Osiris of bread and beer.

Osiris de pain et de bière Depuis peut-être l'époque néolithique en égypte ancienne, la bière a été associée avec Osiris. En tant que premier dieu-roi d'Egypte, il a enseigné l'agriculture, l'architecture, l'art du brassage de la bière, et la civilisation de leur peuples. D'abord en tant que dieu de la fertilité, et plus tard comme le dieu de l'au-delà, son association avec la bière etait plutot positive/bénigne: la bière, comme le pain, servait de soutien a la vie. Au temps de Empire Moyen, la bière devient associée à Hathor, en particulier en tant que Sekhmet. Cela a une signification plus sinistre , car Sekhmet était un destructeur impitoyable aussi bien qu'un guérisseur. Peut-être, avec une efficience accrue de la technologie de fabrication de la bière, celle-ci a ete comprise comme une substance hallucinogène mais egalement une source de nutrition. Cette double nature de la bière comme soutien de la vie ainsi que substance hallucinogene associée avec toute sorte de problèmes sociaux, pourrait expliquer son association ulterieure avec Sekhmet.

El Dios Interno Este es un nuevo tema de Uso y Mal Uso de Sustancias que los editores esperan que traiga un nuevo enfoque sobre el uso y mal uso de sustancias a trevés de la historia y dentro de diversas culturas. Hasta los tiempos modernos, las culturas a través de la historia han asociado diferentes sustancias con deidades específicas, incorporándolas dentro de los mitos específicos, y utilizaban sustancias en rituales específicos. El examinar estas asociaciones puede proveer una idea de cómo estas sustancias se han contemplado en varias culturas y el lugar que se ocupan en esas culturas. Por lo tanto, ofrecemos este nuevo tema para explorar estas asociaciones como una forma de aumentar la comprensión de las funciones del uso de sustancias en las diferentes culturas a través del tiempo histórico. Osiris de pan y cerveza Desde tal vez los tiempos Neolíticos en el antiguo Egipto, la cerveza se ha asociado con Osiris. Como el primer dios-rey de Egipto, enseñaba la agricultura, la arquitectura, el arte de fabricar cerveza, y la civilización a sus pueblos. En primer lugar como un dios de la fertilidad y más tarde como el dios de la vida posterior, la asociación de cerveza con Osiris era totalmente benigna: la cerveza, como el pan, era para sostener la vida. Durante el Reino Medio, la cerveza se llegaba a asociar con Hathor, especialmente en su aspecto como Sekhmet. Esto tiene un mayor significado siniestro, ya que Sekhmet fue un destructor implacable aunque también un curandero. Tal vez, mientras la tecnología de fabricación de cerveza se hacía más eficiente, la cerveza llegaba a ser entendido como un producto embriagador así como una fuente de nutrición. Esta naturaleza dual de la cerveza como sustento de la vida y también una sustancia embriagadora, con todos los problemas sociales asociados con la misma, bien podría haber sido implicado en la siguente asociación de ella con Sekhmet.

Keywords: Hathor; Isis; liquid bread; Nephthys; Osiris; Sekhmet; Seth; Thoth; beer; ancient Egypt; Egyptian mythology

Whether I live or die I am Osiris,

I enter in and reappear through you,

I decay in you, I grow in you,

I fall down in you, I fall upon my side (die).

The gods are living in me for I live and grow in the grain

that sustains the Honored Ones.

I cover the earth;

whether I live or die I am Barley.

I am not destroyed.

(Coffin Texts, 330)

Osiris is at once both the best known and the most mysterious of the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. He is a god yet functions as a man. He is immortal and yet he dies. He is restored to life, once in this world and again in the afterlife. He is royal and yet, through him, access to a life beyond life is made available to all and not just the elite (Armour, [2]).

We have no complete Egyptian source for the story of Osiris and Isis. For that, we are reliant on Plutarch (Babbit, [3]) who recounts the story in the "Moralia" and Herodotus (Strasler, [13]) who makes several mentions of the status of Osiris and Isis in the "Histories." Although these works are not completely accurate in all that they have to say about ancient Egypt, scholars agree that the recounting of the myth of Osiris and Isis is in accord with fragments from older Egyptian sources (Armour, [2]).

