THE ROLE OF HORUS IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION

THE ROLE OF ISIS IN EGYPTIAN RELIGION

But now for an explanation on the plain ground of natural fact. Isis, in one character, was the Mother-Moon, the reproducer of the light in Amenta; the place of conjunction and of re-begettal by the Sun-god, when Osiris entered the Moon, and she became the Woman who was clothed with the Sun. At the end of a lunation the old Moon died and became a corpse-it is at times portrayed as a mummy-in the underworld, and there it was revivified by Osiris, the solar fecundator of the Moon who was the Mother that brought forth the child of light, the “Cripple-deity” that was naturally enough begotten in the dark. (Plutarch.)

But worse still. When Osiris lay helpless and breathless in Amenta with a “Corpse-like face” (Rit., ch. LXXIV) his two wives who are likewise his daughters came to cohabit with him, and raise him from the dead, or re-erect him like, and as, the Tat. It is said of Isis she “raised the remains of the Godof the resting heart and extracted his seed to beget an heir,” or to make him human by reincarnation in the flesh. (Hymn to Osiris, Records, line 16, p. 102, vol. IV, first series; vol. IV, p. 21, second series.) In this phase it is the female who cohabits with the Corpse of the dead Male. But in neither were the actors of the drama human, although they are humanised in the Märchen. The Mythos is repeated and applied in a Semitic Folk-Tale when Lot’s two Daughters are “with Child by their Father.” (Gen. XIX. 36.) The difference being that Osiris as Father in the Mysteries of Amenta was dead at the time, whereas in the irresponsible Märchen Lot is represented as dead-drunk.

The Myths are not to be explained by means of the Märchen; not if you collect and compare the Nursery-Tales of all the world. But we can explain the Märchen more or less by aid of the Myths, or rather the mythical representations in which we can once more recover the lost key. The Aryan Folk-Tales, for example, are by no means a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind. They are not a direct reflection of anything; they are refracted mythology, and the representation in mythology is not direct, not literal, but mystical. Egyptian mythology, and all it signifies, lies between the Aryan or other folk-tales and Primitive Man. The Märchen are not the oldest or most primitive form of the Myth; they are the latest. The coinage is the same, but the primitive impress is greatly worn down, and the features are often well-nigh effaced. In the Märchen, the Ancient Wise Woman or old Mother goes on telling her tales, but the memory of their meaning has lapsed by reason of her age. Whereas in the Ritual the representation is still preserved and repeated accurately according to knowledge. The Mythos passes into the Folk-Tale, not the Folk-Tale into the Mythos.