De Iside Et Osiride

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

All good things, Clea, must be asked of the gods by people of sense, but above all we should pray to obtain from the gods themselves, as far as is attainable for human beings, knowledge of them; for there is nothing greater that a person can receive, nor anything more solemn that he can grant to a god, than truth. God gives men everything else that they need, but of mind and understanding he grants a share, since these are his own possessions and the very things he uses.

For the divine is blessed not through silver and gold, nor made strong through thunders and thunderbolts, but through knowledge and understanding. And of all that Homer has said about the gods, this he expressed most beautifully: when he had Zeus declare, "Truly the two of us are of one stock and one lineage, but Zeus was born first and knows more," he thereby represented the sovereignty of Zeus as the more venerable one, being older in knowledge and wisdom. I think, too, that the eternal life which god has been allotted is a happy one precisely because it never falls behind events in its knowledge of them; and if the knowing and understanding of what exists were taken away, immortality would not be life but mere duration. That is why the longing for divinity is a longing for the truth, above all the truth about the gods — a study and a search that is a kind of recovery of sacred things,

more sacred a task than any purity of life or temple service, and one especially pleasing to this goddess whom you serve, who is preeminently wise and philosophical, as indeed her name seems to indicate: for knowledge and understanding belong to her more than to anyone. "Isis" is a Greek name, as is "Typhon," who is an enemy to the goddess, being through ignorance and deception

puffed up with delusion, and who tears apart and scatters the sacred discourse, which the goddess in turn gathers and puts together and hands down to those being initiated into deification — through a life of continual self-control, through abstinence from many foods and from sexual pleasure, curbing licentiousness and love of pleasure, and habituating people to endure austere and rigorous service in the temples, the goal of which is the knowledge of the First and the Sovereign and the Intelligible, whom

the goddess bids us seek, since he is with her and beside her. And the very name of her temple both clearly and plainly promises knowledge and understanding of that which is. For it is called the Iseion, as though it were a place of "knowing that which is," if we enter the sanctuaries of the goddess in a reasonable and pious manner. Furthermore, many have recorded her as the daughter of Hermes, and many as the daughter of Prometheus,

the latter of whom they consider the discoverer of wisdom and forethought, and Hermes the discoverer of grammar and music. That is why, among the Muses at Hermopolis, they call the first one Isis, and also Justice, since she is wise, as has been said, and reveals divine things to those who are truly and rightly called "bearers of the sacred" and "wearers of the sacred robe." These are the ones who carry the sacred discourse about the gods, purified of all superstition and

needless curiosity, in their soul as though in a chest, and who cloak it, showing forth partly what is dark and shadowy and partly what is plain and bright about their conception of the gods, such as they also display concerning the sacred vestment. That is why it is a symbol that the dead who have been initiates of Isis are adorned with these garments — that this discourse is with them, and that having this and nothing else

they go on their way there. For it is not the wearing of beards, Clea, or the carrying of the philosopher's cloak that makes philosophers, nor is it linen garments and shaven heads that make initiates of Isis; rather, one who is truly an initiate of Isis is the person who, when he has lawfully received what is displayed and enacted concerning these gods, seeks by reason and philosophizes about the truth contained in them. Most people, indeed, fail to notice even this, the most common and smallest point:

the reason why the priests remove their hair and wear linen garments. Some do not concern themselves at all with knowing about these matters; others say that the priests abstain from wool, as they abstain from meat, out of reverence for the sheep, and that they shave their heads because of mourning, and wear linen because of the color which flax, when in bloom, gives off, resembling the ethereal, bright-blue color that surrounds the world.

But the true reason for all of this is a single one: "for it is not lawful," says Plato, "for the impure to touch the pure"; and no excess or residue of nourishment is holy or pure — and it is out of excess matter that wool, hair, fleece, and nails grow and sprout. It would therefore be absurd that, while shaving off their own hair during their purifications and making their whole body smooth,

they should nevertheless wrap themselves in and wear the hair of animals. Indeed, we ought to think that Hesiod too, when he says, "do not cut the dry from the green with bright iron at the joyous feast of the gods, from the five-branched thing," is teaching that one must become pure of such things before celebrating a festival, not that one should employ purification and the removal of superfluities during the rites themselves. As for flax,

it grows out of the immortal earth and yields an edible fruit, and it provides a simple and pure garment that does not weigh heavily on the one who wears it for covering, one well suited to every season and, they say, least likely to breed lice — though that is a separate discussion. The priests are so averse to the nature of excess matter that they not only avoid most legumes and the meats

of sheep and pigs, which produce a great deal of residue, but even remove salt from their food during their purifications, for several reasons, among them that salt makes them thirstier and hungrier by sharpening the appetite. As for the notion, which Aristagoras mentioned, that salt is considered impure because many small creatures die trapped inside it as it solidifies — that is a foolish idea. It is also said that

they water the Apis bull from a well of his own, keeping him altogether away from the Nile — not because they consider the water polluted on account of the crocodile, as some suppose (for nothing is so highly valued by the Egyptians as the Nile), but because drinking Nile water seems to be fattening and especially to produce excess flesh. And they do not want the Apis to be in that condition, nor do they wish it for themselves, but rather that their

bodies should sit lightly and easily upon their souls, and not weigh down and oppress the divine element with a mortal burden that is too strong and heavy. As for wine, those who serve the god at Heliopolis do not bring it into the temple at all, on the ground that it is not fitting to drink during the day while the lord and king looks on; the others use it, but sparingly. And they have many wineless periods of purification,

during which they spend their time in philosophizing, and in learning and teaching sacred matters. And the kings, being themselves priests, used to drink only a measured amount, as prescribed in the sacred writings, according to Hecataeus; they began to drink wine only from the time of Psammetichus, whereas before that they neither drank wine nor poured it in libation as something friendly to the gods, but rather as the blood of those who had once made war upon the gods, from whose fallen bodies, mingled with the earth,

they believe the vines sprang up — which is why becoming drunk makes people frenzied and deranged, since they are, as it were, filling themselves with the blood of their ancestors. This, at any rate, is what Eudoxus, in the second book of his Voyage, says was told by the priests. As for sea fish, not all the priests abstain from all of them, but from some; the people of Oxyrhynchus, for instance, abstain from fish caught by hook, since, out of reverence for the oxyrhynchus fish, they fear

that the hook might not be pure if an oxyrhynchus has ever come into contact with it. The people of Syene abstain from the phagrus fish, since it appears to show itself alongside the rising Nile and, being seen, seems of its own accord to announce gladly the coming flood. The priests abstain from all fish; and on the ninth day of the first month, when every other Egyptian eats a broiled fish before his outer door, the priests do not taste it but burn

their fish before their doors, having two accounts for this practice, one sacred and elaborate, which I will take up again later, in harmony with what is piously philosophized concerning Osiris and Typhon; the other plain and ready at hand, showing that fish is not a necessary or refined dish, and citing Homer as a witness, since he represents neither the luxurious Phaeacians nor the islanders of Ithaca as eating fish, nor even the companions of Odysseus, for all their long voyage

upon the sea, until they came to the direst extremity. In general, they consider the sea to have come from fire and to be set apart from the rest of nature, being neither a part nor an element but a foreign, corrupted, and diseased residue. For nothing is irrational or mythical, nor was anything, as some suppose, built into the sacred rites out of mere superstition; rather, some things have moral and practical explanations, and others are not without a certain refinement

of a historical or a natural kind, as, for example, in the case of the onion. For the story that Dictys, the nurse of Isis, fell into the river and perished while clutching at onions is utterly implausible; but the priests avoid and abhor the onion, taking care to note that it alone thrives and flourishes precisely when the moon is waning. It is unsuitable for those who are either purifying themselves or keeping festival, in the one case because it causes thirst,

in the other because it makes those who partake of it weep. Likewise they consider the pig an unholy animal, since it appears to be mounted for mating chiefly when the moon is waning, and the bodies of those who drink its milk break out in leprosy and scabby roughness. As for the story which they tell when they sacrifice a pig once, at the full moon, and eat it — that Typhon, while pursuing a pig toward the

full moon, found the wooden chest in which lay the body of Osiris, and scattered it — not everyone accepts this, regarding it, like many other such tales, as an idle bit of gossip. Rather, they say the ancients meant by this to reject luxury, extravagance, and self-indulgence, so much so that they even claim there stood a pillar in a temple at Thebes inscribed with curses against King Meinis, who was the first to release the Egyptians from

their poor, unmonied, and simple way of life. It is also said that Technactis, the father of Bocchoris, while on campaign against the Arabs, when his baggage train was delayed, gladly made do with whatever food was at hand, and then, having slept a deep sleep upon a pallet, came to embrace frugality; and that from this experience he cursed Meinis, and that the priests, approving, inscribed the curse upon the pillar. The kings were appointed from among the priests

or from the warrior class, since the one class had standing and honor through courage and the other through wisdom. And whoever was appointed from the warriors immediately became one of the priests and shared in their philosophy, which for the most part is concealed in myths and in accounts that contain dim glimmerings and reflections of the truth, as indeed they themselves suggest when they set up sphinxes, quite fittingly, before their temples, implying that

their theology contains a riddling kind of wisdom. And the seated image of Athena at Sais, whom they also identify with Isis, bore the inscription: "I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and no mortal has yet uncovered my robe." Further, though most people think that Amoun is the proper Egyptian name for Zeus, a name which we, altering it, call Ammon,

Manetho of Sebennytus thinks that the word signifies "the hidden" and "concealment"; while Hecataeus of Abdera says that the Egyptians use this very word among themselves when they call someone to them, since it is a word of summoning. That is why they call the first god — whom they hold to be the same as the universe — by the name Amoun, as being invisible and hidden, when they call upon him and

summon him to become visible and manifest to them. Such, then, was the reverence of the Egyptians' wisdom concerning divine matters. And the wisest of the Greeks bear witness to it too — Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and, as some say, even Lycurgus — who came to Egypt and associated with the priests. Eudoxus, they say, was a pupil of Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis

of Sais, and Pythagoras of Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Pythagoras above all, it seems, was admired by these men and admired them in turn, and so he imitated their symbolic and mysterious manner, weaving his doctrines into riddles; for most of the so-called Pythagorean precepts fall little short of what is written in the hieroglyphic characters — precepts such as "do not eat while seated on a stool," "do not sit on a bushel measure," "do not plant a palm tree," and "do not stir fire with a knife

in the house." I myself think that the men's practice of calling the monad Apollo, the dyad Artemis, the number seven Athena, and the first cube Poseidon, corresponds closely to what is established, enacted — yes, and written — in the temples. For they represent the king and lord Osiris by an eye and a scepter, and some even interpret the name to mean "many-eyed,"

since os in the Egyptian tongue signifies "many" and iri signifies "eye," and heaven, being ageless because of its eternity, they depict with a heart and a brazier set beneath it. In Thebes there stood dedicated images of judges without hands, and the image of the chief justice had its eyes closed, to signify that justice is incorruptible by gifts and inaccessible to influence. For the warrior class, the scarab beetle was engraved as their seal, for

there is no female scarab; they are all male. They deposit their seed into a ball of matter which they shape, providing thereby a place not so much for nourishment as for generation. So then, whenever you hear the myths that the Egyptians tell about the gods — their wanderings, dismemberments, and many such sufferings — you must bear in mind what has already been said, and think that none of these things is spoken of as having actually happened or been done in that way. For they do not properly

call the dog Hermes, but they associate the watchful, wakeful, and philosophical quality of the animal, which distinguishes friend from enemy by knowledge and ignorance, as Plato says, with the most rational of the gods. Nor do they suppose that the sun rises as a newborn infant out of a lotus, but rather they depict the sunrise in this way to hint at the kindling of the sun that arises out of moisture. And indeed, when the

most savage and terrifying of the Persian kings, Ochus, who had killed many, and who at last also slaughtered the Apis and dined upon it with his friends, they called him "the Knife," and to this day they still so name him in the list of kings — not, of course, signifying his real nature by this, but likening the harshness and wickedness of his character to a murderous instrument. In just this way, then, one who hears about the gods and

receives such things from those who interpret the myth in a pious and philosophical manner, and who always performs and preserves the established rites of the temples, while believing that having a true opinion about the gods will please them no less than sacrificing or performing any rite, will thereby escape an evil no less than atheism — namely, superstition. Now this myth is told in the briefest form possible, setting aside what is most useless

...once the superfluous elements have been removed. They say that Rhea had intercourse secretly with Cronus, and that Helios, perceiving it, called down a curse upon her, that she should bear no child in any month or year; but that Hermes, being in love with the goddess, lay with her, and afterward, playing at draughts with the Moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her lights, and out of all these portions composed five days, which he added to the three hundred and sixty. These are the days the Egyptians now call the "added" days, and they celebrate them as the birthdays of the gods.

