Osiride vegetante, i letti di Osiride
Quando Iside scoprì l’accaduto, si mise nuovamente in viaggio per l’Egitto alla ricerca dei resti sparsi da Seth. Una volta terminata la sua missione, Iside ordinò che ovunque fosse stato ritrovato un frammento di Osiride venisse eretto un santuario in suo onore, nel quale Iside dispose che fosse conservata una copia della parte del corpo di Osiride, anziché l’orginale, per depistare Seth. È per questa ragione che nell’Alto Egitto venivano venerate sette gambe del dio e nel Basso Egitto altre quattro.
The Egyptians had a custom of not talking about the death of Osiris. Generally speaking, from the Pyramid Texts to the Greco-Roman documents, the murder of Osiris, his mourning and his tomb are only evoked by allusions or by clever circumlocutions . We can thus read “As for the arou-tree of the West, it stands for Osiris for the affair which happened under him." (Papyrus Salt 825). The matter in question is, obviously, the burial of Osiris, the tree being planted on the site of the divine tomb. The Egyptians also used euphemisms, especially in the late period. So instead of saying “misfortune has befallen Osiris”, the statement is reversed by saying “misfortune has befallen the enemy of Osiris”. By postulating that speech and writing had within them a magical power, the Egyptians feared that the simple act of speaking of a mythical episode such as the death of Osiris risked making it happen again by simple enunciation. In the Papyrus Jumilhac, the murder of Osiris is thus eluded: instead of writing "Then Set threw Osiris to the ground", the scribe writes "Then he knocked the enemies of Osiris to the ground".
