thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
time. But on the nineteenth at night they go down to the sea, and the Dressers and priests bring out the sacred coffer containing a little golden ark, into which they take and pour water from the river, and a shout is raised by the assistants, as though Osiris had been found: next, they knead garden earth with this water, and mingling therewith frankincense and precious spices, they model a little image in the shape of the Moon, and this they robe and decorate, expressing thereby that they hold these deities to be the Principles of Earth and Water.XL. But when Isis has recovered Osiris, and is making Horus grow, strengthened by means of exhalations clouds and mists, Typhon has been conquered indeed, but not destroyed, because the goddess of the Earth hath not suffered the Principle opposed to moisture to be entirely exterminated, but she lowered and slackened the same, wishing that the mixture might still continue: inasmuch as it was not possible for the world to be complete if the fiery principle failed and were exterminated, and if all this is not told in so many words, yet one may not reasonably regret the story that Typhon of old conquered the party of Osiris. For Egypt was once sea; for which cause many places in the mines and in the mountains are found to contain shells to the present day; and all springs, and wells, whereof there are many, have their water brackish and bitter; as though being a stale remnant of the former sea which had collected there. But in time, Osiris got the better of Typhon; that is a good season of rains having come on the Nile drove off the sea, and brought to light the flat ground, and filled up the same with its alluvial deposits: a thing that has for it the testimony of our senses: for we see even now that through the Rivers perpetually bringing down fresh mud, and adding on the land, the deep water gradually recedes, and the sea runs back, in consequence of the bottom rising up through the alluvial deposit: and the Pharos which Homer knew as distant a days sail from Egypt, is now a part thereof: not that the island itself has grown larger, or come nearer, but because the sea has retreated through the rivers forming and making the mainland to grow. This however is of the same kind with the theological theories of the Stoics, for they too say that the generative and nutritive spirit is Bacchus; the impulsive and separative, Hercules; the receptive, Ammon; Ceres and Proserpine, that which pervades the earth and her fruits; and Neptune that pervading the sea.XLI. But such as mix with these physical doctrines others derived from astrology and the mathematics, think that Typhon signifies the solar world, and Osiris the Lunar: for that the moon having her light of a fertilizing and more watery nature is favorable to the breeding of animals and the growing of plants: but that the sun is ordained with his unmitigated light to
heat and parch up things that grow up and flourish, and to render the great part of the earth utterly uninhabitable through his blazing, and also to get the better of the Moon herself. For which reason the Egyptians always call Typhon Seth, [This has no connection with the Hebrew name, which means Placed, Settled.] which signifies that which tyrannizes, and which forcibly constrains, and they fable that Hercules resides in the Sun, and travels about with him, but Hermes does the same with the Moon; for the effects of the Moon resemble the actions of reason, and those dictated by wisdom; whereas those of the Sun are like strokes brought to pass through violence and force, and the Stoics say that the Sun is set on fire, and derives his nutriment from the sea, whereas to the Moon the fountain and lacustrine waters send up a sweet and gentle exhalation.XLII. On the seventeenth day of the month took place, as the Egyptians fable, the death of Osiris, on which day the full Moon being completed becomes most conspicuous: on which account the Pythagoreans call that day Antiphraxis, (precaution); and generally abominate that particular number, for sixteen being a square number and eighteen having sides of unequal length which alone of the integral numbers have the peculiarity of possessing external measurements equal to the areas contained by them,* the seventeen intruding hedges off and disjoins them from one another, and distracts the proportion of one to eight, because it is itself cut up into unequal parts. The number of years that some say Osiris lived, others that he reigned, was eight-and-twenty: for just so many are the lights of the moon, and for so many days doth she revolve about her circle. By the wood they cut down at the so-called burials of Osiris, and construct therewith a crescent-shaped coffer, they signify that the Moon when she approaches the Sun, becomes crescent-shaped and hides herself: and the tearing up of Osiris into fourteen parts they interpret of the days during which the luminary wanes after full moon, until the new moon, and the day when she first appears after escaping the brightness of, and passing by the Sun, they style Imperfect Good; for Osiris is a doer of good, and his name signifies many things, but especially, as they say, the power that is active and beneficial; and the other name of Osiris, namely, Ompis means, according to Hermaeus, by interpretation Benefactor.* is applied to Eighteen, because it may be represented by a parallelogram of which the sides are 6 and 6, 3 and 3, alternately: two of these multiplied give the area of the figure, which also is Eighteenthe same comparison of numbers to mathematical figures Plato uses in the beginning of the Theaetetus.XLIII. For they are of opinion that to the lights of the Moon the risings of the Nile bear a certain analogy: for the greatest rising, that about Elephantine, is of eight-and-twenty cubits, the same in number as the lights and measures of her monthly revolutions, the lowest,
