"Osiris" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the 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 ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... come to surprise their city. 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
... 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 against ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... with the 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 ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Nor 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
... of three days! Ugh! those ugly names! What hedge-schoolmaster has scattered them so loosely and profusely over this lovely land? Whip the wretch with rattlesnakes! Memphis indeed!—as if Memphis with its monolithic statues needed commemoration on the banks of the Mississippi! A new Osiris—a new Sphinx, "half horse, half alligator, with a sprinkling of the snapping turtle." At every forking of the roads, whenever I inquired my way, in my ears rang those classic homonyms, till my soul was sick of sounds. "Swampville" ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... drew God's altar to disparage and displace For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His odious offerings, and adore the gods Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared A crew who, under names of old renown— Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train— With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape Th' infection, when their borrowed gold composed The calf ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... be to be asleep. Then the lad bent over the 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 ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... abode of the departed spirits of men, an upper hades, has been believed for ages. In the Egyptian Book of Respirations, which M. p. J. de Horrack has translated from the MS. in the Louvre in Paris, Isis breathes the wish for her brother Osiris "that his soul may rise to heaven in the disk of the moon." [58] Plutarch says, "Of these soules the moon is the element, because soules doe resolve into her, like as the bodies of the dead into the earth." [59] To this ancient ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... 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 ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 all, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... the children of foreigners." The rulers 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
... 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. Thinking of the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... vegetable origins to myths and gods, where the real origin is perhaps for ever lost. The corn-spirit starts up in most unexpected places. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, is very severe on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god with the corn- spirit. But Mannhardt did not go so far. Mannhardt thought that the myth of Osiris was solar. To my thinking, these resolutions of myths into this or that original source—solar, nocturnal, vegetable, or what not—are often very perilous. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... but in other cases see spontaneous and independent, though coincident invention. I do not believe that the Arunta of Central Australia borrowed from Plutarch the central feature of the myth of Isis and Osiris. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... daily thoughts. The 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 ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... 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 references ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... oracular deity of Africa. Their etymology, if admitted, connects the modern 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 ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... admitted into the band, headed by the masters of 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 they paint in the sacred lodges, and which ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... 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 feeling ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... 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 being thus nursed as in a hot-bed, its products ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion. There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being preserved on a floating ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the appearance of the 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 ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... 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 his toil, Salutes with tears of joy, when fires betray ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... in search of; and as, in the earlier copies at 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 of his own poetry, with a single line of which ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the 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 ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... 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, the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... clothing to a human aspiration. 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
... 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 exactitude. A princess could not be allowed to transmit ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 Thebes and those who after their ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing." The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. "Sitting as a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Philae) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris." Hence the Genesitic "breath." Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being "by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated." We find him next in Jeremiah's "Arise and go down unto the Potter's house," etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans (ix. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... 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 men ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Osiris' balances weighed impartially the souls of Coptic lord and slave, before the pyramids rose on Egypt's plains; austere Minos meted even justice to citizen and helot, while the sculptured ideals of Attica slept in Pentelican quarries; Brahmin and Sudra, according to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and most learned writers. One Kelston, who dedicated a versified chronicle of the Brutes to Edward VI., went further still, and traced up the pedigree of his majesty through two-and-thirty generations, to Osiris king of Egypt. Troynovant, the name said to have been given to London by Brute its founder, was frequently employed in verse. A song addressed to Elizabeth entitles her the "beauteous queen of second Troy;" and in describing ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 he is hounded ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the child, son of Osiris, figured with a finger pointing to his mouth, indicative ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... 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, Moloch, Legion, Satan, Beelzebub, &c. Among ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... 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 ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... cause that Augustine had espoused in Africa; while at Milan, the court capital of the West, the venerable Ambrose confirmed Italy in the Latin creed. In Alexandria the fierce Theophilus suppressed Arianism with the same weapons that he had used in extirpating the worship of Isis and Osiris. Chrysostom at Antioch was the equally strenuous advocate of the Athanasian Creed. We are struck with the appearance of these commanding intellects in the last days of the Empire,—not statesmen and generals, but ecclesiastics and churchmen, generally agreed in the interpretation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva 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 sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... hath 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 turns about, Dust-cloud of flight the Rutuli raise up across the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... might take their places, and even reign as sovereigns (a regency was frequently committed to their care); or they might rule as joint sovereigns with another party; and as Isis took rank above Osiris, so in such a case the woman might take ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,— The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,— Thou art the starred Osiris ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of 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.
