Friday, March 10, 2023

Osirus, Noah and that 17th day... Echoes of the Flood in paganism?

"If Horus is the deified Ham, in what way are Geb and Osiris like
Noah? Regarding Geb’s function, Egyptologist H. te Velde states:
Innumerable texts and expressions dating from all periods of Egyptian history testify to the connection between Geb and the earth … . The word gbb ‘earth’, [Wb 5, 164.7–8] too, is derived from the name of the god … .”
For instance, Coffin Text (CT)-78 describes how Shu separated his children Geb (the earth), from Nut (the sky) during creation. At Genesis 5:29, Noah is associated with the earth by Lamech, who prophetically:
… called his name Noah, saying, ‘Out of the ground [ăd̲āmāh] that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.’”
This verse connects to Genesis 8:20–21 where Noah’s soothing (nîḥōa) sacrifice brought relief from YHWH’s curse to the ground/soil (ăd̲āmāh). Later, Genesis 9:20 states: “Noah began to be a man of the soil [ʾîš hāʾăd̲āmāh], and he planted a vineyard” (ESV). Here, Noah became the Second Adam, a “man of the soil”, to restart the new post-Flood world. Noah’s produce of the ground (wine) brought a soothing/(nîḥōa) rest from Noah’s labors (Genesis 9:21) and with it, a fresh curse.
 
Divine epithets of Osiris (phonetically reminiscent of ‘Noah’)
include Nny, which means ‘The Tired One’ (LGG IV, 248–249), known from the Middle Kingdom, whose hieroglyph shows a ‘resting figure’, ‘nu pot’ and ‘seated god’ . For example CT-431 states: “the Inert One (nny) who ascends from the watery-abyss (nn).” Significantly, nny is also an OK epithet meaning ‘tired’ e.g. PT-578§1534a. The divine name Nw.w ‘Nun’ (Wb 2, 215.5–6) is found commonly in PTs, e.g. PT-233§237a. Text from the 26th Dynasty texts (664–610 BC) also place Osiris directly in the Abyss:
wnn wsjr m n.t nw.wOsiris exists in the Nun.”
Noah means ‘rest/comfort’ (cf. Genesis 5:29) and is conceptually
equivalent to Osiris (Nw/nny) (‘tired/inert’)—offering a striking semantic and phonetic connection with Noah.
 
..... identified Ogdoad Nu as the paganized memory of Noah. Is Horus’s father Osiris connected to Nu? Egyptologist H.M. Tirard recognized that Osiris and Nu (of the Ogdoad) were interchangeable, stating:
In one of the lists of the Ennead the name of Osiris is replaced by that of Nu, the primaeval water … .”
***A festival of Osiris called Khoiak dramatized the struggle between Osiris and Seth, resulting in Osiris’s death and resurrection. 
The festival started on the 12th day of Hathor (Greek Athyr)—third
month of the year, and season of Akhet (Inundation). Khoiak lasted until the end of the month, commemorated by Osiris’s revivification—marked by planting crops at the start of the new agricultural year.
The festival commemorated the drowning of King Osiris by Seth, who then dismembered his body. These parts were delivered throughout Osiris’s kingdom. Osiris’s wife, Isis, relentlessly searched for the pieces, finding all but his phallus—so Isis modeled a new one. 
She mummified the pieces, which revived Osiris, who fathered Horus by her. Osiris then descended to the underworld as Lord of the dead. After this, Horus, Osiris’s son and heir, violently and incestuously struggled against Seth—until Horus’s final victory. However, in the festival, Seth is no longer Osiris’s son (as per some PTs), rather his evil brother.
 
Greco-Roman temple texts at Dendera relate Khoiak’s dramatization. Priests commemorated Horus lifting Osiris’s body from the water of the sacred lake and carrying it to the temple. Osiris was represented by a model mummy made of bitumen—placed in a small wooden boat, ritually floated across the ceremonial lake (representing Nu/Primeval Ocean)—and buried by Horus priests in the temple.
 
Plutarch, the Greek philosophe, ascribed to Egyptian priests the belief that Osiris died on the 17th of Athyr, when Seth (Typhon), by trickery, trapped Osiris in a wooden box, which was cast into the Nile, and floated out to sea.
 
Osiris’s ‘ordeal by water’ within his dbn ‘round-topped wooden box’ (Wb 5, 437.16). 
 
Noah (and family) entered the ark (Tēb̲at̲) on the 17th day of the second month (Genesis 7:11), which rested on Ararat the 17th day of the seventh month (Genesis 8:4) (the next year). Noah’s exit from the Ark (salvation from the Flood) and his restarting of the post-Flood civilization can be understood theologically as a resurrection/re-creation event. This may echo Plutarch’s testimony of Osiris’s entering his dbn on the 17th day of the third month, the season of Inundation, followed by his resurrection/re-creation. The Osiris bitumen mummy may share connections with the ‘pitch’ covering Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6:14). Admittedly, such evidence appears late in Egyptian history.
 
When Horus’s father(s) are compared with Ham’s father, Noah, several striking connections can be made. Osiris’s association through Geb with the earth, echoes Noah as the ‘man of earth’ bringing rest from the curse because of the cursed earth.

Osiris the ‘weary’ parallels Noah the ‘restful’., Noah enters the Tēb̲at̲ on the 17th of the second month, which rests on Ararat on the 17th of the seventh month of the Flood, resembles Osiris entering his dbn on the 17th of the Inundation month. Therefore, Osiris/ Geb as Horus’s father(s) resembles Noah as Ham’s father." CMI