To retell the story briefly, Osiris was one of the five gods born from the union of Geb (Earth) and Nut (Heaven) during the five days that are outside of the Egyptian calendar.[7] Osiris was the first born, then Horus the Elder, then Seth, next Isis, and finally Nephthys. Osiris and Isis were lovers from the womb and became husband/brother and wife/sister. Seth and Nephthys were joined in a somewhat dysfunctional marriage. Osiris was given all the fertile land along the Nile as his domain while Seth was given the entire desert. This did not set well with Seth, who, primarily out of envy, became a mortal enemy of Osiris. Osiris became identified with fertility and order while Seth became identified with wildness and chaos (Figure 1).

Osiris found the people of the Nile living in a state of barbarism and he set about civilizing them. He taught them how to plant and harvest barley, wheat, and grapes; how to domesticate animals; and how to make wine and beer. It is this civilizing activity that identifies Osiris both with wine and with beer. He also gave them just and benevolent laws to regulate their relationships and taught them rituals to honor the gods. All this Osiris did without violence or military force. He accomplished it with the power of his persuasive words, with poems, and with songs.[8] Consequently, all the people of Egypt loved and venerated him because they were now happy, well fed, and at peace. This enflamed the hatred and envy of Seth even more.

Having civilized the valley of the Nile, Osiris set out to spread the benefits of civilization elsewhere. Leaving Isis in charge of Egypt, he left with a small band of followers, musicians, and dancers going first south into Ethiopia, then east into Arabia and India, and finally north across the Hellespont into Europe. Everywhere he went, he taught the arts of civilization, not only agriculture but also establishing cities, building dams and canals, and constructing temples. Everywhere he went, the force of his ideas and the fairness of his laws won people over, leaving them happier and more prosperous than ever.

Graph: FIGURE 1 Osiris and Isis.

While Osiris was busy civilizing the known world, Seth was busy plotting to kill Osiris. Seth managed to secretly get the exact measurements of Osiris and had a wooden box of great beauty fashioned to those specifications. He found 72 conspirators and the Queen of Ethiopia who was not pleased with Osiris's success, and together they planned a homecoming party for Osiris. When Osiris returned to Egypt after all his travels, they invited him to a feast in his honor. At the party, Seth brought out the wonderfully decorated box and said that he would give it to whoever fits into it exactly. All the guests climbed into the box, but, like Cinderella's glass slipper, it did not fit any of them. Finally, Seth convinced Osiris to try. He got into the box and it was an exact fit. Immediately, Seth and his conspirators nailed down the lid and sealed the box with molten lead so that Osiris would soon suffocate. Seth took the box and threw it into the Nile so that it would sail northward and into the sea.

While this was going on, Isis was visiting near Thebes in Upper Egypt. The fauns and satyrs brought her the news of Osiris's death. She went into mourning and began to search the Nile for the body of Osiris. During this search, she was joined by Nephthys who had left Seth and was reconciled to Isis.[1] Isis and Nephthys searched long and hard for the box with Osiris in it. Finally, they were told by some children[2] that the box had entered the sea and floated east. In fact, it had floated to a place called Byblos[3] where it became caught in the branches of a tree—some say a tamarisk tree while others say a cedar tree. The power of Osiris caused the tree to grow into a mighty specimen and it enclosed the box and Osiris in its trunk. The king of Byblos was so impressed by the tree that he had it cut down and used as the main pillar of his palace.Eventually, Isis and Nephthys discovered all this and persuaded the king of Byblos to allow them to open the tree's trunk and extract the box with Osiris inside. They took the body of Osiris back to Egypt and, using a magical ritual, revived Osiris long enough for him to impregnate Isis with a son, Horus the Younger. Seth heard about all this and imprisoned Isis,[4] found the body of Osiris, and hacked it into 14 pieces,[5] scattering them throughout Egypt.Eventually, the two grieving mothers, Isis and Nephthys, with the two grieving sons, Anubis and Horus, together with the aid of Thoth (god of practical wisdom, science, and medicine) searched and found all but one of the pieces. Thoth taught them how to embalm the body parts and perform the proper rituals so that once the pieces were properly buried, Osiris could be reborn into the afterlife. This did, indeed, happen and Osiris was reborn as the king and judge of the world of the afterlife.[6] When a ka, a soul, has passed through all the trials and is judged worthy to enter the afterlife, Osiris greeted him/her with an offering of bread and beer (Mojsov, [11]).

