The Osiris Narrative as Prophecy

Moses’ “Not involved in onolatry” shirt is raising a lot of questions that were answered by his shirt.

Today’s artifact is the Graffito Blasphemo, aka the Alexamenos Graffito or the Blasphemous Graffito.

I am going to begin this one by summarizing some well-worn areas. It’ll be a while before we get to anything original from me. But I think most of this will be new to most readers, and I promise it’ll pay off. Here’s what you can expect: 1) esoteric bits about Noah, 2) alternative history about the Old Testament, and 3) a reading of the Osiris narrative as prophecy about Christ, the people of Noah, the Israelites, the Church, and the future. #3 is my stuff.

Noah

You can find a great summary of this info in Robert Sepher’s video Noah’s Noble Bloodline. I suggest you watch it and come back. But I’ll offer a few points. The world has ended and been repopulated many times. The Aztec, for example, believe this to be the fifth iteration of humanity. The Atlanteans were a highly advanced civilization. Their destruction is the same event recorded in the Bible as Noah’s flood. However, the story of Noah is actually the story of the Indo-European people, not all of humanity. As Sepher points out, Noah is the father of, more or less, white people. Noah represents the aggregate survivors of Atlantis. And, I would add, the Biblical Adam represents the Atlantean people, not all of humanity.

The flood story was not well preserved in Egyptian mythology, the way it was in Greek and Mesopotamian mythology. But it does appear that more ancient Egyptians did have this account, esoterically preserved in the story of the Ogdoad, which means “the eightfold.” This is a story of four gods and four goddesses, four married pairs, whose names match the themes of the flood story fairly well. The men were named Water, Infinity, Uncertainty, and Darkness. Of course, Noah’s ark was said to have saved four married couples, eight people. From the link above: “The Egyptians believed the Ogdoad’s role was to maintain creation’s balance, by stopping the sky from collapsing back into the Nun (the Egyptian idea of a primeval flood), which in Egyptian cosmology was believed to be a state of chaos, from which the creation emerged.” The link contains an analysis comparing the Egyptian story to that of Noah.

There is another aspect to the flood myths relevant to this essay, that of the gods who restored civilization after the cataclysm. This theme can be found in various cultures’ flood myths. The hindu flood myth recounts their Noah figure, Manu, as rebuilding civilization after the flood (link is to PDF download). In the Chinese version, a man named Yu was essential in restoring post-flood order. The Mesopotamian myths include Oannes, who “came up to the seashore of the Persian Gulf and instructed mankind in writing, the arts, and the sciences.” The Peruvian myth of Viracocha tells of the god of that name who teaches mankind agriculture before disappearing into the sea.

In the Osiris myth, fully covered below, Osiris vacates his throne at a time of extreme barbarism and cannibalism to teach humanity to live in a civilized manner. This fits in rather well with some of the myths about gods reteaching civilization to mankind after cataclysm. It’s possible this is a remnant of flood myth knowledge among the Egyptians.

The Graffito Blasphemo

This is one of the oldest graphic depictions of Jesus, if not the oldest. The text reads: “Alexamenos worships his god.” It dates to approximately 200AD. According to the Wikipedia entry, it is “a piece of Roman graffiti scratched into the plaster of a wall in a room near the Palatine Hill in Rome.” This image brings us down quite the rabbit hole.

“The calumny of onolatry, or ass-worship, attributed by Tacitus and other writers to the Jews, was afterwards, by the hatred of the latter, transferred to the Christians (Tac., I, v, 3, 4; Tert., Apol., xvi; “Ad nationes”, I, 14). A short time before he wrote the latter of these treatises (about 197) Tertullian relates that an apostate Jew one day appeared in the streets of Carthage carrying a figure robed in a toga, with the ears and hoofs of an ass, and that this monstrosity was labelled: Deus Christianorum Onocoetes (the God of the Christians begotten of an ass). “And the crowd believed this infamous Jew”, adds Tertullian (Ad nationes, I, 14). Minucius Felix (Octavius, ix) also alludes to this defamatory accusation against the Christians.”

The article assumes that accusations of onolatry among Jews is calumny. But where does this come from, and is it supported by anything substantive? Well . . .

