king of heaven and judge of the dead. However carefully we piece
together the fragments of information which we can extract from native
Egyptian literature, there still remains a series of gaps which can
only be filled by guesswork. Plutarch, as a learned man and a student
of comparative religion and mythology was most anxious to understand
the history of Isis and Osiris, which Greek and Roman scholars talked
about freely, and which none of them comprehended, and he made
enquiries of priests and others, and examined critically such
information as he could obtain, believing and hoping that he would
penetrate the mystery in which these gods were wrapped. As a result of
his labours he collected a number of facts about the form of the Legend
of Isis and Osiris as it was known to the learned men of his day, but
there is no evidence that he had the slightest knowledge of the details
of the original African Legend of these gods as it was known to the
Egyptians, say, under the VIth Dynasty. Moreover, he never realized
that the characteristics and attributes of both Isis and Osiris changed
several times during the long history of Egypt, and that a thousand
years before he lived the Egyptians themselves had forgotten what the
original form of the legend was. They preserved a number of
ceremonies, and performed very carefully all the details of an ancient
ritual at the annual commemoration festival of Osiris which was held in
November and December, but the evidence of the texts makes it quite
clear that the meaning and symbolism of nearly all the details were
unknown alike to priests and people.

An important modification of the cult of Isis and Osiris took place in
the third century before Christ, when the Ptolemies began to
consolidate their rule in Egypt. A form of religion which would be
acceptable both to Egyptians and Greeks had to be provided, and this
was produced by modifying the characteristics of Osiris and calling him