CHAPTER II

THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
Our main knowledge of the old Egyptian religion which gave birth to so many mysterious ritual ceremonies is drawn from the Book of the Dead,1 which was entitled by that people The Chapter of coming forth by Day. The most ancient extant portion of this document dates from about 3500 b.c., but is evidently based on a much older text. It consists chiefly of prayers accompanied by ceremonies of a magical nature to preserve bodies from damp, dry-rot and charnel worms, and it was buried with those bodies as a talisman.
The earliest inhabitants of Egypt disposed of their dead by dismemberment and burial; then by burning; later by burial of the complete corpse; and finally by mummifica¬ tion. This last custom of preserving, as far as possible, the dead bodies, lasted from the earliest dynastic times down to a.d. 640, when the country was conquered by the Arabs.
The original inhabitants seem to have been invaded by a Sumerian tribe, who taught them the use of metals and writing, and introduced new religious thought. The period of this invasion probably coincided with that of the burial of the body whole, instead of disposing of it by dismember¬ ment or burning. The new-comers were never entirely able to root out the old superstitious beliefs of the autoch¬ thons, and traces of these outworn ideas are found in the Book of the Dead. Its chapters are a mirror in which one can see the various religious beliefs of all the races that helped to make the Egyptian nation, and thus it gives us little help towards forming an estimate of what that nation believed in any one stage of its history.
1 Wallis Budge’s translation has been used for the purposes of this section.
4 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
The orthodox held that the Book of the Dead had been written by Thoth, the scribe of the gods. The central god of its theotechny is Osiris, whose legend is probably indi¬ genous to Egypt. Osiris was the type of immortality, and countless generations of worshippers believed they should not see corruption, because he had conquered death and would enable them to do likewise. “O thou, who dost make men and women to be born again!” was the ritual salutation addressed by Thoth to Osiris.
A belief in immortality and a judgment after death was an integral part of the Egyptian religion. The judgment of the dead took place in the hall of Osiris; those who were condemned were forthwith devoured by the Eater of the Dead, while others entered into the domains of Osiris. To these happy ghosts was applied the title “Maa Khoru,” he whose word is right and true — the signification being that the doors of the underworld “Sekhet-Hetepet,” the fields of peace — the Egyptian Elysian Fields were open to the person who possessed the right word; he had power to go where he pleased and do what he liked, and had become the equal of the gods. This idea ran through Egyptian enchantment: the power of the name — that the man who knew the name of a god could invoke and obtain help from him by calling upon him, and that the hostility of a fiend could be defeated by the repetition of his name.
The gods of Egypt, of course, were many, but there is no need to attempt to catalogue them. Moreover, there were different degrees of initiation in the priesthood, and it seems probable that in the higher ranks of it a philo¬ sophical outlook discarded the polytheism held by the masses. Porphyry1 declares: “Under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in various forms of living nature.” They went, however, even farther than this, as is shown by the following hymn to Osiris,2 which indicates at least an approach to true monotheism: “God of many shapes, God of the unknown, thou who hast many names in many
1 De Abstinentia.
2 Of the XIXth dynasty, found at Abydos.
THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES 5
provinces ; if Ra rises in heaven, it is by the will of Osiris ; if he sets, it is at the sight of his glory.”
The monotheism was, however, a fitful gleam rather than a steady light, except temporarily in the school of On or Heliopolis. Though there is little trace of moralistic training of the priesthood, which from the time of the XVIIIth dynasty was an influential body whose privileges were guarded by a strict supervision of entrants, there can be no doubt of the moral tendency of the religion they taught. Take, for example, this response from a litany to Osiris: “O grant thou unto me a path whereon I may pass in peace; for I am just and true; I have not spoken lies wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit.” Such was the religion which produced the mysteries of Isis, celebrated on the lake of the temple of Sais.
Here let it be stated at once, that when these mysteries crossed the Mediterranean and were celebrated at Corinth, Rome and elsewhere, they became very different from the original mysteries of Sais. In Greece and Italy the Eleusinian mysteries seem to have served as a model for the re-edited mysteries of Isis, at least as far as exterior practices were concerned1. Little has been recorded about what went to make up the original initiation at Sais. Diodorus and Plutarch say, that the goddess in establishing the ceremonies introduced to them the spectacle of her sufferings and toils. Saint Hippolytus is more precise, and informs us that in the chief scene of the mysteries, not to be revealed to the profane, Isis appeared in mourning garments searching for the scattered fragments of her spouse, Osiris, and in particular for that portion of his body which the murderers had cast into the Nile.
