The Osiris family tree and the Ennead of Heliopolis

The Osiris family tree of Heliopolis begins before there is any world. In the account of the priests of that city, Atum “is self-created and arises in the shape of an obelisk-like pillar,” the benben, out of a chaotic and watery state.¹ He has no parents, so he stands alone at the top of the chart.

Atum engenders the next generation from his own body. He “spits out a pair of divine beings,” Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, his female counterpart.¹ No mother takes part, so the chart joins each of them to Atum alone. Their son Geb is the god of the earth, and his sister and wife Nut is the goddess of the sky.¹ Egyptian artists showed Shu standing between them and holding the sky away from the earth.¹

Geb and Nut then produced four children, Isis, Osiris, Seth and Nephthys. With Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb and Nut they make the nine gods of the Ennead, which the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts already name.¹ Isis and Osiris in turn produced Horus, the tenth figure that later texts often add.¹

Plutarch tells how the children of Geb and Nut were born. He writes in Greek and calls the parents Cronus and Rhea. The Sun cursed Rhea so that she could bear a child in no month and no year. Hermes, who loved her, won five days from the Moon, and the five days were added to the year.²

A child was born on each day. Osiris came first, and a voice declared “The Lord of All advances to the light.” Arueris, whom the Greeks call Apollo and some call the elder Horus, came on the second day. Typhon came on the third, breaking out through his mother’s side. Isis was born on the fourth day and Nephthys on the fifth.²

The brother that Plutarch names Typhon stands where the Egyptian list of the Ennead has Seth, the third son, husband of Nephthys and enemy of Osiris.^2,1 Plutarch says Isis and Osiris were in love before they were born, and that Nephthys became the wife of Typhon.²

Osiris ruled Egypt and taught its people, then travelled the world. While he was away, Typhon gathered seventy-two conspirators and a queen of Ethiopia named Aso. They made a chest to his measure, shut him inside, sealed it with nails and molten lead and sent it down the Nile to the sea.²

Isis searched for the chest. On the way she learned that Osiris had lain with her sister Nephthys, thinking her to be Isis, and she found their son Anubis and raised him as her guard and attendant.² Plutarch adds later that “Nephthys bore Anubis clandestinely,” after her marriage to Typhon had been barren.³ The chest had come to rest in a heather tree at Byblus, and Isis brought it home.²

Typhon found the body and cut it into fourteen parts. Isis went through the marshes in a boat to gather them, and wherever she found a part she held a funeral, which is why Egypt has many tombs of Osiris.²

Osiris trained his son Horus for battle. Horus defeated Typhon, but Isis let Typhon go. Horus in his anger tore the royal diadem from her head, and Hermes gave her a helmet in the shape of a cow’s head. Typhon was defeated in two more battles.²

Plutarch ends the family with one more child. After his death Osiris consorted with Isis, and she bore Harpocrates, who is not drawn on this Osiris family tree.² The family of the Greek gods, which Plutarch sets beside this one, is drawn on the Greek mythology family tree.