... 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 ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... whiche Idolles and Images of deuelles he stirred vp men to do the honour (Helas) due onely to God. As to Saturne in Italie, to Iupiter in Candie, to Iuno in Samos, to Bacchus in India, and at Thebes: to Isis, and Osiris in Egypte: in old Troie to Vesta: aboute Tritona in Aphrique, to Pallas, in Germanie and Fraunce to Mercurie, vnder the name of Theuthe: to Minerua at Athenes and Himetto, to Apollo in Delphos, Rhodes, Chio, Patara, Troade and Tymbra. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... live bull of the Egyptians, the incarnation of Osiris; must be black all over the body, have a white triangular spot on the forehead, the figure of an eagle on the back, and under the tongue the image of a scarabaeus; was at the end of 25 years drowned in a sacred fountain, had his body embalmed, and his mummy regarded as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... summit, or 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 crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the solemn procession of the funeral boats interrupted by a ludicrous delineation of the "fouling" or upsetting one unlucky boat and its crew, which had drifted in the way; while the most impressive of all scenes, the final judgment of the soul before Osiris, is depicted at Thebes with the grotesque termination of the forced return of a wicked soul to earth, under the form of a pig, in a boat rowed by a couple of monkeys. In the British Museum is a singular papyrus, upon ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... upon his recovery, must be 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of thing you could wish to meet in the 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
... Osiris, their great god, represented the sun in his darkened or nocturnal or ruined condition, before the coming of day. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... in his treatise of Isis and Osiris, informs us that the kings of Egypt, who were not already priests, were initiated, after their election, into the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I 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 ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... 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
... 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, the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... 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 brother, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... PHARAOH from his throne With more imperious tone Addressed in some such terms rebellious MOSES; And esoteric priests in Theban shrines, Their ritual conned from hieroglyphic signs, Thus muttered incantations dark and deep To Isis and Osiris, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... 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 rays of ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... 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])." The central feature of this triangle, upon which its property ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... proportion as he uses his powers on earth for furthering the purposes of those spiritual forces. Those especially, who had worked most zealously in this way between birth and death would be united with the lofty Sun-God Osiris. On the Chaldaic-Babylonian side of this stream of civilization the direction of the human mind toward the physical sense-world was more conspicuous than on the Egyptian side. The laws of that world were being investigated ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... here nothing is wanting for return and revival, for to the Egyptian his dead died not. He closed his eyes, he bore him to the Necropolis, to the house of the embalmer, or Kolchytes, and then to the grave; but he knew that the souls of the departed lived on; that the justified absorbed into Osiris floated over the Heavens in the vessel of the Sun; that they appeared on earth in the form they choose to take upon them, and that they might exert influence on the current of the lives of the survivors. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... length no credit is given to her real griefs and losses. Nor does he, who has been once ridiculed in the streets, care to lift up a vagrant with a [pretended] broken leg; though abundant tears should flow from him; though, swearing by holy Osiris, he says, "Believe me, I do not impose upon you; O cruel, take up the lame." "Seek out for a ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... of the common multitude? They too, like 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 tambourines. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... these claims are utterly without foundation. Thousands of years before Christ was born—thousands of years before Moses saw the light—the doctrine of immortality was preached by the priests of Osiris and Isis. Funeral discourses were pronounced over the dead, ages before Abraham existed. When a man died in Egypt, before he was taken across the sacred lake, he had a trial. Witnesses appeared, and if he ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 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 masque? . ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... was his impression that he was a torch-bearer of Imperial civilization, or something equally picturesque and metaphorical. As he conceived it, it was the duty of the Empire, as represented by himself, to make over backward planets like Aditya in the image of Odin or Marduk or Osiris or Baldur or, preferably, his ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... of Memphis and Abydos were originally the seats of the worship of the two Egyptian gods of the dead, Seker and Khentamenti, both of whom were afterwards identified with the Busirite god Osiris. Abydos was also the centre of the worship of Anubis, an animal-deity of the dead, the jackal who prowls round the tombs at night. Anubis and Osiris-Khentamenti, "He who is in the West," were associated in the minds of the Egyptians as the protecting deities ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... La 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 ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... and applying come 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 they are worth and not a ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... crew, who, under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train, With monstrous shapes and sorceries, abused Fanatic Egypt ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... mythology is another matter: it cannot be omitted, but on account of its mysterious character it calls for a more symbolical exposition;—the legend of Epaphus, for instance, and that of Osiris, and the conversion of the Gods into animals; and, in particular, their love adventures, including those of Zeus himself, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the land of Lotus, Sauntered we by Nilus' side; Garrulous old Herodotus Still our mentor, still our guide, Prating of the mystic bliss Of Isis and of Osiris. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... conqueror. In the land of the Pyramids, the Colossi, the Sphinx, the images of the gods had ceased to represent living realities. They had ceased to be objects of faith. Others of more recent birth were needful, and Serapis confronted Osiris. In the shops and streets of Alexandria there were thousands of Jews who had forgotten the God that had made his habitation behind ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings, stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn, or the celestial Genius that opened the year. The Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... three houses which have been distinguished by names, the House of Isis and Osiris, the House of Narcissus, and the House of the Female Dancers. Of these the latter is remarkable for the beauty of the paintings ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating this flower to Osiris, or ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... blood; Kali, the goddess; 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 are still waiting for the resurrection promised ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... cried; 'thou art cruel. There is famine in the walled cities of India, and the cisterns of Samarcand have run dry. There is famine in the walled cities of Egypt, and the locusts have come up from the desert. The Nile has not overflowed its banks, and the priests have cursed Isis and Osiris. Get thee gone to those who need thee, and leave ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... progress of decay. National thought, fickle as the wind, had turned from an impersonal philosophy to the materialistic cult of Hindu deities, as the Israelites of old hankered after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris in the Golden Calf. No definite creed succeeded in gaining a permanent hold upon the wandering minds and shallow feelings of a race whose deepest instincts reveal the fleeting fancies and inconstant ideas indigenous to a sea-faring ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... or "Mizar;" vulg. Buzah; hence the medical Lat. Buza, the Russian Buza (millet beer), our booze, the O. Dutch "buyzen" and the German "busen." This is the old of negro and negroid Africa, the beer of Osiris, of which dried remains have been found in jars amongst Egyptian tombs. In Equatorial Africa it known as Pombe; on the Upper Nile "Merissa" or "Mirisi" and amongst the Kafirs (Caffers) "Tshuala," "Oala" or "Boyala:" I have also heard of "Buswa"in Central Africa which may be the origin ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... respect shown to the species in mythology,—the nearest to an apotheosis being the assignment of the janitorship of hell to a dog with three heads. Egyptian mythology found it convenient to have a dog-headed man—Anubis—as the attendant of Isis and Osiris. The cynocephali whom the Egyptians venerated were more properly baboons: so that their dog heaven, one might say, was only such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... 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 ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... directly told what these 'sufferings' were which were so represented; but Herodotus remarks that he found in Egypt a ritual that was 'in almost all points the same'. (1) This was the well-known ritual of Osiris, in which the god was torn in pieces, lamented, searched for, discovered or recognized, and the mourning by a sudden Reversal turned into joy. In any tragedy which still retained the stamp of its Dionysiac origin, this Discovery and Peripety might normally be expected to occur, and ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... "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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the Babylonish deities which seems to have been taken from authentic sources.[83] This, together with a few fragments from the work of Berosus, is all that Hellenic tradition has handed down to us. There is nothing here which can be even remotely compared to the treatises upon Isis and Osiris and the Goddess of Syria preserved under the names of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... worship evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although they did not seem to know it, the priestess was nothing less than a personification of the great goddess Isis, and the Ivory Child, their fetish, was a statue of the infant Horus, the fabled son of Isis and Osiris whom the Egyptians looked upon as the overcomer of Set or the Devil, the murderer of Osiris before his resurrection and ascent to Heaven to be the god of ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... procure. Thou that frequent'st Canopus' pleasant fields, 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 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... in 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