We have to go way back. First, if you’d rather listen to a well-argued video on the topic, I recommend Uberboyo’s video The Biggest Lie in History. It’s a long watch, but it’s well researched. His research supports mine basically 1:1. He’s really into neuroscience in a way that I am not. I contend neuroscience as he applies it is just a low fidelity explanation for more spiritual things. But if you have a more modern mindset than mine, you may appreciate his approach. Summarizing his claims: 1) the concept of Judeo-Christianity is false, 2) there is essentially zero archeological evidence for the Exodus, as told in the Bible, 3) earliest evidence of Yahwism rather dramatically contradicts Biblical claims, as early Israelites were polytheistic pagans (with some other interesting bits of scholarship on the topic, particularly the evidence that has emerged from Elephantine) 4) the book of Genesis is an attempt to retell the story of the Hyksos people in a more flattering manner and modify factual history. If you want an extremely schizo book with a good bibliography and summary of this argument, you can read Tricia McCannon’s book Return of the Divine Sophia, which I cite on other points below.

I want to focus on the Hyksos people. The Hyksos were a group of invaders who essentially conquered lower and middle Egypt around 1650BC. The name Hyksos translates into something like “foreign rulers,” or “rulers of foreign lands.” A lot of this comes from the Greek historian Manetho, circa 350BC. More specifically, what we have are retellings of Manetho’s account preserved by later writers, such as Josephus. Both Manetho and Josephus connect the Hyksos to the Jews. However, there is sufficient archeological evidence of the presence and reign of the Hyksos, that the basic facts about this are not really in dispute.

What do we know about them? We know they were from the Levant and ruled in Egypt. Their rule started in Egypt around the year 1650BC. This is roughly the time that the Bible says that Joseph and Israel came to Egypt. Their rule is attested by the fragments of the Turin King List, which is papyrus that dates to the time of Pharoah Ramesses II in the 13^th century BC. They ruled for about 108-150 years. The Turin King List, incidentally, notes that they are foreign, but does not note them as conquerors. It just matter of factly records who ruled and when. The Turin King List supports some parts of Manetho’s narrative and contradicts others. But it is an important bit of evidence.

This is the most important bit: the Hyksos worshipped the Egyptian deity Set. One article puts it thus:

The Hyksos worshipped both Egyptian and Levantine deities, with Set (Seth), the Egyptian god of chaos, becoming associated with Baal, a Canaanite storm god. This syncretism is evidence in artifacts and temples from the period. Hyksos burials within settlements, often accompanied by horse sacrifices, reflect their Levantine heritage.

Set was portrayed as various animals in Egyptian mythology, with a donkey being typical in the late Egyptian period, circa 660-330BC.

Even if your objection is that surely this is Egyptian propaganda to contradict the Biblical account, you’d have to answer why Joseph’s rule was marked by the worship of Set and Baal, and no evidence of the God of Israel is to be found, unless you want to follow the line of scholarship that proposes that Baal worship predated Yahwism among Israelites and Yahweh was not widely worshipped among them until much later. (For example, God’s Best Frenemy: A New Perspective on YHWH and Baal in Ancient Israel and Judah, by Michael Stahl). The reality is that the archeological record supports the Hyksos narrative and does not support the Biblical narrative. Baal worship among the Hyksos does not surprise me, as Solomon’s temple was almost certainly a temple of Indo-European solar worship, and Yahweh was most likely a later syncretism of Baal and El. If you’d rather dig into Yahweh history in a video, here’s a decent one. If you want some summary on the various schools of academic thought on the topic, as scholars disagree, check out the Stahl article just above.

In summary, accusations of onalatry among Israelites was likely rationally linked to a long memory of the Hyksos people, who worshipped Set and likely merged with their kin in the levant and injected new religious practices and ideas into those people after their ejection from Egypt. These accusations stuck even after conversion to Christianity. Romans circa 200AD were still associating Jewish deity with donkey gods. As an aside, and I will cover this in the future, Jesus was widely associated with various Mediterranean depictions of deity, and to say that this graffito would prove that Jesus was seen solely as a Jewish deity is contradicted by a large body of evidence, not least the gospels themselves. More on that another day.

The Osiris Narrative as Prophecy

“Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:42-44.

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. . . Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” 1 Corinthians 12-20, 27.

The story of Osiris goes way back. The oldest written version we have comes from the Pyramid Texts, which go back to the Old Kingdom of Egypt, which ended circa 2200BC. The story itself is older than this. To put this in context, the biblical timeline puts Abraham’s birth around the year 2166BC. The Osiris myth evolved over time, so the bits change here and there. But the general thrust holds, and that is what is most important.

The most detailed retelling of this story comes much later down the road, from Diodorus Siculus and from Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris. Plutarch’s is the more robust account. It can be a little confusing, because Plutarch substituted Greek names for gods of the Egyptian equivalent. In particular, Plutarch called Set by the Greek name, Typhon. I suggest you go back and look at my essay showing how both Old and New Testament depictions of God on His throne were taken from Egyptian depictions of Osiris on his throne. I want you to consider Osiris as a type of Christ in this story.