On the first of these days Osiris was born, and a voice went forth together with him at his birth, declaring that the lord of all things was coming into the light. But some say that a certain Pamyles, drawing water at Thebes from the shrine of Zeus, heard a voice commanding him to proclaim with a shout that the great king and benefactor Osiris had been born; and that for this reason he reared Osiris, Cronus having entrusted the child to him, and that the festival of the Pamylia, resembling the Phallephoria, is celebrated in his honor.

On the second day Arueris was born, whom some call Apollo, and others the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, not at the proper time nor in the proper place, but bursting through with a blow, he leapt out through his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis was born amid all moisture; and on the fifth, Nephthys, whom some name also Teleute and Aphrodite, and others Nike. Osiris and Arueris, they say, were sons of Helios, Isis was the daughter of Hermes, and Typhon and Nephthys were children of Cronus. For this reason the kings, regarding the third of the added days as ill-omened, conducted no business on it and did not attend to their own affairs until nightfall. Nephthys was married to Typhon.

Isis and Osiris, being in love with each other, had intercourse in the darkness even before they were born, while still in the womb. Some say that Arueris too was born in this way, and that he is called the elder Horus by the Egyptians, and Apollo by the Greeks. When Osiris became king, he immediately delivered the Egyptians from their destitute and beast-like way of life, by showing them crops, establishing laws for them, and teaching them to honor the gods. Afterward he traveled over the whole earth, civilizing it, having very little need of weapons, but winning over most people by persuasion and reason, charming them with song and every kind of music; hence the Greeks came to believe that he was the same as Dionysus.

While Osiris was away, Typhon attempted nothing new, because Isis, who held power, guarded herself and watched closely; but when Osiris returned, Typhon contrived a plot, having formed seventy-two conspirators, and having as an accomplice a queen from Ethiopia who happened to be present, whom they name Aso. Having secretly measured Osiris's body, and having had a chest made, beautiful and elaborately adorned, fitted exactly to that measurement, he brought it into the banqueting hall. When the guests were delighted at the sight and admired it, Typhon promised, as a jest, that whoever, lying down in it, fit it exactly, should be given the chest as a gift.

When each of them in turn tried it and none fit, Osiris got in and lay down. The conspirators then rushed up and slammed the lid shut, and, some nailing it fast from outside and others pouring molten lead over it, carried it out to the river and released it into the sea through the Tanitic mouth — which for this reason the Egyptians even now call hateful and execrable. This is said to have happened on the seventeenth day of the month Athyr, when the sun passes through Scorpio, in the twenty-eighth year of Osiris's reign. Some, however, say that he had lived, not reigned, that length of time.

The Pans and Satyrs who lived around the region of Chemmis were the first to perceive what had happened and to spread word of it; and for this reason sudden disturbances and frights among crowds are still called "panics" to this day. Isis, on learning of it, cut off a lock of her hair there and put on mourning garb, in the place that is still to this day called Coptos. Others think the name signifies deprivation, for they say the Egyptians call "depriving" kopto.

Wandering everywhere in her distress, she passed no one without speaking to them; and when she met with small children, she asked them about the chest, and they, as it happened, had seen it and told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of Typhon had pushed the vessel into the sea. For this reason the Egyptians believe that children possess a prophetic power, and they especially take omens from the chance utterances of children playing in sacred places and saying whatever they happen to say.

Isis learned that Osiris, in ignorance, had had intercourse with her sister Nephthys, taking her for Isis herself, and she saw as proof of it the garland of melilot which he had left with Nephthys; so she sought for the child — for Nephthys, immediately after giving birth, had exposed it out of fear of Typhon. It was found, with difficulty and effort, by Isis, who was guided by dogs, and it was reared and became her guardian and attendant, called Anubis, who is said to guard the gods just as dogs guard men.

From this she learned about the chest: that it had been carried by the waves to the region of Byblos, and the swell had gently brought it to rest against a tamarisk bush; and the tamarisk, growing in a short time into a most beautiful and enormous shoot, enfolded it, grew around it, and hid it within itself. The king, marveling at the size of the plant, cut off the trunk that enclosed the coffin, invisible within it, and set it up as a support for the roof of his palace.

They say that Isis, learning of this by a report carried on some divine inspiration, came to Byblos, and, sitting by a spring, humble and in tears, spoke to no one else, but greeted and befriended the queen's handmaidens, plaiting their hair and breathing upon their skin a wonderful fragrance from herself. When the queen saw her handmaidens, a longing seized her for the stranger, whose hair and skin breathed a fragrance as of ambrosia; so Isis was sent for, and, having become intimate with the queen, was made nurse of her child.

The king's name, they say, was Malcandrus; the queen's name is given by some as Astarte, by others as Saosis, and by others as Nemanous, which the Greeks would call Athenais. Isis nursed the child, giving it her finger to suck instead of her breast, and at night she would burn away the mortal parts of its body, while she herself, having become a swallow, flew around the pillar and lamented — until the queen, watching closely, cried out when she saw her baby being burned, and thereby deprived it of immortality.

Then the goddess, revealing herself, asked for the pillar of the roof, and, removing it with the greatest ease, cut away the tamarisk; then, having wrapped it in linen and poured perfume over it, she gave it into the hands of the king and queen; and to this day the people of Byblos still venerate the wood, which lies in the temple of Isis. She then fell upon the coffin and wailed so loudly that the younger of the king's sons died of it; and taking the elder son with her, and placing the coffin in a boat, she put out to sea.

When the river Phaedrus sent forth a rather harsh wind toward dawn, she grew angry and dried up its stream. At the first place where she found solitude, being alone by herself, she opened the chest, and, laying her face upon his face, embraced it and wept. When the child came up silently from behind and watched her, she, perceiving it, turned around and looked at it terribly in anger. The child could not bear the fright, and died. Others say it was not so, but that, as has been said before, he fell into the sea.

He receives honors on account of the goddess; for the one whom the Egyptians sing of at their banquets as Maneros is this very child. Some say that the boy was called Palaestinus or Pelusius, and that the city founded by the goddess was named after him; but they relate that the Maneros who is sung of was the first discoverer of music.

Others say it is not the name of any person at all, but rather a phrase suited to men who are drinking and feasting, meaning "may such things be fitting"; for this, expressed as "to Maneros," is what the Egyptians cry out on each such occasion. Just so, indeed, the image of a dead man that is carried around in a small box and displayed to the guests is not, as some suppose, a reminder of the suffering of Osiris, but rather they bring it in as an unwelcome addition to the revelry, urging themselves, now that they are in their cups, to make use of and enjoy what is present, since they will soon be just such as it.

When Isis had gone to her son Horus, who was being reared at Buto, and had set the chest aside out of the way, Typhon, hunting by night in the light of the moon, came upon it, and, recognizing the body, tore it into fourteen pieces and scattered them about. When Isis learned of this, she searched for the pieces, sailing through the marshes in a papyrus boat; for this reason those who sail in papyrus skiffs are not harmed by crocodiles, which either fear or revere the goddess.

For this reason many tombs of Osiris are said to exist in Egypt, because, whenever she came upon a piece, she performed burial rites for it. But others deny this, and say instead that she made images and gave one to each city, as though giving the body itself, so that Osiris might be honored by more people, and so that, if Typhon should overpower Horus and go searching for the true tomb, he would give up in despair when many tombs were spoken of and shown to him.

Of all the parts of Osiris, the only one Isis did not find was the genital member; for it had been thrown into the river at once, and the lepidotus, the phagrus, and the oxyrhynchus fish had tasted of it — fish which the Egyptians for this reason especially abstain from eating. Isis, making a likeness of it in its place, consecrated the phallus, and the Egyptians even now hold a festival in its honor.

Afterward, Osiris came from Hades to Horus and trained and exercised him for battle, and then asked him what he considered the finest thing. When Horus answered, "To avenge one's father and mother for the wrongs they have suffered," Osiris asked him a second question: what animal he thought most useful to those going out to battle. When Horus said "a horse," Osiris was surprised, and puzzled why he had not said a lion instead. Horus replied that a lion is useful to one who is in need of help, but a horse serves to pursue and destroy an enemy in flight. Hearing this, Osiris was pleased, feeling that Horus was now adequately prepared.

It is said that, as many were continually going over to the side of Horus, even Typhon's concubine Thoueris came over to him. A serpent that pursued her was cut to pieces by Horus's followers; and even now, for this reason, they throw a rope into their midst and cut it up. The battle, then, lasted many days, and Horus prevailed; but when Isis took Typhon prisoner in bonds, she did not kill him, but loosed him and let him go.

Horus did not take this well, but laid hands on his mother and tore the royal crown from her head; and Hermes put a helmet shaped like an ox's head on her instead. When Typhon brought a suit against Horus for illegitimacy, Hermes came to his aid, and Horus was judged by the gods to be legitimate; and Typhon was defeated in two further battles. Isis, having conceived by Osiris after his death, gave birth to Harpocrates, born prematurely and weak in his lower limbs.

These, then, are more or less the main points of the myth, with the most ill-omened details removed, such as the account of Horus's dismemberment and Isis's beheading.

Now, that if these things are believed and asserted to have truly happened and occurred, concerning that blessed and imperishable nature by which the divine is above all conceived, then, in the words of Aeschylus, "one must spit them out and purify one's mouth" — there is no need to say this to you, for you yourself are displeased with those who hold such lawless and barbarous opinions about the gods.

But that these things do not seem to be entirely thin and empty fabrications of the sort that poets and prose-writers, like spiders spinning from themselves out of an unfounded beginning, weave and stretch out, but that they contain certain accounts of events and narratives of sufferings — this you know yourself. Just as the mathematicians say that the rainbow is a reflection of the sun, given its varied colors by the turning back of our vision toward a cloud, so here the myth is a reflection of some account that turns the mind toward other things, as is suggested both by the sacrifices, which display mourning and a gloomy character, and by the arrangement of the temples, which in some parts open out into wings and open, unroofed colonnades exposed to the sky, while in other parts have hidden and dark underground chambers resembling burial vaults and shrines.

Not least significant is the belief concerning the tombs of Osiris, his body being said to lie in many places; for they say the small town called Diochita is named as the one that alone possesses the true tomb, and at Abydos the most fortunate and powerful of the Egyptians are chiefly buried, competing with each other for the honor of sharing a grave with the body of Osiris, while at Memphis the Apis bull is reared, being an image of Osiris's soul, in the place where his body also is said to lie; and the name of the city is interpreted by some as "haven of good things," and by others, specifically, as "tomb of Osiris."

The islet near Philae is at other times inaccessible and unapproachable by anyone, and not even birds land on it nor fish come near it; but at one appointed time the priests cross over and offer sacrifices and wreathe the tomb, shaded by a plant called methide, which surpasses in size any olive tree. Eudoxus says that, of the many tombs spoken of in Egypt, it is at Busiris that the body actually lies, since this was in fact the birthplace of Osiris; Taphosiris, on the other hand, needs no explanation, for the name itself declares "the burial of Osiris."

I pass over in silence the cutting of wood, the splitting of linen, and the libations that are poured, because many of the mystic rites are mixed up with these matters.

