BOOK II. OF THE SUN. HEAD III. OF OSIRIS AND ISIS, AS REFERRED TO THE SUN.

×It will be convenient, in treating of Osiris, to set down at the outset what the ancient witness upon whom the identification is commonly rested has said, and to distinguish it, with a care which has not always been observed, from what the moderns have added; for it is of the first consequence to the order of the present Book that the reference of this deity to the sun should be seen to rest upon the opinion of certain persons reported, and not upon the belief of the Egyptians themselves.¹ Plutarch, in the treatise concerning Isis and Osiris, does not say that the Egyptians held Osiris to be the sun. He says, as the translation which I have used has it, that there are some who scruple not to say plainly that Osiris is the sun, and that he is called by the Greeks Sirius; and it is of these some that the opinion is reported, so that the writer is a witness that it was held, and, if I am not mistaken, of no more.² It were premature to determine here whether those who are thus described were Egyptians or Greeks, a point upon which the passage does not enlarge; it is sufficient to observe that the author who relates the opinion has taken care to attach it to its holders, and has not thought fit to deliver it in his own person. NB-21-007

×Mr. Bryant, to whom it is necessary to return, is to be asked what order he intends. In the Preface to his work he says of the posterity of Ham that "They called him Amon: and having in process of time raised him to a divinity, they worshiped him as the Sun"; so that the man is first deified, and is afterwards called the sun.³ In the first of the Radicals he has them worship the sun originally, and afterwards confer his titles upon their ancestors: "The Deity, which they originally worshiped, was the Sun. But they soon conferred his titles upon some of their ancestors."⁴ In the one place the sun is the later, and in the other the earlier; in the one the man is deified and then called the sun, in the other the sun is worshipped and then the man is given his titles. I do not find how both can stand together, and I cannot take the one without refusing the other; and since the opinion of the "some" in Plutarch is evidence only that it was held, it cannot be called in to decide between two orders, neither of which it professes to deliver. NB-21-007

×The same writer observes, in the same sentence, that the Egyptians, adding the article to the name, have obscured its sense and brought it into question; and it is to be remarked that a witness who tells us that the sense of a name has been brought into question has, by the same statement, cautioned us against building upon the sense which a Greek has given it.⁵ Where the sense of a name is in doubt, a reading is wanted which will choose between the senses; and the reading which Mr. Faber has proposed is of a different kind. "If the several histories of the principal deities, revered by most of the ancient nations, be considered, we shall find them at once allusive to the Sabian idolatry, and to the catastrophe of the deluge," he says, and he applies the rule to the present instance in these terms: "Thus, the account, which is given of Osiris and Isis, if taken in one point of view, directs our attention to the Sun and the Moon; but, if in another, it places immediately before our eyes the great patriarch, and the vessel in which he was preserved."⁶ He adds that the Egyptians held both together. A reading which accepts both, whichever the occasion offers, is refuted by no instance and established by none; and the question which the passage of Plutarch raises, namely what the name really signified before it was obscured, is not answered by an account which makes it signify in every case whatever the inquirer is for the moment in search of. NB-23-015 NB-21-007

×I do not deny, it will be understood, that the patriarch and the vessel are in the account of Osiris and Isis; I am prepared, on the contrary, to find them there, and the proof of it will be given in the Book which treats of the gods of the waters. What I deny is that the sun and the moon are to be had with them for nothing; and I conceive that each of the deities should be put to the testimonies separately, and not by a rule.⁷ NB-23-015

×The view which I propose, as it is at present sketched, is that the identification of Osiris with the sun is the reading of persons whom Plutarch does not name, laid upon a name which, by the testimony of the same writer, had already lost its sense; that it is neither the original worship of the Egyptians, as Mr. Bryant in one place says, nor to be conjoined with the history of the patriarch by a rule which dispenses with proof, as Mr. Faber supposes; and that the deity, so far as the solar part of the account is concerned, is to be assigned to the mode of corruption which is the subject of the present Book, and to no other. The proof of this, which requires the testimonies of the Egyptians concerning Osiris to be collected apart from the interpretations of the Greeks, is reserved for its place. It may be objected that the opinion which Plutarch reports was held by many, and that its prevalence is evidence of its antiquity; to which I answer that the prevalence of an opinion is evidence of its prevalence, and that the antiquity of a reading is not to be inferred from the number of its adherents. It may be objected, in the second place, that the refusal to accept the sun and the moon together with the patriarch and the vessel leaves the account of Osiris and Isis less complete than the reading of Mr. Faber; to which I answer that completeness is the quality of an account which has been made to fit, and that I had rather have fewer instances which are determined than more which are only allowed.⁸ NB-21-007 NB-23-015