Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians 6

Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians 6

In presenting a summary of Plutarch’s account we have omitted nothing

 

 

 

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FREEMASONRY OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

 

 

 

THE OSIRI AN CYCLE

 

 

 

which could in any way be regarded as relevant. We have taken the liberty,

however, of somewhat expanding the fable by incorporating therein some

small fragments derived from other Greek writers and occasionally a few

words bearing upon the account from fragments of Egyptian religious litera-

ture. The story then is in substance as follows:

 

The goddess Nut, whom Plutarch identifies with Rhea, was the daughter

of Shu and Tefnut. She is the wife of Seb (Saturn) and the mother of Ra

(Helios). If we are to trust Plutarch, she afterwards becomes the wife of Ra,

or the sun. Nut is unfaithful to Ra who, discovering that she is with child by

Seb, pronounces a curse upon her that she should not be delivered of her

progeny in any month or year. Thoth (Hermes or Mercury), who is also in love

with Nut, comes to her assistance with a stratagem. He plays at tables with

the moon-goddess (Selene) and wins from her the seventieth part of each of

her illuminations, and joining these parts together he forms of them five days

which he adds to the calendar; previous to that time the Egyptian year con-

sisted of three hundred and sixty days. These five days, being not part of any

month or year, Ra was outwitted. Upon these days Nut brought forth her five

children at different times and different places. Upon the first of these days

she brought forth Osiris and the place of his birth, according to Diodorus,

was Mount Nissa, in Arabia the Happy. (Mount Nissa is now Mount Sinai.)

At the moment of the birth of Osiris a voice sounded throughout the world,

saying, "The Lord of all the earth is born.” On the second day Nut gave birth

to Aroucris, the elder Horus; on the third day, Typhon or Set; on the fourth

day, Isis; and on the fifth and last day, Nephthys.The Egyptians, therefore, re-

gard the five days which they term the Epact or super-added, as the birthdays

of the gods, especially venerating the fourth of them, upon which the benev-

olent goddess Isis came into being.

 

Plutarch further on announces that the five children of Nut were not all of

the same father, thus contradicting his earlier statement. He says that Osiris

and the elder Horus were the children of Ra, that Isis was the daughter of

Thoth, and only Typhon and Nephthys were actually the offspring of Seb.

There is another and even more recondite legend regarding the elder Horus

 

 

 

which denies him the fathership of Ra, declaring him to be the offspring of

Osiris and Isis while they were still in the womb of Nut. 1 hesc accounts we

shall consider later.

 

Osiris was given to Pamyles to be educated, and having come to the years

of majority, became king of Egypt. In this high capacity Osiris applied him-

self to the civilizing of his nation, turning the Egyptians from their previ-

ously indigent and barbarous course of life to a happy and community

existence. He taught them agriculture, compiled for them a body of laws for

the regulation of conduct, instructed them in the reverencing and worship of

the gods, thus establishing Egypt in all the essentials of truth. Having

brought his own nation to prosperity and enlightenment, Osiris travelled over

the rest of the world, converting peoples to his disciplines, not by force but

the persuasion of reason. Osiris was accompanied on this journey by a pro-

cession of nymphs and other supcrphysical beings who filled the air with

music and song.

 

In the meantime Typhon, brother or half-brother of Osiris, had ambition

to usurp the throne, but the vigilant Isis, sister-wife of Osiris, was too watch-

ful. Typhon, however, having persuaded seventy-two other persons to join

him in his conspiracy, with the aid of a certain queen in Ethiopia named Aso,

perfected a plot against Osiris. He fashioned a chest exactly to the measure of

the body of Osiris which chest he caused to be brought into the banquet hall

where the princes of Egypt were feasting their kings return. Typhon, simulat-

ing jest, promised this elaborately ornamented box to the one whose body,

upon trial, most nearly fitted it. Each of the princes in turn lay down in the

box, but each was too short or too tall, until last of all Osiris himself lay

down in it. Immediately the seventy-two conspirators rushed to the box,

clamped the cover upon it, fastened it with nails and poured melted lead over

all the cracks and crevices. After this they carried the chest to the bank of the

Nile and cast it into the river where it joins the sea. This evil deed was exe-

cuted upon the seventeenth day of the Egyptian month Athyr when the sun

was in Scorpio. According to some it was in the twenty-eighth year of the

reign of Osiris, and to others in the twenty-eighth year of his life.

