Osiris: The Royal Mortuary God of Egypt

S.G.F. Brandon explains how, early in the history of Egyptian religion, Osiris, the slain king, emerged as the classic prototype of the saviour-god, whose death and resurrection assures his worshippers a new life.

A scene from the Book of the Dead. Osiris is seated to the right.The oldest written documents, so far known, of the human race are the hieroglyphic texts inscribed on the interior walls of the pyramids of certain pharaohs of the fifth and sixth dynasties. When the first of these Pyramid Texts were engraved about 2430 B.C., Egypt already had some six hundred years of history as a unified state with a strong central government, and during that long period great progress had been made in the arts of civilized living.

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