Sarapis, and identifying him with the Greek Pluto. To Isis were added
many of the attributes of the great Greek goddesses, and into her
worship were introduced "mysteries" derived from non-Egyptian cults,
which made it acceptable to the people everywhere. Had a high priest
of Osiris who lived at Abydos under the XVIIIth Dynasty witnessed the
celebration of the great festival of Isis and Osiris in any large town
in the first century before Christ, it is tolerably certain that he
would have regarded it as a lengthy act of worship of strange gods, in
which there appeared, here and there, ceremonies and phrases which
reminded him of the ancient Abydos ritual. When the form of the cult
of Isis and Osiris introduced by the Ptolemies into Egypt extended to
the great cities of Greece and Italy, still further modifications took
place in it, and the characters of Isis and Osiris were still further
changed. By degrees Osiris came to be regarded as the god of death
pure and simple, or as the personification of Death, and he ceased to
be regarded as the great protecting ancestral spirit, and the all-
powerful protecting Father of his people. As the importance of Osiris
declined that of Isis grew, and men came to regard her as the great
Mother-goddess of the world. The priests described from tradition the
great facts of her life according to the Egyptian legends, how she had
been a loving and devoted wife, how she had gone forth after her
husband's murder by Set to seek for his body, how she had found it and
brought it home, how she revivified it by her spells and had union with
Osiris and conceived by him, and how in due course she brought forth
her son, in pain and sorrow and loneliness in the Swamps of the Delta,
and how she reared him and watched over him until he was old enough to
fight and vanquish his father's murderer, and how at length she seated
him in triumph on his father's throne. These things endeared Isis to
the people everywhere, and as she herself had not suffered death like
Osiris, she came to be regarded as the eternal mother of life and of