Osiris, “The Mighty One,” was married to his sister, Isis, “The Queen of Heaven.” Isis was esteemed as the Queen of Heaven, not only by Egyptians, but likewise by the Greek and Roman cultures, usually called by the name Demeter. From one encyclopedia, we get the following:

Isis was venerated first in Egypt, then in the entire Eastern Mediterranean and in Italy. There was an Isis temple in Rome in the first century before Christ. The Roman writer, Apuleius, in his “Transformations of Lucius” in the first century B.C, gives an understanding of Isis as the “Queen of Heaven.”. The following paragraph is particularly significant.

“You see me here, Lucius, in answer to your prayer. I am nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are, my nod governs the shining heights of Heavens, the wholesome sea breezes. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names. . . some know me as Juno, some as Bellona . . . the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship call me by my true name...Queen Isis.”

Osiris had a brother and chief adversary, Set, or Seth. Britannica states:

Originally Seth was a sky god, lord of the desert, master of storms, disorder, and warfare—in general, a trickster. Seth embodied the necessary and creative element of violence and disorder within the ordered world. . . . During the rule of the Hyksos invaders (c. 1630–1521 bce), Seth was worshipped at their capital, Avaris, in the northeastern Nile River delta, and was identified with the Canaanite storm god Baal. During the New Kingdom (1539–c. 1075 bce), Seth was esteemed as a martial god who could sow discord among Egypt’s enemies.

Pay careful attention to this, from a University of Pennsylvania publication:

Seth was originally a god of desert — the “Red Land” — and, as the god of the Red Land, he opposed and threatened the civilized and sedentary lives of the floodplains, or the “Black Land,” thus earning him the title: god of violence, chaos, and confusion (Wilkinson 197). In later Egypt, however, [Seth] evolved to become a symbol of foreign power, expressed in the form of ‘crimes, in sickness and disease, as well as civil unrest and foreign invasion’ (Wilkinson 198). In a world where the preservation of ma’at (order) was considered to be one of the most significant roles of the king and where foreigners were thought to be physical manifestations and harbingers of isfet (chaos), Seth would have been a source of fear and a force of destabilization.

Remind you of anyone? One thing I see people get consistently wrong about Yahweh is that he is a god who stands against chaos. Contrariwise, the writers of the Old Testament show chaos as perhaps the greatest weapon in Yahweh’s arsenal. Consider: Yahweh destroys the cosmos with the waters below and above in the flood of Noah, collapsing the created order; Yahweh confounds the language of the people at Babel, introducing chaos to thwart their efforts; Yahweh sent the plagues to Egypt to deliver his people and caused chaos among their army to let Moses escape through the Red Sea; Yahweh scatters his own people for disobedience; Yahweh taught Gideon how to sow chaos among the Midianites; Yahweh introduced chaos into the camp of the Syrian army; Yahweh, uh, “thundered with a great thunder” and caused chaos among the Philistine army. “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” Which god is that?

Another excerpt from the UPenn link that is worthwhile:

Royal worship of Seth appeared once again during the Second Intermediate Period. In the papyrus record of a story called The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre, it is noted that King Apophis of the 15th Dynasty “adopted for himself Seth as lord, and he refused to serve any god that was in the entire land except Seth” (Goldwasser 129). Apophis was a member of the Hyksos Dynasty — the first non-Egyptian family of kings to rule Egypt. As a foreigner himself, it makes sense that he would worship a god of foreigners. The Hyksos also identified Seth as being similar to a god of their own, Baal, who was also a god of storms and aggression (Allon 20). Eventually, the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt by the Thebans of the 17th Dynasty, but their cultural and religious influence, namely Seth worship, persisted.

Now that we have introduced the main characters, I’ll move on to the narrative of Osiris and Set, as told by Plutarch. I will replace “Typhon” with “Set” to avoid confusion.

One of the first acts related of Osiris in his reign was to deliver the Egyptians from their destitute and brutish manner of living. This he did by showing them the fruits of cultivation, by giving them laws, and by teaching them to honour the gods. Later he travelled over the whole earth civilizing it without the slightest need of arms, but most of the peoples he won over to his way by the charm of his persuasive discourse combined with song and all manner of music. Hence the Greeks came to identify him with Dionysus.

