Osiris character profile in the Smite video game

(7) EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY – HERO: OSIRIS

Osiris is a black god!

No, seriously. Osiris was often depicted with black skin to symbolize his connection to the life-giving power of the Nile through visual association with the fertile black silt deposits from the Nile’s annual flooding. He was also “classically depicted as a green-skinned deity” through similar visual association with vegetation, although I can’t help thinking of the Hulk – particularly as Osiris is depicted in the Smite video game.

It was also apparently a mystical phrase uttered to initiates – Osiris is a black god, or alternatively, Osiris is a dark god. I’d like to say that it was a mystical phrase to initiates in the original Mysteries of Osiris but sadly I think it’s a reconstruction by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century esoteric mysticism that gave rise to the Order of the Golden Dawn and similar occult secret societies.

The other of two deities from Egyptian mythology in my top ten – his son Horus may be the more conventionally heroic figure but I just have my idiosyncratic preference for Osiris, similarly to my preference for Shiva in the Hindu mythology pantheon and my preference in another pantheon to come.

That may seem somewhat strange. After all, Horus avenged his father’s death at the hands of Set while Osiris doesn’t seem to do much else other than, well, be killed by Set. Horus and Osiris’ wife Isis basically do everything else while lugging around Osiris’ corpse like Egyptian mythology’s version of Weekend at Bernie’s – even to the similar plot point of Osiris getting it on with Isis and conceiving Horus while dead, albeit through Isis’ magic.

Osiris was the original Mr Mojo Risin’ – a hero of death and resurrection who rises to rule the afterlife. Osiris “was the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation”. All true heroes go down into the underworld. The Mysteries of Osiris apparently revolved around his resurrection.

He was also the original Good Shepherd – “Some Egyptologists believe the Osiris mythos may have originated in a former living ruler — possibly a shepherd who lived in predynastic times (5500–3100 BC) in the Nile Delta, whose beneficial rule led to him being revered as a god. The accoutrements of the shepherd, the crook and the flail…with whom Osiris was associated – support this theory.”

SUPERMAN-BATMAN SCALE

Like Egyptian gods in general, Osiris is definitely on the divine Superman end of the scale, although Osiris more resembles the death (and regeneration) of Superman while Horus resembles the birth (and flight from Krypton) of Superman.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU RANKING

Not so much punching out but high being punched out – and pulling off that supreme divine gambit of resurrection.

PARTY ROCK RANKING

Osiris is much more a party god than Horus, the latter tending to resemble that meme of a loner among partygoers – “they don’t know I’m plotting my vengeance on Set”. Osiris gets laid when he’s dead. What higher party rock ranking can you get?

RATING

A-TIER (TOP TIER)