The beard of Osiris

Figurine of a bearded man by the Naqada I culture, 3800–3500 BC, from Upper Egypt. Pic by Rama.

Today I came across this article "Heliopolis and the Solar Cult in the Third Millennium BC"

In it I read about the "Souls of Heliopolis", "Souls of Hierakonpolis" and Pharaohs as great prophets, great seers, who received their sacred knowledge and legitimacy from their ancestors...all the way to the procreator god..."

And this got me thinking: Was ancestral worship at the core of the early Ancient Egyptian religion? Is this why Pharaohs wore false beards?

Apparently, Pharaohs (divine rulers) wore false beards to signify their status as a living gods. 

And not any god. Osiris. In ancient Egypt, Osiris was considered as being the perfect example for pharaohs...

Thus, in order to get closer to and bond with the perfect pharaoh Osiris, his pharaonic successors wore a false beard to imitate his appearance. But Osiris didn't actually have a real beard himself...

Osiris, wore a false beard in his role as ruler of underworld while he judged the dead. Apparently, he wore the false beard "as a symbol of his great wisdom"...

Why would a beard be a symbol of great wisdom? Cause beard is a symbol of an elder, an ancestor...Someone of a great age with great experience and hence knowledge, wisdom...

The older you were, the wiser you became...And longer your beard grew...

And then you died and went to the underworld. So the underworld was full of dead ancestors with long beards...

So Osiris wearing a false beard while judging the dead, was symbolically proclaiming the judgement of the ancestors...Cause it was really the ancestors who judged their descendants...And gave them what they deserved...

Remember this?

"...humiliation of the Hittite kingdom is the result of the fact that the Hittites have forgotten to respect the sacred bond with their dead..." - Last Hittite king Suppiluliuma II.  I talked about this in my post "House of bones"...

Statue of Suppiluliuma II, Hatay Archeology Museum, with a pretty depressed looking expression on his face...

In the above post, I proposed that what caused the demise of the Hittites was a severe multiyear drought, and that to understand why Suppiluliuma II talked about the dead, we need to look at the beliefs of Serbs and other Balkan Slavs. In the Balkans people believed that if the dead were not given water, they would drink it from the clouds, and would cause drought. You can read more about the eternal thirst of the dead in my post "Thirst"

Romans linked rain, and agriculture, with the will of the dead too...You can read more about this in my post "Lapis Manalis" about the Roman agricultural rituals which link the (thirsty) dead living under (holy) stones, rain and agricultural fertility...

It turns out, that I was right. According to this recent article from Nature, "Severe multi-year drought coincided with Hittite collapse around 1198–1196 BC"...

In Egypt, agriculture depended not on rain, but on the annual Nile flood. And who was the god directly linked to the annual Nile flood that created the black (fertile) soil? Osiris. 

Osiris with wheat growing from his body. From the coffin of Nespawershepi.

I talked about the link between annual Nile flood, fertile black soil and Osiris in my post "Holy carp"...

Osiris the Perfect Pharaoh. He who made the land fertile and who liked to wear a false beard, pretending to be symbolic ancestor...Did Ancient Egyptians also have in their religion the link between the dead and water and fertility? I think so...

Osiris, who was thus emulated by the Pharaohs who wore a false beard to pretend to be Osiris (who wore a false beard to pretend to be an ancestor 🙂)...

What was the most important role of a Pharaoh? To feed his people of course...

BTW, this is Diduch (Grandfather, Ancestor), depicted as a sheaf of grain, to symbolically show the link between the dead and the grain fertility...I talked about this in my post "Diduch"

This was fun 🙂 What do you think?

I want to thank my friend @another_barbara for this great insightful comment:

I've been thinking about the things you posted since last night. People "planted" their dead in the soil that fed them, scatter their ashes into life giving rivers or seas that provided for them...

Dead man loaf

In Bulgaria, a special loaf of bread was made immediately after a person died, during the washing of the body. It was a simple round loaf, sometimes with a cross. In northeastern Bulgaria it was baked from dough which was made with the water used to bathe the deceased...