During his absence the tradition is that [Set] attempted nothing revolutionary because Isis, who was in control, was vigilant and alert; but when he returned home [Set] contrived a treacherous plot against him and formed a group of conspirators seventy-two in number . . . . [Set], having secretly measured Osiris’s body and having made ready a beautiful chest of corresponding size artistically ornamented, caused it to be brought into the room where the festivity was in progress. The company was much pleased at the sight of it and admired it greatly, whereupon [Set] jestingly promised to present it to the man who should find the chest to be exactly his length when he lay down in it. They all tried it in turn, but no one fitted it; then Osiris got into it and lay down, and those who were in the plot ran to it and slammed down the lid, which they fastened by nails from the outside and also by using molten lead. Then they carried the chest to the river and sent it on its way to the sea through the Tanitic Mouth. . . . .^”

“Isis, when the tidings reached her, at once cut off one of her tresses and put on a garment of mourning in a place where the city still bears the name of Kopto . . . . But Isis wandered everywhere at her wits’ end; no one whom she approached did she fail to address, and even when she met some little children she asked them about the chest. As it happened, they had seen it, and they told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of [Set] had launched the coffin into the sea.”

[Skipping over how Isis retrieved the chest containing Osiris’ body]

“Isis proceeded to her son Horus, who was being reared in Buto, and bestowed the chest in a place well out of the way; but [Set], who was hunting by night in the light of the moon, happened upon it. Recognizing the body he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus.”

“Of the parts of Osiris’s body the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this had been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus, the sea-bream, and the pike had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyptians are most scrupulous in abstaining. But Isis made a replica of the member to take its place, and consecrated the phallus, in honour of which the Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival.”

I am going to turn to a summary of what comes next taken from a paper published by the University of Texas:

With Osiris dead, Set became king of Egypt, with his sister Nepthys as his wife. Nepthys, however, felt sorry for her sister Isis, who wept endlessly over her lost husband. Isis, who had great magical powers, decided to find her husband and bring him back to life long enough so that they could have a child. Together with Nepthys, Isis roamed the country, collecting the pieces of her husband’s body and reassembling them. Once she completed this task, she breathed the breath of life into his body and resurrected him. They were together again, and Isis became pregnant soon after. Osiris was able to descend into the underworld, where he became the lord of that domain.

From a short article by The Fitzwilliam Museum, in England:

There are different accounts of how Horus was eventually established as the rightful king of Egypt. In one version, found on a papyrus in the village of the workmen who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, a tribunal of gods had to judge between Horus and Seth. In another, depicted in detail on the walls of the temple of Horus of Edfu, Horus eventually speared Seth, who had turned himself into a hippopotamus.

These myths were central to the concepts of Egyptian kingship. The current ruler was always identified with Horus, while his deceased predecessor was notionally Osiris. When a ruler died, his successor (who may or may not have been his actual son) became the next Horus.

When looking at the oldest extant version of the myth, from the Pyramid Texts, the details are not much filled in. I’ve taken these points from a master’s thesis The Myth of Osiris in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts: A Study in Narrative Myth, by David Stewart. However, the essential bits are present. In the Pyramid Texts, we know that 1) Set murdered Osiris, 2) cut his body up into pieces, 3) Isis mourns for Osiris and searches out his body (with her sister, Nephthys, Set’s wife), 4) Isis reassembles Osiris’ body (literally “gather him together” and “unite him”), 5) Horus is expected to avenge the murder of Osiris, 6) Horus fights Seth to avenge his father and regain the throne (in this fight, Horus loses an eye and Seth loses his testicles), 7) Horus becomes the heir of Osiris and reigns. However, one major difference is that Osiris is resurrected by Horus with the assistance of Thoth. The exact time of the conception of Horus is not clear in these older texts; it may have been before Osiris died, and it may have been after he died and was brought back to life.

The salient points from the oldest version are the most important and what I would emphasize as prophetic myth. Think of Osiris as Christ. He was murdered by Set so that Set could usurp his throne. As a result of the actions of Set, the body of Osiris is dismembered and scattered. The body of Osiris is reassembled/gathered by Isis. Osiris is resurrected, which permits him to hang around long enough for him and Isis to produced Horus. Horus fights Set for the right to sit on the throne and ultimately prevails.

If you can see it, this myth tells us that the Indo-European people would be scattered, that God would manifest himself to man, who would murder God, that worship of the Queen of Heaven would be instrumental in the gathering of the Indo-European people, and things yet to happen.

First, consider that the Indo-European peoples, the descendants of Noah, were driven apart and scattered. In the Biblical narrative, this relates to the Tower of Babel. Obviously, this is long before the birth of Jesus. However, I don’t think that is something we should get hung up on. The important part is that they are divided and scattered. Then God manifests Himself to us in the person of Jesus. God is murdered by Set worshippers, the descendants of the Hyksos people. They do this with the intent to usurp the right to rule this world, something their god has promised them. Alternatively, you could compress this narrative into the profound ideological disruption of Christendom that occurred in the modern era. What started as nearly universal Christianity was fractured and broken apart until the twin blows of WW1 and WW2 left nothing of the old order remaining. By the end of the WW2, there is no doubt that that Set had usurped what was once another god’s throne in this world. I don’t particularly care exactly how linear time would map onto prophetic myth. If we get too hung up on that, we miss the deeper points.

