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Egyptian Mythology
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The Great Hymn to Osiris

When

c. 1400 BCE, Eighteenth Dynasty

Where it survives

The stela of Amenmose, now in the Louvre

What it is

The fullest Egyptian account of the Osiris story, covering his kingship, his death, the search by Isis, the conception of Horus and the vindication of the heir. Still praise rather than narrative, but it gives the sequence.

Read it with this in mind

It is a hymn, so it is allusive where a reader wants detail, and it says nothing about how Osiris died. That silence is deliberate and consistent across Egyptian sources: the murder is referred to constantly and described almost never.

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