Sources:

"Glasnik Etnografskog muzeja u Beogradu knjiga 19 godina 1956"

"Bread in the folk culture of the Serbs in its pan Slavic context"

The dough for the bread was kneaded in a wooden throw. Before the kneading of the bread started, a candle was lit and put next to the through. And the dough was kneaded until the candle burned out...

In some parts of Bulgaria, this bread had to be made by a "clean" woman who had no sexual intercourses, either a virgin girl, a widow or a grandmother...

The name of this bread was пътнина (patnina), meaning "(bread for the) journey". In some parts of Bulgaria, this bread was placed in the coffin with a bottle of water and a bottle of wine, so the deceased would have enough food and drink for his journey to the other world...

This is very interesting. Remember my articles about the pots and pans found in Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age graves all over the world. Like these Ghandara culture graves from Pakistan, dated to 1200-800BC...Were the drinking vessels placed in graves with drink "for the other world"...

 I talked about this in my post "One for the road"...Why would the living bother with making sure the dead had enough food and drink in the otherworld? 

Our ancestors believed that it was the dead ancestors that directly affected the life of the living and in particular the land/grain fertility. 

I talked about this in many of my posts like my post about Diduch (grandfather), symbolic representation of the ancestral spirit which governs the lives of the living.

The dead had to be remembered, and fed and watered by giving them regular food and drink (mostly water) sacrifices. Cause forgotten, hungry and thirsty dead ancestors will take revenge on their living descendants. And one of the ways they would do that is by causing droughts, storms, floods and other natural disasters that would cause grain crops to fail, and would result in famine and the death of the living...

I talked about this in my posts "Thirst", "White feast", "Soul breads". I talked about the link between the dead and rain and grain fertility in Roman mythology in my post "Lapis Manalis"....

Also, remember this? 

"...humiliation of the Hittite kingdom is the result of the fact that the Hittites have forgotten to respect the sacred bond with their dead..." - Last Hittite king Suppiluliuma II.  From my post "House of bones"...  

Statue of Suppiluliuma II, Hatay Archeology Museum with a pretty depressed expression on his face...

This is why people not just buried their dead with food and water, but also regularly feasted with the dead. 

Starting from the funeral feast. 

In some other parts of Bulgaria, the bread was, while still warm, broken over the deceased person's head, making sure that steam, representing the deceased person's soul, rose the broken bread...The bread was then ritually eaten by the people attending the bathing of the body...

BTW, in Herodotus 4:73 we read that when a Scythian man died his family would put the body on a cart and take it to all his friends houses. They would bring the body into each house where they would eat and drink together with the corpse...

Through the quarterly remembrance feasts. 

There is a custom among Serbs of "feasting with the dead". Four times a year, once per season, on a day called "Zadušnice" (Souls day) a family goes to the graveyard, spreads the tablecloth on the grave, lays food and drink on the grave and has a feast with the dead. 

And literally any other feast.

Serbs actually always feasted with the dead. Every family feast was symbolically eaten with the dead. This prompted some Serbian ethnographers to propose that the whole Serbian belief system was based around the cult of the dead...

Soul breads

As late as the mid 20th century, there was a custom in Poland to bake small loaves of bread for the dead on the All Souls day. Because the All Souls day is in Polish known as Dzien Zaduszki (the day for the souls), the bread was also called zaduszki, bread (for) souls...

Originally these were just a plain sourdough flatbreads...But the recipe gradually evolved into this:

Lublin All Souls' Day breads (powałki)

1 kg of cooked flour potatoes

2 eggs

400 g of wheat flour

100g of fresh yeast

1 teaspoon of sugar

2 flat teaspoons of salt

Press the previously cooked and cooled potatoes through a press, add eggs, flour, salt and yeast grated with sugar. Knead the mixture into a loose dough. Tear off pieces of dough, form thick flat patties and place them on oiled baking tray.