The body of Osiris, the collected Indo-European peoples, is reassembled by Isis. Marian devotion is a peculiar addition to Christianity, given the scorched earth efforts of the redactors to remove any hint of the goddess from post-exile Judaism. Yahweh once enjoyed the company of his consort, Asherah. This was vigorously suppressed after the Jews returned from Babylon and set to systematizing a new religion that distinguished themselves from their Indo-European cousins. Given the Christian impulse to see biblical Judaism as the sole inspired precursor to Christianity, the fact that Marian devotion thrived in Christianity is something miraculous.

Marian devotion is easy to see as an extension of worship of the Goddess in Indo-European peoples. The parallels between Mary and Isis are many, and if we include esoteric teachings about Mary Magdalene, we are seeing another side of the sacred feminine in her person. Speaking of the depiction of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Juan Diego’s tunic, Tricia McCannon states that the Aztec goddess Coatlocpia, whose name means “walks on the serpent,” has “symbols . . . the same as those of both Mary and Isis: gold stars on a blue cloak with the sickle moon and a serpent at her feet.” Return of the Divine Sophia at 286-287. One protestant objection to the appearance of Mary at Fatima, is that the woman that appeared with the same short dress and features as an ancient pagan goddess who was worshipped in this same location. Personally, I accept these apparitions and miracles as factual. However, the significant overlap between Marian apparitions and Indo-European goddesses is as though Mary herself is trying to connect these appearances with the Indo-European tradition. It’s like she’s telling us who she is and where this element of Christianity came from. Put differently, Marian devotion did not come to Christianity by way of Judaism; it is a continuation of the Indo-European tradition in spite of the Judaic influence on Christianity.

Seeing Marian devotion as the continued Indo-European influence in Christianity is particularly apt if we see the Osiris myth as prophetic. Isis/Mary/Catholicism/Orthodoxy reunited the Indo-European peoples under the banner of Christianity. St. Peter’s square is a physical representation of this process. In the center, there is the Vatican Obelisk. This is an old Egyptian obelisk sourced from Heliopolis, the city of the sun, which, I would contend, was pre-Christian Christ worship from an Indo-European perspective. The obelisk comes right from the Osiris myth, as Isis could not find his penis and fashioned one as an obelisk. This obelisk/penis was used to impregnate Isis and lead to the miraculous conception of Horus. St. Peter’s square is the energetic union of the male and female energies, which is crafted architecturally as a phallus and a womb. Osiris, Isis, and Horus are all represented in this space, as are Christ, the Church, and something yet to come.

Which brings us to the next part of the narrative, which starts to project out into the future. Set still sits on Osiris’ stolen throne. This implies that the offspring of Christendom and the Indo-European peoples is something that will contend for the right to rule this world and will ultimately prevail over Set. However, in the narrative, the struggle was prolonged and harmful to both combatants. This means that the Indo-European peoples, now gathered together, under the watchful eye of Isis, must birth something new, something terrible to its enemies.

As I’ve said before, if our people are going to be saved, they are going to have to be saved from their churches. These are old wine in old bottles. Horus is not Osiris (the Indo-European traditions, that is paganism), and Horus is not Isis (Christianity as we’ve known it since Christ’s day). Horus is the union of Osiris and Isis. This is something new that will build upon both of these traditions and incorporate the best of what the Indo-European peoples learned during their time of sole focus on the Trinitarian God. But they are bound to start to remember some things that were forgotten, but to incorporate them with the Christian world view. This is a point that Gigi Young has made best .

I don’t know exactly what form this will take, or how long it will take, or who will drive it. But a return to tradition is not the way forward. I think God will move our people through crisis and necessity. The impulse to cling to what inspired our fathers is noble; at a minimum it is comfortable. But our fathers went through a great transition at one point when they converted to Christianity, which conversion was consistent with the movement of God on the earth. If God is moving us in a different direction, however, He will get His way. That way won’t be to revive dead and dying churches preaching stale doctrines, which have become the rule that brought us to where we are right now. Watching the birth of whatever Horus represents is going to be something our children will remember two thousands years from now. You can see them desperately trying to stop it from happening, with every move they make they try to stop it from happening. They won’t stop it. God wins in the end.