Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative TheologyClarke, James Freeman
Islamic
Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology
Clarke, James Freeman
Christianity and other religions; Religions
Seb and Nutpe, or Nut, called by the Greeks Chronos and Rhea, were the
parents of this group. Seb is therefore Time, and Nut is Motion or perhaps
Space. The Sun pronounced a curse on them, namely, that she should not be
delivered, on any day of the year. This perhaps implies the difficulty of
the thought of Creation. But Hermes, or Wisdom, who loved Rhea, won, at
dice, of the Moon, five days, the seventieth part of all her
illuminations, which he added to the three hundred and sixty days, or
twelve months. Here we have a hint of a correction of the calendar, the
necessity of which awakened a feeling of irregularity in the processes of
nature, admitting thereby the notion of change and a new creation. These
five days were the birthdays of the gods. On the first Osiris is born, and
a voice was heard saying, "The Lord of all things is now born." On the
second day, Arueris-Apollo, or the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, who
broke through a hole in his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis; and on the
fifth, Nepthys-Venus, or Victory. Osiris and Arueris are children of the
Sun, Isis of Hermes, Typhon and Nepthys of Saturn.
Isis became the wife of Osiris, who went through the world taming it by
means of oratory, poetry, and music. When he returned, Typhon took
seventy-two men and also a queen of Ethiopia, and made an ark the size of
Osiris's body, and at a feast proposed to give it to the one whom it
should fit. Osiris got into it, and they fastened down the lid and
soldered it and threw it into the Nile. Then Isis put on mourning and went
to search for it, and directed her inquiries to little children, who were
hence held by the Egyptians to have the faculty of divination. Then she
found Anubis, child of Osiris, by Nepthys, wife of Typhon, who told her
how the ark was entangled in a tree which grew up around it and hid it.
The king had made of this tree a pillar to support his house. Isis sat
down weeping; the women of the queen came to her, she stroked their hair,
and fragrance passed into it. She was made nurse to the queen's child, fed
him with her finger, and in the night-time, by means of a lambent flame,
burned away his impurities. She then turned herself into a swallow and
flew around the house, bewailing her fate. The queen watched her
operations, and being alarmed cried out, and so robbed her child of
immortality. Isis then begged the pillar, took it down, took out the
chest, and cried so loud that the younger son of the king died of fright.
She then took the ark and the elder son and set sail. The cold air of the
river chilled her, and she became angry and cursed it, and so dried it up.
She opened the chest, put her cheek to that of Osiris and wept bitterly.
The little boy came and peeped in; she gave him a terrible look, and he
died of fright. Isis then came to her son Horus, who was at nurse at Buto.
Typhon, hunting by moonlight, saw the ark, with the body of Osiris, which
he tore into fourteen parts and threw them about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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