The Ancients - The Legend of Osiris, King of the Dead

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

The story of Osiris and how he became King of the Dead is a gruesome tale and one of the most famous legends from Egyptian mythology.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Campbell Price to explore the myth which culminates in a divine and bloody battle between the God of Chaos Set and Osiris’ son Horus.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Scriptwriter is Andrew Hulse. Voice Actor is Menna Elbezawy.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. A bird. A kite is soaring between the clouds. It is a goddess, Isis. She is searching for the remains of her husband,

the pharaoh god god Osiris. You see, he has been betrayed. He has been killed. His brother, Seth, has mutilated his body, dismembered it, cut it into 14 pieces, and scattered them far and wide across Egypt. And so, as a kite, Isis plucks his limbs from the mountain peaks. She unearths organs from the sand with her talons. She fishes for flesh in the Nile depths with her beak. Over the course of decades, Isis stitches each part and binds together each piece.

And finally, with Osiris' body wrapped in linens, the last rites of a pharaoh, only one thing is missing. His phallus has been eaten whole by the fish of the Nile. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today in the latest episode of our Egyptian Gods and Goddesses miniseries, we are covering one of the most famous legends from Egyptian mythology, the story of Osiris and how he became king of the dead. It's a gruesome story featuring some of the most well known figures from Egyptian mythology, including Osiris, his wife Isis, their son Horus, and the big bad guy of the legend, Osiris' jealous brother Set, god of chaos. Today we're going to be exploring this myth, going through it part by part,

with the fantastic Egyptologist Dr. Campbell Price from Manchester Museum. But just before that interview, we're kicking off this episode with a retelling of the legend, which culminates in this divine battle between the evil Set and Osiris' son Horus, as they battled to be king of Egypt. An ancient Egyptian clash of gods. Desire is the key to resurrection. It is vigor and vitality. And so, Isis crafts her husband a new phallus before taking him into her loving embrace. But it is a shadow life she speaks into his body.

Ossiris is a thing of death now, a reflection, an echo. He can rule only the underworld, the duet. Ossiris' throne in the living world must be given to his child now. A son conceived during his resurrection, the falcon-headed Horus. Horus' life begins in constant peril. After all, he is little more than a fledgling, sickly and blind. His falcon-headed covered in fluffy down, not strong feathers. His uncle the traitor, the god of chaos, Seth, has declared himself the new god Pharaoh,

and he sends all manners of creatures to kill Osiris' child, serpents and scorpions, lions and leopards. Isis is the young Horus's only protection. No one could deny her devotion, but she is no fighter, so she must rely on her cunning, on her craft. She takes Horus down into the Nile Delta, and there she stitches reeds and binds together stems. She builds a nest, a haven, a place where Horus can grow into his prime. The god's set is as tough as a crocodile, hardy as a bull, and cunning as a desert fox. So under Isis' direction, Horus sharpens not only beak but mind. He flexes not only feather but thought. He becomes a son worthy of his father, a son worthy of

the pharaoh's crown. That is when he issues his challenge to Set. Horus and Set meet before a tribunal of the other gods on the banks of the Nile. Young Horus contends that he is the Pharaoh's true-born son. He insists that the lineage of Ra to Shu to Geb to Osiris must be respected. Set simply contends that Horus is too weak, too young to rule. The first test is decided. Their bodies warp, bend and twist. They sprout great manes, great fangs. They skulk and stalk the Nile marches as lions, each trying to pounce upon the other. And though, at first, it seems Seth is the tougher, Horus holds his ground until the Enyan judge them to be equal.

Next, their bodies bloat, their skin turns grey. The argument transforms them both into hippos. They sink their great gaping jaws below the water and compete to see who can hold his breath longer. Though, at first, it seems Seth is the hardier. Isis creates a harpoon from copper and spears Seth while submerged, forcing him to go back to the surface. Despite this, the Enyad judge them to be equal. Finally, the argument becomes a matter of skill.

Horus and Set shift into men. They will compete as mariners. Sailing Stone barges down the Nile. But here is where Horus turns to his mother's lessons, her craft, her cunning. He chops trees, not rock to build his barge, painting them with grey gypsum to appear as stone. As soon as the race gets underway, Seth begins to struggle. He is a master sailor, but the stone blocks are simply too heavy. His barge sinks.