The priests say this not only of Osiris, but also of the other gods, all those who are neither unbegotten nor imperishable: that their bodies, having grown weary, lie among them and receive rites of care, while their souls shine as stars in heaven — the star of Isis being called the Dog-star by the Greeks, and Sothis by the Egyptians, Orion being the star of Horus, and the Bear that of Typhon. And as regards the burial rites for the sacred animals, all other Egyptians perform the prescribed contributions, but the inhabitants of the Thebaid alone do not contribute, since they hold that no god is mortal, but only the one whom they themselves call Kneph, who is unbegotten and immortal.

Since many such things are said and shown, some, believing that these are the deeds of kings and rulers who, on account of surpassing virtue or power, claimed for themselves the dignity of divine repute and then met with fortunes such that their terrible and great deeds and sufferings are still remembered, resort to the easiest escape from the difficulty, and not without some skill transfer the ill-omened elements from the gods to human beings, finding support for this in what is recorded in the histories. For the Egyptians relate that Hermes, with his...

...in body, that Hermes was bandy-legged, Typhon reddish in complexion, Horus white, and Osiris dark, as though they had been born men by nature. They also call Osiris a general, and Canobus a helmsman, after whom, they say, the star is named; and the ship which the Greeks call the Argo is a starry image, set among the stars in his honor, of Osiris's own vessel, and it moves not far from Orion and the Dog Star, of which the one the Egyptians hold sacred to Horus, the other to Isis.

I am reluctant to disturb what should not be disturbed, and to "war," not merely, as Simonides says, "with the long march of time," but with many nations of men and races held fast by their piety toward these gods — reducing to nothing and dragging down from heaven to earth names and honors so great, and a faith almost woven into everyone from his very birth, thereby throwing open great gates to a godless rabble and turning the divine into the merely human, and giving free rein to the impostures of Euhemerus of Messene, who himself composed a fictitious record of an incredible and nonexistent mythology and has poured out atheism over the whole inhabited world by leveling all the gods men believe in into names of generals, admirals, and kings who supposedly lived long ago and are recorded in golden letters at Panchaia — letters which no barbarian and no Greek, but only Euhemerus himself, it seems, ever saw, having sailed to visit the Panchaeans and Triphyllians, who exist nowhere on earth and never existed. And yet great deeds are celebrated in song among the Assyrians as belonging to Semiramis, and great ones among the Egyptians as belonging to Sesostris; the Phrygians to this day call brilliant and marvelous achievements "Manic," after a certain Manes, a good and powerful king of old among them, whom some call Masdes; Cyrus led the Persians and Alexander the Macedonians to conquer very nearly the ends of the earth — yet these have only the name and memory of good kings. "But if certain men, puffed up by vainglory," as Plato says, "their souls ablaze with youth and folly together with insolence," accepted divine titles and the founding of temples in their honor, their glory flowered only briefly, and then, along with impiety and lawlessness, they incurred a reputation for emptiness and imposture. Short-lived, they were borne up like smoke and vanished, and now, like runaway slaves dragged back in chains, torn away from their shrines and altars, they possess nothing but their monuments and their tombs.

Hence Antigonus the Elder, when a certain Hermodotus in his verses proclaimed him son of Helios and a god, said: "My chamber-pot bearer knows nothing of the kind about me." And Lysippus the sculptor rightly rebuked Apelles the painter, because in painting a portrait of Alexander he had put a thunderbolt in his hand, whereas he himself had given him a spear, the glory of which no length of time will ever take away, since it is true and truly his own. Better, then, are those

who hold that the things told of Typhon, Osiris, and Isis are the sufferings neither of gods nor of men, but of great daemons — beings whom Plato, Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus, following the ancient theologians, say came into being stronger than men and far surpassing us in the power of their nature, yet not possessing the divine element unmixed or pure, but sharing also in the nature of soul and of body, allotted a share in sensation, receiving pleasure and pain, and whatever affections attend these changes disturb some more, some less. For, as among men, so among daemons there are differences of virtue and vice. Indeed the tales of the Giants and Titans sung among the Greeks, certain lawless deeds of Cronus, the resistance of Python against Apollo, the flights

and wanderings of Dionysus, and those of Demeter, fall short in nothing of the Osiriac and Typhonic stories, nor do the other tales which anyone is free to hear recounted without restraint; and whatever is kept hidden under the veil of mystic rites and secret ceremonies, unspoken and unseen to the multitude, admits of a similar account. We hear too that Homer variously calls the good "godlike" on each occasion, and "godlike-opposing," and "having thoughts from the gods," while he uses the term "daemon" indiscriminately of both the good and the bad — "come near, O daemonic one; why do you so fear the Argives?"; and again, "but when for the fourth time he rushed on like a daemon"; and "daemonic one, what harm have Priam and the sons of Priam done you, that you rage so relentlessly to sack the well-built citadel of Ilium?" — as though daemons possessed a mixed and uneven nature

and moral character. Whence Plato assigns to the Olympian gods the things on the right hand and the odd numbers, and to the daemons their opposites. And Xenocrates holds that the inauspicious days, and those festivals which involve blows, beatings of the breast, fasts, curses, or foul language, belong to the honor neither of good gods nor of good daemons, but that there exist in the surrounding air natures great and powerful, yet perverse and gloomy, who delight in such things, and, obtaining them, turn to nothing worse. The good and virtuous ones, on the other hand, Hesiod calls "holy daemons" and "guardians of men," "givers of wealth, possessing this kingly privilege too." Plato likewise calls this class of being interpretive and ministering, situated between gods and

men, carrying up to the gods the prayers and petitions of men, and bringing back down from them oracles and gifts of good things. Empedocles says that the daemons pay a penalty for whatever they sin and transgress: "for the might of the aether pursues them into the sea, the sea spits them out onto the floor of the earth, the earth casts them into the rays of the unwearied sun, and he in turn flings them into the eddies of the aether; one receives them from another," and all of these abhor them, until, thus chastened and purified, they at last recover their proper place and rank according to nature. Of these and similar beings they say kindred things are told concerning Typhon — how out of envy and ill will he wrought terrible deeds, and having thrown everything into confusion, filled almost the whole earth and sea alike with evils, and afterward paid the penalty. And she

who avenged Osiris, his sister and wife, having quenched and put an end to Typhon's madness and fury, did not disregard the labors and struggles she had endured, nor her own wanderings; and having consecrated many deeds of wisdom and many of courage, adopting a policy of forgetfulness and silence, yet weaving into her most sacred rites images, hints, and reenactments of the sufferings then endured, she made them into a lesson of piety and a consolation at once for men and women caught in similar misfortunes. She herself and Osiris, having changed from good daemons into gods on account of their virtue — as later did Heracles and Dionysus — hold, not inappropriately, honors that combine those of gods and of daemons together, being most powerful everywhere, but especially in the regions above and below the earth. For they say Sarapis is none other than Pluto, and Isis is Persephone, as Archemachus of Euboea has said, and Heraclides of Pontus holds that the oracle at Canopus belongs to Pluto.

Ptolemy Soter saw in a dream the colossal statue of Pluto at Sinope, without knowing or ever having seen before what its form was like, commanding him to bring it to Alexandria as quickly as possible. Not knowing where it stood, and being at a loss, and while he was describing the vision to his friends, there was found a much-traveled man named Sosibius, who said he had seen at Sinope just such a colossus as the king seemed to have seen. Ptolemy therefore sent Soteles and Dionysius, who after a long time and with much difficulty — yet not without divine providence — brought it away by stealth. When it had been carried off and was seen, Timotheus the expounder of sacred rites and Manetho the Sebennyte, comparing notes, concluded from the Cerberus and the serpent

that it was an image of Pluto, and persuaded Ptolemy that it belonged to no other god but Sarapis. For it did not come from there already bearing that name; rather, once brought to Alexandria it acquired, under the Egyptian name for Pluto, the title Sarapis. And indeed, since Heraclitus the natural philosopher says, "Hades and Dionysus are the same, for whom men rave and hold their Lenaean revels," they subscribe to this same opinion. But those who suppose that Hades means the body, in which the soul is as it were deranged and drunk, allegorize too feebly. It is better to identify Osiris with Dionysus, and Sarapis with Osiris once he had changed his nature and taken on this new name. That is why Sarapis belongs equally to all, just as those who have been initiated into the sacred rites know Osiris to belong to all.

For it is not worth paying attention to the Phrygian writings, in which it is said that Isis was born the daughter of Charops, son of Heracles, and Typhon the son of Aeacus, son of Heracles; nor should one dismiss Phylarchus's account, that Dionysus was the first to bring two oxen from India into Egypt, one of which was named Apis, the other Osiris; and that Sarapis is the name of the one who orders the universe, derived from "sairein," a word some say means to beautify and adorn. These claims of Phylarchus are absurd enough, but far more absurd are those of the people who say that Sarapis is not a god at all, but that this is simply the name given to the coffin of Apis, and that certain bronze gates at Memphis, called the "gates of forgetfulness and wailing," are opened whenever they bury an Apis bull, making a heavy, harsh sound — which is why we clap our hands on any resounding piece of bronze whenever we hear it.

More moderate are those who say the name derives from "seuesthai" and "sousthai," words expressing the motion of the universe as a whole. Most of the priests, however, say that Osiris and Apis are woven together into one, explaining and teaching us that we ought to regard Apis as the embodied image of Osiris's soul. For my part, if the name Sarapis is indeed Egyptian, I think it signifies cheerfulness and joy, inferring this from the fact that the Egyptians call the festival of joy "sairei." And indeed Plato says that Hades was named as a gracious and kindly god to those who come to dwell with him; and among the Egyptians there are explanations for many other names as well, and they call the subterranean place to which they believe souls depart after death "Amenthes," the name signifying "the one who receives and gives." Whether this too is one of the names carried off long ago from Greece and later brought back, we shall examine later; for now let us go through the rest of the current line of opinion.

Osiris and Isis, then, passed from good daemons into gods; but Typhon's power, dimmed and worn down, though still gasping and struggling, they at times appease and soothe with sacrifices, and at other times again humble and abuse in certain festivals — insulting men of ruddy complexion and hurling a donkey off a cliff, as the people of Coptus do, because Typhon was reddish and ass-like in color. The people of Busiris and Lycopolis make no use of trumpets at all, because their sound resembles the braying of a donkey. And in general they consider the donkey not a pure but a daemonic animal, on account of its resemblance to Typhon, and in the sacrifices of the months of Payni and Phaophi they make cakes stamped with the image of a bound donkey. And in the sacrifice to the Sun they instruct those who worship the god not to wear gold ornaments on their bodies, nor

to give food to a donkey. Even the Pythagoreans appear to consider Typhon a daemonic power: for they say that, reckoned in the even number, Typhon belongs to the fifty-sixth; and again that the triangle belongs to Hades, Dionysus, and Ares; the square to Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera; the twelve-sided figure to Zeus; and the fifty-six-sided figure to Typhon, as Eudoxus has recorded. The Egyptians, believing Typhon to have been reddish in color, also consecrate red oxen for sacrifice, and conduct so exacting an examination that if the animal has even a single black or white hair, they consider it unfit for the offering. For what is fit for sacrifice ought not to be dear to the gods, but on the contrary must be the sort of thing that has caught up the souls of unholy and unjust men transformed into other bodies. Therefore they curse the victim's head and, having cut it off,

used formerly to throw it into the river, though now they sell it to foreigners. The bull that is about to be sacrificed is marked by those of the priests called "sealers," whose seal, as Castor records, bears the engraving of a man kneeling with his hands bound behind him and a sword laid at his throat. And they think the donkey shares in this same likeness, they suppose, no less because of its stupidity and violent temper than because of its color. For this reason too, hating Ochus most of all the Persian kings, as accursed and polluted, they nicknamed him "the donkey." And he, when he said, "well, this donkey of yours will feast on the ox," had the Apis bull slaughtered, as Deinon has recorded. As for those who say that Typhon fled the battle on a donkey's back for seven days, and, having been saved, fathered sons named Hierosolymus and Judaeus, they are plainly dragging Jewish matters into the myth by their own admission.

