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proper noun
Osiris  n.  (Myth.) One of the principal divinities of Egypt, the brother and husband of Isis. He was figured as a mummy wearing the royal cap of Upper Egypt, and was symbolized by the sacred bull, called Apis. Cf. Serapis.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Osiris" Quotes from Famous Books



... Caesar's dream. For Antony was made for conquests; it was he who, fortune favoring, might have given the world to Rome. A splendid, an impudent bandit, first and foremost a soldier, calling himself a descendant of Hercules whom he resembled; hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus, in Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, and Teuton in his capacity for drink; vomiting in the open Forum, and making and unmaking kings; weaving with that viper of the Nile a romance which is history; passing initiate into the inimitable ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... shaped by some workman down in Thebae on the Nile. We may be sure that no people believes more intensely in a future life. What compliment they pay this physical frame of men when they hold that embalmment restores to the soul its former body! After the judgment of Osiris, if their lives be true, the worthy shall enjoy the companionship of the great god forever. No other people wears such a visible emblem of their faith in another life. I will buy this scarab for an amulet ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford

... stolen kisses, when the moony nights Call forth fierce lovers to their wish'd delights; So kings and queens meet, when desire convinces All thoughts but such as aim at getting princes, As I meet thee. Soul of my life and fame! Eternal lamp of love! whose radiant flame Out-glares the heaven's Osiris,[H] and thy gleams Out-shine the splendour of his mid-day beams. Welcome, O welcome, my illustrious spouse; Welcome as are the ends unto my vows; Aye! far more welcome than the happy soil The sea-scourged merchant, after all ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... to undertake the conquest of Asia, it was necessary for me to appear to the people something more than a man. They had been used to the idea of demi-god heroes. I therefore claimed an equal descent with Osiris and Sesostris, with Bacchus and Hercules, the former conquerors of the East. The opinion of my divinity assisted my arms and subdued all nations before me, from the Granicus to the Ganges. But though I called myself the son of Jupiter, and kept up the veneration ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... It has not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among his friends, and no takers, that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake Osiris. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Matrimony under the form of a Right-Angled Triangle. That triangle contains one of the perpendiculars of three, the base of four, and the hypotenuse of five parts, the square of which is equal to the squares of those sides containing the right angle. The perpendicular (three) is the Male, Osiris, the originating principle ([Greek: arche]); the base (four) is the Female, Isis, the receptive principle ([Greek: hypodoche]); and the Hypotenuse (five) is the offspring of both, Horus, the product ([Greek: apotelesma])." ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... been witnessed in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.—Hence among the Hindoos, those personified agencies have been systematized under the titles of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Crishna, &c. Among the Egyptians, they were worshipped in the forms of living animals, and called Osiris, Ammon, Oris, Typhon, Isis, &c. Among the Chaldeans, and, after them, among the Jews, they were classed in principalities, powers, and dominions of angels and devils, under chiefs, who bore the names of Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... the gods might be mortal; even Ra, the sun-god, is said to have grown old and feeble, Osiris was slain, and Orion, the great hunter of the heavens, killed and ate the gods. The mortality of gods has been dwelt on by Dr. Frazer (Golden Bough), and the many instances of tombs of gods, and of the slaying of the deified man who was worshipped, all show that ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... Adonis, are ruins of an ancient temple in which can still be seen a few Corinthian columns. This, too, we are told, was consecrated to Tammuz; and in this valley the women of Byblus bemoaned every year the fate of their god. Isis and Osiris, Tammuz and Ashtaroth, Venus and Adonis,—these, I believe, are one and the same. Their myth borrowed from the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Romans, from either of the two. But the Venus of Rome is cheerful, joyous, that of the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Ram Spudd took it. He made the deepest salaam and said, 'Isis guard you, beautiful lady.' Such perfect courtesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. As I passed out I couldn't help slipping another dollar into his hand, and he took it as if utterly unaware of it, and muttered, 'Osiris keep you, O flower of women!' And as I got into the motor I gave him another dollar and he said, 'Osis and Osiris both prolong your existence, O lily of the ricefield,' and after he had said it he stood beside the door of the motor and waited without moving till I left. He had such a strange, rapt ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... doubt, some day succeed my father as high priest of Osiris," he told Amuba. "I know that my father does not think that he is clever, but it is not necessary to be very clever to serve in the temple. I thought that, of course, I too should come to high rank in the priesthood; for, as you know, almost all posts are hereditary, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... the Egyptian mystery of Osiris in this light. Osiris had gradually become one of the most important Egyptian divinities; he supplanted other gods in certain parts of the country; and an important cycle of myths was formed round him and ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... of a life after death. It was still a great religion when the Christian doctrine of immortality was enunciated. In the early centuries of the Christian era, it seemed almost possible that the worship of Osiris and Isis might become the religion of the classical world; and the last stand made by civilized paganism against Christianity was in the temple of Isis at Philae in the sixth ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... first fasciculus of the work on Edfu by M. de Rochemonteix. In it a Page 101 complete temple will be placed before students. The entire Egyptian religion will be illustrated, in all its rituals,—ritual of foundation, of sacrifice, of the feast of Osiris. M. Benedite has commenced in the same way the publication of the Temples of Philae.—Revue Critique, 1892, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... lukos, ailouros]. The Egyptians styled Myrrh, Baal; balsam, baal-samen; Camphire, Cham-phour, [Greek: kamphoura] of Greece; Opium, Ophion. The sweet reed of Egypt was named [47]Canah, and Conah, by way of eminence; also, [48]Can-Osiris. Cinnamon was denominated from Chan-Amon; Cinnabar, [Greek: kinnabaris], from Chan-Abor; the sacred beetle, Cantharus, from Chan-Athur. The harp was styled Cinnor, and was supposed to have been found out by Cinaras; which terms ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... of the gods? On the walls of the tombs still remain Pthah, the creator, and Neph, the divine spirit, sitting at the potters wheel, turning clay to form men; and Athor, who receives the setting sun into her arms; and Osiris, the judge of the dead. The granite statues ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin, Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort incomplete, ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... banks of the Nile is approached by an avenue flanked by six colossal figures, which measure six feet and a half from the ground to the knees. They are representations of Isis and Osiris, in various attitudes. The sides and capitals of the pillars are covered with paintings or hieroglyphic carvings, in which Burckhardt thought a very ancient style was to be traced. All these are hewn out of the rock, and the faces ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... and foresight of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer was in the composition of the Archbishop himself, for he judged mankind alone by its general stupidity and credulity;— stupidity and credulity which formed excellent ground for the working of miracles, whether such miracles were wrought in the name of Osiris or Christ. Mokanna, the "Veiled Prophet," while corrupt to the core with unnameable vices, had managed in his time to delude the people into thinking him a holy man; and,—without any adequate reason for his assumption,—the Archbishop had certainly ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... front garden!" ironically responded Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer, as he lay on his back on the lower deck of the Osiris, waiting for Fielding Pasha's orders to steam up ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... slain by the Emperor. As Arrian compared his master to Achilles, so Pancrates flattered him with allusions to Herakles. The lotos, it is well known, was a sacred flower in Egypt. Both as a symbol of the all-nourishing moisture of the earth and of the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris, and also as an emblem of immortality, it appeared on all the sacred places of the Egyptians, especially on tombs and funeral utensils. To dignify Antinous with the lotos emblem was to consecrate him; to find a new species of the revered blossom and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Egypt, music is entirely under the patronage of male gods. Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, invented the lyre by striking the tendons of a dead tortoise, which had dried and stretched in the shell. Osiris, too, the chief of the Egyptian gods, protected the art, although Strabo says music was not allowed in his temple at Abydos. While travelling in Ethiopia, the story runs, Osiris met a troupe of revelling satyrs, and, being fond ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... into every cult of religious mystery, and in his story he exultingly shows us the dog-faced gods of Egypt triumphing on the soil that Apollo and Athene had blessed. Here was Anubis, their messenger, and unconquered Osiris, supreme father of gods, and another whose emblem no mortal tongue might expound. So it came that at the great procession of Isis through a Greek city the ass was at last able, after unutterable sufferings, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... and when I came to the priest he held out the roses, and I ate them, and was changed into a man. The people raised their hands to heaven, wonder-stricken by the miracle, and the fame of it went out over all the world. The priest initiated me into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, and I shaved my head, and entered the College of Pastors, and became a servant of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... persons, undeceived by appearances, seeing things always as they are, calling them always by their true names. And such will His judgment be hereafter. On the walls of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is a group of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit before Osiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds a shepherd's crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales of justice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whose lot ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... Tradition says that Ham, or one of his sons, led the first colony into Egypt. In fact there is a legend that Noah himself once dwelt there and some historians have identified him with the great deity of the Egyptians, Osiris. To Hermes, or Mercury, the secretary of Osiris, is ascribed the invention of the first stringed instrument. The story is that Hermes was walking one day along the banks of the Nile. It was just after one of the great inundations. The Nile had overflowed its banks and the ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover

... illustrate the temptations to which they were exposed.(1) Such was the memorial erected by Abseli to the memory of his parents, Abba and Ahatbu, in the fourth year of Xerxes, 481 B.C.(2) They had evidently adopted the religion of Osiris, and were buried at Saqqarah in accordance with the Egyptian rites. The upper scene engraved upon the stele represents Abba and his wife in the presence of Osiris, who is attended by Isis and Nephthys; and in the lower panel is the funeral scene, in ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... Thebes. Let us look at the finest of them—the tomb of Sety I., the father of that Ramses II. of whom we have heard so much. Entering the dark doorway in the cliff, you descend through passage after passage and hall after hall, until at last you reach the fourteenth chamber, "the gold house of Osiris," 470 feet from the entrance, where the great King was laid in his magnificent alabaster coffin. The walls and pillars of each chamber are wonderfully carved and painted. The pillars show pictures of the King making offerings to the gods, or being welcomed by them, but the pictures ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie

... the creator of all things, from whom all things emanate and by whom all things are sustained. The Persians, Egyptians, Greeks held similar ideas. The Persians called God, Ormuzd, the Greeks, Orpheus, the Egyptians, Osiris." ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... the ordinary white geese of Europe[2], and not the red goose of the Nile (the [Greek: chenalopex] of Herodotus), which, ages before, had been enrolled amongst the animals held sacred in Egypt, and which formed the emblem of Seb, the father of Osiris.[3] HORAPOLLO, endeavouring to account for this predilection of the Egyptians (who employed the goose hieroglyphically to denote a son), ascribes it to their appreciation of the love evinced by it for its offspring, in exposing itself ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... ceremonies and the presidents of the sacred lodges, who receive neophytes and confer dignities. Their rites are secret; none but a member can be admitted. These divines, as of old the priest of Isis and Osiris, are deeply learned; and truly their knowledge of natural history is astonishing. They are well acquainted with astronomy and botany, and keep the records and great transactions of the tribes, employing certain hieroglyphics, which ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... information. In vain he started the topic of modern conjuring-tricks as compared with the conjuring-tricks performed by the ancient Egyptians. Zuleika did not even say "Oh really?" when he told her about the metamorphosis of the bulls in the Temple of Osiris. He primed himself with a glass of sherry, cleared his throat. "And what," he asked, with a note of firmness, "did you think of our cousins across the water?" Zuleika said "Yes;" and then he gave in. Nor was she conscious that he ceased talking to her. At intervals throughout the rest of dinner, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune godhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern worship of the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... of this most ancient of books—its catholic spirit and disregard of those {35} mythological and esoteric riddles that most Egyptian works propound to us continually. It will be noticed that 'the God' is not anywhere mentioned by name. Osiris (5) and Horus (41) are alluded to, but only historically, in respect of their rule upon earth, not as present powers. The reason is this, that at that time the Gods, even the great Gods, were only local, that is to say, their worship was confined ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn

... dying; Hark! the insulting foeman's cry. They are coming—quick, my falchion! Let me front them ere I die. Ah! no more amid the battle Shall my heart exulting swell; Isis and Osiris guard thee! Cleopatra—Rome—farewell! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the famous Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, for whose sake he had dismissed his wife Octavia, the sister of Octavian, in order that the Egyptian might take her place. He had appeared beside her in Alexandria wearing the insignia of the Egyptian god Osiris, while Cleopatra wore those of Isis. Coins and medals were struck bearing their effigies as joint rulers of the East, and the loyalty of Rome and the West to Octavian was confirmed by the sense of indignation ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... the wit Osiris gave me! This same bit of glass shall save me! I shall sell it as a diamond at some stupendous price! And whoe'er I ask to take it will find, for his own sweet sake, it Will be better not to wait until I have ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Memphis, and Pharos that sweet date-trees yields, And where swift Nile in his large channel skipping,[305] By seven huge mouths into the sea is slipping. 