So thus we have indicated a ritual drama, much like the mystery plays of medieval days, portraying events in the history of the god and goddess.
The myth as told by Plutarch2 relates that “Rhea having accompanied with Saturn by stealth, the Sun found her out and pronounced a solemn curse against her . . .
1 OuvarofF, Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis.
2 Of Isis and Osiris. William Baxter’s translation is used.
6
FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
that she should not be delivered in any month or year”; but Hermes gambled with the moon goddess, and won from her five new days to the year, observed by the Egyptians since as the birthdays of their gods. On the first of them the great and good king Osiris was born; on the second, Arueris, otherwise the Elder Horus; upon the third, Typhon, “who came not into the world either in due time or by the right way, but broke a hole in his mother’s side, and leaped out of the wound”; upon the fourth, Isis; and upon the fifth, Nephthys, sometimes called the End, sometimes Venus, sometimes Victory. Osiris and Arueris were begot by the Sun, Isis by Hermes, and Typhon and Nephthys by Saturn. Nephthys became the wife of Typhon: Isis of Osiris.
Osiris taught the Egyptians the use of grain and made them civilised, and then travelled all over the world in¬ structing all nations in a like manner. When he returned home Typhon formed a plot against him in this way. “Having privately taken the measure of Osiris’s body, and framed a curious ark, very finely beautified and just of the size of his body, he brought it to a certain banquet. And as all were wonderfully delighted with so rare a sight and admired it greatly, Typhon in a sporting manner promised that whichsoever of the company should by lying in it find it to be of the size of his body, should have it for a present. . . . Osiris at last got into it himself and lay along in it ; whereupon they that were there present immediately ran to it, and clapped down the cover upon it, and when they had fastened it down with nails, and soldered it with melted lead, they carried it forth to the river-side, and let it swim into the sea.”
When Isis heard of the murder, she cut off a lock of her hair, put on a mourning garment, and went in search of the ark. She had tidings of it from the god Anubis, the son of Osiris and Nephthys, and learnt how it had been cast upon the coast of Byblos and become enclosed in the trunk of a tree. Having recovered the ark after some further adventures which need not be recited, Isis carried it home to Egypt and mourned for her dead spouse, guarding the
THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
7
body carefully in the ark. Typhon, hunting by moonshine, “by chance lighted upon it, and knowing the body again tore it into fourteen parts, and threw them all about.” Isis then went in search of them in a barge made of papyrus, and made a particular burial for each member as she found it, for which reason there are many places in Egypt claiming to be the sepulchre of Osiris. “But of all Osiris’s members Isis could never find out his private part, for it had been flung into the river Nile,” where it was eaten by the pike and sea-bream; “but Isis in lieu of it made its effigies, and so consecrated the Phallus for which the Egyptians to this day observe a festival.” After these events Osiris returned to the earth from the underworld, did battle with and worsted Typhon, and performed many other feats as though he had never been slain.
This outline of the main theme of the Osiris myth will be enough, but two curious details are included in it which show a correspondence between the mysteries of Egypt and Greece. “And they say that Osiris when he was king of Egypt drew them off' from a beggarly and bestial way of living, by showing them the use of grain, and by making them laws, and teaching them to honour the gods.” Then it is related of Isis, when she had arrived at Byblos in quest of the ark, “she sate her down hard by a well, very pensive and full of tears, insomuch that she refused to speak to any person, save only to the queen’s women ...” Both these incidents were later transferred to Demeter in the mysteries of Eleusis.1
There is little doubt that the search for the body of Osiris was the main theme in the mystic drama celebrated in the mysteries of Isis; but all that we know about the cult with certainty is confined to certain exoteric matter. Thus some ritual observances are described by Plutarch.
The priests of Isis shaved all the hair off their bodies, were clad only in linen, and avoided wool. In their diet they abstained from pulse, pork, mutton, pike, and sea- fish in general, salt at certain seasons of fasting, and drank very little wine.
1 Vide pp. 1 8, 22.
8
FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
The cult was rich in symbolism. Black was considered a sacred colour, red unlucky. The sacred garment of Isis was supposed to be particoloured, but that of Osiris “no variety of colours, but one only resembling light” . . . “They represent their king and lord Osiris by an eye and sceptre . . . And the heaven, because by reason of its eternity it never grows old, they represent by a heart with a censer underneath it.”
