“Placeth thy soul in the bark Ma-at, In that name which is thine, of GOD MOON.”
“Thou _who comest to us as a child each month_, We do not cease to contemplate thee, Thine emanation heightens the brilliancy Of the stars of Orion in the firmament,” etc.
_Records of the Past_, i. 121 _sq._; Brugsch, _Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter_, p. 629 _sq._ Here then Osiris is identified with the moon in set terms. If in the same hymn he is said to “illuminate us like Ra” (the sun), this, as we have already seen, is no reason for identifying him with the sun, but quite the contrary. 4. At the new moon of the month Phanemoth, being the beginning of spring, the Egyptians celebrated what they called “the entry of Osiris into the moon.” Plutarch, _Is. et Os._ 43. 5. The bull Apis, which was regarded as an image of the soul of Osiris (_Is. et Os._ cc. 20, 29), was born of a cow which was believed to have been impregnated by the moon (_ib._ 43). 6. Once a year, at the full moon, pigs were sacrificed simultaneously to the moon and Osiris. Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, _Is. et Os._ 8. The relation of the pig to Osiris will be examined later on.
Without attempting to explain in detail why a god of vegetation, as I take Osiris to have been, should have been brought into such close connection with the moon, I may refer to the intimate relation which is vulgarly believed to subsist between the growth of vegetation and the phases of the moon. See _e.g._ Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 221, xvi. 190, xvii. 108, 215, xviii. 200, 228, 308, 314; Plutarch, _Quaest. Conviv._ iii. 10, 3; Aulus Gellius, xx. 8, 7; Macrobius, _Saturn._ vii. 16, 29 _sq._ Many examples are furnished by the ancient writers on agriculture, _e.g._ Cato, 37, 4; Varro, i. 37; _Geoponica_, i. 6.
1024 Herodotus, ii. 42, 49, 59, 144, 156; Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 13, 35; _id._, _Quaest. Conviv._ iv. 5, 3; Diodorus, i. 13, 25, 96, iv. 1; _Orphica_, Hymn 42; Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ iii. 11, 31; Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ xi. 287; _id._, on _Georg._ i. 166; Hippolytus, _Refut. omn. haeres._ v. 9, p. 168; Socrates, _Eccles. Hist._ iii. 23, p. 204; Tzetzes, _Schol. in Lycophron_, 212; Διηγήματα, xxii. 2, in _Mythographi Graeci_, ed. Westermann, p. 368; Nonnus, _Dionys._ iv. 269 sq.; Cornutus, _De natura deorum_, c. 28; Clemens Alexandr. _Protrept._ ii. 19; Firmicus Maternus, _De errore profan. relig._ 7.