He can only thrash in the Nile current and watch as Horus' barge flows calmly by, sailing all the way to the river's mouth. Seth knows it must be some trick. But what can he say? What argument can he make? He claimed his cunning was what marked him as a good pharaoh, and here he's been outfoxed. There can be no judging them as equal now. Horus has won his crown. Campbell, welcome back. Hi again, Tristan. Nice to be back.

And we are still, we've been here for a long time now. We haven't been let out. We are still in this beautiful part of the Manchester Museum. These are the galleries. This is behind the scenes almost. Yes, so we're in the storerooms right next to the objects, which talk about the gods and depict the gods that we're going to be discussing. And last time we did the sun gods, particularly Ray and his really interesting story combinations, Achenot and all those big figures from ancient history. Well, for ancient Egyptian history, the sun is big for the ancient Egyptians.

That's what we learned, wasn't it? It is. ancient Egyptian history. The sun is big for the ancient Egyptians. That's what we learned, wasn't it? But we are now focusing on, can we say, perhaps the best known myth narrative of Egyptian mythology? Yes. The Osiris myth is pretty foundational, even though, as we will explore, it's only known in a kind of narrative form from really late on by classical authors like Plutarch. Yeah, because it almost feels like, it's not like the Epic of Gilgamesh, I know, but it almost feels like a saga in its own right. There is a narrative, even as you say, as we'll explore those sources which come much later, there is still that interesting narrative which you have to it. Yeah, and I think it speaks to humanity

down the generations, and that's why it was so popular. And it also explains, I guess, the universal appeal, as far as we can tell based on the monuments in the text, of the figure of Osiris. Because he appears early on,

and again, like Ray, persists right until the end of pharaonic times. And so I think there is a sense of the yin and the yang. You have the sun with light and brightness. You have Osiris, the underworld, darkness, but the promise of rebirth. And you mentioned Plutarch there, so a Greek biographer basically, writing these parallel lives, but also other works. So this isn't the time of the pharaohs when he is writing. I mean, is he one of our key sources? What sources do we have for the Osiris myth?

Yeah. Well, so Plutarch is an important one, but like Diodorus or like Herodotus- And they're also Greek historians. Greek historians who are writing at the tail end of what we might call pharaonic history. So they're speaking to people in Egypt, if we believe that they actually visited Egypt. So they're getting an account of something that's already very ancient. So what someone might say in the 5th century BC may not be what was believed or understood in the Pyramid Age 2,000 years before. So yeah, Plutarch is responsible for kind of codifying in a way, recording in a narrative form this saga,

as you say, of what happens to Osiris, his apotheosis, if you like, and that gets copied by later sources. But the actual ancient Egyptian evidence is surprisingly meagre for what the ancient Egyptians actually thought happened to the god Osiris. But it's so interesting how, say with Greek mythology, how certain figures evolve and how they're portrayed in the stories as time goes on, the centuries of ancient Greek history. The Osiris myth that we have today is perhaps very different to the one that might have been told perhaps at the time of Khufu or the fourth dynasty, thousands of years before the time of Greek historians like Plutarch. We need to remember

that. Yeah, and we really cannot, unless it were recorded in some kind of written form, we cannot account for what everyday people talked about or told stories about around a fire at night. We have got some versions that refer to Osiris, but most of the literature, the folk tales, concern kings and other legendary figures. They don't tend to talk about the gods so much. So that is a little bit of a barrier to our understanding of what the ancient Egyptians thought about Osiris. And also, you mentioned their everyday people. So was that also the main way in which these myths would have been retold before they're written down? That would be around fireplaces, it would be oral history, oral mythology almost.

Yeah, I think most ancient Egyptians would know of the figure of these gods, but there is no way of knowing the nature of those stories really, unless they were figured or impacted on other written forms of communication. And those written forms of communication we have, the hieroglyphic texts on temples or tombs and written literature, come from an elite context. That's the royal court. written literature come from an elite context, that's the royal court. You had to be pretty well off to write down and certainly to be able to compose a new piece of literature or to inscribe something on a wall. So maybe, I perhaps imagine what we have from the monuments is a very kind of restricted vision of gods that's ritually important and is important for

the performance of state religion, if we can call it that. And then there's this completely parallel other world of possibly quite salacious stories that were just told and never really written down, just passed on by word of mouth. It's interesting to think how much has been lost, as you say, in that way and how bizarre and interesting those stories would have been. Sure. But, of course, we have the myth that we have today, and that is the one where we're going to explore in detail. And let's start at the beginning.

