Following Osiris

Following Osiris PDF Author: Mark Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019958222X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
Osiris, god of the dead, was one of ancient Egypt's most important deities. The earliest secure evidence for belief in him dates back to the fifth dynasty (c.2494-2345BC), but he continued to be worshipped until the fifth century AD. Following Osiris is concerned with ancient Egyptian conceptions of the relationship between Osiris and the deceased, or what might be called the Osirian afterlife, asking what the nature of this relationship was and what the prerequisites were for enjoying its benefits. It does not seek to provide a continuous or comprehensive account of Egyptian ideas on this subject, but rather focuses on five distinct periods in their development, spread over four millennia. The periods in question are ones in which significant changes in Egyptian ideas about Osiris and the dead are known to have occurred or where it has been argued that they did, as Egyptian aspirations for the Osirian afterlife took time to coalesce and reach their fullest form of expression. An important aim of the book is to investigate when and why such changes happened, treating religious belief as a dynamic rather than a static phenomenon and tracing the key stages in the development of these aspirations, from their origin to their demise, while illustrating how they are reflected in the textual and archaeological records. In doing so, it opens up broader issues for exploration and draws meaningful cross-cultural comparisons to ask, for instance, how different societies regard death and the dead, why people convert from one religion to another, and why they abandon belief in a god or gods altogether.

Following Osiris

Following Osiris PDF Author: Mark Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019958222X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
Osiris, god of the dead, was one of ancient Egypt's most important deities. The earliest secure evidence for belief in him dates back to the fifth dynasty (c.2494-2345BC), but he continued to be worshipped until the fifth century AD. Following Osiris is concerned with ancient Egyptian conceptions of the relationship between Osiris and the deceased, or what might be called the Osirian afterlife, asking what the nature of this relationship was and what the prerequisites were for enjoying its benefits. It does not seek to provide a continuous or comprehensive account of Egyptian ideas on this subject, but rather focuses on five distinct periods in their development, spread over four millennia. The periods in question are ones in which significant changes in Egyptian ideas about Osiris and the dead are known to have occurred or where it has been argued that they did, as Egyptian aspirations for the Osirian afterlife took time to coalesce and reach their fullest form of expression. An important aim of the book is to investigate when and why such changes happened, treating religious belief as a dynamic rather than a static phenomenon and tracing the key stages in the development of these aspirations, from their origin to their demise, while illustrating how they are reflected in the textual and archaeological records. In doing so, it opens up broader issues for exploration and draws meaningful cross-cultural comparisons to ask, for instance, how different societies regard death and the dead, why people convert from one religion to another, and why they abandon belief in a god or gods altogether.

Becoming Osiris

Becoming Osiris PDF Author: Ruth Schumann Antelme
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
ISBN: 9780892816521
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
In their Book of the Dead, the ancient Egyptians left humanity a comprehensive understanding of the death experience and the afterlife. Becoming Osiris is an accessible account of the initiatic stages of the immortalization process and the techniques necessary for the soul to achieve its objective of becoming a solarized being after death.

Osiris

Osiris PDF Author: Bojana Mojsov
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405143568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Bojana Mojsov tells the story of the cult of Osiris from beginning to end, sketching its development throughout 3,000 years of Egyptian history. Draws together the numerous records about Osiris from the third millennium B.C. to the Roman conquest of Egypt. Demonstrates that the cult of Osiris was the most popular and enduring of the ancient religions. Shows how the cult provided direct antecedents for many ideas, traits and customs in Christianity, including the concept of the trinity, baptism in the sacred river, and the sacrament of the Eucharist. Reveals the cult’s influence on other western mystical traditions and groups, such as the Alchemists, Rosicrucians and Freemasons. Written for a general, as well as a scholarly audience.

Reflections of Osiris

Reflections of Osiris PDF Author: John Ray
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195158717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A portrait of ancient Egypyt that evokes the flavor of life in that time through profiles of eleven actual people and the god Osiris.

Isis and Osiris

Isis and Osiris PDF Author: Jonathan Cott
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN: 9780385417976
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Interviews worshipers, philosophers, historians, and psychologists worldwide to understand the tenacity and influence of the Ur myth of death and regeneration

Book of the Dead

Book of the Dead PDF Author: Foy Scalf
Publisher: Oriental Institute Press
ISBN: 9781614910381
Category : Book of the dead
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny! This book, edited by Foy Scalf, explores what the Book of the Dead was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and what happened to it.

Illuminating Osiris

Illuminating Osiris PDF Author: Richard Jasnow
Publisher: Lockwood Press
ISBN: 1937040755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Illuminating Osiris comprises twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues in honor of Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. Smith is especially renowned as a Demoticist and specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. His numerous Demotic text editions and translations of Egyptian funerary and religious compositions have been enormously influential in the field. The contributions in Illuminating Osiris naturally reflect Smith's particular interests in the religion and literature of Graeco-Roman period Egypt, dealing with cult, rituals, astronomy, and divination, among other subjects. The book includes many editions or reeditions of texts written in Demotic, Hieratic, and Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs. It is profusely illustrated and supplied with detailed indices.

ReMembering Osiris

ReMembering Osiris PDF Author: Tom Hare
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804731799
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The story of Osiris is one of the central cultural myths of ancient Egypt, a story of dismemberment and religious passion that also exemplifies attitudes about personal identity, sexuality, and the transfer of royal power. It is, moreover, a story of death and the overcoming of death, and in this it lies at the center of our own means of engagement with ancient Egypt. ReMembering Osiris takes as its focus this tale as it is recorded in Egyptian texts and memorialized on the walls of temples and tombs. Since such a focus is attainable only through Egyptian representational systems, especially hieroglyphs, the book also engages broader questions of writing and visual representation: decipherment, controversies about the "ideograph," and the relation between visual images and writing.

Daemons and Spirits in Ancient Egypt

Daemons and Spirits in Ancient Egypt PDF Author: Carolyn Graves-Brown
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786832909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
It deals with artefacts from the Egypt Centre. This is a little known but important collection. It deals largely with themes rarely or not at all discussed in separate volumes. The theme of daemons is particularly current in academic Egyptology. It should appeal to both academic and non-academic readers.

Of Isis and Osiris

Of Isis and Osiris PDF Author: Plutarch
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781468024111
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
And therefore the desire of truth, especially in what relates to the Gods, is a sort of grasping after divinity, it using learning and enquiry for a kind of resumption of things sacred, a work doubtless of more religion than any ritual purgation or charge of temples whatever, and especially most acceptable to the Goddess you serve, since she is more eminently wise and speculative, and since knowledge and science (as her very name seems to import) appertain more peculiarly to her than any other thing. For the name of Isis is Greek, and so is that of her adversary Typhon, who, being puffed up through ignorance and mistake, pulls in pieces and destroys that holy doctrine, which she on the contrary collects, compiles, and delivers down to such as are regularly advanced unto the deified state; which, by constancy of sober diet, and abstaining from sundry meats and the use of women, both restrains the intemperate and voluptuous part, and habituates them to austere and hard services in the temples, the end of which is the knowledge of the original, supreme, and mental being, which the Goddess would have them enquire for, as near to herself and as dwelling with her.