 

 

 

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n>

 

 

 

 

From Lenoir's La Franchf.-Maconnerie

 

Isis the Mother of the Mysteries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE OS1RIAN CYCLE

 

As soon as Isis received word of this crime she cut off one of the locks of

her hair and put on the mourning apparel of widowhood, for which reason

the spot, where she did this, was afterwards called Coptos or the city of

mourning. After donning the widows weeds, Isis set forth in search of her

husbands body and wandered about all Egypt, asking all with whom she

came in contact. Finally some children, who had been at play, told her that

they had seen the accomplices of Typhon carrying the chest to the Nile; for

that reason Egyptians regard the words of children as oracular and pay great

attention to them. While Isis was searching for her husbands body she

learned that Nephthys, her sister, had by magic insinuated herself into the

presence of Osiris before his death and in the guise of Isis had conceived a

son from him. Isis sought out the child which Nephthys had deserted for fear

of Typhon s anger, and adopting it, attached it to her person as a constant

guard and attendant. This was Anubis, the dog-headed god who appears in

the Book of the Dead.

 

At length Isis learned that the chest had been carried by the sea to the

coast of Byblos where it had lodged in the branches of a bush of tamarisk

which had grown up miraculously about the sacred receptacle and concealed

it within its trunk. The king of Byblos, amazed at the miracle, caused the tree

to be cut down and from the trunk, containing the box, he made a pillar to

support the roof of his palace. By magic Isis discovered this and, traveling

immediately to Byblos, attached herself to the suite of the queen as a nurse to

her children. At night, when all the palace was asleep, Isis transformed herself

into a swallow and fluttered around the column, bemoaning her fate in

strange, sad notes. In due time Isis revealed her divine nature and asked that

the pillar be cut down; taking therefrom the chest, she departed with it into a

desert place where she performed certain magical rites by which the body of

Osiris was temporarily animated and by this animation she received from

Osiris a son who is called the younger Horus, the child who was conceived of

the dead.

 

There is some confusion in the account at this point. Plutarch says that

 

 

 

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FREEMASONRY OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

 

 

 

Isis left the body of Osiris temporarily to visit her son Horus, just men-

tioned, but the context of the fable would rather call for her departure to a se-

cluded place where the child could be born without the knowledge of Typhon

who certainly would have destroyed him. Isis hid the chest in a remote and

unfrequented place but Typhon, hunting one night by the light of the moon,

chanced upon it. Knowing its contents and realizing Isis to be proficient in

magic, he resolved to thwart her purposes, and tearing the body into fourteen

parts, he scattered them about Egypt.

 

From the inscriptions on the Metternich Stele it seems that Set must have

imprisoned Isis and her son Horus. The goddess is made to say, “I am Is is,

and I came forth from the house wherein my brother Set had placed me.”

Thoth, the “Prince of Law,” again came to her assistance, and aided Isis to es-

cape from the house (prison?) of Set. Thoth, also, at this time, prophesied

that Horus would sit upon the throne of his father and rule the double em-

pire of Egypt. Upon the advice of Thoth, Isis hides the child in a papyrus

swamp, thus saving him from the wrath of Set.

 

Isis, returning, having left her son at Butos, and fashioning a magical boat

out of papyrus, traversed the whole of the empire. As she met with the scat-

tered parts of her husband, she buried each one separately, first, however, en-

casing it in a magical mummy composed of wax, incense, and grain seed. She

finally recovered all of the parts of Osiris except the phallus which had been

thrown into the river and devoured by three fishes. This organ Isis reproduced

in gold and having performed all of the ceremonies necessary to insure the

life of Osiris in the underworld, she returned to her son Horus and by the

theurgic arts, of which she was mistress, saved him from death from the stings of scorpions.