CHAPTER SIX

THE CULT AND THE SOCIETY

Patriarchy in a Nomadic Community In his primal aspect Osiris wields sovereignty over the realm of the dead, and the basic urge behind his equation with the dead King must be the conversion of terror into benign protection, a captatio bene• volentiae not unparalleled in man's attitude to death. In this primal aspect he was probably at first a jackal-god like Anubis and Khen• tamenthes, but in the myth-making stage he is already one with the dead King, to whom he owes his anthropomorphism and much else. In the myth he is the father who groups his family around him. He is acknowledged too as the god who dies but who achieves continued life, partly because his body is preserved by mummification. Here again the King's fate and desired end are reflected. A question of some interest is what kind of society can have engendered such a myth and cult. Of the primary pre-mythic stage little can be said, except that the gods regarded as jackals or canides seem to derive exclusively from Upper Egypt. 1 The desert and the necropolis belong naturally to them, and religion has made the source of the greatest fear - that they would devour the dead body - a veritable guarantee of pro• tection. A puzzling feature is that Anubis, like Osiris, is regarded sometimes as a judge of the dead. 2 It is a feature that in each case preserves the dreaded aspect of the jackal image. As for the stage reflected by the myth, where Osiris and the King are one, it obviously implies a society in which the patriarchal head occupied a highly privileged position. Just as the concept of the father• hood of God in Hebrew and Christian and Moslem thought reflects sociologically a primitive patriarchy, so the central position of Osiris in the myth is the outcome of a social state dominated by the father. 3

1 Cf. Kees, Ancient Egypt, 25. 2 Bonnet, Reallexikon, 42. 3 In such a society the paterfamilias, chieftain or king is often also the priest or high priest of the family, tribe or state; cf. Joachim Wach, Sociology of Religion (Chicago, 1944), 363f. 186 THE CULT AND THE SOCIETY

The position of Isis is thoroughly subsidiary. Whereas four of the deities of the Heliopolitan Ennead are accompanied by their wives, the leader of the Ennead, Atum, is a sovereign creator who generated without the aid of a wife. 4 Atum belongs, however, to Heliopolis and its theology in a way that Osiris does not. At the same time, the evidence from the early religion suggests a patriarchal society in both Lower and Upper Egypt. That the ruler's position was highly privileged is indicated by the predominance exercised in the Osirian cult by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. It was only the deceased King who was identified with the god, whereas the rites of the 'Butic burial' were open to commoners. Are we to infer from this that the Upper Egyptian society among which Osiris arose knew a kingship that was more rigid in its abso• lutism than the contemporary society in Lower Egypt? Such an infer• ence is beyond the scope of our evidence, since the cult of Osiris cannot as yet be traced to so early an era. Although the cult probably originated in the necropolis of Abydos, its origins cannot be traced to the period prior to the establishment of the united kingdom under Menes, nor indeed is there tangible attestation in the earliest dynasties even of this era. We have seen that the god's position in the funerary cult of the com• moners was at first far less commanding, and the cleavage between ruler and ruled is forcibly illustrated by the difference. It is not easy to say whether the god was known and revered by a local community as a whole before being appropriated by the Kings in a special way. Breasted 5 states that 'in spite of its popular origin ... the Osirian faith, like that of the Sun-god, entered into the most intimate relations with the king• ship.' His grounds for believing in its popular origin seem to be that the Osiris-myth expressed the hopes and aspirations of the people. 6 This was scarcely true in the full sense of the initial stage; the private inscriptions seek from Osiris, as from other mortuary gods, the favour of a goodly burial, that is all. An imposed brevity is, of course,

4 On a coffin from Asyut Atum is grouped with his Hand as Osiris is with Isis and Seth with Nephthys : see Chassinat and Palanque, Foui/les dans Ia necropo/e d'Assiout (MIFAO 24, 1911), 192 (cote 4) and 236, a ref. I owe to Rundle Clark. Pyr. 1521a-b is a similar text, but does not refer to the Hand. Rundle Clark remarks that the coffin text in question does not occur in de De Buck, CT. For the equation of the God's Htmd with Hathor see Sethe, Dram. Texte, 226 and cf. Allam, Beitriige zum Hathorku/t, 129. Cf. Kees, Giitterglaube, 222, n. 5. 5 Dev. Rei. 39. 6 Op. cit., 37.