Tag Archives: conceive

We already know the relationship between mourning and hair and the connexion it has with the Osiris legend. A very important part of that myth is the episode when Osiris recovers his virility. According to the legend, once the different parts of Osiris corpse were found and the body was restored, Isis put herself over her husband’s body and conceived the posthumous son Horus. Thanks to that act the cosmic order was again established; Horus became the king of Egypt and Osiris resurrected as the king of the Hereafter.

In a coffin found in Gebelein and dating from the XIII Dynasty, there is a vignette with both women assisting the dead, over him is bending a feminine image.

Already in the 50’s Chr. Desroches-Noblecourt considered that the goal of this gesture was to give back the virility to the mummy[1]. In fact, the Pyramid Texts show that in the Old Kingdom Isis and Nephtys were considered the responsible ones of regenerating the deceased’s faculty for fertilising[2]. The Egyptian iconography has several examples of the copulation of Isis and Osiris; Isis as a kite[3] put herself over the phallus of her husband, and she assures the conception of the son who will avenge the murder of his father; also literature has many examples of that episode:

“I am your sister Isis. No god and no goddess have done what I have done. I have performed the procreation, although I am a woman alone, for making your name to endure on earth. Your divine semen was inside my womb and I put it over the earth, this way he can spread your image. He is healthy, although you suffer. He must send the violence to those who had caused it. Set succumb to his knife. Fellows of Set succumb because of Set. The throne of Geb is yours. You are his beloved son…”[4]

 In some tombs of the Middle Kingdom were found some figurines maybe used for restoring the virility to the dead. According to Chr. Desroches-Noblecourt, these figurines evocate a young femininity and with no visible effects of maternity; so, they would not be images of fecundity, but of eroticism[5]. That premise would send us to what we exposed formerly (see post of 27^th May) about the two mourners in the roles of Isis and Nephtys; we think that these two women should have been mother yet. It looks as if these figurines were also put in tombs of New Kingdom for restoring the ka of the dead[6].

In chapter 991 of the Coffin Texts we could read how the dead is “the one who fertilises the mourners” (see post of 21rst May) and in The Songs of Isis and Nepthys there are several allusions to that matter; many times Osiris is “the lord of the sexual pleasure”[7], “the lord of the love” [8], “bull that fertilises the cows”[9]. We also read in that text: « you give the life over the woman”[10], so, « you impregnate her »; it is the same meaning as we read in chapter 991 of Coffin Texts. In the Songs of Isis and Nephtys Osiris is also called « the one who engenders » [11] and the mourners ask him to have sexual relations:

“Copulate you with us as a male” [12].

“Copulate you with your sister Isis” [13].

 There is a very meaningful sequence: 

“Lord of the sexual pleasure,

¡Oh! Come to me;

Be in union the sky and the earth”[14].

 In the mythic sphere the primeval union is the one between earth and sky (in Ancient Egyptian cosmogony between Geb and Nut); it is the moment of the Creation, symbolised by the sexual act because it contents the power of generating life. This reflexion makes us think of orgy as a sexual celebration; in many cultures orgy is a synonym of agricultural fecundity; it is an act in favour of life for stimulating new births; and there is also a bond between vegetation and eroticism.