Let's introduce the main characters at the start of this myth. And first off, I've got the names Osiris and Isis. Now, who are these two figures? So, Osiris and Isis. Now who are these two figures? So Osiris and Isis are brother and sister and they are second generation beings. So you have the creation and again the accounts vary and the reason the accounts vary is not because the ancient Egyptians are unsure, it's because of the nature of Egypt as a regionalised place. So different accounts were conceptualised and recorded in different locations and so accounts vary, accounts may differ. So you have the creation act however that was achieved achieved and the sun god produces shu and tefnut so shu is the idea of air and maybe tefnut is an

association with moisture they have two children geb and nut now geb is the earth nut is the sky and i said second generation but i mean mean third generation, come along. They have four children, okay? So they have Osiris, Isis, and they are a couple. And then they have, again, depending on the version, generally accepted, Seth and Nephthys. So these are two male, two female. are two, male, two female. So these siblings, it's generally understood, exist as rulers or a royal family, if you like, on earth. And the action really concerns Osiris's demise, because he is conceived of as a popular king, so he's egypt alongside his wife the queen isis and he is killed

he is killed because he makes his brother jealous so seth is the one who wants to kill osiris his older brother i'm guessing that's why he's ruling oh can we know you could infer that i mean there's so many things can be inferred and absolutely aren't known. Seth is associated with strength, brute strength, not kind of wily strength, just brutality in a way, chaotic strength. at least according to the latest accounts, we have the classical recordings of these accounts. He is the one favouring farming. We know he has an association in pharaonic times with agriculture and fertility and rebirth, but he makes his brother jealous. And so this is framed, and I think it's no coincidence, we have these accounts from classical sources, and those sources are familiar with the ins and outs of God's private lives. So yeah, maybe there was an oral tradition

of talking about these things, but the ancient Egyptians don't generally record that detail. But in Greece and Rome, we know lots about what the gods' personalities were like. And so that's the kind of interpretation that's given to these Egyptian stories. And also with that context, before we get into the grisly manner of how Set supposedly kills Osiris, there was also something interesting you mentioned during your talking there. So if Osiris is ruling as a king, and then there's Isis and Set and Nephthys, and they're almost gods on earth but they're ruling over humans. Are humans there at this time too then? Yes, I mean there is a reference to a time when gods and men, gods and human beings were together. So there's this idea,

again, what the ancient Egyptians actually, how they visualised this is not entirely clear to me, but murder a god, to butcher a god, but also because they're gods you can bring them back to life. And interestingly in the story of Osiris and Isis, Isis the wife is a key player. She is great of magic. She in some ways is the prime mover in the myth. Interesting and we'll explore that no, as we now move on with the story of the myth. So Seth wants to kill his brother. How does he go about doing that? So in the late version, the classical version, which is not known definitively

from earlier pharaonic sources, only slightly alluded to, Osiris is popular, like a lot of popular people. He rubs other people up the wrong way, certainly Seth. So Seth has a party and he invites Osiris to the party and he says to his guests, I've got this beautiful painted coffin. I will give it to whoever fits inside it. Now, maybe Osiris is too trusting he doesn't realise what his brother's up to and so when he gets down and tries the coffin for size it fits him perfectly and Seth slams the lid shut and throws him in the river. Now what happens next that there's a bit of debate amongst

Egyptologists? Perhaps Osiris is already dead. He's been suffocated perhaps. It's less clear that he drowns, but he's in the coffin. He's in the river. The river takes him out to sea ultimately. So Isis, his wife, is distraught that her husband has been pretty clearly killed, at least significantly injured in this debacle. And she has to go and find the body. So in one account, the coffin washes up in Byblos, modern Lebanon, and a tree has grown around it. And the king of Byblos cuts down this massive tree

and incorporates it in his palace. So Isis and her sister Nephthys transform themselves into birds and they encircle this tree until eventually they can cut the tree down and reveal the body of Osiris inside. Not satisfied with killing his brother because presumably Seth has now become the king of Egypt, he attains possession of the corpse of Osiris and chops it into different bits and this is really foundational and I think this is where we really get to the core of ancient Egyptian funerary belief and practice and philosophy. Death is disruption and dismemberment in a way. And the process, the ritual of mummification brings the body back together and it also divinizes. It turns the body parts into gods. This is known for hundreds of years in the