around Mendes and Xois, is of six cubits, analogous to her half-quartering; and the mean, that round Memphis, when it is of the regular height, is fourteen cubits, corresponding to the full moon. Apis, they say, is the animated image of Osiris, and he is conceived when a generative light falls strongly from the Moon, and touches a cow that is in heat; for which cause many of the decorations of Apis resemble the appearances of the Moon; for he blackens over his shining parts with dusky robes, because it is on the new moon of the month Phamenath that they hold the festival, called by them the Entrance of Osiris into the Moon; being the commencement of spring. Thus they place the power of Osiris within the Moon, and say that Isis, being cause of his birth is also his consort. On this account they call the Moon the Mother of Saturn, and hold that she is of hermaphrodite nature, for she is filled and impregnated by the Sun, and again she emits and disseminates in the air generative principles: for that she doth not always express the mischief wrought by Typhon; but being after conquered by the birth, and bound thereby, she nevertheless emerges again and fights her way through to Horus: this latter is the universe surrounding the earth, which is not entirely exempt either from generation or destruction.XLIV. Some make an allegory out of the rule of the eclipses, for the Moon is eclipsed at her full, when the Sun holds the station opposite to her when she falls into the shadow of the earth, in the same way as they tell Osiris did into the coffer; and she herself, upon the thirtieth conceals and puts out of sight, yet does not altogether destroy, the Sun, as neither did Isis Typhon. And when Nephthys conceives Anubis, Isis adopts him, for Nephthys signifies what is under the earth and invisible; Isis, what is above ground and visible; and the circle touching these, called the Horizon, and common to both, has been named Anubis, and is figured as a dog; for the dog has the use of his sight both by night and by day; and Anubis appears to have the same office with the Egyptians that Hermes has with the Greeks, being both infernal and celestial. Some, however, think that Anubis signifies Time, wherefore as he brings forth all things out of himself, and conceives all things within himself, he gets the title of Dog. Besides, the votaries of Anubis celebrate a certain mystery, [A passage is lost here, containing a description of this rite, in which it is evident a dog played the principal part.] and in old times the dog enjoyed the highest honors in Egypt. But when Cambyses had slain the apis and cast him out, nothing approached, or tasted of the carcass, except the dog, so he lost his place of the first, and the most honored of all the other animals. And there are some that think he is the shadow of the earth
into which the Moon passes when she is eclipsed, and they call him Typhon.XLV. From all which, it is not unreasonable to conclude that no one singly says what is right, and that all collectively do so; for it is neither drought, norwind, nor the sea, nor darkness, but generally every hurtful and mischievous part that earth contains, which belongs to Typhon. For we must not place the principles of the all in lifeless bodies, as do Democritus and Epicurus: nor yet assume as modeller of uncreated matter, one Reason and one Providence, like the Stoics, that prevails over and subdues all things: for it is impossible that anything at all, whether bad or good, should exist, where God is cause of nothing. For the harmony of the universe is reciprocal, like that of a lyre or bow, according to Heraclitus, and according to Euripides:Evil and good cannot occur apart;There is a mixture to make all go well.Consequently this is a most ancient notion, that comes down from theologians and lawgivers to poets and philosophers, which has its origin unattributed, but the belief therein strong and not to be effaced, not consisting in words and reports, but in ceremonies and sacrifices, of Barbarians and Greeks alike, and diffused in many places, that neither is the Universe without mind, without reason, and without guidance, and tossed about at random, nor yet is there One Reason that rules and directs all things as it were, by a rudder and by guiding reins, [The Epicurean and Stoic theories of the government of the universe, as opposed to the Neo-Platonic.] but that there are many such directors, and made up out of good and bad; or rather, to speak generally, inasmuch as Nature produces nothing unmixed here below, it is not one Dispenser that like a retail dealer mixes together things for us out of two vessels and distributes the same, [Alluding to the Homeric picture of Jove, and his two vases of good and evil.] but it is from two opposite Principles and two antagonistic Powers; the one guiding us to the right hand and along the straight road, the other upsetting and rebuffing us, that Life becomes of a mixed nature; and also the Universe (if not the whole, yet that which surrounds Earth, and lies below the Moon), is made inconsistent with itself, and variable and susceptible of frequent changes. For if nothing can happen without cause, and good cannot furnish cause for evil, it follows that the nature of Evil, as of Good, must have an origin and principle of its own.XLVI. And this is the opinion of most men, and those the wisest, for they believe, some that there are Two Gods, as it were of opposite tradesone the creator of good, the other of bad things; others call the better one God, the other Daemon, as did Zoroaster the Magian, who, they record, lived 5,000 years before the Trojan War. He therefore calls the former Oromazes, the latter Arimanios; and furthermore explains that of all the objects of sense, the
