The Names of Osiris

Source section: "The Names of Osiris in Every Shrine Wherein He Dwelleth" — Theban Recension, c. 1600 BC (60 names) and Saite Recension, c. 300 BC (158 names) Related: osiris · neb-ankh · sah · sia · sokar · ptah · wepwawet · an-mut-f · the Epithet Trap · the Gods of the Qererts

Why this page exists

A census of Egyptian deities compiled by harvesting names from translations will pick up strings like Neb-ankh, Sah, Nub-heh, Bati-erpit and Heq-tchetta and file them as gods.

Every one of those is Osiris. They come from a chapter that does nothing but enumerate the names he answers to, shrine by shrine — and Budge prints two versions of it, thirteen centuries apart.

This page sets both out, and reports what the corpus found when it checked its own census against them.

The two recensions

The list nearly triples over thirteen hundred years. Whatever it is, it grew.

The two openings are almost identical, which shows the later list is the earlier one extended rather than replaced:

Theban — 1. Asar Un-nefer · 2. Asar Ankhti · 3. Asar Neb-ankh · 4. Asar Neb-er-tcher · 5. Asar Khenti- · 6. Asar Sah · 7. Asar Saa …

Saite — 1. Asar Un-nefer · 2. Asar Ankhi · 3. Asar Neb Ankh · 4. Asar Neb-er-tcher · 5. Asar Ap-…-taui · 6. Asar Khentet Un · 7. Asar Khentet Nepra · 8. Asar Sah …

Four names agree exactly. Then they diverge, and the Saite version keeps going for another hundred and fifty entries.

Most of them are addresses

Read down either list and the commonest form is Asar Em X — Osiris in X:

Asar Em Resenet · Asar Em Mehenet · Asar Em Ati · Asar Em Sehtet · Asar Em Netchefet · Asar Em Resu · Asar Em Pe · Asar Em Sau-kheri · Asar Em Baket · Asar Em Sunnu · Asar Em Aper · Asar Em Pet · Asar Em Ater …

These are place-names. Osiris in Pe, Osiris in Sunnu, Osiris in heaven, Osiris in Re-stau. The chapter is closer to a gazetteer than a theology — a register of where he is worshipped and what he is called there.

A handful are genuine epithets rather than addresses: Un-nefer ("beautiful being"), Neb-er-tcher ("lord to the uttermost limit"), Neb-ankh ("lord of life"), Neb-tchetta ("lord of eternity"), Heq-tchetta ("ruler of eternity"), Nub-heh. And two are compounds with other gods: Asar Ptah-neb-Ankh and Asar Sekri — Osiris-Ptah and Osiris-Sokar.

And then, about two thirds through, it stops being Osiris

This is the finding, and it changes how the list should be used.

The Saite recension runs Asar X · Asar X · Asar X for roughly a hundred entries, and then the formula drops away and the list becomes a roster of other gods under their own names:

Ap-uat of the south, "power of the two lands" · Ap-uat of the north, "power of heaven" · Ptah · Ra · Seb, prince of the gods · Heru-ur · Heru-khentet-an-maati · Heru-sa-Ast · Amsu (Min) · An-mut-f · Khnemu · Heru-Tehuti · An-her · Anpu · Nut · Ast (Isis) "in all her names" · Shenthit · Heqtit · Net (Neith) · Serqet · Maat · Ahit · the four Meskhenu · Amseth, Hapi, Tua-mut-f, Qebh-sennu-f · the Neteru Qerti · Aarat · and the gods of the Tuat.

Those are not names of Osiris. Ap-uat is the jackal who opens the ways. Neith and Serqet are goddesses with their own cults. The four sons of Horus are the canopic four. The Neteru Qerti are the gods of the caverns, who have their own page.

So the chapter is two things bolted together: a list of Osiris' shrine-names, followed by a list of the gods invoked alongside him. Budge prints them under one heading and does not mark the seam.

Which cuts both ways for anyone using the list as a filter. A census name matching the first section is very probably an epithet. A census name matching the tail is very probably a real and independent god — and treating the whole list as Osiris-epithets would be its own error.

What the corpus found when it checked itself

Both sections were cross-checked against all 601 entries.

Of twenty-five distinctive Asar X epithets, exactly two are in the census:

• neb-ankh — carried as an independent god, **caught and closed

as an Osiris epithet** in an earlier pass.

• sah — but that entry is titled "Orion, and a name of Osiris" and

already names Asar Sah in its alternates. It was never confused.

Of thirty-four names in the tail, eleven are in the census — Ptah, Ra, Heru-ur, Min, An-mut-f, Nut, Isis, Neith, Serqet, Maat, Hapi. All are major deities with proper entries, and none of them is there because of this list.

The exposure is two names, and both were already handled

This was a deliberate check expected to turn up several contaminated entries. It turned up one that had already been caught and one that was never wrong. That is worth as much as a haul would have been: it converts an open worry into a bounded one (C398), and it means the corpus's Osiris-epithet problem is closed rather than merely known about.

One near-miss was corrected on the way: sia is ● full, knows Saa is its Budge-era spelling, and said nothing about Asar Saa standing in both recensions. A caution was added — a hit on "Saa" in Budge could be either — without merging them.

What the list is actually evidence of

Set the two recensions side by side and they document something the individual entries cannot.

Osiris did not spread by conquest of other gods. He spread by accumulating addresses. The Theban list has sixty places and titles; the Saite has a hundred and fifty-eight, and the extra ones are overwhelmingly Asar Em [somewhere]. Nobody was displaced to make room — compare onuris, who lost the title Khenti Amentet to him outright, which is the exception rather than the pattern.

And by the Saite period the chapter has stopped being able to tell the difference between Osiris under a local name and the local gods standing next to him. The seam in the middle of that list is what a national god looks like after thirteen hundred years of absorption: the roster of his names and the roster of his neighbours have run together.

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Primary attestations

Sources

• [budge-1904] — Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II. Public domain, archived. Transcribed lists with hieroglyphs — Budge recording rather than interpreting, which is where he is most dependable. He prints both recensions under one heading and does not mark where the Osiris-names end.

Open threads

• Where exactly is the seam? The transition from Asar X to independent gods happens somewhere around no. 100 of the Saite list and the OCR obscures the boundary. A clean scan would fix the number, and the number matters — it is the difference between an epithet and a god.
• Translate the place-names. Sunnu, Baket, Netchefet, Sau-kheri, Beteshu, Tepu, Shennu… Most are towns, and a map of them would be a map of the Osiris cult at two dates thirteen centuries apart. The best unrealised page in this material.
• What did the Saite list add? Diffing sixty against a hundred and fifty-eight would show exactly which shrines were gained between the New Kingdom and the Ptolemies.
• Asar Ankhti (Theban) vs Asar Ankhi (Saite) — the second name changes by a letter between recensions. Scribal drift, or two different words?
• Shenthit, Heqtit, Ahit, Aarat, Neshmet appear in the tail and are not in the census (C397). Neshmet is the name of Osiris' sacred barque, which makes it another candidate for trap form 7.
• The four Meskhenu — birth-goddesses, four of them, named individually (Aat, Seqebet, Ment(?), Nefert). Not in the census.

Art notes

• Historical plate: none — the source prints columns of hieroglyphs. The hieroglyph columns themselves would reproduce well and would show a reader what a list of 158 names actually looks like.
• New art: a map, not a figure. Two maps of Egypt side by side, one plotting the sixty Theban shrines and one the hundred and fifty-eight Saite ones. That is the argument of this page made visible, and nothing needs inventing to draw it.