Page 76 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

by means of hymns and songs accompanied by musical instruments.
While he was gone, however, he was plotted against by seventy-two
members of his court, led by his brother-in-law Set. On his return the
conspirators invited him to a banquet where a splendid coffer of wood
and gold was offered as a prize to any guest who could fit into it exactly.
Osiris did not know that the coffer had been constructed precisely to his
body measurements. As a result, when the assembled guests tried one by
one to get into it they failed. Osiris lay down comfortably inside. Before
he had time to get out the conspirators rushed forward, nailed the lid
tightly closed and sealed even the cracks with molten lead so that there
would be no air. The coffer was then thrown into the Nile. It had been
intended that it should sink, but it floated rapidly away, drifting for a
considerable distance until it reached the sea coast.
At this point the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, intervened. Using all the
great magic for which she was renowned, she found the coffer and
concealed it in a secret place. However, her evil brother Set, out hunting
in the marshes, discovered the coffer, opened it and, in a mad fury, cut
the royal corpse into fourteen pieces which he scattered throughout the
land.
Once more Isis set off to save her husband. She made a small boat of
papyrus reeds, coated with pitch, and embarked on the Nile in search of
the remains. When she had found them she worked powerful spells to
reunite the dismembered parts of the body so that it resumed its old
form. Thereafter, in an intact and perfect state, Osiris went through a
process of stellar rebirth to become god of the dead and king of the
underworld—from which place, legend had it, he occasionally returned to
earth in the guise of a mortal man.
5
Although there are huge differences between the traditions it is bizarre
that Osiris in Egypt and Thunupa-Viracocha in South America should have
had all of the following points in common:

• both were great civilizers;
• both were conspired against;
• both were struck down;
• both were sealed inside a container or vessel of some kind;
• both were then cast into water;
• both drifted away on a river;
• both eventually reached the sea.
Are such parallels to be dismissed as coincidences? or could there be
some underlying connection?

5 From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, p. 180.

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