Plutarch refrains from telling us all he might about the mysteries, and we have to be content with an occasional hint, as of a cord being cut into pieces in allusion to a serpent that pursued one of Typhon’s concubines, or with such a discreet evasion as: “I pass by their cleaving of wood, their peeling of flax, and the wine libations then made by them, because many of their secret mysteries are therein contained.” The sislrum or rattle was the instrument used par excellence in the Isiac mysteries, and an emblematical meaning was attached to its construction: “Moreover, as the sistrum hath its upper part convex, so its circum¬ ference contains the four things that are shaken . . . for all things are moved and changed (in the world) by the four elements, fire, earth, water, and air. And upon the upper part of the circumference of the sistrum, on the outside, they set the effigies of a cat carved with a human face; and again on the under part below the four jingling things they set on one side the face of Isis, and on the other the face of Nephthys; symbolically representing by these two faces generation and death (for these are changes and alterations of the elements), and by the cat representing the moon, because of the different colours, the night- motion, and the great fecundity of this animal.”
The account given by Apuleius of his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis deals merely with externals, but since it illustrates the matter is here condensed from his Meta¬ morphoses.1
He was first taken into the temple where a priest produced from a secret place certain books written in hieroglyphics, “thence he interpreted to me such things as were necessary
1 William Adlington’s translation of 1566 has been used throughout.
THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES 9
to the use and preparation of my order.” This meant the purchase of various unspecified things, which appear to have cost a considerable sum. The neophyte was then bathed, brought into the temple before the feet of the god¬ dess, given a “ charge of certain secret things unlawful to be uttered,” and told to abstain for ten days from wine and flesh.
“Then behold the day approached when as the sacrifice of dedication should be done; and when the sun declined and evening came, there arrived on every coast a great multitude of priests, who according to their ancient order offered me many presents and gifts. Then was all the laity and profane people commanded to depart, and when they had put on my back a new linen robe, the priest took my hand and brought me to the most secret and sacred place of the temple. Thou wouldst peradventure demand, thou studious reader, what was said and done there: verily, I would tell thee if it were lawful for me to tell. . . . Thou shalt understand that I approached near unto hell, even to the gates of Proserpine, and after that I was ravished throughout all the elements, I returned to my proper place: about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine, I saw likewise the gods celestial and the gods infernal, before whom I presented myself, and worshipped them.”
There is little doubt that Apuleius is here referring darkly to some dramatic ceremonies in the Mysteries and that his allusions would have been understood by the elect.
In the morning he was displayed to the congregation crowned with a wreath of flowers, wearing a magnificent embroidered robe, and bearing a lighted torch in his hand, perhaps typifying the Sun-god.
The subsequent feasting lasted for three days — probably at his expense.
Apuleius was later initiated into the Mysteries of Osiris, which were distinct from the former degree. For this he had to fast another ten days and to shave his head; but except that the ceremony took place at night that is all he says about the matter. Later still he became a Pastophorus,
IO FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
one of the select college of the priests of Osiris, vowed to chastity, and wearing the tonsure openly in token of his new dignity. In alluding to these degrees our author is so discreet in his language as to be quite unrecognizable as the frank reporter of the adventures of the Golden Ass.
Just one more hint from Plutarch to make an end of suggestions about the ritual.
“In like manner they affirm that the likeness of a dead man which is carried about in a little box and shown at feasts is not to commemorate the disaster of Osiris, as some suppose, but was designed to encourage men to make use of and to enjoy the present things while they have them, since all men must quickly become such as they there see; for which reason they bring it into their revels and feasts.”
One is tempted to suggest that the explanation was in¬ vented to gloss over the similarity between the custom and a mystic rite not revealed to the profane, and to quote from one of the Fathers in illustration:
“Let us set forth another symbol . . . whereof we must detail the whole order, that all may see that the law ordained by God has been perversely imitated and corrupted by Satan. On a night an image is placed recumbent on a bier, and is bewailed in measured dirges. Then when they have sated themselves with fictitious mourning, light is brought in. Thereafter the faces of all the mourners are anointed by the priest, and he whispers in a slow murmur: ‘Take cheer, ye initiated, the god being saved, for we shall have out of toils deliverance V’1
This symbolism, doubtless, was common to many of the mysteries of antiquity; and no useful purpose would be served by further conjecture about the ritual. Not without reason the temple of Isis at Sais, which was the chief seat of the cult, had upon it this inscription: “I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal has ever raised.”
1Julius Firmicus Maternus, De Erroribus Profanarum Religionum, a.d. 345.