The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

§ 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives. 305conjecture is right, the view that the mock king at the Sacaea wasslain in the character of a god would be established. But to thispoint we shall return later on.sacrifice. But when Hercules came to Egypt, and was beingdragged to the altar to be sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slewBusiris and his son. 798 Here then is a legend that in Egypt aa confirmation of the conjecture in the text, was pointed out to me by myfriend W. Robertson Smith, who furnished me with the following note: “In theSyro-Macedonian calendar Lous represents Ab, not Tammuz. Was it differentin Babylon? I think it was, and one month different, at least in the early timesof the Greek monarchy in Asia. For we know from a Babylonian observationin the Almagest (Ideler, i. 396) that in 229 B.C.{FNS Xanthicus began onFebruary 26. It was therefore the month before the equinoctial moon, not Nisanbut Adar, and consequently Lous answered to the lunar month Tammuz.”797 Above, p. 215.798 Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 5. 11; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,Argon. iv. 1396; Plutarch, Parall. 38. Herodotus (ii. 45) discredits the ideathat the Egyptians ever offered human sacrifices. But his authority is not tobe weighed against that of Manetho (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73), who affirmsthat they did. See further Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the EgyptianResurrection (London and New York, 1911), i. 210 sqq., who says (pp. 210,212): “There is abundant proof for the statement that the Egyptians offeredup sacrifices of human beings, and that, in common with many African tribesat the present day, their customs in dealing with vanquished enemies werebloodthirsty and savage.... The passages from Egyptian works quoted earlier inThere is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain corn- The corn-spirit—the dead Osiris—was represented by a human victim,whom the reapers slew on the harvest-field, mourning his death ina dirge, to which the Greeks, through a verbal misunderstanding,gave the name of Maneros. 797 For the legend of Busiris seems topreserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by theEgyptians in connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris wassaid to have been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangerson the altar of Zeus. The origin of the custom was traced toa dearth which afflicted the land of Egypt for nine years. ACyprian seer informed Busiris that the dearth would cease if aman were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted thespirit in Egypt(Osiris) annuallyrepresented by ahuman victim.