dead king
Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged
with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been
merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet assumed,
as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be explained
later, a cow.

The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception
of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were
enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.

[41: "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple
Ritual," _Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.
50, 1912, p. 69.]

[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds
the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a
footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from
Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this
belief--the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate
if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were
found] "being usually identified with Osiris--since the water used in
the libations was Nile water."]

[43: The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found
summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James
Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of
evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that
Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based
upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar
customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different
localities where such similarities make their appearance.

The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate
(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are
other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating
article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir
James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the
History of Oriental Religion," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol.
II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was
primarily a king, and that "it is always as a _dead_ king," "the role of
the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".

He states furt