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Osiris = Adonis = Tammuz, Isis = Aphrodite = Ištar.
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 13-16:
Typhon contrived a treacherous plot against him and formed a group of conspirators seventy-two in number. … Typhon, having secretly measured Osiris’s body and having made ready a beautiful chest of corresponding size artistically ornamented, caused it to be brought into the room where the festivity was in progress. The company was much pleased at the sight of it and admired it greatly, wood Typhon jestingly promised to present it to the man who should find the chest to be exactly his length when he lay down in it. They all tried it in turn, but no one fitted it; then Osiris got into it and lay down, and those who were in the plot ran to it and slammed down the lid, which they fastened by nails from the outside and also by using molten lead. Then they carried the chest to the river and sent it on its way to the sea through the Tanitic Mouth. …
Isis, when the tidings (of Osiris’ death) reached her, at once cut off one of her tresses and put on a garment of mourning in a place where the city still bears the name of Kopto. … But Isis wandered everywhere at her wits’ end; no one whom she approached did she fail to address, and even when she met some little children she asked them about the chest. As it happened, they had seen it, and they told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of Typhon had launched the coffin into the sea.Thereafter Isis, as they relate, learned that the chest had been cast up by the sea near the land of Byblus and that the waves had gently set it down in the midst of a clump of heather. The heather in a short time ran up into a very beautiful and massive stock, and enfolded and embraced the chest with its growth and concealed it within its trunk. The king of the country admired the great size of the plant, and cut off the portion that enfolded the chest (which was now hidden from sight), and used it as a pillar to support the roof of his house. …
[Isis] came to Byblus and sat down by a spring, all dejection and tears … Then the goddess disclosed herself and asked for the pillar which served to support the roof. She removed it with the greatest ease and cut away the wood of the heather which surrounded the chest; then, when she had wrapped up the wood in a linen cloth and had poured perfume upon it, she entrusted it to the care of the kings; and even to this day the people of Byblus venerate this wood which is preserved in the shrine of Isis. Then the goddess threw herself down upon the coffin with a dreadful wailing.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 13-16
Bibliography
| Babbitt 1949-1969, V | Babbitt, Frederick C. Plutarch's Moralia. 15 Vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, London: Heinemann 1949-1969. |
Amar Annus
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