ancient Egyptian sources. And it's that idea, we have it in medical texts as well, the best way of curing someone is to identify the healer or the person with a god. In the same way, if you want to be healed from death, so you're wrapped up in bandages which bandage the body and heal it back to life, the analogy of the Osiris myth comes out of these magical medical texts. So Isis is the one who brings the maimed dismembered body parts which Seth scatters all over Egypt back together, missing one vital piece that is eaten by a Nile perch, a fish. in linen bandages and fashions a missing member for her husband with which she can conceive a child. So their child, the god Horus, is only conceived posthumously, so it's getting pretty unusual to maybe a modern audience, but we do have scenes of this conception that are very ancient, back to the ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Images of Osiris bound, wrapped up in the bandages with all the paraphernalia of a king conceiving a child with Isis who takes the form of a bird. So it's all quite involved. who takes the form of a bird. So it's all quite involved. And is this how Osiris then, if he's dead, but he's got a crown, so he's still depicted as a king, is this how we get to this title of him

becoming king of the dead? Yes, basically. Who decides that Osiris is the king of the dead is not clear. He just kind of, as I said, apotheosizes. He becomes, he triumphs over death. But in this, actually, Osiris himself is quite a passive figure. So he's murdered, he's killed. And we do have allusions to the enemies of Osiris back in the Middle Kingdom. So, you know, 1800 BC, his boat is attacked by Seth's followers. But in all of this, it's Isis who's this really clever magician who is the one who A, brings him back together and who has the magical power to revive him and conceive his child, who is to be the legitimate king of Egypt. And this is the backbone of the myth.

It's the idea of the father should be succeeded by the legitimate son. And the son is Horus, the falcon-headed god. The mother is Isis, who protects the son when he's very young. So there are two aspects to Horus. There is the innocent child who is in hiding from the evil uncle, Seth, who's the king of Egypt. And eventually when Horus grows up, he has to avenge his father. So there are two things. There is Isis, protector of Horus, and the iconography of this is well attested. It's Isis breastfeeding her baby, her young son. is well attested. It's Isis breastfeeding her baby, her young son. That is, you know, essentially the model for the Madonna and Child. And then when the boy grows up, he challenges Seth and Seth has to fight and the gods eventually decide in favour of Horus as the legitimate king

of Egypt. before we get to the horse kind of proclaiming the rightful throne and well done by the way that's very lovely explaining i'd like to kind of ask a bit more about Seth. In that period in between, when Osiris is killed, but Horus is young, not yet ready to take control, to retake control by force, do we know how Seth rules Egypt in the meantime? How is he portrayed? Essentially, no, we don't know. It's interesting that we have, of course, what you might call indigenous perspectives on Seth himself. He's a god of chaos. He's a god of the desert.

He's a god of foreign people, in a sense. Whether he is meant to rule Egypt badly, and Horus has to put things right, is not explicitly stated in ancient Egyptian sources. There is just this kind of period in the classical accounts where Isis is clearly afraid, and so she has to hide in the marshes of Egypt. Presumably, therefore, Seth or Seth's agents are out to get them, but it's really a story told in terms of a personal vendetta. It's not about Seth being a good king or a bad king. There is, I guess, the concept of Seth as a king,

but we don't know a lot about it. So do we know much about the process of Horus becoming the next legitimate king or seizing back what's rightfully his? Yes, we do have something on this. We do have an ancient Egyptian account, which is already alluded to in the Middle Kingdom, so maybe around 1800 BC, but is really formalised and recorded in a papyrus known as the Chester Beatty papyrus, named after an Irish collector. And in that account, the so-called contendings of Horus and Seth, written in the 20th dynasty, so 1100 BC, there is clearly a point at which Horus has come of age and the gods are being asked to decide between him, the son of Osiris. So there's an allusion to the fact Osiris is dead. There's nothing about how Osiris has to the fact Osiris is dead. There's nothing about how Osiris has died, but Osiris is dead. And the decision is between Horus, the son, and Seth, the uncle. And so the two of them have these series of fights. And in this, you have Horus is the wily one. He's, you know, pretty clever.

He's trying to avenge his father and reclaim the throne. Whereas Seth is the elder of the two. So the words that are used could be interpreted to mean Seth is somehow the older brother rather than the uncle of Seth. And various things happen. Seth attempts to rape Horus. Horus manages to avoid that. Horus manages to remove Seth's testicles.

