Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [24]
Two different sets of stars were important to Egyptian burials. Up until the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians were interested in stars above the ecliptic, hence stars which never set. Like the North Star, they were the “indestructible” stars (Ikhemu-Seku, the stars that never fail), representing astral immortality in a direct and important way. Until the Twelfth Dynasty, the entrances to the pyramids and tombs were aligned with these stars, likely so as to enable the ba-soul of the pharaoh to ascend directly to them. The Middle Kingdom focused on the stars that set and rose in the sky periodically, some of which were planets (Ikhemu-Weredu, “never resting stars”). They sank into the netherworld only to rise again at regular intervals (which were often noted in the tomb) and so became a potent symbol for regeneration, especially important for the Osiris cult.16 The stars known to the Greeks as the “decans” because they helped keep time in the night were also used by the Egyptians.
These exact parallels with geographical and astral features were designed to aid the dead directly in their flight to immortality. Very quickly too, the tombs were filled with spells for the same purpose. Unfortunately pyramids were very expensive and vulnerable to looting. When Thebes, with its central location, became more important as a capital, burial was thence moved to the Valley of the Kings, where the tombs were carved out of the foot of a very obvious and prominently pyramidal-shaped mountain. So, in a sense, the pharaohs never did leave behind the notion of resting in pyramids; they merely moved their final resting places to a much greater pyramid, closer to their new capital, and one where their costly possessions could be more easily protected.
The Osiris Myth
THE OSIRIS-ISIS mythology was central to Egyptian notions of the afterlife. It also functioned to help unify the countries of Upper and Lower Egypt into one single political and religious unit. A complete text of the story of Osiris was not obtained until the first century when Plutarch wrote de Iside et Osiride, probably conflating several versions of the story to a single consistent text. Before that, we have but fragments of the same myth. The legend runs thus: Just as the Nile flows again after its deathly ebb in summer and yearly restores the land of Egypt, so the divine Osiris, both husband and brother of Isis, undergoes many periodic trials for the salvation he brings through the funerary cult. Osiris is a beneficent king, teaching Egypt how to grow crops, establish laws, and worship the gods. Isis and Osiris, sister and brother, are also perfect lovers. They even mated in the womb of Nut, the sky goddess. Isis is invoked as the one who made her brother Osiris endure and live. She, the Great One, burns incense for her young child, the new-born god Horus; so Egyptian mothers did in imitation of her. Isis is figured in the Hellenistic period as an especially kind warm-hearted wife, sister and mother, nursing her child and keeping a good home, indeed later serving as the sculpture-model for the Christian figure of the Madonna and child. It is Isis’s tears that make the Nile rise and bring back life to the dead earth.
Life is never perfect, in myth or reality. Osiris is victimized by his evil brother Seth. Seth tricks Osiris into entering a chest, prefiguring the mummy case, where he is slain and set afloat. Isis discovers that Seth has killed and cruelly dismembered the body of Osiris. With this event, the story begins to take on its characteristic emphasis on the process of disposal of bodies and their transformation into new life.
Since Osiris and Isis are the divinities most associated with the mortuary rites, this story is quintessentially a justification and legitimation of that science. According to the tale