These accounts, then, offer such hints and conjectures. But let us first examine, starting from a different point, the simplest of those who seem to speak somewhat more philosophically. These are the ones who say that, just as the Greeks allegorize Cronus as time, Hera as air, and the birth of Hephaestus as the change of air into fire, so among the Egyptians the Nile is Osiris consorting with Isis, who is the earth, while Typhon is the sea, into which the Nile falls and is scattered and disappears, except for the portion which the earth, taking up and receiving, is made fertile by. And there is a sacred lament sung over Osiris, and it laments

him as born in the left-hand regions and as perishing in the right-hand regions. For the Egyptians think that the eastern parts of the world form its face, the northern parts its right side, and the southern parts its left side. The Nile, then, flowing from the southern regions and being consumed by the sea in the northern regions, is reasonably said to have its birth in the left-hand parts and its destruction in the right-hand parts. For this reason the priests hold the sea in religious aversion and call salt "the foam of Typhon"; and among the things forbidden to them is the setting out of salt at table. Nor do they address pilots with honor, because they make their living from the sea and depend on it for their livelihood; and it is not least for this same reason that they also reject the fish,

and they write "hate" with a fish. At any rate, in Sais, in the forecourt of the temple of Athena, there was carved an infant, then an old man, and after him a hawk, then next a fish, and last of all a hippopotamus. This symbolically signified: "O you who are coming into being and passing out of being, god hates shamelessness" — for the infant is a symbol of coming-to-be, and the old man of passing-away. By the hawk they indicate the god, by the fish, as has been said, hatred, on account of the sea; by the hippopotamus, shamelessness, for it is said that after killing his father he forces himself on his mother.

The saying of the Pythagoreans, that the sea is a tear of Cronus, would also seem to hint at the impurity of the sea and its being of alien kindred. Let this much, then, be said from outside sources, containing the common tradition. But the wiser of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply regard Osiris as the whole moisture-producing principle and power, taking it to be the cause of generation and the substance of seed; and Typhon as everything parched and fiery and utterly desiccating, and hostile to moisture. Hence, believing that he was born ruddy in body and sallow of complexion, they are not at all eager to meet

nor pleased to associate with men of such an appearance. Osiris, on the other hand, they tell in myth was born black-skinned, because water blackens everything it mixes with — earth, and clothing, and clouds — and the moisture present in young people gives their hair its black color; whereas graying, a kind of pallor, comes upon those past their prime through dryness. And spring is luxuriant and fruitful and mild,

while autumn, through lack of moisture, is hostile to plants and unhealthy for animals. The bull kept at Heliopolis, which they call Mnevis and hold sacred to Osiris (some think it the father of Apis as well), is black and holds second honors after Apis. And since Egypt, being among the most black-earthed of lands, just as the black part of the eye, they call "Chemia,"

and they liken it to a heart, for it is warm and moist and, in relation to the southern parts of the inhabited world, is enclosed and situated much as the heart is on the left side of a man. They say that the Sun and Moon do not use chariots but sail about in boats as their vehicles, hinting at their nourishment and generation from moisture. They also think that Homer, like Thales, learned from the Egyptians to set down water

as the origin and generation of all things — for Ocean, they say, is Osiris, and Tethys is Isis, since she nurses and rears all things jointly with him. And indeed the Greeks call the emission of seed "apousia" (absence) and intercourse "synousia" (togetherness), and they derive the word for "son," huios, from hudōr (water) and from husai (to rain); and they call Dionysus "Hyēs," as lord of the moist nature, he being none other than Osiris.

Indeed Hellanicus too seems to have heard the god called "Osiris" (not "Hysiris") by the priests, for he consistently names the god this way — reasonably, from his nature and from the discovery. That he is the same as Dionysus, who could know better than you, Clea, since it is fitting that you should — you being head of the Thyiades at Delphi, and consecrated to the Osirian rites by your father

and mother? And if for the sake of others one ought to produce testimony, let the secret rites remain in their place, but consider what the priests openly do when they bury Apis: as they convey the body on a raft, it falls nothing short of Bacchic revelry. For they fasten on fawnskins and carry thyrsus-wands, and use cries and movements just like those possessed in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus.

That is why many of the Greeks make images of Dionysus in the form of a bull; and the women of Elis actually invoke him in prayer, calling on him to come to them "with the foot of a bull." And among the Argives, Dionysus bears the epithet "Bull-born"; they call him up out of the water with trumpets, casting a lamb into the abyss for the Keeper of the Gate, while they hide the trumpets inside thyrsus-wands, as Socrates has said in his work On Holy Things.

And the Titanic and Nyctelian rites agree with what is said of the dismemberment of Osiris, his returns to life, and his rebirths, and likewise with what concerns his burials. For the Egyptians point out tombs of Osiris in many places, as has been said, and the Delphians believe that the remains of Dionysus are deposited among them beside the oracle; and the Holy Ones offer a secret sacrifice in the temple

of Apollo whenever the Thyiades awaken the Liknites. And that the Greeks consider Dionysus lord and author not only of wine but of all moist nature, it is enough that Pindar bears witness, saying: "may Dionysus, rich in joy, increase the grove of trees, the holy radiance of harvest-time." For this reason those who revere Osiris are forbidden to destroy a cultivated tree or to stop up a spring of water. Not only

do they call the Nile an effluence of Osiris, but simply all moisture; and in processions of the sacred rites, the water-vessel is always carried in front, in honor of the god. And they represent the king by a reed, and the southern quarter of the world as well, and the word "reed," when translated, means "watering" and "the conception of all things," and it is thought to resemble in its nature the generative organ. And when they celebrate the festival of the Pamylia, which is, as has been said,

a phallic festival, they set out and carry around an image whose member is three times its natural size — for the god is a first principle, and every first principle multiplies from itself by its generative power what proceeds from it. And we are accustomed to say "often" also as "thrice," as in "thrice-blessed," and "bonds three times as many, without limit." Unless, by Zeus, the ancients strictly meant the number three itself —

for the moist nature, being the origin and generation of all things, made from the beginning the first three bodies: earth, air, and fire. And indeed the explanation added to the myth, that Typhon threw the genital member of Osiris into the river and Isis did not find it, but fashioned and set up a likeness of it in its place and ordained that it be honored and carried in procession, comes round to teaching this very point: that the generative

and seminal power of the god had moisture as its first material, and through moisture was blended into things so as to enable them to share in generation. There is another account among the Egyptians, that Apophis, being a brother of Helios, made war on Zeus, and that Zeus, having taken Osiris as his ally and, together with him, having overthrown the enemy, adopted him as his son and named him Dionysus. And the mythical character of this account too can be shown

to touch upon the truth concerning nature. For the Egyptians call Zeus "pneuma" (breath/spirit), to which the parched and fiery element is hostile; this element is not the sun, but has a certain kinship with the sun; while moisture, by quenching the excess of dryness, increases and strengthens the exhalations by which the breath is nourished and flourishes. Further, the Greeks

consecrate ivy to Dionysus, and among the Egyptians it is said to be called "chenosiris," the name signifying, so they say, "plant of Osiris." Ariston, then, who wrote the History of the Colonies of the Athenians, came across a certain letter of Alexarchus, in which it is recorded that Dionysus, being the son of Zeus and Isis, is called by the Egyptians not Osiris but "Arsaphes," with the letter alpha, signifying the manliness of the name. This is also indicated

by Hermaeus in the first book of his work On the Egyptians: for he says that, when translated, Osiris means "vigorous" or "strong." I pass over Mnaseas, who identifies Dionysus, Osiris, and Sarapis with Epaphus; and I pass over Anticleides, who says that Isis, being the daughter of Prometheus, cohabits with Dionysus — for the affinities already mentioned, concerning the festivals and the sacrifices, carry

a more evident conviction than any witnesses. Among the stars, they consider Sirius to belong to Isis, since it draws up water; and they honor the lion, and adorn the doorways of their temples with lion-mouth gargoyles, because the Nile floods "when first the sun comes together with the Lion." And just as they hold the Nile to be an effluence of Osiris, so they hold that the earth is the body of Isis — not all of it, but that part which the Nile covers, fertilizing it and mingling with it; and from

this union they say Horus is born. Now Horus is the season and blending of the surrounding air that preserves and nourishes all things, which they say was reared by Leto in the marshes around Buto — for the watery and drenched earth chiefly nurtures the exhalations that quench and relax dryness and drought. They call Nephthys the

extremities and borderlands of the earth, touching upon the sea; hence they also name Nephthys "the End," and say that she cohabits with Typhon. And whenever the Nile, overflowing and increasing beyond measure, draws near to the outermost regions, they call this the union of Osiris with Nephthys, which is betrayed by the plants that spring up there — among which is the melilot; and the myth says that when this dropped and was left behind, Typhon became aware

of the wrong done concerning the marriage. Hence Isis bore Horus legitimately, but Nephthys bore Anubis in secret. Yet in the king-lists they record that Nephthys, when given in marriage to Typhon, was at first barren; and if this is said not of a woman but of the goddess, they are hinting at the utter unproductiveness and barrenness of the earth through sterility. The

plot and tyranny of Typhon was the power of drought, which prevailed and dispersed the very moisture that generates and increases the Nile; and his accomplice, the queen of the Ethiopians, hints at the south winds from Ethiopia — for whenever these prevail over the Etesian winds, driving the clouds toward Ethiopia and preventing the rains that swell the Nile from bursting forth, Typhon, holding sway, scorches everything; and then,

having wholly overpowered the Nile and driven it, shrunk by weakness and flowing hollow and low, back into himself, he thrusts it into the sea. For the so-called imprisonment of Osiris in the coffin seems to hint at nothing other than the hiding and disappearance of water; hence they say that Osiris disappears in the month Athyr, when, with the Etesian winds having wholly ceased, the Nile recedes and the land is laid bare;

and as the night lengthens, the darkness increases, and the power of light is weakened and overcome, the priests perform other rites of mourning, and they cover a gilded cow with a black linen garment and display her in mourning for the goddess (for they consider the cow an image of Isis, and of the earth) for four days, from the seventeenth, in succession, up to the twelfth. For indeed the things mourned are four:

first, the Nile receding and failing; second, the north winds being wholly quenched as the south winds prevail; third, the day becoming shorter than the night; and on top of all these, the stripping bare of the earth together with the bareness of the plants, which at that time shed their leaves. On the nineteenth day of the night they go down to the sea, and the sacred chest

the stolists and the priests carry out, containing within it a golden box, into which they pour fresh water they have taken, and a shout goes up from those present as though Osiris were found; then they knead fertile earth with the water, and mixing in spices and costly incense, they mold a small crescent-shaped image, and this they dress and adorn, signifying that they consider these gods to be the substance of earth and water. And as

Isis in turn recovers Osiris and increases Horus, strengthened by exhalations and mists and clouds, Typhon was overpowered, but not destroyed. For the goddess who is mistress of the earth did not allow the nature opposed to moisture to be wholly destroyed, but relaxed and let it go, wishing the blending to remain; for it would not be possible for the world to be complete if the fiery element

were to fail and disappear entirely. And if these things are not said contrary to what is likely, one might reasonably not reject that other account either — that Typhon once held sway over the portion belonging to Osiris, for Egypt was a sea; hence to this day many shells are found in the mines and on the mountains, and all the springs and wells, of which there are many, contain

salty and bitter water, as though it were a remnant of the ancient sea that had settled and grown stale there. But in time Horus prevailed over Typhon — that is to say, when there came a timely abundance of rains, the Nile drove back the sea, revealed the plain, and filled it up again with its deposits. And this account has the evidence of perception to confirm it: for we still see even now the river bringing fresh silt and advancing the land,

as the deep sea gradually withdraws, and the sea, as the depths rise up because of the deposits, is flowing away; and Pharos, which Homer knew to be a day's sail distant from Egypt, is now a part of it — not because it moved forward or came up closer, but because the intervening sea was pushed back by the river, which builds up and nourishes the mainland. But these explanations are similar to those given in the theology

of the Stoics: for they too say that the generative and nourishing breath is Dionysus, the striking and dividing force Heracles, the receptive principle Ammon, that which pervades the earth and its fruits Demeter and Kore, and that which pervades the sea Poseidon. And others, mixing in with these physical explanations some elements

from astrological mathematics, hold that Typhon is called the solar system, and Osiris the lunar. For the moon, having a generative and moisture-producing light, is kindly and conducive to the offspring of animals and the growth of plants; whereas the sun, with its unmixed and harsh fire, scorches and dries up the things that are growing and flourishing, and renders the greater part of the earth entirely uninhabitable through its blaze,

and in many places even overpowers the moon. Hence the Egyptians always call Typhon "Seth," which means "overpowering" or "forcibly constraining." And they tell in myth that Heracles is established in the sun and revolves with it, and Hermes with the moon; for the works of the moon resemble those of reason and of surpassing wisdom, whereas those of the sun resemble blows carried out by force and strength. The

Stoics say that the sun is kindled and nourished from the sea, while to the moon the springs and lake-waters send up a sweet and gentle exhalation. The Egyptians tell in myth that the death of Osiris occurred on the seventeenth, on which day the full moon is most plainly seen to be complete. Hence the Pythagoreans call this day "obstruction," and in general hold this number in aversion.