Seth manages to remove Horus's eye. These are very important foundational aspects of ancient Egyptian. Well, I mean, I've heard of the eye of Horus. I haven't heard of the testicles of Seth. So it seems like one is more popular than the other, but maybe I just haven't read enough ancient Egyptian history from mythology. Yeah. So the Eye of Horus is fairly clear. So Horus's eye is plucked out, damaged, injured, and he goes to his mother, Isis, the great of magic, and she restores the eye. So it is the fact that it is something injured which is restored to completeness and health that makes the eye of Horus the healing symbol par excellence. It's really, you know,

the one image of ancient Egyptian wholeness, completeness, wellness. Mathematically, the eye of Horus can be used to express numerical fractions. So a half, a quarter, an eighth, a sixteenth, a thirty-second. And together, all of the parts make the complete eye. Rather less popular is the testicles and the attempted rape of Horus. And in fact, the oldest part of this myth is known from a Middle Kingdom town, the town of Lahoone, in which actually the oldest chat-up line in history is recorded, How beautiful are your buttocks?

Which is, you know, an inc incestuous pederastic line but nonetheless it's the first expression of do you want to have sex i have no idea that in this chat we also mentioned the first known chat up line in history there we go cameron you're always full of surprises it's quite an interesting end to this myth isn't't it? But I also remember in our last chat when we were talking about Rey, how is it almost like, although Horus ultimately emerges the victor, as the gods split almost, and maybe Rey, the powerful sun god, who perhaps you'd expect to be on the side of Horus, is in fact on the side of Seth. Yeah, you get that impression in the contendings.

So, you know, there's a challenge for them to transform into hippos and, you know, battle it out in the River Nile. And then there's something maybe slightly more abstract. They're told to have a boat race, but they have to make their boats of stone. So in that, Seth creates a boat made of stone and it sinks. Whereas Horus makes a boat painted, made of wood, but which floats and covered in something that makes it look like stone. So he's shown as the wily, intelligent one. Almost deceptive, I guess. Yeah, who can use not just brute strength. So Seth is the strong one and Horace is the wily, intelligent one.

And again, I mean, the context of the attempted molestation, it's more about strength and power. And there are various ways people have been intensely interested in this, this kind of homosexual aspect of this. But the outcome is basically, Seth is shown to be unpredictable, using his strength, difficult to contain, he's chaotic. But Horus is strategic.

And yes, you're right. Most of the gods seem to favour Horus as the rightful heir, but the sun god, Ray, seems to be more on the side of Seth. And it is interesting that in depictions of the bark of the sun god going through the underworld, the sacred boat, the ship by which he travels through the hours of the night, often Seth is shown defending the sun god. So that brute strength can be used for good, for defensive purposes.

So basically, there is still a role for Seth. It's not almost like he is consigned to the depths of the aversion almost of hell and forgotten, you know, kind of the punishment for him being the baddie in this well-known myth. There is still a place for him even after he is superseded, he is replaced by Horus, which is interesting in its own right. Yeah, and I think that's really important to emphasise, Tristan, that what you've got again is a yin and yang situation. So you have the sun god and Osiris, you have Horus and Seth. Clearly, in the New Kingdom, especially in the Ramesside period, so dynasties 19 and 20, you know, 1200 to about 1000 BC, you have kings called Ramesses, you've got kings called Seti. Seti means literally he of Seth. Seth is the patron deity of the 19th dynasty, the family of Ramesses II. It's only later that images, names of Seth are attacked. He has bad luck. There's a taboo

on Seth. So in a way, for a lot of Egyptian history, Seth is, from the earliest times in fact, dynasty two, right the way through to the Ramesside period, you need both Horus and Seth. They're both shown uniting together to crown the king of Egypt. So you need both in the universe to keep balance. The names we've largely been talking about are Seth, Isis, and Horus, and yet it's called the Osiris myth. Osiris, as you said, almost takes quite a background role. Of course, being important to the plot and his death, but at the same time, he is not one of the main characters in a way, is he? And yet we have this great focus on him and his portrayal. And I think that is because, at least formally speaking, and by formally speaking I mean hieroglyphic inscriptions,

