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Reign of kings map ethiopia4/6/2023 ![]() One also thinks of the twenty-one cubits - 11 m.-assigned to the god Onuris (Shu), son of the creator and grandfather of Osiris, in a tale of Ptolemaic times (the Dream of Nectanebo), or, according to Manethon, to the five cubits and three palms-2.84 m. of the famous snake of the tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, the likely image of the creator-god, Lord of the Land of Punt, the place of origin. II, 101,3) !Įverything considered, this notation could be mostly based on objective observations: the one of the huge statuaries, often "Osirian", which populated the divine or funeral temples of the valley of the Nile. In an apparently anecdotal way, a text from the temple of Dendara teaches us that he measured eight cubits, six palms and three fingers, that is close to 4.60 m. Osiris was a giant, a natural action of the human mind granting exceptional proportions to an outstanding being. Some arguments, as we will see, could support this last hypothesis. In actual fact, one would be tempted to return to the great times of glory of Thebes back in this legendary period, that is to say in the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty, after the expulsion of the Hyksos by the brothers Kamosis and Ahmoses, or even to the beginning of the XIIth Dynasty, after the reunification of the Two-lands by Montuhotep II. Already by the time of Saite -XVIth Dynasty-, an inscription engraved on a statuette of the Osiris-king indicates that Thebes was the god's city (Cairo CG 38368). In Karnak, the temple of Opet, built on the supposed place of the birth of Osiris, does not fail to celebrate the event. Several texts from the Ptolemaic temple at Dendara make allusion to this. The question arises, from then on, as to the exact moment where one officially fixes this detail in the biography of Osiris. The choice of the city of Thebes is not fortuitous: it is a question of making it sacred, by attributing to it a privileged place, a city in which royal power is already prominent, to this stage of the development of the myth, to the rank of dynastic capital. In the tales of the Papyrus Westcar, written to the Middle Kingdom, the arrival in the world of each of the first three kings of the Vth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare-Kakai, is systematically accompanied by an official declaration from the goddess Meskhenet: "A king who will exercise royalty in this entire land !" (P. This public proclamation of the birth of the hereditary prince is probably inspired by an authentic institutional reality. Some tell that in Thebes a certain Pamylès, who was in the process of drawing water, heard, coming from the temple of Zeus (Amon), an order proclaiming that the Great King, Benefactor, Osiris, was born " ( Isis et Osiris, 12). At he moment the delivery was completed, a voice announced: 'The master of all things comes today'. "The first (epagomenal) day was born Osiris. Osiris, eldest son of Geb, the god of the earth, and of Nut, the goddess of the sky, was the first of the five children (Osiris, Horus the ancient, Seth, Isis and Nephthys) born successively on each of the five additional so-called "epagomenal" days, which finishes the solar year of 360 days. We are also able to, beyond doubt, to search for the political circumstances which, in Pharaonic history, conditioned this "historical" progress of the Osirian figure. However, on examination of the multiple sources - classic or Egyptian, religious, magical or literary - relative to this terrestrial existence, it turns out that numerous convergences allow a coherent reconstruction, and probably a close enough narrative plot to the official biography" which a cultured Egyptian had to know. The traditional image of Osiris sitting, wearing his Atef crown, with the crook ( heqa) and the flail ( nekhakha) crossed on his chest, often surrounded by his sisters Isis and Nephthys, as seen on the funeral papyrus vignettes, a reminder that before reigning over "the west", meaning in the beyond, the god indeed governed, according to the legend, the world of the living. Sarcophagus Texts, Formula 44 ( CT I, 189f-g) (Middle Kingdom)Įxtracted from the magazine "Egypte", N☁0, August 1998, with the agreeable authorisation of editor-in-chief Thierry-Louis Bergerot You are crowned Lord of the West after having governed Egypt and the inhabitants of the Earth. ![]() When Osiris Ruled on Earth Bernard MATHIEU: Quand Osiris règnait sur terre. ![]()
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