For of sixteen, a square number, and eighteen, an oblong number, which alone among plane numbers happen to have their perimeters equal to the areas they enclose, seventeen falls between them, obstructs them, and separates them from one another, cutting the ratio of nine to eight into unequal intervals. As for the number of years, some say that Osiris lived, others that he reigned, twenty-eight years; for that is the number of the moon's lights, and in that many days it completes its own cycle.

The wood which they cut in the rites called the burial of Osiris they fashion into a crescent-shaped coffin, because the moon, when it draws near the sun, becomes crescent-shaped and disappears from view. And by the tearing of Osiris's body into fourteen pieces they hint at the number of days from full moon to new moon, during which the star wanes.

The day on which the moon first appears, escaping the sun's rays and passing beyond the sun, they call "imperfect good." For Osiris is a benefactor, and his name expresses much, not least an effective and beneficent power, as they say. The other name of the god, Omphis, the priest of Hermes says signifies "benefactor" when translated. They also think that the risings of the Nile bear some relation to the lights of the moon.

For the greatest rise, near Elephantine, comes to twenty-eight cubits, matching the number of lights and measures of each monthly cycle; the smallest, near Mendes and Xois, is six cubits, corresponding to the half-moon; and the middle rise, near Memphis, when it is regular, is fourteen cubits, corresponding to the full moon.

The Apis, they say, is a living image of Osiris, and comes into being when a fertilizing light from the moon strikes and touches a cow in heat. Hence many features of Apis resemble the moon's phases, its bright parts being darkened by shaded ones. Moreover, on the new moon of the month Phamenoth they hold a festival which they call the Entry of Osiris into the Moon, this being the beginning of spring.

Thus, placing the power of Osiris in the moon, they say that Isis, being his generative source, unites with him. That is why they also call the moon the mother of the universe, and think it has a nature that is both male and female, being filled and made pregnant by the sun, while it in turn casts forth into the air generative principles and sows them; for destruction, the power of Typhon, does not always prevail, but is often mastered by generation,

and being bound is again dissolved, and continues its struggle against Horus. Now Horus is this world around the earth, which is delivered neither wholly from destruction nor wholly from generation. Some make the myth a riddle about eclipses as well. For the moon is eclipsed when it is full, the sun standing opposite to it, and it falls into the shadow of the earth, just as they say Osiris falls into

the coffin. And the moon in turn hides and makes the sun disappear at the times of conjunction, yet does not utterly destroy it, just as Isis does not destroy Typhon. When Nephthys bore Anubis, Isis substituted the child as her own; for Nephthys is that which is under the earth and unseen, while Isis is that which is above the earth and visible. And the circle that touches both of these and is called the horizon, being common to both,

is named Anubis, and is likened in form to a dog, for the dog uses its sight equally by night and by day; and among the Egyptians Anubis seems to have this same power that Hecate has among the Greeks, being both of the underworld and of Olympus. To some, Anubis seems to be Cronus; hence, since he begets all things from himself and "dog" is contained within himself,

he acquired the epithet of the dog. There is, then, a certain secret doctrine among those who revere Anubis; and in ancient times the dog received the highest honors in Egypt, but when Cambyses killed Apis and threw the body away, and no creature approached or tasted it except the dog alone, it lost its place as first and most honored among the other animals.

There are also some who call Typhon the shadow of the earth, into which they believe the moon slips and is eclipsed. Hence it would not be amiss to say that no one of them individually is right, but that all together they are right. For it is not drought, nor wind, nor sea, nor darkness, but everything harmful and destructive that nature contains, that is a portion of Typhon.

For neither should the first principles of the universe be located in lifeless bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus hold, nor should a single reason and a single providence, prevailing over and mastering all things, be posited as the maker of formless matter, as the Stoics hold. For it is impossible that anything, whether base, where God is the cause of all, or good, where he is the cause of nothing, should come into being. "The harmony of the world," says Heraclitus, "bends back on itself like that of the bow and the lyre." And according to

Euripides, good and evil cannot exist apart, but there is a certain blending that makes things right. That is why this most ancient opinion, descending from theologians and lawgivers to poets and philosophers, has its origin untraceable, yet its conviction is strong and hard to erase, current not only in words and rumors but also in rites and sacrifices among both

barbarians and Greeks in many places: that the universe is not borne along automatically, without mind or reason or guide, nor is there a single reason that rules and steers it as with a rudder or obedient reins, but rather many things, mingled from both good and evil; or rather, speaking simply, nature here bears nothing unmixed, and it is not as though one steward, like one who apportions

wares from two casks in a tavern, mixes and dispenses things to us; rather, from two opposing principles and two rival powers, one leading toward the right and along a straight path, the other turning back and bending in the reverse direction, both life and the world -- if not the whole world, at least this one around the earth and beneath the moon -- have become uneven and varied and undergo

every kind of change. For if nothing comes to be without a cause, and the good could not supply a cause for evil, then, just like good, evil must have its own origin and principle in nature. And this is the view of most people, and of the wisest. For some believe there are two gods, as it were rival craftsmen, one the maker of good things, the other of bad; while others call the better one

"god" and the other a "daemon," as does Zoroaster the magus, whom they record as having lived five thousand years before the Trojan War. He called the one Oromazes and the other Areimanius, and declared further that the one most resembles light among perceptible things, the other, conversely, darkness and ignorance, while Mithras is between the two; hence the Persians call Mithras the mediator.

He taught that offerings of prayer and thanksgiving should be made to the one, and offerings of aversion and gloom to the other. For pounding a certain plant called moly in a mortar, they invoke Hades and darkness; then, mixing it with the blood of a slaughtered wolf, they carry it out to a sunless place and cast it away. For they also believe that some plants belong to the good god, others to the evil daemon, and likewise

among animals, dogs and birds and land hedgehogs belong to the good, while water-rats belong to the bad; hence they consider whoever kills the most of these to be fortunate. But indeed those people too tell many mythical things about the gods, of which these are examples: Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanius, born from darkness, wage war on one another; and

the one made six gods, the first of goodwill, the second of truth, the third of good order; and of the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and one the maker of pleasure in noble things; the other made an equal number as their rivals in each craft. Then Oromazes enlarged himself threefold and removed himself from the sun by as great a distance as

the sun is removed from the earth, and adorned the heavens with stars; and he set one star before all the others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog Star. He made twenty-four other gods and placed them in an egg; but those from Areimanius, being equal in number, pierced through the egg, whence evil has been mixed together with good ever since. And a fated time is coming, in

which Areimanius, bringing on plague and famine, must by their agency be utterly destroyed and vanish, and when the earth has become flat and level, there will be one life and one government for all mankind, blessed and speaking a single tongue. Theopompus says that according to the magi, in alternation, for three thousand years one of the gods prevails and the other is subdued, and for another three thousand years they fight and

war and undo each other's works; but in the end Hades will fail, and men will be happy, needing no food and casting no shadow; and the god who has contrived these things will rest and repose for a period -- not long, as befits a god, but moderate, as befits a sleeping man. Such, then, is the character of the magi's mythology. As for the Chaldaeans,

they declare that of the planets, whom they call the gods of birth, two are beneficent, two maleficent, and the remaining three are middling and common to both. As for the Greeks, it is plain to everyone that they assign the good portion to Olympian Zeus and the averting portion to Hades. And they tell in myth that from Aphrodite and Ares was born Harmonia, of whom the one is harsh and contentious, the other gentle and connected with birth.

Consider now how the philosophers agree with these views. Heraclitus outright calls war "the father and king and lord of all," and says that Homer, in praying that "strife might perish from among gods and men," "fails to notice" that he is cursing the origin of all things, since all things arise from conflict and opposition; and that the sun will not overstep its appointed bounds, or else the Furies,

handmaids of Justice, will find him out. Empedocles calls the beneficent principle "love" and "friendship," and often "harmony of gentle countenance," while he calls the worse principle "destructive strife" and "bloody discord." The Pythagoreans denote the good by many names -- the one, the limited, the abiding, the straight, the odd, the square, the equal, the right, the bright -- while

they denote evil by the dyad, the unlimited, the moving, the curved, the even, the oblong, the unequal, the left, the dark, on the ground that such are the underlying principles of generation. Anaxagoras posits Mind and the Unlimited; Aristotle posits Form and Privation. Plato, in many places, as though veiling and concealing himself, names one of the opposing principles "the Same" and the other

"the Different"; but in the Laws, being now older, he speaks no longer in riddles or symbols but in plain terms, saying that the world is moved not by one soul but by several, perhaps, though certainly not fewer than two -- of which one is beneficent, and the other opposed to it and the maker of things opposite. He also leaves room for a certain third nature, in between, not soulless nor irrational

nor unmoved of itself, as some suppose, but subordinate to both of the others, ever desiring, longing for, and pursuing the better, as the following part of the discussion will show, since he closely aligns Egyptian theology with this very philosophy. For the origin and constitution of this world is a mixture of opposing powers, not equal in strength, but with the mastery belonging to the

better one; yet it is impossible for the inferior power to be utterly destroyed, since much of it is inborn in the body, and much in the soul of the universe, ever contending fiercely against the better. Now in the soul, mind and reason, the guide and lord of all that is best, is Osiris; and in earth and wind and water and heaven and stars, that which is ordered and

established and healthy, appearing through the seasons and blendings and cycles, is an outflow and image of Osiris; but Typhon is the passionate, titanic, irrational, and impulsive element in the soul, and in the bodily element, that which is perishable, diseased, and disturbing through untimely conditions and bad mixtures, and through the concealments of the sun and the disappearances of the moon -- like the outbreaks and disappearances of Typhon. And the very name Seth, by which they

call Typhon, points to this: for it means "that which overpowers and does violence," and it also signifies frequent reversal and again a leaping over bounds. Some say that Bebon was one of Typhon's companions, but Manetho says that Typhon himself was also called Bebon; the name signifies restraint or hindrance, as though the power of Typhon opposed things that proceed along their course and move toward

their proper end. Hence, among tame animals they assign to him the most stupid, the ass; and among wild ones, the most beastly, the crocodile and the river-horse. Now we have already spoken of the ass. In the city of Hermes they show an image of Typhon as a river-horse, upon which stands a hawk fighting with a serpent, indicating Typhon by the horse, and by the hawk his

power and rule, which Typhon, seizing by force, often does not relinquish, being disturbed by his own vice and disturbing others. That is why, when they sacrifice on the seventh day of the month Tybi, which they call the Arrival of Isis from Phoenicia, they stamp upon the cakes the image of a bound river-horse. And in the city of Apollo it is customary for everyone without exception to eat crocodile; and on one day they hunt as many as they can

and, having killed them, cast them down opposite the temple, saying that Typhon fled from Horus by becoming a crocodile, thereby making all animals and plants and evil and harmful states into the works, parts, and movements of Typhon. Osiris, on the other hand, they represent by an eye and a scepter, of which the one signifies providence, the other power, just as Homer, calling the ruler and king of

all things "Zeus most high and counselor," seems by "most high" to signify his power, and by "counselor" his good judgment and wisdom. They also often depict this god as a hawk; for the hawk excels in keenness of sight and swiftness of flight, and is naturally able to sustain itself on very little food. It is said, moreover, that flying over the bodies of the unburied dead, it casts earth upon them; and when it goes to drink,

...on the river, it raises its wing upright; and when it has drunk it lowers it again — a sign that it is safe and has escaped the crocodile; but if it is caught, its wing remains fixed as it stood. Everywhere they also display an image of Osiris in human form, with the phallus erect, because of his generative and nourishing power. And they clothe his statues in a flame-colored robe, holding that the sun is the body

of the power of the good, as the visible image of an intelligible essence. For this reason it is right to despise those who assign the sun's orb to Typhon, to whom nothing bright or life-preserving belongs, nor order, nor generation, nor motion that has measure and reason, but rather the opposites of these; and drought, which destroys many living things and growing plants, should not be reckoned the work of the sun, but of the

winds and waters on earth and in the air not blended in due season, whenever the disordered and indeterminate power gains ill-timed ascendancy and quenches the exhalations. In the sacred hymns of Osiris they invoke him as the one hidden in the arms of the sun, and on the thirtieth of the month Epiphi they celebrate the birthday of the Eyes of Horus, when the moon and the sun come to be on one straight line, since they hold not

only the moon but also the sun to be the eye and light of Horus. On the eighth day of the waning of Phaophi, after the autumnal equinox, they celebrate the birthday of the Staff of the Sun, signifying that it then needs, as it were, a support and a strengthening, since it is becoming deficient in heat and in light, sinking and moving obliquely away from us. Further, at the winter solstice they carry the cow around the

temple seven times, and this circuit is called the Seeking of Osiris, the goddess longing in winter for the water of the sun; and they go round that many times because the sun completes its passage from the winter solstice to the summer solstice in the seventh month. It is said that Horus, son of Isis, was the very first of all to sacrifice to the sun, on the fourth day of the waxing month, as is written in the books entitled The Birthdays of Horus. Moreover, every

day they burn incense to the sun three times: resin at sunrise, myrrh at midday, and what is called kyphi around sunset; the reasoning behind each of these I shall explain later. They believe that by all these offerings they are propitiating and serving the sun. But why should I gather many such instances? For there are those who say outright that Osiris is the sun and is called Sirius by the Greeks,

even though among the Egyptians the prefixed article has made the name ambiguous; and they declare Isis to be none other than the moon — whence some of her statues have horns, in imitation of the crescent, while the black-robed ones represent her concealments and eclipses, in which, in longing, she pursues the sun. For this reason too people invoke the moon in matters of love, and

Eudoxus says that Isis presides over love affairs. Now these views have some measure of plausibility; but those who make the sun Typhon are not even worth listening to. Let us instead return to our own proper account. Isis is the female principle of nature, and receptive of every kind of generation, in accordance with which she is called by Plato the nurse and the all-receiving, while by most people she has been given countless names,

because, being transformed by reason, she takes on all shapes and forms. She has an innate love for the first and most sovereign of all things, which is identical with the good, and that she desires and pursues; but the portion that comes from evil she flees and repels, being herself the region and matter for both, yet inclining always of her own accord toward the better and offering herself to it to beget

and to sow into herself effluxes and likenesses, in which she rejoices and delights, becoming pregnant and filled with generative processes. For becoming is an image of being set in matter, and that which comes to be is an imitation of that which is. Hence it is not without reason that they tell the myth that the soul of Osiris is eternal and imperishable, but that his body Typhon often tears apart and makes to disappear, while Isis

wanders about seeking it and fitting it together again. For that which truly is, and is intelligible and good, is superior to destruction and change; but the images which the sensible and corporeal world stamps from it, and the accounts, forms, and likenesses it takes on, are like seal impressions in wax that do not always remain, but are overtaken by the disorder and turbulence that here, in this world driven far from the region above,

contends against Horus, whom Isis, as the image of the intelligible world made sensible, brings to birth. For this reason it is said that he is prosecuted by Typhon on a charge of illegitimacy, as not being pure and unmixed like his father — reason itself by itself unmingled and unaffected — but rather adulterated by matter because of its corporeal nature. Yet he prevails and is victorious, with Hermes — that is, reason —

bearing witness and showing that nature, being transformed toward the intelligible, renders the world complete. For while the gods were still in the womb of Rhea, the birth of Apollo that came from Isis and Osiris hints darkly that, before this world became manifest and matter was brought to completion by reason, nature, tested on its own, produced its first offspring imperfect.

For this reason they say that that god was born maimed in the darkness, and they call him the elder Horus; for there was as yet no ordered world, but only a kind of image and phantasm of the world to come. But this later Horus is himself defined and perfect, not having utterly destroyed Typhon, but having stripped away his active and forceful power; whence at Coptus they say the statue of Horus

holds in one hand the genitals of Typhon. And they tell the myth that Hermes, having removed the sinews of Typhon, used them as harp-strings, teaching thereby that reason, having fitted the universe together, made a harmony out of unharmonious parts, and did not destroy the destructive power but only disabled it. Hence it is weak and powerless there, but here it is mingled and entangled with the passible and changeable parts, producer

of earthquakes and tremors in the earth, of droughts in the air and of unnatural winds, and again of thunderbolts and lightning. It also poisons waters and winds with pestilences, and it rises even as far as the moon, and turns it back, confusing and often darkening its brightness, as the Egyptians believe and say — that Typhon at one time strikes the eye of Horus, at another tears it out and swallows it

and then gives it back again to the sun: by the blow they hint at the monthly waning of the moon, and by the mutilation, its eclipse, which the sun heals by shining forth again as soon as the moon escapes the shadow of the earth. The higher and more divine nature is composed of three things: the intelligible, matter, and that which comes from these two, which the Greeks call the world. Now

Plato is accustomed to call the intelligible the Form and the Pattern and the Father, matter the Mother and the Nurse and the seat and place of generation, and that which comes from both the Offspring and the generated thing. One might conjecture that the Egyptians likened the nature of the universe especially to the most beautiful of triangles, as indeed Plato too seems in the Republic

to have made use of that same figure in constructing his nuptial diagram. That triangle has a vertical side of three units, a base of four, and a hypotenuse of five, equal in square to the sides containing it. We must therefore liken the vertical side to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to the offspring of both; and Osiris is to be likened to the origin, Isis to the

receptacle, and Horus to the result. For three is the first perfect odd number; four is a square, from the side of the even number two; and five in some respects resembles the father, in others the mother, being composed of three and two. And people derive from five their word for 'all,' and say 'to five' for 'to count.'

Five multiplied by itself produces a number equal to the number of letters among the Egyptians, and to the number of years that Apis lived. Horus they are accustomed to call also Min, which means 'the visible'; for the world is a thing of sense and sight. Isis is sometimes called also Muth, and again Athyri and Methyer; by the first of these names they signify

'mother,' by the second 'the orderly house of Horus,' as Plato too calls it 'the region and receptacle of generation'; the third is a compound of 'fullness' and 'cause'; for the matter of the world is full, and is joined with the good and the pure and the ordered. One might suppose that Hesiod too, in making Chaos and Earth and Tartarus

and Eros the first of all things, takes no other principles than these — if indeed, transposing the names somewhat, we assign to Isis the part of Earth, to Osiris that of Eros, and to Typhon that of Tartarus. For Chaos seems to posit a kind of region or place for the universe. This myth also somehow invites comparison with the myth Plato tells,

which Socrates in the Symposium relates concerning the birth of Eros — how Penia, in want of children, lay down beside Poros as he slept, and, having conceived by him, bore Eros, who is by nature mixed and manifold, since he was begotten of a father who is good and wise and self-sufficient in all things, but of a mother who is helpless and resourceless and, through want, always craving something else and clinging

to something else. For Poros is none other than the first object of desire and longing, the perfect and self-sufficient; and by Penia he meant matter, which of itself lacks the good but is filled by it, and forever longs for it and partakes of it. And the world that comes to be from these, and Horus, is neither eternal nor unaffected nor imperishable, but, being ever-generated,

contrives, through the changes and cycles of its affections, to remain forever young and never to be destroyed. We must use the myths not as accounts that are wholly rational in themselves, but taking from each what is fitting according to its likeness to the truth. When we speak of matter, then, we must not, in line with the opinions of some philosophers, think of it as a soulless body without quality, inert and inactive of itself; for

we call oil the matter of perfume, and gold the matter of a statue, though these are not devoid of all quality; and we ourselves make the very soul and mind of man to be, as it were, the matter of knowledge and virtue, which reason adorns and orders; and some have declared the mind to be a place of forms and, as it were, an impression-tablet of intelligible things; and some hold that the seed of the woman is not a power or a principle,

but matter and nourishment for generation. Following these views, we must think of this goddess likewise in this way: that she always shares in the first god and is united with him in love of the good and beautiful things about him, not as one opposed to him, but as we say that a lawful and just man loves justly, and a good wife, though she lives with her husband, still longs for him — so she is forever craving

and clinging to him and filled with his most sovereign and purest parts. But wherever Typhon breaks in and lays hold of the outermost parts, there she is said to grow downcast and to mourn, and to seek out and gather up certain remnants and fragments of Osiris, receiving into herself the things that perish and hiding them away, just as she brings to light again the things that come to be and sends them forth from herself. For the accounts and forms and effluxes of the god that are in heaven and

among the stars remain, but those that are scattered among the passible things — earth, sea, plants, and animals — being dissolved and destroyed and buried, often shine forth again and reappear in new generations. For this reason the myth says that Typhon dwells with Nephthys, but that Osiris consorts with her in secret. For the outermost parts of matter, which they call Nephthys

and 'the End,' are held chiefly by the destructive power; but the generative and preserving power sends into these a weak and dim seed, which is destroyed by Typhon, except insofar as Isis, taking it up, saves and nourishes and holds it together. In general this power is the better one, as both Plato and Aristotle suggest. Of nature, the generative and preserving part moves toward

itself and toward being, while the destructive and dissolving part moves away from itself and toward not-being. For this reason they call the one Isis, from her 'going' with knowledge and being carried along, since she is a motion that is animate and intelligent — for the name is not foreign, but just as all the gods have a name common to them derived from two words, 'that which is seen' and 'that which runs,'

so we call this goddess Isis from knowledge together with motion, and the Egyptians too call her Isis. So too Plato says that the ancients signified holiness by calling it 'hosia,' as though from motion; and likewise understanding and prudence, as being a movement and motion of mind that goes and is carried along, and applied the terms for comprehension and for the good in general and for virtue

to things that flow and run; just as, conversely, they abused with contrary names that which is evil — that which hinders and binds and holds fast nature and stops it from going and moving — calling it wickedness, helplessness, cowardice, distress. But the name Osiris is a composite formed from 'hosion' (holy) and 'hieron' (sacred); for he is the common principle of the things in heaven and the things in Hades, of which

the ancients were accustomed to call some 'sacred' and others 'holy.' The account that reveals the heavenly things and the things borne aloft is called Anubis, and sometimes also Hermanubis, the one name belonging to the things above, the other to the things below. For this reason they sacrifice to him a white cock and a saffron-colored one, considering the one pure and radiant,

the other mixed and variegated. One must not be surprised at the reshaping of these names into Greek forms; for countless other words too, carried off along with those who migrated from Greece, remain in use to this day and are naturalized among foreigners — some of which those who reproach the so-called poetic vocabulary as barbarous, calling such words strange tongues, denounce. In the books called the Books of Hermes it is recorded that

Concerning the sacred names, they say it is written in the books called the books of Hermes that the power set over the revolution of the sun the Egyptians call Horus, while the Greeks call him Apollo; and the power set over the wind some call Osiris, others Sarapis, and others, in Egyptian, Sothis, which signifies pregnancy or conception. For this reason, by a shift of the name, the star is called in Greek "the Dog," which they consider to belong especially to Isis.

