Page 381 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

disposal, he avoids the use of force wherever possible.
23
We saw in Chapter Sixteen that Quetzalcoatl, the god-king of the
Mexicans, was believed to have departed from Central America by sea,
sailing away on a raft of serpents. It is therefore hard to avoid a sense of
déjà vu when we read in the Egyptian Book of the Dead that the abode of
Osiris also ‘rested on water’ and had walls made of ‘living serpents’. At
24
the very least, the convergence of symbolism linking these two gods and
two far-flung regions is striking.
There are other obvious parallels as well.
The central details of the story of Osiris have been recounted in earlier
chapters and we need not go over them again. The reader will not have
forgotten that this god—once again like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha—was
remembered principally as a benefactor of mankind, as a bringer of
enlightenment and as a great civilizing leader. He was credited, for
25
example, with having abolished cannibalism and was said to have
introduced the Egyptians to agriculture—in particular to the cultivation of
wheat and barley—and to have taught them the art of fashioning
agricultural implements. Since he had an especial liking for fine wines
(the myths do not say where he acquired this taste), he made a point of
‘teaching mankind the culture of the vine, as well as the way to harvest
the grape and to store the wine ...’ In addition to the gifts of good living
26
he brought to his subjects, Osiris helped to wean them ‘from their
miserable and barbarous manners’ by providing them with a code of laws
and inaugurating the cult of the gods in Egypt.
27
When he had set everything in order, he handed over the control of the
kingdom to Isis, quit Egypt for many years, and roamed about the world
with the sole intention, Diodorus Siculus was told,

of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate the
vine and sow wheat and barley; for he supposed that if he made men give up their
savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honours
because of the magnitude of his benefactions ...
28
Osiris travelled first to Ethiopia, where he taught tillage and husbandry to
the primitive hunter-gatherers he encountered. He also undertook a
number of large-scale engineering and hydraulics works: ‘He built canals,
with flood gates and regulators ... he raised the river banks and took
precautions to prevent the Nile from overflowing ...’ Later he made his
29

Ancient Egypt, p. 190; Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt, p. 230.
23 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 2.
24 Chapter CXXV, cited in ibid., volume II, p. 81.
25 See Parts II and III for Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha. A good summary of Osiris’s
civilizing attributes is the New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 16. See also
Diodorus Siculus, pp. 47-9; Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, pp. 1-12.
26 Diodorus Siculus, p. 53.
Ibid.; Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 2.
27
28 Diodorus Siculus, p. 55.
29 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, volume I, p. 11.

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