Hey everyone,

Welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to be discussing the resurrection of Osiris.The myth of Horus and Set vying for the Kingship is both one of the best known and most important in all of the ancient Egyptian mythos.

The impetus for this story is that age-old dynamic in which one person has power and another person, coveting that power, is driven to evil action. In this iteration, Osiris is king of all, both mortal and immortal alike. He imparts on mankind the gifts of civilization and agriculture, and no one, with the exclusion of Set, wished anything but for his reign to be long and prosperous. Admittedly, there is a range of reasons that supposedly drove Set to murder his brother. One has Osiris kick Set, and yet another has Osiris bed Nephthys, Set's wife. But in this video, we're just going to stick to the version of Set being that archetypal, power-hungry, tired-of-always-being-number-two person

Osiris inherited his lofty position from impeccable lineage. Ra, the son god, was the original king, but as he grew older, he abdicated his throne, ascended to the heavens, and began his eternal, cyclical journey across the stars and then through the underworld. His emergence from the underworld brought the dawn, and night fell when he departed the mortal plain. His first successor was his son, Shu, the personification of air, who, in turn was succeeded by his son, Geb, the personification of the earth, who was, then, succeeded by one of his sons, Osiris. Geb's other son was Set, and Geb's two daughters were Isis and Nephthys, the consorts of Osiris and Set, making two brother-sister pairs.

So Osiris was king, and Set, his younger brother, was jealous of him, coveting the kingship. Set used all his guile and cunning to supplant his brother and take the throne for himself. There are many accounts that detail how exactly Set killed Osiris. The most popular version has him lock Osiris in a chest, which is then cast into the nile. Another version has Set Transform himself into a bull and trample Osiris into the ground.

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