The Great Myths #5: Osiris – Human Voices Wake Us
An episode from 2/7/21: In this second episode on Egyptian mythology, I offer an overview of the story of the god Osiris, with readings from the most complete Egyptian and Greek sources. As with so much of the surviving corpus of Egyptian religious writings, hardly any attention is paid to our idea of a coherent narrative. The focus is almost entirely on an incantatory summary of what Osiris can do, what his attributes are, and what he can offer the deceased. It is only in the Greek account that a fleshed-out story appears.
The books read from in this episode are:
- for Plutarch’s account: Isis & Osiris (electronic text of the 1936 Loeb Classical Library edition of Plutarch’s Moralia)
- for the “Great Hymn to Osiris”: Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2: The New Kingdom
- Salima Ikram & Aidan Dodson, The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity
- Douglas Brewer, Ancient Egypt: Foundations of a Civilization
- Richard Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
- Erik Hornung,
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Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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