Now one ought not to be overly zealous about names; nevertheless I would concede to the Egyptians the name Sarapis rather than Osiris, since the former is a foreign word and the latter Greek, though I hold both to belong to one god and one power. The Egyptian usage resembles this: they often call Isis by the name of Athena, expressing a meaning such as "I have come of myself," which signifies self-moved motion. Typhon, as has been said, is called Seth, Bebon, and Smy, names meant to express a violent and obstructive restraint, opposition, or overturning. Further, they call the loadstone "the bone of Horus," and iron "the bone of Typhon," as Manetho records; for just as iron often behaves like something drawn along and following after the stone, and often turns away and is repelled in the opposite direction, so too the saving and good and rational motion of the universe turns back and draws near and makes gentler that hard and Typhonian element, persuading it, and then again, once raised up, turns back upon itself and sinks down into the boundless.

Further, Eudoxus says that the Egyptians tell a myth about Zeus: that because his legs had grown together, he was unable to walk, and out of shame he spent his time in solitude; but Isis, by cutting apart and separating these parts of his body, gave him a gait sound of foot. This myth hints, among other things, that the mind and reason of the god, moving by itself in the invisible and unseen, advanced into generation through motion.

The sistrum also signifies this: that existing things must be shaken and never cease from motion, but must, as it were, be roused and shaken out of their slumbering and withering. For they say that Typhon is turned away and driven back by the sistra, showing that when destruction binds and brings things to a stop, generation again dissolves and raises up nature through motion. Since the sistrum is round at the top, its arch encloses the four things that are shaken; for the portion of the world that comes into being and perishes is enclosed by the lunar sphere, and within it all things move and change through the four elements — fire, earth, water, and air. On the arch of the sistrum, at the very top, they carve a cat with a human face, and below, beneath the things that are shaken,

they carve, on one side, the face of Isis, and on the other, that of Nephthys, hinting by these faces at generation and dissolution — for these are the changes and motions of the elements — and by the cat at the moon, on account of the variegated, night-working, and prolific nature of the creature. For it is said to bear one offspring, then two and three and four and five, and so on one by one up to seven,

so that it bears twenty-eight in all — the same number as the days of light of the moon. This, indeed, may be somewhat more fabulous; but the pupils of its eyes seem to fill and widen at the full moon, and to grow thin and dim during the moon's waning. In the human-shaped form of the cat is expressed the intelligent and rational element in the changes that occur around the moon. To sum up: it is not right to think that Osiris or Isis is water, or sun, or earth, or heaven, nor again that Typhon is fire, or drought, or sea, but simply whatever in these is immoderate and disordered, through excess or deficiency, is to be assigned to Typhon; while the ordered, good, and beneficial we should

revere and honor as a work of Isis, and as the image, likeness, and reason of Osiris — in this we would not be mistaken. And we shall also put an end to the doubt and perplexity of Eudoxus as to how it is that Demeter has no part in the care of erotic matters, but Isis does, and how Dionysus can neither cause the Nile to rise nor rule over the dead. For in a single, common account we hold that these gods have been set over the whole portion of the good, and that

whatever is beautiful and good in nature exists through them — the one supplying the first principles, the other receiving and distributing them. In this same way we shall also undertake to deal with the popular and vulgar practices, whether people associate with these gods the seasonal changes of the surrounding atmosphere, or the birth of crops, the sowing, and the plowing, saying that Osiris is buried

when the crop, sown, is hidden in the earth, and comes to life again and reappears when growth begins. Hence it is also said that Isis, perceiving that she was pregnant, fastened on an amulet on the sixth day of the month Phaophi; and that Harpocrates was born around the winter solstice, unfinished and young, among the plants that bloom and sprout early. That is why they bring him first-offerings of budding lentils, and celebrate

the days of her lying-in after the spring equinox. For hearing these things, people are content and believe them, drawing what is plausible straight from what is familiar and at hand. And there is nothing terrible in this, provided, first, that they keep the gods common to all of us and do not make them the private property of the Egyptians, and do not appropriate the Nile — which waters only their own land — under these names, nor the marshes, nor the lotus,

claiming these as a divine creation peculiar to themselves, thereby depriving other peoples, who have no Nile, no Buto, no Memphis, of great gods — for all peoples possess and recognize Isis and the gods associated with her, even though some have only recently learned to call them by their Egyptian names, while knowing and honoring the power of each from the beginning. Second — and this is more important — that they take great care

and are on guard lest they unwittingly, in describing winds and streams and sowings and plowings and the changes of the earth and of the seasons, dissolve and explain away the divine — as do those who take Dionysus for wine and Hephaestus for flame; or as Cleanthes says somewhere that Persephone is the breath that is carried through the crops and slain. There is even a poet who, speaking of reapers, says: "At the time when vigorous men cut down Demeter's

limbs" — for such people are no different from those who take sails, ropes, and anchor to be the helmsman, or thread and weft to be the weaver, or a libation, honeyed drink, or barley gruel to be the physician. These give terrible and godless names to natures and things by attaching to them the names of gods; for it is not possible to conceive of these things themselves as gods. For such people are no different from those who take sail and rope and weft to be the weaver, and

libation and honeyed drink to be opinions — attributing them to senseless, soulless things, necessarily perishing, used and needed by men. For god is not mindless, nor soulless, nor subject to man; rather, from these very things which men use and need, we have come to regard as gods those who give them to us and provide them everlastingly and abidingly — not different gods among different peoples, nor barbarian and Greek, nor southern and northern gods, but just as

the sun and moon and heaven and earth and sea are common to all, though called by different names by different peoples, so too, of the one reason that orders these things and the one providence that governs them and the subordinate powers appointed over everything, different honors and titles have arisen among different peoples according to their customs; and they use consecrated symbols, some dimmer, some clearer, guiding the understanding toward divine things — though not without danger.

For some, straying entirely, have slipped into superstition, while others, fleeing superstition as though it were a marsh, have unwittingly fallen, as it were, off a cliff into atheism. For this reason one must, above all, in approaching these matters, take reason from philosophy as a guide through the mysteries, and reflect reverently on each of the things said and done; so that, as Theodorus said of those who, when he offered his arguments with his right hand, received them

with their left — some of his hearers doing so — we too may not go astray by wrongly construing what the laws have rightly ordained concerning sacrifices and festivals. That everything is to be referred back to reason can be seen even from these very practices themselves. On the nineteenth day of the first month, when they hold festival to Hermes, they eat honey and figs, saying as they do so, "Sweet is truth";

and the amulet of Isis, which they tell in myth she wore, is interpreted to mean "a true voice." Harpocrates, moreover, must not be thought of as an incomplete and infant god, nor as some kind of pulse or legume, but rather as the patron and corrector of the young, unfinished, and inarticulate reasoning about the gods that exists among men; that is why he holds his finger pressed to his mouth, a symbol of discreet silence. And in the month of Mesore,

when they offer pulses, they say, "The tongue is fortune, the tongue is a spirit." Of the plants in Egypt, they say the persea is especially sacred to the goddess, because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue. For nothing that a human being naturally possesses is more divine than reason — especially reason concerning the gods — nor does anything have a greater bearing on happiness. That is why, to one

descending here to the oracle, we enjoin: think holy thoughts, speak words of good omen. Yet most people act absurdly in their processions and festivals, first proclaiming reverent speech, and then saying and thinking the most irreverent things about the gods themselves. How, then, are we to make use of the gloomy, joyless, and mournful sacrifices, if it is neither right to omit what has been rightly established by custom, nor to confound and disturb people's opinions about the gods

with strange suspicions? Among the Greeks too, many similar things happen at about the same time of year as what the Egyptians do in their sacred rites. For at Athens the women fast, sitting on the ground, at the Thesmophoria; and the Boeotians move the sacred chests of Achaea, calling that festival "the Sorrowful," on the ground that, because of the descent of Kore, Demeter is in grief.

This month falls around the setting of the Pleiades, sowing time, which the Egyptians call Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, and the Boeotians Damatrios. Theopompus records that the peoples of the West believe and call winter Cronus, summer Aphrodite, and spring Persephone, and that from Cronus and Aphrodite all things are born. The Phrygians, believing that the god sleeps in winter

and is awake in summer, celebrate rites of Bacchic revelry for him — at one time "lullings to sleep," at another "awakenings." The Paphlagonians say that he is bound and shut up in winter, and set free and moves about in spring. And the season itself gives rise to the suspicion that this gloom arose from the hiding away of the crops, which the ancients did not regard as gods, but as gifts of the gods, necessary and great for not living

savagely and like wild beasts. For at that season they saw some crops vanishing altogether from the trees and disappearing, while others, which they themselves had sown, still weak and scanty, they buried in the earth with their own hands and covered over again, uncertain whether they would ever be brought to completion and fulfillment — and in this uncertainty they performed many acts resembling burial and mourning. Then, just as we say that the one who buys the books

of Plato is "buying Plato," and that the one who performs the plays of Menander is "acting Menander," so those people were not scrupulous about calling the gifts and works of the gods by the gods' own names, honoring and dignifying them out of need. But those who came later, receiving this uneducated and interpreting it ignorantly, turned back upon the gods themselves the experiences of the crops, and spoke of the appearances of necessary things and their disappearances not merely as

the presence and hiding of the gods, but actually believed them to be the gods' births and deaths, and so filled themselves with absurd, unlawful, and confused opinions, even though they had the absurdity of this irrationality right before their eyes. Xenophanes of Colophon rightly demanded that the Egyptians, if they believe these to be gods, should not mourn them, and if they mourn them, should not believe them to be gods; for it is ridiculous, while mourning, at the same time to pray that the crops

reappear and come to completion for them, so that they may again be consumed and again mourned. But that is not really how it is; rather, they mourn the crops themselves, while they pray to the gods who are the causes and givers that they may again make new ones grow and spring up in place of those that perish. Hence it is well said among the philosophers that those who do not learn to understand names correctly misuse the things themselves as well — just as among the Greeks

those who have not learned or become accustomed to call the bronze, painted, and stone images and honors of the gods by their proper names, but instead call them the gods themselves, then dare to say things such as that Athena was stripped by Lachares, or that Dionysius shore off the golden locks of Apollo, or that Capitoline Zeus was burned and destroyed during the civil war — without realizing that, along with the names, they are drawing in and accepting base opinions that follow upon them.

This is a fault the Egyptians have fallen into no less, regarding the animals they honor. For the Greeks, at least in this matter, speak and think correctly, holding the dove to be a sacred animal of Aphrodite, the serpent of Athena, the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides says, "you shall become a dog, the image of light-bearing Hecate." But most of the Egyptians, in tending

these very animals and treating them as gods, have brought their sacred rites into disrepute — not merely into laughter and mockery, though this is the least of the harm from their folly. A terrible opinion grows up in its place: it drives the weak and simple headlong into unmixed superstition, while in the sharper and bolder it collapses into godless and beastly reasoning. And it is not out of place to go through what is plausible concerning these matters.

The notion that the gods, in fear of Typhon, changed themselves into these animals, hiding themselves, as it were, in the bodies of ibises, dogs, and hawks, surpasses every kind of monstrous tale and myth; and equally incredible is the notion that the souls of the dead that survive are reborn only into these creatures. Of those who wish to give some political explanation, some say that Osiris, in his great campaign,

having divided his forces into many parts — which they call in Greek companies and divisions — gave to each an animal-shaped standard, and that each of these became sacred and honored to the tribe assigned to it; others say that later kings, in order to terrify their enemies when they appeared in battle, put on gilded and silvered animal-head masks; and others report that some clever and unscrupulous kings among the Egyptians

having observed that they were by nature fickle and quick to change and revolt, but possessed of an invincible and hard-to-restrain power once they combined and acted together, sowed in them an everlasting superstition as a pretext for unceasing strife. For since the animals which he had ordered different groups to honor and worship were hostile and warred with one another, and each was naturally disposed to eat a different food from the others, the people, always defending their own animals and taking it hard when they were wronged, were unknowingly drawn along and dragged into war against one another by the enmities of the animals.