Both Herodotus and Plutarch affirm that the only cult that was universally practiced in Egypt was that of Osiris and Isis. At first, Egyptians believed that only the Pharaoh, who was an embodiment of both Osiris and Horus, and those closest to him, could be reborn into the afterlife (Figure 2). But because Osiris was an exceptionally democratic god and king, eventually the belief evolved to the point that anyone who was properly buried could enter the afterlife.

Graph: FIGURE 2 Osiris as the king of the afterlife.

Far from a fanciful tale, Plutarch, using his admittedly cursory knowledge of Egyptian customs and rituals, thought that the story was a grand metaphor for the annual flooding of Egypt by the Nile (Babbit, [3], pp. 85–109). Osiris is moisture in general, and the Nile in particular, whose annual flooding brings fertility to the soil. He further speculates that Isis is the earth of Egypt, who is impregnated by the flood and becomes fertile.

As they regard the Nile as the effusion of Osiris, so they hold the belief that the earth to be the body of Isis, not all of it, but so much of it as the Nile covers, fertilizing it and uniting with it. (p. 93)

In this reckoning, Nephthys is the border where the land of Egypt meets the sea or the mountains and Seth is the dry desert wind that sometime forestalls the rains that cause the Nile to flood. Becoming more enthusiastic in his speculation, Plutarch sees in the story as a metaphor for human nature and for the universe itself.

So in the soul Intelligence and Reason, the ruler and lord of all that is good, is Osiris, and in the earth and wind and water, and the heavens and stars that which is ordered, established, and healthy, as evidenced by seasons, temperatures, and cycles of revolution, is the efflux of Osiris, and his reflected image. But Typhon (Seth) is that part of the soul which is impressionable, impulsive, irrational, and truculent, and of the bodily part the destructible, diseased and disorderly as evidenced by abnormal seasons and temperatures, and the obscuration of the sun and the disappearances of the moon, outbursts, as it were, and unruly actions on the part of Typhon (Seth). (Babbit, 1931, p. 121)

Even though our sources for the myth of Osiris and Isis come from the first century, Joseph Campbell dates the origin of the myth to the early Predynastic period in Egypt (Campbell, 1976). He maintains that it is one of a family of myths that arose during the middle Neolithic period as humans moved from hunting and gathering to actively practicing agriculture, developing societies with classes of specialists (farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, and rulers), and establishing cities/kingdoms. These myths all tie the order of the society to the order of the eternal realms, the world of the gods, and the cycles of time. In all of these myths, which have their origin in ancient Ur (2150–2050 BCE), the ruler is central.

They express well the fundamental concept of the whole archaic world that the reality, the true being, of the king—as of any individual—is not in his character as individual but as archetype. He is the good shepherd, the protector of cows; and the people are his flock, his herd. Or he is the one who walks in the garden, the gardener; the one who gives life to the fields, the farmer of the gods. Again, he is the builder of the city, the culture-bringer, the teacher of the arts. (Campbell, [4], p. 413)

So, from very early times in Egypt, Osiris was honored as the god of beer. But it was beer as the daily and democratic food for lowborn and high alike—liquid bread to sustain the workings of an increasingly complex society. It was a domestic beverage to nourish and gladden humankind. It was a benevolent gift of the god that bound society together, fueling the works that brought great benefit to its members. This beer was of high nutritive value and low alcohol content: in all likelihood with 3%–4.5% (McGovern, [10]). In ancient Egypt, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, beer was an omnipresent and universally consumed commonplace of daily life (McGovern, [10]). This is attested to by the large numbers of depictions painted on tomb walls and the small-scale models of domestic breweries entombed with Egyptians to insure a steady supply of beer in the afterlife. All show both men and women grinding grain, baking it into leavened loafs, breaking these loafs into large open mouth jars, adding water, mashing the mixture, straining it into fermentations jars, inoculating it with a starter (often beer from a previous batch), and then sealing it with clay stoppers (McGovern, [10]). It might not be inappropriate, if somewhat poetic, to say that Osiris, as synonymous with the grain, died in the act of brewing to be reborn as beer.