... of these gods, for it is an interesting fact that in the history 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
... still mourned for. Ezek. 8:14. See Young's Analytical Concordance or any standard Greek Mythology. Now see Piersons' Traditions of Freemasonry. 'The Masonic legend stands by itself, unsupported by history, or other than its own traditions. Yet we readily recognize in Hiram Abiff the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Mithras of the Persians, the Bacchus of the Greeks [god of drunkenness, or feasts and the like], the Dionysis of the fraternity of artificers, and the Atys of the Phrygians, whose passions, deaths, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the creation of things. The new year formerly began at the spring equinox, at about Easter; and at that period of the renewal of Nature, a festival was celebrated in the new moon of the month Phamenoth, in honor of Osiris, when painted and gilded eggs were exchanged as presents, in reference to the beginning of all things. The transference of the commencement of the year to January deprived the Paschal egg of its significance. Formerly in France, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... diabolical end. An angel could have as well been brought from the cabinet as a murderous somnambulist, and every act of his could have been a work of beneficence and health and healing. I could not help but think that the ancient miracle play of the resurrection of Osiris could have been acted out with similar simple means, with a mummy case and great sarcophagus. The wings of Isis and Nephthys could have been spread over the sky instead of the oppressive walls of the crooked city. Lights instead of shadows could have been ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing. The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. Sitting as a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Phil) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris. Hence the Genesitic breath. Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated. We find him next in Jeremiahs Arise and go ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... that 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 ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 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 either of the cave-bear or of the reindeer, still less ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... than you want it. 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
... on the 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, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Graeco-Roman world in pre-Christian times. The cult of Demeter and Dionysius in Greece and Thrace; Cybele and Attis in Phrygia; Atagartes in Cilicia; Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria; Ashtart and Eshmun (Adon) in Phoenicia; Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylonia; Isis, Osiris and Serapis in Egypt, and Mithra in Persia—all were developed along the same lines.[2] The custom of the sacrifice of virginity to the gods, and the institution of temple prostitution, also bear witness to the sacred atmosphere ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... 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, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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 of Heracles ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... 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 ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... 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 Ra ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... 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
... famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, and the judge whose final award is blessedness or perpetual misery. The departed, if their lives have not been wicked, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Divine Ruler of the land of Egypt was called Osiris, and all the little Egyptian children knew the story of ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... we have glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune godhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern worship ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... magnificence at Chartres for herself alone, not for the public. As far as one can see into the spirit of the builders, Chartres was exclusively intended for the Virgin, as the Temple of Abydos was intended for Osiris. The wants of man, beyond a mere roof-cover, and perhaps space to some degree, enter to no very great extent into the problem of Chartres. Man came to render homage or to ask favours. The Queen received him in her palace, where she alone was at home, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... with sphinxes, and should be quick at guessing riddles. Will Cleopatra or Antony answer my conundrum? When my erudition creates a panic, why am I like those who dwelt about Chemmis, when the tragical fate of Osiris ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Diodorus Siculus, it was the belief of the ancients that Dionysos, Osiris, Serapis, Pan, Jupiter and Pluto were all one. They were, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble |
