Considerable diversity of opinion existed amongst the ancients themselves as to the meaning of the myth of Osiris. He represented, -according to Plutarch, the inundation. of the Nile; Isis, the irrigated land; Horns, the vapors; Buto, the marshes; Nepl thys, the edge of the desert; Anubis, the barren soil; Typhon, was the sea; the conspirators,.
the drought; the chest, the river's banks. The Tanaitic branch was the one which over flowed unprofitably; the 28 years, the number of cubits which the Nile rose at Elephan tine; Ilarpocrates, the first shootings of the corn. Such are the naturalistic interpreta tions of Plutarch; but there appears in it the dualistic principle of good and evil, represented by Osiris and Set or Typhon, or again paralleled by the contest of Ra or the sun, and Apophis or darkness. The difficulty of interpretation increased from the form of Osiris having become blended or identified with that of other deities, especially Ptah Socharis, the pigmy of Memphis, and the bull Hapis or Apis, the avatar of Ptah. Osiris was the head of a tetrad of deities, whose' local worship was at Abydos, but who were the last repetition of the go(N of the other nomes of Egypt, and who had assumed an heroic or mortal type. In form, Osiris is always represented swathed or mumnued in allusion to his embalmment; a net-work, suggestive of the net by which his remains were fished out of the Nile, covers this dress; on his head he wears the cap all, having at each side the feather of truth, of which he was the lord. This is placed on the horns of a
•goat. His hands hold the crook and whip, to indicate his governing and directing power; and his feet are based on the cubit of truth; a panther's skin on a pole is often placed before him, and festoons of grapes hang over his shrine, connecting him with Dionysos. As "the good being," or Onnophris the meek-hearted, the celestial or king of heaven, he wears the white or upper crown Another and rarer type of him repre sents him as the Tat, or emblem of stability, wearing the crown of the two Truths upon his head. His worship, at a later time, was extended over Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, and at an early age had penetrated into Phenicia, traces of it being found on the .coins of Malta and other places. He became introduced along with the Isiac worship into Rome, and had votaries under the Roman empire. But the attacks of the philoso phers, and the rise of Christianity, overthrew these exotic deities, who were never popu lar with the more cultivated portion of the Roman world.
Herodotus, ii. 40-42; Plutarch, De "'side,. Tibullus, i. 7; Diodorus, i. 23; Prichard, Mythology, p. 208; Wilkinson, Han. and Cest., iv. 314; Bunsen, Egypt's Place, i. 414.