things which were put in tombs, monumental records, Seth doesn't really get monumentalized so much, but Osiris becomes the entity by which most people hope to exist into the afterlife. He becomes the judge of the dead. So he's the king of the beyond after he's kind of transformed once Isis brings him back to life. And then she kind of takes a back seat in the judgment. So when you have a scene in the so-called book of the dead from the new kingdom or a bit later say you have Osiris seated enthroned and the deceased coming

in front of them and having their heart weighed on the set of scales and any school child can tell you who studied ancient Egypt that you need to have your heart weighed in a set of scales against a feather and Osiris is the judge. So the reason we have this focus on Osiris is he's the key linchpin, he's the guarantor of eternity and rebirth. And from really early on, from the Middle Kingdom, the deceased is referred to as the Osiris so and so. So you're not just hoping to meet Osiris, you're hoping to become Osiris. So that's the reason Osiris is so popular, you're literally hoping to transform into him. Not Seth, not Isis, not Horus, Osiris achieves this kind of universality, this accessibility which other gods can't match. That's why he's really popular. So Osiris is very popular and he's regularly depicted.

How is he usually depicted? So Osiris has various associations and epithets, these qualifications. He's known as the foremost of Westerners. And it seems that perhaps his cult originates in the south of Egypt. And the south of Egypt has as one of its emblems a tall white crown that the king of the south of Egypt, Upper Egypt, wears. So it's no coincidence perhaps that Osiris wears a tall white crown, sometimes with feathers, called the Atef crown. So when you see him, he's bound up, wrapped in divine form. He's holding a crook and flail, symbols of kingship and rulership. He's often called the ruler of eternity and he wears this crown. He's also the most perfect one. So he has this term, this epithet,

when and ever. Here's a fun fact. When and ever becomes Onophorus in Greek and Onophorus becomes Humphrey. So if you know anyone called Humphrey, they are named after Osiris. So when you encounter Osiris in iconography, in a tomb scene or on a papyrus, he's shown usually seated, passive with his wife Isis in attendance, but almost exclusively wrapped in gleaming white shroud and with the tall white crown. And so this object I've got in front of us is one of potentially hundreds of thousands of votive gifts to the god. And this is, so people at home can see, and we'll make a small social reel on Instagram and show people as well when we release this episode.

Oh goodness, it might be about 10, 20 cents, maybe 15 centimeters. We'll make a small social reel on Instagram and show people as well when we release this episode. Oh goodness, it might be about 10, 20, maybe 15 centimetres tall. It's a statuette almost, isn't it? And black coloured too. Talk us through it. Yeah, so it's made of copper alloy, as most of these objects are. It's what we call a votive. So nowadays, in a Christian context, you might go to a church and light a candle and hope that that will get the deity's attention. In ancient Egypt, you would give an image of the god to a temple and hope that that would secure some kind of answer for your prayers or your petitions or in thanks perhaps at something that the gods had done. So this is a very typical Osiris votive of which, as I say, tens if not hundreds of thousands were

produced. Huge numbers have been found deliberately cached, buried in sacred sites in Egypt. So it shows Osiris in his typical wrapped divine form with crook and flail and he has this very distinctive crown, the tall white crown with a serpent at the front and feathers on the side. It is really only Osiris who wears this form of crown. So also the fact that he is easily identifiable from the surviving archaeology which also adds that why we have so much of him. And eschatologists like yourself can say when another one comes out to the ground, right, that is Osiris. Yes, very distinctive iconography. And if you think, again, if you were living, I don't know when, 600 BC, and you're illiterate, and you go to a temple

and want to give a gift to the god Osiris and hope for some benefit from him, because even though he's associated with rebirth and to do with royalty and legitimate kingship, by the first millennium BC, his worship becomes really quite popular. Worship of Osiris is really something which a large proportion of the population engage with. If you're that illiterate person, you can distinguish Osiris. You don't need to read hieroglyphs to be able to recognize that iconography. and keeping on objects because there is that other object right next which you brought out you brought out two objects and this other one i must admit at first glance it looks a bit more dare i say mundane it doesn't strike out as much because

it's almost a semi-circular block of stone that I can see from this distance it's only when you look closely that you can see faintly on it some carvings yes and what is this and why is this relevant to our chat at the moment yeah this is something really quite exciting Tristan and I was excited when you asked about Seth that I could get this piece out. It's not very assuming. You might not put it on display. It's the top part of a rounded stone slab, a stela, and the hieroglyphs there etched at the top give the name of Seth. And it gives his typical epithet, a'a pehwi, which is literally great of strength. So this is this force which can be used in a malign way to, you know, attack your nephew, or it can be used positively to defend the