For only the Lycopolitans among the Egyptians still today eat sheep, since the wolf too, which they hold to be a god, does the same; while the Oxyrhynchites, in our own time, when the Cynopolitans were eating the oxyrhynchus fish, caught a dog, sacrificed it as a victim, and ate it. As a result of this they fell into war and treated one another badly, and afterward, being punished by the Romans, were treated badly again. Since many say that the very soul of Typhon flew off into these animals, the myth would seem to hint that every irrational and beast-like nature has fallen to the portion of the evil daemon, and that in propitiating and appeasing him people attend to and serve these creatures. But whenever a great and harsh drought comes upon them, bringing excessive dryness, or deadly diseases, or other strange and unaccountable calamities, the priests lead away some of the honored animals in darkness, in silence and quiet, and at first threaten and try to frighten them; and if the trouble continues, they consecrate and slaughter them, as though this were some punishment of the daemon, or else a great purification performed for the greatest of reasons. Indeed, in the city of Eileithyia they used to burn living

men, as Manetho has recorded, calling them "Typhonians," and, winnowing their ashes, they scattered and made them disappear. But this was done openly and at one fixed time, during the dog-days; whereas the consecrations of the honored animals are secret and occur at irregular times, as circumstances arise, escaping the notice of most people, except when they hold funerals for them, and, displaying some of the remains of the others

who are present, throw them in together, thinking thereby to vex Typhon and cut short his pleasure. For Apis, along with a few others, is thought to be sacred to Osiris; to him they assign the greatest share of honors. And if this account is true, I think what we are seeking holds for those animals that are agreed upon and hold their honors in common, such as the ibis, the hawk, and the cynocephalus; but Apis himself

is called by the same name as the goat kept at Mendes. There remains, then, the useful and the symbolic explanation, of which some animals partake of one, but many of both. The ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon, it is clear, they honored for use and benefit, as the Lemnians honor larks, because they find and destroy the eggs of locusts; and the Thessalians honor storks, because when the earth once sent up many snakes,

the storks appeared and destroyed them all; wherefore they also made a law that whoever kills a stork should go into exile. The asp, the weasel, and the beetle they honored because they discerned in them certain faint images, as it were in drops of sunlight, of the power of the gods. For many still believe and say of the weasel that it conceives through the ear and gives birth through the mouth, a likeness of the generation of reason (logos);

and that the race of beetles has no female, but that all the males discharge their seed into the ball-shaped matter, which they roll along by pushing it in the direction opposite to themselves, just as the sun seems to turn the heavens the contrary way, while itself moving from west to east. The asp they likened to a star, as being ageless and employing unaided movements with ease and suppleness. Nor, indeed, has

the crocodile lacked a plausible reason for the honor it has received, but is said to have become an image of god, since it alone is without a tongue. For the divine word has no need of voice, and, "walking a soundless path, by justice guides all mortal things." They say that of all creatures living in water it alone has its eyes covered by a smooth, transparent membrane that descends from the forehead, so that it sees without being seen, which

is also true of the first god. And wherever the female lays her eggs on land, she thereby knows this to be the limit the Nile's flood will reach. For since they cannot lay in the water, yet are afraid to lay too far from it, they foresee the future with such precision that they make use of the river as it advances, both for laying and for warming their eggs, while keeping them dry and unwetted. They lay sixty eggs and hatch them in the same number of days,

and those that live longest live that same number of years — a number which is the first unit of measure for those who study the heavens. But among the animals honored for both reasons, concerning the dog it has already been said; and the ibis, by killing the deadly kinds of reptiles, was the first to teach the usefulness of a medicinal purge, when people observed it thus flushing and cleansing itself; and the most scrupulous of the priests

take their purifying water, for the rites of consecration, from a place where an ibis has drunk; for it does not drink water that is diseased or tainted, nor does it even approach such water. By the spacing of its feet from one another and its beak it forms an equilateral triangle; and further, the mingling and variegation of its black feathers with the white displays the moon in its gibbous phase. One need not be surprised that the Egyptians cherished such slight resemblances, for

the Greeks too, in both painted and sculpted images of the gods, made use of many such things. In Crete, for instance, there was a statue of Zeus that had no ears, since it is not fitting for the ruler and lord of all to listen to anyone. Pheidias placed the serpent beside his statue of Athena, and the tortoise beside his statue of Aphrodite at Elis, signifying that maidens need guarding, while

wives need to keep to the house and observe becoming silence. The trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the third region, which the sea occupies, ranked after heaven and air; hence they also gave Amphitrite and the Tritons their names accordingly. The Pythagoreans, too, adorned numbers and figures with the names of gods. The equilateral triangle they called Athena, "born from the head" and "Tritogeneia,"

because it is divided by three perpendiculars drawn from its three angles. The number one they called Apollo, by denial of plurality and because of the simplicity of the monad; the dyad they called strife and daring; the triad, justice — for since wrongdoing and being wronged consist in deficiency and excess, justice has come to occupy the middle position, in equality. And the so-called tetraktys, the number thirty-six, was

the greatest oath, as has often been said, and was named "the cosmos," being made up from the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers added together. If, then, the most respected philosophers, discerning a riddle of the divine even in things lifeless and bodiless, thought it right to neglect and dishonor nothing, I think it far more fitting to cherish the distinctive properties found in natures that have perception, that possess soul, feeling, and character —

and to hold these dear, not honoring the creatures themselves, but through them the divine, as clearer mirrors formed by nature, regarding them always as instruments or works of the god who orders all things; and, in general, to maintain that nothing lifeless is better than something living, nor anything without perception better than something that perceives, not even if one heaped together all the gold and emerald in the world. For it is not in colors,

nor in shapes, nor in smoothness that the divine comes to be, but whatever has no share, and by nature cannot share, in life has a lot more dishonorable than that of the dead. But the nature that lives and sees and has within itself the source of its own motion, and knowledge of what belongs to it and what is foreign, has drawn an outflow of beauty and a portion from that intelligence "by which the universe is steered," as Heraclitus says.

Hence the divine is represented no worse in these creatures than in works of bronze and stone, which likewise suffer decay and discoloration, but by nature are deprived of all perception and understanding. Concerning the honored animals, then, these are the explanations I most approve of among those given. As for their robes: those of Isis are variegated in their dyes, since her power has to do with matter, which becomes and receives all things —

light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end; but that of Osiris has no shadow or variegation, but one single, simple color of light, for the first principle is unmixed and the primary, intelligible reality is unblended. Hence, once they have taken up this robe, they put it away and guard it, unseen and untouched. But they use the robes of Isis often, for perceptible things, being in use and

close at hand, offer many unfoldings and views of themselves as they change now one way, now another. But the understanding of the intelligible, pure, and simple allows the soul only once, like a flash of lightning, to touch and glimpse it. This is why both Plato and Aristotle call this part of philosophy the "epoptic" part, since those who by reasoning pass beyond these opinable, mixed, and variegated things

leap toward that first reality, simple and immaterial, and, having simply touched the pure truth concerning it, consider that they possess philosophy's complete end. And this is what the priests of today, with reverent caution and veiled language, hint at when they suggest that this god rules and reigns over the dead, being none other than the one called Hades and Pluto among the Greeks — since it is not understood

how this is true, it disturbs most people, who suspect that the holy and truly sacred Osiris dwells in the earth and beneath the earth, where the bodies of those thought to have reached their end are hidden. But he himself is in fact very far removed from the earth, unstained, undefiled, and pure of all substance that admits of decay and death. For the souls of men here,

enclosed as they are by bodies and passions, have no participation in god, except so far as they may attain, through philosophy, to a dim, dreamlike touch of him by understanding; but when they are released and pass over into the formless, invisible, passionless, and pure, then this god becomes their leader and king, since they now depend on him and gaze insatiably and long for that beauty which cannot be told or spoken by men — the beauty of

which ancient tradition declares that Isis, ever loving and pursuing and consorting with him, fills this world with all things fair and good, so far as they partake of generation. These things, then, stand thus, in the account most fitting for the gods. But if I am also to speak of the incense burned each day, as I promised, one should first consider this: that men are always most earnestly concerned

with practices conducive to health, and especially in their sacred rites, purifications, and ways of life the wholesome is regarded no less than the holy. For they did not think it right to serve what is pure and wholly unharmed and undefiled with bodies or souls that were themselves unsound and diseased. Since, then, the air, which we use the most and live constantly amid, does not always

keep the same condition and mixture, but at night grows dense and presses upon the body and draws the soul together into despondency and a kind of murky, anxious heaviness, they rise at once and burn resin as incense, treating and purifying the air through this separation and fanning back to life the innate breath in the body when it has grown faint, since the scent has something forceful and startling about it. Again, at midday,

perceiving that the sun forcibly draws up a great, heavy exhalation from the earth and mixes it with the air, they burn myrrh as incense; for heat dissolves and disperses whatever murky, muddy matter has gathered in the surrounding air. And indeed physicians too seem to help against pestilential diseases by kindling a great fire, since it thins the air; and it thins the air better if they burn fragrant

woods, such as cypress, juniper, and pine. Acron the physician, at any rate, is said to have won renown at Athens during the great plague by ordering a fire to be kept burning beside the sick, for it benefited not a few. Aristotle says that the fragrant exhalations of perfumes, flowers, and meadows contribute no less to health than to pleasure, since with their warmth and smoothness they gently dissolve the brain, which is by nature cold and frosty.

And if indeed the Egyptians call myrrh "bal," which when translated means chiefly "the scattering away of foolish talk," this too lends the argument some support for its cause. Kyphi is a compound made of sixteen ingredients combined: honey, wine, raisins, cyperus grass, resin, myrrh, and

aspalathus and seseli, and further mastic, asphalt, rush, and dock, and besides these two kinds of juniper berries — of which they call one the greater and the other the lesser — and cardamom and sweet flag. These are not compounded just as it happens, but while sacred writings are read aloud to the perfume-makers as they mix them. As for the number of ingredients, even though it seems altogether

a square derived from a square, and is alone among numbers of equal factors multiplied by equal factors in having its perimeter equal to its area, one should say this contributes very little to the purpose; rather, most of the ingredients that are gathered together, having aromatic properties, give off a sweet breath and a wholesome exhalation, by which the air is transformed, and the body, stirred through the breathing of it, is gently and mildly lulled to sleep and acquires an inviting temper,

and loosens and dissolves, without any intoxication, the painful, tight knots, as it were, of the day's cares; and it polishes, like a mirror, the imaginative part of the soul that receives dreams, and makes it clearer — no less than the strains of the lyre which the Pythagoreans used before sleep, charming away and healing the passionate and irrational part of the soul. For scents

often recall a failing sense of perception, and often again dull and calm it, as their particles are diffused through the body by their smoothness; just as some physicians say that sleep comes about when the exhalation of food, creeping gently, as it were, around the internal organs and touching them, produces a kind of tickling. Kyphi is used both as a drink and as a mixture, for when drunk it seems

to purge the inward parts, being a gentle laxative. Apart from these ingredients, resin is the product of the sun, and myrrh comes from the sun's heat as the plants weep it forth. Of those who compound kyphi, some prefer it made at night, like those substances that by nature are nourished by cold winds, shadows, dew, and moisture, since the light of day is one thing, simple, and the

...the sun, as Pindar says, is seen "coursing solitary through the upper air." The night air, on the other hand, is a blend and mixture of many lights and powers, as though the seeds streaming down from every star flowed together into one. It is reasonable, then, that those substances which are simple and derive their origin from the sun should be burned as incense by day, while those that are mixed and of varied qualities should be desired for burning at the coming on of night.

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