10 By feared Anubis' visage I thee pray,— So in thy temples shall Osiris stay, And the dull snake about thy offerings creep, And in thy pomp horned Apis with thee keep,— Turn thy looks hither, and in one spare twain: Thou givest my mistress life, she mine again. She oft hath served thee upon certain days, Where the French[306] rout engirt themselves with bays. On ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... diversify the canon have been fitly named temples, as Shiva's Temple, a mile high, carved out of the red Carboniferous limestone, and remarkably symmetrical in its outlines. Near it is the Temple of Isis, the Temple of Osiris, the Buddha Temple, the Horus Temple, and the Pyramid of Cheops. Farther to the east is the Diva Temple, the Brahma Temple, the Temple of Zoroaster, and the Tomb of Odin. Indeed, everywhere are there suggestions of temples and tombs, pagodas and pyramids, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... And it seemed as though in that powerful, symmetrical, magnificent body, even after it became scarcely recognizable as human, that the spark of life could not be extinguished even though it were cut into a million shreds and scattered to the winds like the fair body of Osiris. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... standing on seven steps, having lifted the sky from the earth in the form of a triangle; and that at each point stood one of the gods, Sut and Shu at the base, the apex being the Pole Star where Horus of the Horizon had his throne. This is, in so far, true; but the pyramid emblem was older than Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and runs back ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... make out a good solid list From authors recondite who do not exist,— But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,— I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... existence of Jesus, but regards him as the figure round which has grown a mythus, moulded by the Messianic expectations of the Jews: the second, which is indifferent to his historical existence, and regards him as a new hero of the ancient sun-worship, the successor of Mithra, Krishna, Osiris, Bacchus, etc. To this school, it matters not whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth or not, just as it matters not whether a Krishna or an Osiris had an historical existence or not; it is Christ, the Sun-god, not Jesus, the Jewish peasant, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is entertained by an Arcadian, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... such gods must be in him also. The mystery of the elements must be interwoven with the very stuff of his being and the unfathomable depths of Nature must be a path for his feet. In him all mythologies and all religions must meet and be transcended. He is Prometheus and Dionysus. He is Osiris and Balder. He is the great god Pan. "All that we have been, all that we are, and all that we hope to be, is centred in him alone." His spirit is the creative spirit which moves for ever upon the face of the waters. In him ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... from being fools," I answered Sir John with the air of being in their confidence. "We who are tempted to think so, don't take the trouble to try the key of their Faith in its door. I might say that its door was the door of the Tomb. If we go through that door into the Kingdom of Osiris, Amenti, which the Greeks renamed Hades, the mysteries which appear tangled sort themselves graciously out. The story of Isis the Great Enchantress, and her search for the body of her husband Osiris, murdered by Set, his wicked and jealous ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... indebted alike for the rock temples of Nubia, and the inimitable obelisks of Luxor. He raised that splendid structure on the western side of Thebes, supported by colossal statues, which is foolishly styled the Memnonion; he made great additions to Karnak; he built the temple of Osiris at Abydus; he adorned the great temple of Memphis with colossal statues, for which he evidently had a passion; and, finally, amid a vast number of other temples, especially in Nubia, which it would be tedious to recount, and other remains, he cut the famous Monticoelian obelisk now at Rome. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... the stale legends of Deucalion of Thessaly, of Inachus of Argos, and, AEgialeus of Sicyon; nor in the long line of princes who are derived from them. The supposed heroes of the first ages, in every country are equally fabulous. No such conquests were ever achieved as are ascribed to Osiris, Dionusus, and Sesostris. The histories of Hercules and Perseus are equally void of truth. I am convinced, and hope I shall satisfactorily prove, that Cadmus never brought letters to Greece; and that no such person existed as the Grecians have described. What I have said ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... and the other milk, and that the dragon seemed to applaud their action by hisses. As the people who were present at the spectacle did not see what was going on within, it is not astonishing that they believed it due to divine intervention. We know, in fact, that Osiris or Bacchus was considered as the discoverer of the vine and of milk; that Iris was the genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... All things were in disorder and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased their gods—[Diod. Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic terrors.—[Ibid. ; Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... A Leper once he lost and gain'd a King, Ahaz his sottish Conquerour, whom he drew Gods Altar to disparage and displace For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His odious offrings, and adore the Gods Whom he had vanquisht. After these appear'd A crew who under Names of old Renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus and their Train With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd Fanatic Egypt and her Priests, to seek 480 Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms Rather then human. Nor did Israel scape ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... be again occupied by the soul, when, after many transmigrations from one animal to another, having expiated all sins done in the body, it should return purified to the old body. Assuming their belief true, where now might be those ancient believers in Osiris, Ra, Horus, Isis, Set and other nature gods, having ages before bowed in submission to Bes, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... chronicles,—and instances from more modern folklore, wherein a mistress or wife dies, or seems to die, and is buried, yet is afterwards recovered from the tomb, and lives to wed, if a maiden, and to bear children. He supports these by references to the vampire superstitions, and to the case of Osiris, who returned after death to Isis and became the father of Horus. And, following Uhland, he compares the sleep-thorn, with which Odin pricked the Valkyrie, Brynhild, and so put her into a magic slumber, to the stake which was driven into the corpse suspected of being a vampire, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... amusements, you could hear a mouse run. A hundred stiff and silent women walk round and round an orchestra that is set up in the middle. The Baron compares these circuits to the seven processions of the Egyptians round the tomb of Osiris. A charming mot of my good friend Garrick, is that London is good for the English, but Paris is good for all the world.... There is a great mania for conversions and missionaries. Mr. Hume told me ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... several instruments for each and their manner of use among different nations. Alongside the dignity of such is placed, and their several inventors are named. But on the exterior all the inventors in science, in warfare, and in law are represented. There I saw Moses, Osiris, Jupiter, Mercury, Lycurgus, Pompilius, Pythagoras, Zamolxis, Solon, Charondas, Phoroneus, with very many others. They even have Mahomet, whom nevertheless they hate as a false and sordid legislator. In the most dignified position I saw a representation of Jesus Christ and of the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... division are tesserae from Egyptian mummies of the Grecian period, with various figures, including one of Anubis, the embalmer of the dead; a mummy of Amounirion covered with a curious network of bugles in blue porcelain; the upper part of a coffin with dedications to the Egyptian god Osiris; a small coffin containing the mummy of a child; the mummy of a female, Auch-sen-nefer, upon which is a scarabaeus, the sacred beetle of the Egyptians. In the fourth division the principal object is the coffin of the last-named mummy, with representations ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... fortresses are those of Abydos, El Kab, and Semneh. Abydos contained a sanctuary dedicated to Osiris, and was situate at the entrance to one of the roads leading to the Oasis. As the renown of the temple attracted pilgrims, so the position of the city caused it to be frequented by merchants; hence the prosperity which it derived from the influx ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... mother, but to have come completely armed from his brains, when his head was opened by Vulcan; by which it is meant to infer that wisdom is the result of this ethereal fluid. Thus, following the same fictions, the sun, that beneficent star which has such a marked influence over the earth, became an Osiris, a Belus, a Mithras, an Adonis, an Apollo. Nature, rendered sorrowful by his periodical absence, was an Isis, an Astarte, a Venus, a Cybele. Astarte had a magnificent temple at Hieropolis served by three hundred priests, who were always ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... religion Ahriman and his evil Spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the Lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt." (Archbp. Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 7.) Terror, and the seeming absence of a beneficent Providence, are suggestions of the Desert which must have led men to associate it with evil spirits, rather than the figure with which ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... by the laws, but even, in some measure, originated from their religion, from the example and practice of such of their gods as had been the most anciently and universally adored in Egypt, that is, Osiris and Isis.(335) ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... sleeper to scan his face. But, as Timokles stooped, he dimly saw, in the relaxed, open palm of the man's hand, a small stone of the triangular form under which the Egyptians were wont to worship Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Such are the stones found in the tombs of ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford

... Nor is Osiris seen In Memphian grove or green, Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud, Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest— Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark. The sable-stoled sorcerers ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... are appointed by law to exercise this art (embalming) as their peculiar business; and when a dead body is brought them they produce patterns of mummies in wood imitated in painting, the most elaborate of which are said to be of him (Osiris) whose name I do not think it right to mention on this occasion. The second which they show is simpler and less costly; the third is the cheapest. Having exhibited them all, they inquire of the persons who have applied to them which method they wish to be adopted, and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... handsome cartonnage case laced up the back. The Professor lifted it gently out on the table, and substituted Carrel's body. He staunched as he best could the blood which trickled on to the glaring pictures of the Judgment of Osiris and the goddess Nut imparting the Waters of Life; then he turned to examine the former occupant, whom two thousand years, even at such a moment endowed with a greater interest than could attach to the corpse of a defunct blackmailer. It now occurred to him that he might ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... Seez, in the department of the Orne, is sometimes written Sais, like the city of the Delta. The Gauls swore by the bull, an idea derived from the bull Apis. The Latin name of Bellocastes, which was that of the people of Bayeux, comes from Beli Casa, dwelling, sanctuary of Belus—Belus and Osiris, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... I call down upon thee? May the Nile Turn back his water to his source, thy fields Want for the winter rain, and all the land Crumble to desert wastes! We in our fanes Have known thine Isis and thy hideous gods, Half hounds, half human, and the drum that bids To sorrow, and Osiris, whom thy dirge (24) Proclaims for man. Thou, Egypt, in thy sand Our dead containest. Nor, though her temples now Serve a proud master, yet has Rome required Pompeius' ashes: in a foreign land Still lies her chief. But though ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... chambers open: on the west side is an apartment forming a court and kiosk for the celebration of the feast of the New Year, the principal festival of Dendera. On the roof of the temple, reached by two staircases, are a pavilion and several chambers dedicated to the worship of Osiris. Inside and out, the whole of the temple is covered with scenes and inscriptions in crowded characters, of ceremonial and religious import; the decoration is even carried into a remarkable series of hidden passages and chambers or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... god we deemed, Or king of palmy Nile, colossal shapes Such as Syene's rosy quarries yield To Memphian art; Horus, Osiris called, Or Amenoph, who, on the Theban plain, With magic melody the sun salutes; Or he, far mightier, to whose conquering car Monarchs were yoked, Rameses: by the Greeks Sesostris styled. And yet no sculptor's art Moulded this shape, for form ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli

... Diodorus Siculus, and Pausanias, say that Io was the daughter of Inachus, the first king of Argos; that Jupiter carried her away to Crete; and that by her he had a son named Epaphus, who went to reign in Egypt, whither his mother accompanied him. They also tell us that she married Apis, or Osiris, who, after his death, was numbered among the Deities of Egypt by the name of Serapis. From them we also learn that Juno, being actuated by jealousy, on the discovery of the intrigue, put Io under the care of her uncle Argus, a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... change comes over the psychical powers of a man at that supreme moment, whereby he can do no more good, but may harden into a more hopeless reprobate. The notion that a judgment of the soul takes place, as in the hall of Osiris, of Egyptian mythology, at the instant of dissolution, whereby the destiny of the individual is sealed for ever, we repudiate in terms. Man is judged, not then, but at every moment of his life. "The moral ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... offerings to the divine beings. On others, groups of men and women are shown, humbly presenting salvers of fruit and the sacred flower—the lotus—to their gods. Some of the most effective work is decorated with a simple life-size figure of Osiris or Rameses the Great in brilliant colours. A few of the more subdued patchwork designs consist of a solitary scarab, the sacred beetle of the Pharaohs, or an asp or two gracefully entwined. The smaller pieces make practical and admirable cushion ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft. Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on slightly raised plaster. Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris, Horus, and other gods; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst the elaborate inscriptions. The colours were extremely rich, and, though there was so much to be seen ahead, we stood there for some minutes, looking at them with a ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds, and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of Osiris, would scarce be ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier

... divinities of the popular mythology were frequently grouped in triads. First in importance among these groups was that formed by Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Horus, their son. The members of this triad ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... depicted naval as well as military battles, in which the vessels are evidently those employed at sea. According to their own traditions, they colonized in a remote age. They themselves laid claim to Danaus: and the mythus of the expedition of Osiris is not improbably construed into a figurative representation of the spread of Egyptian civilization by the means of colonies. Besides, Egypt was subjected to more than one revolution, by which a large portion of her population was expelled the land, and scattered over the neighbouring ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... resounding Acheron;' nor do the philosophers accept as gods Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as gods or as the sons of Ares. And on many points also they are at variance with the legislators, as Xenophanes bade the Egyptians, if they regarded Osiris as mortal, not to honour him as a god; but if they thought him a god not to mourn for him. And, again, the poets and legislators will not listen to, nor can they understand, the philosophers who make gods of ideas and numbers and units and spirits. And their views generally are very different. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... O power divine! And on thy hospitable Argos shine; Whether the style of Titan please thee more, Whose purple rays th' Achaemenes adore: Or great Osiris, who first taught the swain In Pharian fields to sow the golden grain; 860 Or Mithra, to whose beams the Persian bows, And pays, in hollow rocks, his awful vows; Mithra! whose head the blaze of light adorns, Who grasps the struggling ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... power of that man, and prepared to struggle against it. Suppose a Jew of Judas Maccabeus, a worshipper of Jehovah, having, from his infancy, heard him called the King of kings, the God of strength, of vengeance, of armies, the Eternal, coming suddenly face to face with the mysterious Osiris of the Egyptians, or the thundering ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... revealed before my soul; And the hieroglyphs are suns— Changeless change the law that runs Through the flame-inscribed page, World on world and age on age, Balls of ice and orbs of fire, What abides when these expire? Through slow cycles they revolve, Yet at last like clouds dissolve. Jove, Osiris, Brahma pass, Races wither like the grass. Must not mortals be as gods To embrace such periods? Yet at Nature's heart remains One who waxes not nor wanes. And our crowning glory still Is to have conceived ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... so surely guarantees. Go tell to the marines that the seed of Israel flourishing in the borders of [150] Misraim will abandon their flourishing district of Goshen through sensitiveness on account of the idolatry of the devotees of Isis and Osiris! ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... were various endowments analogous to our professorships and fellowships of colleges; under the Ptolemies the head librarian, in after times the professor of rhetoric, held the highest post within this ancient university. The librarian was usually chief priest of one of the greatest gods, Isis, Osiris, or Serapis. [35] His appointment was for life, and lay at the disposal of the monarch. Thus the museum was essentially a court institution, and its savants and litterateurs were accomplished courtiers and men of the world. Learning ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... In the mantle of justice there is not the smallest shred for a slave. The gods themselves regard not a creature whose hands are for labor, whose mouth was made only for weeping, and whose back is for clubs. O death, rub my body into ashes, so that there, beyond on the fields of Osiris, I be not born into ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... Indians had such performances; that's exactly like the priests of Osiris. Did any one teach him? I mean ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... "camel-stick" of all Arabia is that carried by the Osiris (mummy), and its crook is ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... the coarse pastimes of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired negro from whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea Coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or Io. Such as had no love ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... been its masters. So much coming and going of peoples corrupted the old Mizraimic faith. The Valley of Palms became a Valley of Gods. The Supreme One was divided into eight, each personating a creative principle in nature, with Ammon-Re at the head. Then Isis and Osiris, and their circle, representing water, fire, air, and other forces, were invented. Still the multiplication went on until we had another order, suggested by human qualities, such as strength, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... was identified rather with the principles of agriculture and political organization. The deity is the fertilizing Nile, or the judge of right conduct. There is recorded in {239} the Book of the Dead the pleading of a soul before Osiris, in which the commands of the god are thus identified with the conditions of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... the deceased immunity from punishment for moral offenses: a sacred beetle of stone, inscribed with a charm beginning "O my heart, rise not up against me as a witness," laid on the breast of the mummy, silences the heart in the presence of Osiris, and the man, even though guilty, goes free. Forms of charms were prepared by the priests, and the name of any one who could pay was inserted in blanks left for this purpose.[201] This sort of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... brother and husband of Isis. Osiris is identical with Adonis and Thammuz. All three represent the sun, six months above the equator, and six months below it. Adonis passed six months with Aphrod[i]t[^e] in heaven, and six months with Perseph[)o]n[^e] in hell. So Osiris in heaven was the beloved of Isis, but in the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... entirely the character of a Roman citizen, and assumed the state and dress of an Eastern monarch. Instead of the toga he wore a robe of purple, and his head was crowned with a diadem. Sometimes he assumed the character of Osiris, while Cleopatra appeared at his side as Isis. He gave the title of kings to Alexander and Ptolemy, his sons by Cleopatra. The Egyptian queen already dreamed of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... power and energy was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the author of Light and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... superstitions of the west of Africa, with the ancient ones of the east of that continent, from which source they have also been spread in Europe. They are humble parts of the great system which is adorned with the fables of Osiris and Isis; and they comprise not only the Obi of Africa, but the witchcraft of our own country. That superstition is every where connected with the worship of the serpent, and with the moon and the cat. Skulls and teeth of cats are ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... first place, that Isis was—and, for that matter, she may yet be—the most beautiful of deities; and Osiris, her husband, though wise and powerful, was sometimes stung with jealousy of her, for only in their loves are the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... extensive and permanent prevalence.3 For immemorial centuries it has possessed the mind of the countless millions of India. Baur thinks the Egyptian identification of each deceased person with Osiris and the burial of him under that name, were meant to denote the reception of the individual human life into the universal nature life. The doctrine has been implicitly held wherever pantheism has found a votary, from Anaximander, to whom finite creatures were "disintegrations or decompositions ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... great antiquity of this characteristic of the Egyptian is proved by a passage in a Book of Precepts, which was written by a king of the ninth or tenth dynasty for his son, who reigned under the name of Merikara. The royal writer in it reminds his son that the Chiefs [of Osiris] who judge sinners perform their duty with merciless justice on the Day of Judgment. It is useless to assume that length of years will be accepted by them as a plea of justification. With them the lifetime of a man is only regarded as a moment. After death these Chiefs must be faced, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... days later I sent him the plan for the journey, also a second copy of the translation which I had made of the hieroglyphical inscription on the Osiris or sepulchral figure. He acknowledged the receipt of the same in two letters, one written in Mrs Montefiore's handwriting, the other in his own. Mr Montefiore subsequently told me that his wife now commenced to take a special interest in antiquities, enriching her cabinet with curiosities ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... fiends, and from the powers of darkness generally. These powers of evil had hideous and terrifying shapes and forms, and their haunts were well known, for they infested the region through which the road of the dead lay when passing from this world to the Kingdom of Osiris. The "great gods" were afraid of them, and were obliged to protect themselves by the use of spells and magical names, and words of power, which were composed and written down by Thoth. In fact it was believed in very early times in Egypt that ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge

... civilized states. The ancient kings of Teneriffe, if they could not find mates of equal rank, married their sisters to prevent the admixture of plebeian blood.[1687] In the Egyptian mythology Isis and Osiris were sister and brother as well as wife and husband. The kings of ancient Egypt married their sisters and daughters. The doctrine of royal essence was very exaggerated, and was applied with quantitative ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... of the development of the belief in water's life-giving attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma [Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of certain representations ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... Aeschylus seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... of the reckless hero, Lemminkainen, (chopped to pieces by the Sons Of Nana, as in the myth of Osiris) was raking together the fragments of his body from the river of Tuoui, and fearing that the sprites of the Death-stream might resent her intrusion, the Sun, in answer to her entreaties, throws his Powerful rays upon the dreaded Shades, and sinks them into a deep sleep, while the mother gathers ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot

... the right hand of God," sang the choir. Slowly, with the air of an irritated lion, the king turned his head in order to see what stupid choirmaster mingled Hebrew verses with the hymn of Osiris. Then ensued noise and confusion. The windows, behind which was the darkness, shone with a red light. The people had assembled before the palace with torches in order to do homage to Pharaoh, the son of Light. The king looked annoyed. Such homage was repeated ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... as accessible as a newspaper. But Plutarch's "Morals" is less known, and seldom reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can as ill spare it as the "Lives." He will read in it the essays "On the Daemon of Socrates," "On Isis and Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On Garrulity," "On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch charms by the facility of his associations; so that it signifies little where you open his book, you find yourself at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... this mystery also. The emperor was, by his taste and his vices, attached to the old religion; but he trembled at the truths disclosed by the revelation; and in this state of apprehension, his thirst of knowledge and his fears led him to consult the priests of Osiris and Isis; and they impressed him with a notion that the infernal deities would be appeased by the sacrifice of a human being dear to him, and who loved him so entirely as to lay down his life for him. Antinous, moved by the anxiety ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... contained a statue of Bacchus, who was, perhaps, the same god as Osiris. An expurgation room, intended for ablutions and purifications, descending to a subterranean reservoir, occupied an angle of the courtyard. In front of this apartment stands an altar, on which were found some remnants of sacrifices. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... forborn, spared, and cherished, in such sort that they may harbour in their own breasts this opinion, that there is not in the world a king or a prince who does not desire fewer enemies and more friends. Thus Osiris, the great king of the Egyptians, conquered almost the whole earth, not so much by force of arms as by easing the people of their troubles, teaching them how to live well, and honestly giving them good laws, and using them with all possible affability, courtesy, gentleness, and liberality. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... moment. It seems that he has an old Pott's fracture of the left ankle, a linear, longitudinal scar on each knee—origin not stated, but easily guessed at—and that he has tattooed on his chest in vermilion a very finely and distinctly executed representation of the symbolical Eye of Osiris—or Horus or Ra, as the different authorities have it. There certainly ought to be no difficulty in identifying the body. But we will hope that it ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... of Jerusalem set about making coalitions with the other nations of western Asia: with the Philistines, the Syrians, the Phoenicians and, most of all, the Egyptians. The gods of the Egyptians were supposed to be especially strong: Osiris and Isis were the chief of their deities and they were believed to be the gods of the underworld—of Sheol, or Hades, the abode of the dead. So when these poor ignorant politicians at Jerusalem finally did succeed in arranging for ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... appear to be incorporated in some shape in the Indian mythology. If interpreted agreeably to the metaphysical symbols of the old world, it would appear to be distilled from the same oriental symbolical crucible, which produced an Osiris and a Typhon—for the American Typhon is represented by the Mishikinabik, or serpent, and the American Osiris by a Hiawatha, Manabozho, Micabo, or ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... the Sun is at the vernal equinox of his age, and this varies with the precession of the equinoxes. Oannes of Assyria had the sign of Pisces, the Fish, and is thus figured. Mithra is in Taurus, and, therefore, rides on a Bull, and Osiris was worshipped as Osiris-Apis, or Serapis, the Bull. Merodach of Babylon was worshipped as a Bull, as was Astarte of Syria. When the Sun is in the sign of Aries, the Ram or Lamb, we have Osiris again as Ram, and so ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... likeness to the Egyptian Cynocephalus, and the emblem of Osiris and Shiva is the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... as I had been, with the resemblance of the figure to that of the Egyptian Osiris. Of course there were differences. For instance, instead of the crook and the scourge, this divinity held a torch. Again, in place of the crown of Egypt it wore a winged head-dress, though it is true ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... Tree bore it back to Chaldaea; the candle bore it to ancient Persia; the cross bore it to the Nile and Isis and Osiris; the dove bore it to Syria; the bell bore it to Confucius; the drum bore it to Buddha; the drinking horn to Greece; the tinsel to Romulus and Rome; the doll to Abraham and Isaac; the masks to Gaul; the mistletoe to Britain,—and all brought it to Christ,—Christ the latest world-ideal of sacrifice ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... the cruel and dark religions are far more successful than those of Greece and Rome, for Osiris, etc., by the might of the devil, of darkness, are truly terrific. Cybele stands as a middle term half-way between these dark forms and the Greek or Roman. Pluto is the very model of a puny attempt at darkness utterly failing. He looks big; he paints himself histrionically; he soots ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... and Osiris) that a ship well laden with passengers drove with the tide near the Isles of Paxi, when a loud voice was heard by most of the passengers calling unto one Thanus. The voice then said aloud to him, "When you are arrived at Palodes, take care to make it known that the great ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... it's filled with strange and terrible creatures, Robin Hood—that's me, though I have some redeeming qualities—the Erymanthean boar, the Hydra-headed monster, Medusa of the snaky locks, Cyclops, Polyphemus with one awful eye, the deceitful Sirens, the Old Man of the Mountain, Wodin and Osiris, and, last and most terrible of ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was comparable to the phallus on Japanese highways. In the festivals of Bacchus high phalli were carried, the male organ being represented about the size of the rest of the body. The Egyptians carried a gilt phallus, 150 cubits high, at the festivals of Osiris. In Syria, at the entrance of the temple at Hieropolis, was placed a human figure with a phallus 120 cubits high. A man mounted this upright twice a year and remained seven ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... were among the most cherished articles of the Egyptian creed. Here (in the tombs), as on the papyri which contain the 'Ritual of the Dead,' are represented the passage of the soul through the nether world and its introduction into the Judgment Hall, where Osiris, the god of benevolence, sits on a throne, and with the assistance of forty-two assessors proceeds to examine the deceased. His actions are weighed in a balance against truth in the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, and if found wanting ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... the sun, which is six months north of the horizon, and six months south. Thammuz is the same as Adonis, and so is Osiris). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... ceiling. In each corner of the room rests a red granite sarcophagus, and between each pair of pillars stands a mummy in its wooden case. At that end farthest from the low-browed doorway—which is guarded by two great figures of Isis and Osiris, sitting impassive, with hands on knees—is raised an altar of black marble, on which burns some incense. The perfumed smoke, wavering upwards, mingles with that of the lamps beneath the high ceiling. The prevailing color is ruddy Indian-red, relieved by deep blue ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... The aspiration was the real thing,—the clothing was a matter almost of national taste or need. The Greeks had a naked Apollo, the Christians a white-robed Christ, the Buddhists a royal prince, the Egyptians their Osiris. Religions were local and religion was universal. Christianity was a local branch. There was as yet no assimilation of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... we were told to get our baggage in order and embark for Quarantine. The time necessary to purify a traveller arriving from Egypt from suspicion of the plague, is five days, but the days of arrival and departure are counted, so that the durance amounts to but three full days. The captain of the Osiris mustered the passengers together, and informed them that each one would be obliged to pay six piastres for the transportation of himself and his baggage. Two heavy lighters are now drawn up to the foot of the gangway, but as soon as the first box tumbles into them, the men tumble ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... overthrown. The gods of Tyre and Carthage were destroyed. The beliefs of Miltiades and of Pericles, of Scipio and Seneca, were disavowed. The thousands that flocked annually to worship the Eleusinian Ceres ceased their pilgrimage. Odin and his disciples have all perished. The very language of Osiris, which was afterwards spoken by the Ptolemies, is no longer known to his descendants. The paganisms which still exist in the East are rapidly yielding to the march of western intelligence. Christianity alone, amidst all these ring and fallen fabrics, retains ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the difficulties, however, we are already able to come to certain definite conclusions. We cannot connect the megalithic monuments with any one of the ancient religions known. They were certainly not set up in honor of Odin or of Osiris, of Astarte or of Athene, the Phoenician or the Egyptian, the Greek or the Roman gods; their erection seems to have had but one end in view, to do honor to the dead. Beneath none of them do we find the remains ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... a fairly evident birth phantasy. In dreams as in mythology, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly presented by distortion as the entry of the child into water; among many others, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening she had experienced in her only pregnancy. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... dark. In a loud voice he cried, "Claudius is coming!" All marched before him singing, "The lost is found, O let us rejoice together!" [Footnote: With a slight change, a cry used in the worship of Osiris.] Here were found C. Silius consul elect, Juncus the ex-praetor, Sextus Traulus, M. Helvius, Trogus, Cotta, Vettius Valens, Fabius, Roman Knights whom Narcissus had ordered for execution. In the midst of this chanting company ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca

... mightiest of spiritual powers, then their position must be set far higher than that of deified men. They must be accepted as the supreme gods of the red race, the analogues in the western continent of Jupiter, Osiris, and Odin in the eastern, and whatever opinions contrary to this may have been advanced by writers and travellers must be set down to the account of that prevailing ignorance of American mythology which has fathered so many other blunders. To solve these ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... after his death as a supreme god, devouring his fathers and mothers, slaughtering the gods, eating their "magical powers," and swallowing their "spirit-souls," so that he thus becomes "the first-born of the first-born gods," omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal, identified with the Osiris, the highest god. Now this Unas was a real historical man; he was the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, and was deified after death, just like any other king of Egypt. The early Egyptians, like many savage tribes, regarded all their kings as gods on earth and paid them formal worship after ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... of the head was a single lock of hair, while the fourth finger of the right hand was held before the lips as though to enjoin silence. Both of these peculiarities, it will be remembered, are characteristic of the infant Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, as portrayed in bronzes and temple carvings. So at least Ragnall, who recently had studied many such effigies in Egypt, informed me later. There was nothing else in the place except an ancient, string-seated chair of ebony, adorned with inlaid ivory patterns; an effigy of a ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... of any civilized people, the evolution of psychotheism is approximately synchronous with the invention of an alphabet. In the earliest writings of the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Greeks, this stage is discovered, and Osiris, Indra, and Zeus are characteristic representatives. As psychotheism and written language appear together in the evolution of culture, this stage of theism is consciously or unconsciously a part of the theme ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... in Egypt was concentrated in the cult of Osiris and Isis, and influenced all local theologies. In Babylonia these deities were represented by Tammuz and Ishtar. Ishtar, like Isis, absorbed many other ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... Osiris did the plough bestow, And first with iron urged the yielding ground. He taught mankind good seed to throw In furrows all untried; He plucked fair fruits the nameless trees did hide: He first the young vine to its trellis bound, And with his sounding sickle keen Shore ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... heavens and its branches fill the world. The Grecian oracles were delivered from the oak of Dodona, and the priests set forth their decrees on its leaves. Nutpi or Neith, the goddess of divine life, was by the Egyptians represented as seated among the branches of the Tree of Life, in the paradise of Osiris. The "Hom," the sacred tree of the Persians, is spoken of in the Zendavesta as the "Word of Life," and, when consecrated, was partaken of as a sacrament. An oak was the sacred tree of the ancient Druids of Britain. ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... avoiding argument, "I have heard of Isis of the Egyptians, Lady of the Moon, Mother of Mysteries, Spouse of Osiris whose child ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... superstition. The four greatest manifestations of human intellect which founded the four principal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian, were developed by the strong excitement of active superstition in the worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore, to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... divine vocation they are dispersed, and whatever is dispersed is deprived of a great part of its strength. How can the disjecta membra, scattered far and wide by Typhon, become again Osiris? Under the guidance of God, by that great instrument of modern times, the power of association and organization, aided ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and awful lights in the dead mid-noon of night by that Apostle who is the Rock of the Church. Before him who wanders in Thessaly Pan will brush the dewy lawns and slim-girt Artemis pursue the flying hart. In the pale gold of Egyptian sands the heavy brows of Osiris crowned with the pshent will brood above the seer and the veil of Isis tremble to the lifting. For all this is the rhythm to which the souls of men are attuned and in that vibration they will see, and no other, since in this the very mountains and trees of the land are rooted. So here, where our ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... Hellespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Thymbraeus' battle-blade the huge Osiris found, And Mnestheus slays Archetius, Achates Epulo, And Gyas Ufens: yea, the seer Tolumnius lieth low, 460 He who was first against the foe to hurl the war-shaft out. The cry goes up unto the heaven; the war-tide ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... priestly order scarcely rose to its pure conceptions. But there {173} were other groups or dynasties of gods which were worshipped throughout Egypt. These were mostly mythical beings, who were supposed to perform especial functions in the creation and control of the universe. Among these Osiris and Isis, his wife and sister, were important, and their worship common throughout all Egypt. Osiris came upon the earth in the interests of mankind, to manifest the true and the good in life. He was put to death by the machinations ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the Cephissus," Artazostra said, whenever he spoke of home. Then she would tell of Babylon and Persepolis, and Mardonius of forays beside the wide Caspian, and Roxana of her girlhood, while Gobryas was satrap of Egypt, spent beside the magic river, of the Pharaohs, the great pyramid, of Isis and Osiris and the world beyond the dead. Before the Athenian was opened the golden East, its glitter, its wonderment, its fascination. He even was silent when his hosts talked boldly of the coming war, how soon the Persian power would rule from the