# Cult of Osiris · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/001-cult-of-osiris/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
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The Cult Dossier · No. 001 · Ancient Mystery Cult
Cult of Osiris
Osirian Mysteries
c.2400 BCE – 4th c. CE · Egypt, later pan-Mediterranean
I. ANTIQUITY — THE MYSTERY CULTS
Fully religious — state-sanctioned mystery religion
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- c.2400 BCE Osiris named in the Pyramid Texts of Unas — earliest surviving religious literature.
- c.1970 BCE The Ikhernofret Stela records the Abydos passion play, a public mystery drama of the god's death and resurrection.
- c.1550 BCE Book of the Dead spells standardise the Hall of Two Truths judgment scene.
- 30 BCE – 200 CE Osiris-Isis worship spreads through the Roman Empire; Serapis created as a Greco-Egyptian hybrid.
- 391 CE Theodosius I bans pagan worship; the temple network collapses.
- 535–537 CE JUSTINIAN CLOSES PHILAE — DATE CONFIRMED, 537 being the more firmly established of the two years. He sent the general NARSES, who shut the temples of the island, JAILED THE PRIESTS AND SHIPPED THE SACRED IMAGES BACK TO BYZANTIUM. Philae, on Egypt's southern frontier, was the last major site where ancient Egyptian religion was still practised. THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY CALLED IT 'THE END OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION', WHICH IS TOO CLEAN. The account comes from PROCOPIUS, and specialists do not accept it as a sufficient explanation: the religious transformation at Philae was GRADUAL AND ALREADY WELL ADVANCED, and 535–537 marks the closing of an institution rather than the extinction of a faith. THE LAST DATED HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTION ANYWHERE — THE GRAFFITO OF ESMET-AKHOM AT PHILAE — WAS CARVED IN 394 CE, more than a century before Narses arrived. The religion was dying long before the state got there to declare it dead.
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