one most resembles Light, the other Darkness, and Ignorance; and that Mithras is between the two, for which reason the Persians call Mithras the Mediator, and he [Zoroaster] taught them to offer sacrifice of vows and thanksgiving to the one, of deprecation and mourning to the other. For they bruise a certain herb called omoine in a mortar and invoke Hades and Darkness, and mixing it with the blood of a wolf they have sacrificed, they carry away and throw it into a place where the Sun never comes, for of plants they believe some to belong to the good God, others to the evil Daemon; and similarly of animals, dogs, birds, and land hedgehogs belong to the Good, but to the Bad One water rats, for which reason they hold happy men that have killed the greatest number of such things.XLVII. They too, nevertheless, tell many fabulous stories concerning their godsfor example, the following: that Oromazes sprang out of the purest Light, but Arimanios out of Darkness; they wage war upon each other. Oromazes created six gods, the first of Goodwill, the second of Truth, the third of Order, of the rest one of Wisdom, one of Wealth, one of Pleasure in things beautiful. [The same notion is expressed in the Jewish Sephiroth.] The other God created, as it were, opponents to these deities, equal in number. Then Oromazes, having augmented himself threefold, severed from the Sun as much space as the Sun is distant from Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars; and one star he appointed before all for guard and look out, namely Sirius. And having created four and-twenty other gods, he shut them up in an egg; but those made by Arimanios, being as many as they, pierced the egg that had been laid, and so the bad things were mixed up with the good. But a time appointed by fate is coming, in which Arimanios having brought on famine and pestilence must needs be destroyed by the same and utterly vanish; when the earth becoming plain and level there shall be one life and one government of men, all happy and of one language. Theopompus says that, according to the Magi, one of the Gods shall conquer, the other be conquered, alternately for 3,000 years; for another 3,000 years they shall fight, war, and undo one the works of the other; but in the end Hades shall fail, and men shall be happy, neither requiring food nor constructing shelter: whilst the God who hath contrived all this is quiet and resting himself for a time, for that God may well slumber, but not long, like as a man reposing for a moderate space. The religious system of the Magi is of the aforesaid character.XLVIII. The Chaldeans hold that the gods belong to the planets, of whom two they call doers of good, two makers of evil; the other three they describe as intermediate and neutral. But the notions of the Greeks are, I suppose, plain enough to every one, for they make the good part that
of the Olympian Jove, that of the hostile deity they give to Hades; and they fable that Harmony was the child of Venus and Mars, of whom the one is cruel and quarrelsome, the other gentle, and presiding over birth. Consider too the philosophers that side with them, for Heraclitus directly calls Mars, father, lord, and ruler of all things; and says that Homer, when he prays thatPerish Contention, both from gods and men,forgets that he is cursing the origin of all things, inasmuch as they derive their origin from contention and antipathy, and the Sun will not overpass his appointed limits, otherwise:The avenging tongue of Law would find him out,and Empedocles calls the Beneficent Principle Love and Friendship, and frequently too, Harmony, with glowing face, but the Evil Principle he stylesContentiousness accurst, and blood-stained War.Now the Pythagoreans characterize these Principles by several names: the Good One, as the One, the Definite, the Abiding, the Straight, the Exceeding, the Square, the Equal, the Right-handed, the Bright; the Bad One as the Two, the Indefinite, the Unstable, the Crooked, the Sufficient, the Unequally-sided (parallelogram), the Unequal, the Left-handed, the Darkinasmuch as these are supposed the final causes of existenceAnaxagoras defines them as Mind, and the Infinite; Aristotle, the one as Form, the other as Deprival. Plato, as it were mystifying and veiling the matter, denominates in many places one of the opposing Principles as The Same; the second, as The Other; but in his Laws, being now grown older, he no longer speaks in riddles and symbolically, but names them directly. Not by one soul, says he, was the universe set in motion, but by several, perhaps, at all events, by not less than Two; whereof the one is beneficent, the other antagonistic to this, and the creator of opposite effects: and there is room for a Third Principle to exist, one intermediate between the Two, which is neither destitute of soul, nor of reason, nor of impulse from within (as some suppose), but subordinate to those Two Principles, ever seeking after the Better One, and desiring and following after it, as the part of the treatise which follows will show, for he adopts into this system chiefly the religious notions of the Egyptians.XLIX. For the origin and constitution of this world are mixed, being formed out of opposite principlesnot, however, of equal force with each other, but the superiority belonging to the Better One. But it is impossible that the Bad One should be entirely destroyed, as it is largely implanted in the body, largely in the soul of the all, and always contending against the Better One. Now in the soul, Mind, and Reason, the best masters and guides, are Osiris; but in Earth and Water, Winds and Stars, that which is ordered, permanent, and healthy, in seasons, temperament, and revolutions, are the issue ofOsiris, and the image of him made visible. But Typhon is the part of the soul that is subject to the passions, Titan-like, unreasonable, and impulsive; but of the body (he is) the part that is unsound,