Pillars ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Brahm and Osiris, Are they peeved with this revel, I ask? . . . Does Pluto like this, where his fire is? . . . What in hell do they think of this ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... the originals in the British Museum. Where this was the case it was so stated, but there were many genuine things, amongst which I noted a wooden statue dating back about 1,000 years before Christ, being the wife, and also sister of Osiris, and mother of Horus, chief deity of Egypt. Strictly on the stroke of four o'clock a policeman went through the building and called out that the buildings must be closed. I made a request to one of these policemen to see the curator, and he took me to his office; he was, unfortunately, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... era his works enjoyed a considerable vogue, and he also had a very great influence on the Renaissance period. The Hermetic books, with all their mysteries, have become part of the theosophical gospel, as well as the doctrines of Plato and of the Neo-Platonists, Plutarch's treatises on Isis and Osiris, the philosophies of Plotinus and Iamblichus, the teachings of Philo and of the Gnostics, and the works of innumerable others, who in seeking to throw light on the super-physical realms seem often only to have succeeded in plunging them into greater darkness. Augmented by all these obscure products ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... who have a temple set up to the Theban Zeus or who are of the district of Thebes, these, I say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from sheep: for not all the Egyptians equally reverence the same gods, except only Isis and Osiris (who they say is Dionysos), these they all reverence alike: but they who have a temple of Mendes or belong to the Mendesian district, these abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep. Now the men of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own good works, but through the intercession of the Sun-god Horus as well. Horus was addressed as "the Redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his father Osiris upon his enemy Set, the lord of evil, and through faith in him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. Horus, however, and Osiris were but forms of the same deity. Horus was the Sun-god when he ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... is Osiris[129] seen In Memphian grove or green, Trampling the unshowered[130] grass with lowings loud; Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest; Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark, The sable-stoled ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... stories can well testify, that the very religion of that time stood upon many and many-fashioned gods, not taught so by the poets, but followed, according to their nature of imitation. Who list, may read in Plutarch, the discourses of Isis, and Osiris, of the cause why oracles ceased, of the divine providence: and see, whether the theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they had not the light of Christ,) did much better in ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... the ball, they patiently labour on. Walking backwards, having the pellet between their broad hind legs, they push it up and up until it is placed in safety. The persevering energy of this insect led the Egyptians to adopt it as an emblem of the labours of their great deity, Osiris, or the sun; they also traced a resemblance in the spiny projections on its head to the ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... least, there was no paged index where each author's pieces were collected together, one had to hunt up his fragments with no little loss of time and patience, under various heads, "imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris." The other remark is that each one of Emerson's American fellow-poets from whom he has quoted would gladly have spared almost any of the extracts from the poems of his brother-bards, if the editor would only have favored us with some specimens ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... pleasant of all drinks, whether due to Noah who planted the vine, or to Bacchus who expressed the juice of the grape, dates back to the infancy of the world. Beer, which is attributed to Osiris, dates to an age far ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... the gods must perish. Many an ancient worship was grounded in that very idea. Osiris, Adonis die indeed in order to rise again. On the stage itself, in plays which were only acted for the feast days of the gods, AEschylus expressly averred by the mouth of Prometheus, that some day they should suffer death: but how? As conquered and laid low ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... Dead priests of Osiris, and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels On dry dust ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy Egyptian worships began to make their appearance; the former Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin to the Sullan period. Men had become perplexed not merely as to the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... upon lapis-lazuli, the twenty-seventh upon green felspar, the twenty-ninth upon cornelian, and the thirtieth upon serpentine? He does not. Having studied Part Four, has he learned the secret of why Osiris was a black god, although he typified the Sun? Has he learned why modern Christianity is losing its hold upon the nations, whilst Buddhism, so called, counts its disciples by millions? He has not. This is because the scholar is rarely ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... was to produce a certain emotional state (ου μαθειν τι δειν αλλα παθειν {ou mathein ti dein alla pathein}). A passion-play was enacted amid the most impressive surroundings, and we need not doubt that the moral effect was beneficial and sometimes profound. When the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris were fused with the Hellenic, a type of worship was evolved which was startlingly like Christianity. A famous Egyptian text contains the promise: 'As truly as Osiris lives, shall he [the worshipper] live; as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die.' The thanksgiving ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... life, was librarian of one of those petty princelets who sold their subjects to be shot at in America,—creatures strong enough to oppress, too weak to protect their people. Whoever would have found a Germany to love must have pieced it together as painfully as Isis did the scattered bits of Osiris. Yet he says that "the true patriot is by no means extinguished" in him. It was the noisy ones that he could not abide; and, writing to Gleim about his "Grenadier" verses, he advises him to soften the tone ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... their superiors, learnt to disbelieve or to question the power of the ancient deities; but, as the mind absolutely requires some religion on which to rest, they gave their real devotion to all kinds of strange and foreign deities,—to Isis and Osiris, and the dog Anubus, to Chaldaean magicians, to Jewish exercisers, to Greek quacks, and to the wretched vagabond priests of Cybele, who infested all the streets with their Oriental dances and tinkling ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... the foundation of Memphis was ascribed to Menes, the first king of Egypt. It was a large, rich, and splendid city, and the second capital of Egypt. Among its buildings were several magnificent temples, as those of Phtha, Osiris, Serapis, etc.; its palaces were also remarkable. In Strabo's time, it was next to Alexandria in size and population. Edrisi, who visited Memphis in the 12th century, thus describes its remains then existing: "Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city, the remote period at which it was built, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... Marmora, and other writers, justly consider the Nennere as one of the many relics of the Phenician colonisation of Sardinia. Every one knows that the Sun and Moon, under various names, such as Isis and Osiris, Adonis and Astarte, were the principal objects of worship in the East from the earliest times; the sun being considered as the vivifying power of universal nature, the moon, represented as a female, deriving her light ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... series of dissertations of his own, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend books. Anquetil had already tried to show, in a memoir on Plutarch, that the data of the "Avesta" fully agree with the account of the Magian religion given in the treatise on "Isis and Osiris." Kleuker enlarged the circle of comparison to the whole of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various



Words linked to "Osiris" :   Egyptian deity



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