OSIRIS VEGETANS
This is a corn mummy, not the mummy of a person or an animal. Corn, or grain, mummies were created annually during the Mysteries of Osiris to ensure the agricultural fertility of the land of Egypt.
Egypt was wholly dependent on the yearly flooding of the Nile river. During the summer, the river overflowed and brought nutrient rich black silt to the banks of the Nile. After the waters receded, farmers planted their crops in the renewed, fertile land. The land’s cycle of life, death and rebirth paralleled the myth of Osiris’s life, death, and rebirth. Each year, Egyptians re-enacted this myth in the Mysteries of Osiris during Khoiak, the last month of the flooding season.
This religious festival was the most important event of the sacred calendar. Celebrations of the Mysteries took place inside the temples and consisted of secret rituals that the priests performed on behalf of the pharaoh himself. Every temple and sanctuary in Egypt had a special chapel set aside for the worship of Osiris and his Mysteries.
Corn mummies, like this one, are called “Osiris vegetans,” which means “Osiris who animates or invigorates.” Each Osiris vegetans was ritually made by priests using barley seeds and soil wrapped in linen. They were formed in the shape of Osiris as the first mummy, and the face was shaped out of blackish-green wax, colors that symbolized life for the Egyptians.
During Khoiak, priests spent several days in the temple making the Osiris vegetans. They used special instructions as well as special instruments, like moulds made of gold.
Once completed, the Osiris vegetans was placed into a large stone basin and watered daily with ritual ladles known as simpula, examples of which you can see in a nearby case. The figure was watered until it started to sprout and was then dried in preparation for the next part of the festival. Osiris vegetans was an essential deity that ensured the land’s fertility. Just as Osiris’s rebirth was part of the divine cycle of death and renewal, so the sprouting of the Osiris vegetans ensured the annual renewal of the land of Egypt.
But not every part of the Mysteries of Osiris took place behind closed doors. There was also a public aspect to the celebration. On the 22nd of Khoiak, the newly-made, sprouted, and dried Osiris vegetans figure left the temple in a procession of 34 sacred boats, or barques, lit by 365 lamps. The procession started at the Temple of Amun-Gereb in Thonis-Heracleion and, using canals and waterways, travelled throughout the city. When the figure returned to the temple, it took the place of the Osiris vegetans from the previous year. Then, on the 29th of Khoiak, the previous year’s vegetans figure was taken by boat to Canopus, where it was interred in the temple of Osiris. This was known as the Great Navigation. The final rituals, performed after this journey, remain a mystery to this day.
Until the discoveries at Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, most of our knowledge about the Mysteries of Osiris came from literary texts and tomb and temple decorations. The underwater excavation of these cities has opened up not only our understanding of this important religious ceremony but also the rituals and objects that were a part of it.
By the Late Period, the Mysteries of Osiris were widely celebrated in Egypt, including in the Nile Delta where Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus once stood. The Ptolemies embraced the celebration of the Mysteries. Like the Egyptian pharaohs that came before them, these Greek rulers connected themselves to Osiris, Isis, and Horus and honored traditional Egyptian religion even as they introduced new gods, like Serapis explored later in this exhibition.