Mr. Miller says: 

“As nocturnal sun, Osiris was also regarded as a type of the sun before its first rising, or of the primordial night of chaos, and as such, according to M. Mariette, his first rising—­his original birth to the light under the form of Ra—­symbolized the birth of humanity itself in the person of the first man."[2]

M. F. Chabas says: 

“These forms represented the same god at different hours of the day. . . . the nocturnal sun and the daily sun, which, succeeding to the first, dissipated the darkness on the morning of each day, and renewed the triumph of Horus over Set; that is to say, the cosmical victory which determined the first rising of the sun—­the organization of the universe at the commencement of time.  Ra is the god who, after having marked the commencement of time, continues each day to govern his work. . . .  He succeeds

[1.  “Musée de Boulaq,” etc., pp. 20, 21, 100, 101.

2.  Rev. O. D. Miller, “Solar Symbolism,” “American Antiquarian,” April, 1881, p. 219.]

{p. 235}

to a primordial form, Osiris, the nocturnal sun, or better, the sun before its first rising."[1]

“The suffering and death of Osiris,” says Sir G. Wilkinson, “were the great mystery of the Egyptian religion, and some traces of it are perceptible among other people of antiquity.  His being the divine goodness, and the abstract idea of good; his manifestation upon earth, his death and resurrection, and his office as judge of the dead in a future state, look like the early revelation of a future manifestation of the Deity, converted into a mythological fable."[2]

Osiris—­the sun—­had a war with Seb, or Typho, or Typhon, and was killed in the battle; he was subsequently restored to life, and became the judge of the under-world.[3]

Seb, his destroyer, was a son of Ra, the ancient sun-god, in the sense, perhaps, that the comets, and all other planetary bodies, were originally thrown out from the mass of the sun.  Seb, or Typho, was “the personification of all evil.”  He was the destroyer, the enemy, the evil-one.

Isis, the consort of Osiris, learns of his death, slain by the great serpent, and ransacks the world in search of his body.  She finds it mutilated by Typhon.  This is the same mutilation which we find elsewhere, and which covered the earth with fragments of the sun.

Isis was the wife of Osiris (the dead sun) and the mother of Horus, the new or returned sun; she seems to represent a civilized people; she taught the art of cultivating wheat and barley, which were always carried in her festal processions.

When we turn to the Greek legends, we shall find

[1.  “Revue Archæologique,” tome xxv, 1873, p. 393.

2.  Notes to Rawlinson’s “Herodotus,” American edition, vol. ii, p.:219.

3.  Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 347.]