subject to disease, and liable to disturbance by bad seasons and inclement weather, by the concealments of the Sun, and the disappearances of the Moonsuch as deviations from its course, vanishings, and whirlwinds. And the name Seth, by which they call Typhon, proves this; for it signifies That which tyrannizes and constrains by force, it likewise signifies a return, and again an overleaping. Bebaeon, again, some say, was one of the companions of Typhon, whilst Manethos asserts that Typhon was called Bebon, and that the name signifies a holding back, and hindrance,implying that the power of Typhon stands in the way of things going on regularly and towards their proper end.L. For which reason, they give him for attribute the most stupid of all tame animals, namely, the ass; and of the wild, the most savage, namely, thecrocodile and the hippopotamus. With respect to the ass we have already explained the meaning, but at Hermopolis they show as a figure of Typhon a hippopotamus, upon which stands a hawk fighting with a serpent; by the hippopotamus signifying Typhon, by the hawk power and virtue, [or sovereignty,] which Typhon frequently gains by force, and never ceases to be disturbed by his own wickedness, and to disturb others; for which cause when they sacrifice on the 7th of the month Sybi (which they call The Coming of Isis out of Phoenicia) they stamp upon the consecrated cakes the figure of a hippopotamus bound. In the city Apollinopolis, it is the custom that every one must by all means eat a bit of crocodile [once a year]. And on one day they catch and kill as many crocodiles as they can, and lay them out in front of the temple, saying that Typhon ran away from Horus changing himself into a crocodile,thus making out all animals, plants, and feelings, that are noxious and bad, to be the productive parts and instigations of Typhon.LI. Osiris, on the contrary, they represent by an eye and a sceptre, whereof the one signifies foresight, the other power; in the same way as Homer by calling Jupiter, who governs and reigns over all, by the titles Supreme and Knowing, probably indicates by the Supreme his power, by the Knowing his good counsel and intelligence. They frequently represent this god by the figure of a hawk, for that bird excels all in acuteness of sight and swiftness of flying; and by nature digests its food most rapidly of all. The bird is also said, when corpses are lying about unburied, to hover over them, and drop earth upon their eyes. And when in order to drink it descends upon the river, it sets its wings upright, and having drank bends them back again; by which it is evident that it protects itself, and escapes from the crocodile, for if it should be swallowed up, the wing remains as it stood, fixed upright. [In the crocodiles gullet, and so prevents his gulping down the bird.] In many places also, they exhibit a statue of Osiris in the human shape, erecting the genitals,
on account of his generative and nutritive character, whilst the flame-colored robe investing his images, is [put] because they regard the Sun as the body of the Good Principle, the visible form of the Intelligible Being. Hence we ought to pay no attention to such as assign to Typhon the sphere of the Sunhe that has nothing bright, nor salutary, neither order, nor power of generating, nor motion regulated by measure and reason; but all the opposite qualities belong to him. For drought which destroys many things, both of animals and vegetables, must not be put down as the effect of the Sun, but of the winds and waters in earth and air not being seasonably mingled together, when the Principle of disorderly and unregulated force has got loose and has extinguished the exhalations.LII. In the sacred hymns to Osiris they invoke Him that is carried within the arms of the Sun, and on the 30th day of the month Emphi they celebrate the Birthday of the Eyes of Horus, when the Sun and the Moon are come into one straight line, inasmuch as they consider not the Moon alone, but the Sun also as the eye and the light of Horus. And on the 8th day from the end of the month Phaophi they celebrate that of The Suns walking-stick, after the autumnal equinox, signifying that he requires as it were a support, and strengthening, as he grows weak both in heat and light, and moves away from us, bending down, and crooked. And again upon the eve of the winter solstice they carry the Cow seven times around the temple; and this circular procession is named the Seeking for Osiris, as though the goddess were longing for the winter rays from the Sun; and they walk round so many times, because he completes his journey from the winter solstice to the summer solstice in the seventh month. And on the 4th day from the beginning of the month it is said that Horus, son of Isis, was the first that offered sacrifice, as it is written in what are entitled The Birthdays of Horus, and in fact they on each day burn incense to the Sun of three different sorts, namely, resin at his rising, myrrh at noontide, that which is called kyphi, at his setting, of which the signification that each bears I will explain further on; and by means of all these they believe they propitiate and worship the Sun. And what need is there to bring together many things to the same effect? There are some that assert point-blank that Osiris is the Sun, and is named Sirius by the Greeks (for amongst the Egyptians the prefixing of the article has caused the name to be mistaken [The Greeks mistaking for . Egyptians in text must be a slip of the scribe.]), and make out Isis to be no other than the Moon; and one particular of her images, those figured with horns, are (say they) imitations of the crescent; whilst by those covered with black they