boat of the sun god. So even though the depiction of Seth hasn't survived, we can tell this was once a depiction of Seth, maybe with an offering person in front of him. But it makes that point that you made before. We're not talking about Seth as some kind of ancient Egyptian Satan. He's not. He is actively receiving positive worship for a lot of pharaonic history. Yeah, I like that equivalent with our ancient Egyptian Satan. It makes it quite easy to understand. It's not to the bowels at the end of the story. I'd like to move on quickly. I mean, it's very fascinating, but before we completely wrap up, going back to this whole story with Horus and Seth and this usurping of a family member, of overthrowing a family member. I mean, is this a myth type that isn't unusual, that is also repeated in ancient Egyptian mythology of

a family member usurping another one? It is, I would say, unique in a way to the contentings of Horus and Seth. And it should be noted that the account we have, the main written account, also was written on the back of a document that concerned the legitimacy of the king at the time, a king called Ramesses. So there may be the argument that these questions of inheritance and legitimacy and the rightful ruler were being told, were being performed, were being read out in the context of current political circumstances, which is not unusual. You know, myth and storytelling and fiction can reference current political climates. So I can't tell you another myth in which we have this level of detail. In fact, the contendings of Horace and Seth is in some ways, as one Egyptologist has put it, the only ancient Egyptian myth that's recorded. Things which were told around fires,

as we keep saying, of an evening might have concerned these personalities. You don't have a lot of other evidence for it. Absolutely fair enough. What is interesting though, and it's obviously a very, very loose parallel, but some listeners might be thinking about it, is how you describe Horus, you know, as this wily, clever, strategic figure, and then Seth as this strong but slightly chaotic

figure. And maybe I'm slightly wrong on this, but I'll say it anyway. My mind instantly goes to, let's say, Odysseus. The crafty, cunning Odysseus, not portrayed as overly strong in any kind of depictions, against someone like maybe the Ajax, the strong warrior Ajax, but he doesn't have a great ending and he's not seen as the cleverest of them all. But it's interesting how you have those kind of contrasting figures and they form part of a story and have their own elements to it. And Egyptian mythology, you have those kind of attributes too. Yeah, I think there must be echoes in the story of Odysseus, for example.

And I wonder perhaps whether the point in the Horus and Seth story is that it's the balance, trying to strike the balance between the more mature strength and experience, maybe, and then the youthful wiliness. How do you balance those two things? As I say, the ancient Egyptians for most of their history join the two. They're not enemies. They come together to crown the pharaoh. So they act as a kind of yin and yang. And even though Horus ultimately triumphs and is the legitimate king, each pharaoh of Egypt is meant to be the incarnation for us. Seth is not totally written off until the very end of pharaonic history. Death and rebirth, which seem such important parts of ancient Egyptian beliefs, especially as in the next episode, we're going to explore more about that.

We have Anubis, the underworld, mummification, and so on and so forth. mummification and so on and so forth. And I'm guessing this myth, the Osiris myth with these larger-than-life characters, are they absolutely, do you think they are central to that belief? Yes, they are central. But I suspect, in fact, rather than, as is commonly said, the first mummified bodies representing Osiris, actually Osiris' image comes from the practice of mummification having already started. The god, in a sense, is a result of the practice. The practice is not a result of the myth. What you would give to travel back in time and find out more about the earlier versions of this myth, to have earlier versions and to find out maybe how different it was to the one that we have today. I mean, that'd be fascinating.

It would, if only we had a time machine. Well, Campbell, this has been absolutely fantastic. Your final appearance on our Egyptian Gods and Goddesses miniseries. And it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. Pleasure. series and it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast pleasure well there you go there was dr campbell price talking you through the legend of osiris the fourth episode in our special gods and goddesses of ancient egypt mini series i hope you enjoyed today's episode stay tuned for next week That is when we have the finale to this series, when we explore the story of Anubis and the underworld in Egyptian mythology.

I cannot wait for that episode and to share it with you. The story at the top of this episode, it was written by Andrew Hulse. It was narrated by Mena Elbezawi. The producer for this episode was Anne-Marie Luff. And it was edited by our assistant producer Joseph Knight. Thank you to you all for making this episode a reality. Once again, thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free, and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you

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