Over time, methods of brewing improved, and with these improvements, alcoholic content of beer increased. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, about 2055–1650 BCE (Shaw, [12]), another god had also taken a place as patroness of beer: Hathor. Under one aspect, Hathor was a domestic goddess, guardian of the hearth and home. As such, she is generally pictured as a woman with the head of a cow—an altogether benevolent image. But it is Hathor as the mistress of drunkenness, equivalent to the Sumerian goddess of beer Ninkasi, pictured as a woman with the head of a lioness and called Sekhmet (Hutton, [7]) that is identified with beer (McGovern, [10]). As the story goes, Ra, chief of all gods, was upset because he thought that some of the humans he had created did not honor him and talked against him. He summoned Hathor, his daughter, in her form as Sekhmet, and told her to destroy humankind. She set about this task with great relish and by sunset had slaughtered the greater part of humankind and had drunk their blood. Ra at first was pleased with his daughter's work but soon began to think that he had been adequately avenged and that he did not really want to extinguish all humans from the earth. He tried to call back Hathor/Sekhmet, but her blood lust was so great that she would not stop except while resting in the night so that she could finish the carnage the next day. During the night, Ra had a large quantity of the fruit of the mandrake, whose juice is blood red and has sedating qualities, brought to him. He also commanded the women of Heliopolis to brew a great quantity of beer into which he mixed the mandrake juice. By dawn, Ra had spread this red beer over the whole plain of Egypt. When Hathor/Sekhmet awoke, she saw the whole of Egypt covered with what she thought was blood. She rejoiced that she had shed so great quantity of blood and rushed upon the liquid and drank it. The more she drank, the more she wanted to drink until she had consumed it all. Consequently, she became very, very drunk, and eventually passed out. When she awoke, three days later, she had no memory of her plans to destroy all of the humankind and changed her aspect again into that of the cat, Bastet (Armour, [2]).

This event was celebrated every year at the temple of Hathor in Dendera as the feast called the Drunkenness of Hathor. This festival coincided with the summer inundation of Egypt by the Nile when its waters, colored by iron-rich sediment, are red (Figure 3). During the celebration, each devotee is expected to drink three large vases of beer—a quantity probably roughly equivalent to 5 or 6 L (Armour, [2]; Lesko, [8]; McGovern, [10]).

Graph: Figure 3 Sekhmet.

This identification of beer with Hathor/Sekhmet is far more sinister than the earlier identification of beer with Osiris. It would seem that it does not focus on the life-sustaining qualities of beer as a food but on the identification of beer as an alcoholic beverage that can lead to violence and serious harm if used excessively. To be sure, in the story, it is the beer that saves humankind from the blood lust of Sekhmet. However, it is the identification of beer with the person of the goddess, whose nature is violent and ruthless and who is known as the bringer of death and pestilence (Darvill, [5]), that is instructive. It is also interesting to note that in the myth, the more Sekhmet drank the blood red beer, the more she wanted to drink. This may be in reference to the compulsive quality of substance use that marks substance misuse. Perhaps this myth developed as the use of beer began to move from a foodstuff that nourished to a drink that intoxicated. It is also of interest that Ra mixes a soporific, the juice of mandrake fruit, with beer. In the story, this is done to both increase the drug effect of the beer and to turn it to the color of blood. But there is good reason to think that, at some point, the Egyptians also mixed other psychoactive substances with beer to enhance the effect. Figure 4, from a tomb painting of c. 1350 BCE, shows an Egyptian man consuming beer through a straw assisted by a young boy while his wife looks on. The boy holds a small container in his left hand, which some think might have contained a psychoactive substance, like the Nile blue lotus, which was consumed with the beer (McGovern, [10]).

Graph: FIGURE 4 An Egyptian man drinking beer through a filter straw assisted by a servant.

There is a good deal of ambivalence in the association of beer with Sekhmet. It is seen as in some ways good and in other ways dangerous and harmful. This same ambiguity exists in the person of the goddess, Sekhmet herself. She is an aspect of Hathor, who is altogether benevolent, while Sekhmet is violent and dangerous. Once pacified, Sekhmet becomes Bast, feline goddess of pleasure and protection from evil spirits (Armour, [2]). Additionally, as Armour notes:

There are two characteristics of this goddess that seem at odds with her violent nature. First, she is often depicted as carrying the ankh, a sign of life; and second, she is renowned for her role as healer because of her knowledge of magic and sorcery. These indications of care and concern for others are not easily reconciled with what else is known about her activities. (2001, p. 104)

Although Sekhmet was understood as the bringer of death and pestilence in Egypt, the priests of her temple were sought out as healers and physicians (Mander, [9]). Also, it was the image of Sekhmet that most often appears on amulets that was meant to insure a healthy pregnancy and a safe delivery (Westwood, [14]).

This ambivalence about the role and the risks of beer in ancient Egyptian society and its association with a goddess, herself quite an ambivalent figure, probably came about as Egyptians moved from experiencing only the desirable and positive aspects of beer to also experiencing its harmful and undesirable aspects. This ambivalence is not hard to understand and continues today in countries like the United States. In the vast majority of states in the United States, being intoxicated in your home is not considered a social problem but being intoxicated on your front lawn is a crime. Likewise, in the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, advertizing hard liquor is prohibited and the phrase "The advertising of beer and wines is acceptable only when presented in the best of good tastes and discretion and is acceptable to local and federal law" (American Association of Broadcasters, [1], p. 4) has been interpreted to mean that you can make beer pouring into a glass look like a religious experience but you cannot show anyone actually drinking it.

Declaration of Interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.

THE AUTHORS

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Theodore M. Godlaski, MDiv, CADC, is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Kentucky where he teaches and does evaluative research. He has a long experience in treatment development, implementation, and delivery in both the public and private sector, and is an editor for Substance Use & Misuse. His areas of interest include the development of treatment that is culturally appropriate for specific groups such as Appalachians, rural individuals, or Native Americans of a specific tribe; treatment effectiveness and outcome for substance misuse; the relationship between substance use and intimate violence; spiritual factors as they relate to substance misuse and its treatment; and, most recently, entheogenic substances. He has a special passion for qualitative research into the experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and values of individuals in the treatment process. He has published in both referred and professional journals and has contributed chapters to several books. He has presented papers and workshops both nationally and internationally and is a faculty member of the Middle Eastern Summer Institute on Drug Use.

1 Nephthys had tricked Osiris into her bed and had conceived a son whom she abandoned in the wilderness, lest Seth find out. The god child was fostered by jackals. When Isis found out about the child, she found him and raised him as her own, naming him Anubis. He served Isis and guarded her much like mortal dogs do their masters. 2 Because of this, the Egyptians revered children for their prophetic powers. 3 Possibly on the coast of Syria (Armour, [2]). 4 She later escaped from the prison with the aid of Anubis. 5 Fourteen is also the number of cubits that the Nile must flood to insure a plentiful harvest (Mojsov, [11]). 6 This may be because the part that Isis could not find was Osiris's penis, and consequently, he could no longer be a god of fertility. 7 The Egyptians had a sidereal calendar that consisted of 12 months, each with 30 days for a total of 360 days. The remaining five days were considered sacred and celebrated as the birthdays of the gods, except for the third day (the birthday of Seth) that was considered ill-omened: no business could be conducted on that day. 8 It is largely because of this and the belief that he was aided by satyrs and nymphs that the Greeks identified him with Dionysos (Strasler, [13], pp. 144–185). American Association of Broadcasters. (1951). Code of practices for television broadcasters. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.tvhistory.tv/SEAL-Good-Practice1.JPG Armour, R. A. (2001). Gods and myths of ancient Egypt. (6th ed.). New York: American University of Cairo Press. Babbit, F. C. (Trans.). (1931). Plutarch: Moralia, Volume III (Loeb classical library no. 245). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Campbell, J. (1976). The masks of god: Primitive mythology. New York: Penguin Books. Darvill, T. (2008). "Sekhmet": The concise Oxford dictionary of archaeology. Oxford Reference Online. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t102.e3767 Hornung, E. (1999). The ancient Egyptian books of the afterlife. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hutton, K. (2005). Lions. In J. Lindsay (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religion (Vol. 8, 2nd ed., pp. 5464–5465). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Lesko, L. H. (2005). Egyptian religion: An overview. In J. Lindsay (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religion (Vol. 4, 2nd ed., pp. 2702–2717). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. 9 Mander, P. (2005). Healing and medicine: Healing and medicine in the ancient near east. In J. Lindsay (Ed.), Encyclopedia of religion (Vol. 6, 2nd ed., pp. 3824–3828). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. McGovern, P. E. (2009). Uncorking the past: The quest for wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mojsov, B. (2005). Osiris: Death and afterlife of a god. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Shaw, I. (2003). The Oxford history of ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press. Strasler, R. B. (Ed.). (2007). Book two. The landmark Herodotus: The histories (A. L. Purvis, Trans.). New York: Pantheon. Westwood, J. (2002). Gods and goddesses of life and death. In K. Robert Kastenbaum (Ed.), Macmillan encyclopedia of death and dying (Vol. 1, pp. 334–337). New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

By Theodore M. Godlaski

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