Decorate each patty with a grid pattern using a fork, and leave them to rise for 30 minutes. Bake for 20-30 minutes in an oven preheated to 160°C. 

That's the traditional recipe. If you want, you can add cheese, ham, spices or any other topping of filling to suit your taste...

The origin of this ritual in the old Slavic feast called Dziady, which in Polish means Grandfathers, Forefathers, when the souls of Forefathers would come back to our world to visit their descendants. And the little (soul) breads were made as food for the visiting ancestors.

The soul breads had to be prepared a few days in advance, as people did not want to light the fire on the hearth on All Saints' Day, as they believed that the visiting souls gathered around the house hearth, and they didn't want to disturb them...

Two interesting things here.

First: Slavs believed that it was the (happy) ancestors (satisfied with the way their descendants treated them) who were the source of all good that their descendants enjoyed. Including (and especially) good grain harvest...I talked about this in my post "Diduch" (grandfather), about the East Slavic symbolic representation of the ancestral spirit which governs the lives of the living. 

So a bread for the dead now makes a lot of sense, right? I talked about the ancestral cult root of Slavic agricultural rituals in many of my blog posts and twitter threads. This post, "Wheat cross", is a good jumping point for exploring this subject further. It talks about the ceremonial "wheat cross" from Romania, which was made on the last day of the wheat harvest to carry the "wheat wreath" from the fields to the village. And about the related Slavic harvest traditions and ritual.

Second: Hearth as the place where the dead gather when they visit the house of their descendants. I talked about the link between the dead and the hearth in my post about "Verige" (hearth chain). 

As you can see from the above picture, in the past, the hearth was the focal point of every house. So it is easy to imagine that the souls of the dead ancestors would also gather around the hearth to warm themselves up on the cold November night...

This is confirmed by the fact that in the past in Poland, on All Souls eve, people used to set up bonfires on the crossroads, in order to help the souls of the ancestors warm up a bit...Why on crossroads? Allegedly to show wandering souls their way home...

But interestingly:

In some parts of Serbia, on Christmas eve, a single man from a village would go to a crossroads and lay down a feast for wolves. He would then run home without turning...I talked about this in my post "Wolf feast", about the link between wolves and the ancestors in Serbian folklore. 

And also:

Diduch (Grandfather), the grain effigy representing "The Ancestor" made in Ukraine for Christmas, was in some areas, burned on New Year's eve, on crossroads, "one of the favorite hangouts of evil spirits and vampires"...

See how the souls of the ancestors ended up becoming evil spirits and vampires...With a little help of Christian priests...

Finally, some Serbian ethnographers proposed that the belief that the dead gather around the house hearth might also be a remnant of the ancient (really really ancient) practice of burying the dead under and around the hearth...

I am very important! 

Love this little guy 🙂 Neolithic Vinča culture anthropomorphic terracotta figurine, 5000 BC, Serbia.

"These figurines were found in houses, often near fireplace, sometimes carefully arranged, which indicates that they had ritual, cult value".

Did they represent the deceased, the ancestors?

Apkallu

Gold and lapis lazuli carps found in the grave of the Sumerian Queen Puabi who was buried in Ur around 2500BC...

Gold for sun and blue for water...

The latest data from Ancient Mesopotamian city of Girsu  shows that agriculture built around system of irrigation canals existed for a 1000 years before the first city was built...

Which is "surprising" as it was believed that it was agriculture that was the catalyst for emergence of the first Mesopotamian cities and civilisation...Apparently something else triggered this development, "but we don't know what"...

Maybe city building fashion was brought to Mesopotamia by outsiders? Ever heard of Apkallu, the "seven sages (demigods)" who brought civilisation to Sumer?

Their names are very interesting:

"He who finished the plans for heaven and earth",

"He who was endowed with comprehensive intelligence",

"He who was allotted a good fate",

"He who was born in a house",

"He who grew up on pasture land",

"He who built the city of Eridu",

"He who ascended to heaven"

I wonder if these were 7 sages, or just 7 epithets of the original culture heroes, who brought civilisation to Mesopotamia...From the same place from where grain was brought to Mesopotamia...From Levant via Anatolia...I talked about it in my post "How grain came to Sumer"...

