Osiris
| Religion in NetHack |
|---|
In SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM, and Hack'EM, Osiris is the neutral god of the Undead Slayer pantheon.
Origin
Osiris was the ancient Egyptian god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown, and holding a symbolic crook and flail. Osiris was one of the first deities to be associated with the mummy wrapping: When his brother Set cut him up into pieces after killing him, Osiris' wife, Isis, and her sister Nephthys searched all over Egypt to find each part of him. She collected all but one and then wrapped his body up, enabling him to return to life.
Osiris was the judge and lord of the dead and the underworld, and his cult spread after the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC) to the point that the kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death: as Osiris rose from the dead, they would unite with him and inherit eternal life through imitative magic. Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles in nature, in particular the sprouting of vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile River, as well as the heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year.