Anatolia is where before any city was built in Mesopotamia, we find cities like Çatalhöyük...

Where people "endowed with comprehensive intelligence", who were "born in a house" and "grew up on pasture land" and who were "allotted a good fate" to bring them to Sumer where they "conjured the city of Eridu" before they "ascended (went back) to heaven"...

BTW, heaven was by Sumerians seen as a mountain...Most likely the Northern Mountains from which Tigris and Euphrates emerge...So "ascending (going back) to heaven" just means "going back north"...I talked about this in my posts "When Utu steps into heaven", "Eagle dance", "Descending to Hades"...

Ok...I can hear you mumbling...Where are the animal calendar markers? How disappointing... 🙂

Guess what Apkally were depicted as? Fish men...You know "The Amphibians aliens"...

They were of course aliens...But in a sense "not from lower Mesopotamia" and not "not from Earth"...

And they were not fish-men. They were men wearing skins and heads of giant Mesopotamian carps. These monsters...

Remember my post "Goatfish" about the meaning of the symbol of Goatfish? 

Symbol for the wet season in Mesopotamia, which starts with rain, when goats mate, and ends with flood, when carps mate...

In it I talked about the fact that carp swimming upstream for spawning was believed to be them "swimming back to their master, Enki/Ea, god of fresh water and annual flood, who resides in Abzu, source of fresh water"...

That identifies Abzu as the Northern mountains and highlands. I talked about this in my post "Problems with Abzu" and "The great imposter"...

In the "Poem of Erra", we can read this line:

"Where are the seven Apkallu of the apsu, the holy carp, who are perfect in lofty wisdom like Ea's their lord..."

This clearly states that apkallu belong to Enki/Ea...And that they are fish (men)...

Enki/Ea, god of sweet water and the annual flood is shown here holding two jars with water flowing out of them, which represent the sources of Tigris and Euphrates...Standing on a carp fish...I talked about this in my post "Carp surfer"...  

Now Enki/Ea was seen as the actual source of wisdom and civilisation, and Apkallu were just his proxies, through whom he transmitted knowledge...

And considering that Enki/Ea was in Abzu, which was up north, somewhere at the "source of sweet water", Apkallu made their annual upstream "pilgrimage" from which they returned with more "knowledge from the source"...

And so did the actual giant carp. They swim up the rivers, towards river sources, towards Abzu, for spawning, every Apr/May, during the annual Tigris and Euphrates flood. Which is why in "A study of Sumerian faunal conception..." we can read that an Ur III text calls Enki "the (wielder of) the a-eštub (carp flood)”...

Back to our golden (sun) and lapis (water) fish. Why sun and water and fish? 

It is Utu/Shamash who releases Enki/Ea, the sweet water, from his icy prison on top of the sacred mountains, Abzu...

Over 70% of all the water flowing down Tigris and Euphrates comes from the snowmelt. Snowmelt which is caused by Utu/Shamash. I talked about this in my post "Shamash young and old"...

The snowmelt peaks at the beginning of summer, Apr/May, in Taurus... 

Which is why Tigris and Euphrates flood also reaches its peak in Apr/May, in Taurus... 

Which is why Utu/Shamash was depicted as a golden bull (Sun in Taurus) with flowing lapis lazuli beard (flowing water)...

I talked about this in my posts "Solar bull", "Elamite water bull", "Butt chewing", "Killing of the bull of heaven"...And many others...

By the way, this is the old Taurus, the original Taurus, which has nothing to do with constellations. The old animal calendar marker, marking the beginning of the calving period of the wild Eurasian cattle. I talked about it in my posts "Ram and bull", "Cow and calf ivory"...And many others...

Anyway, I think this is kind of interesting...To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

PS: Before there were fishmen in Mesopotamia, there were fishmen in the Balkans...I talked about this in my post: "Mesolithic sturgeon fishermen"