City-Myth Correspondences

[sdi]

There is a lot of overlap between the Mysteries and the Epic Cycle:

#	Epic Cycle	Horos	Orestes
1	Kupria	Seth holds a feast.	The wedding of Peleus and Thetis.
2	Kupria	Seth kills Osiris, seals him in a box, and drops the box in the Nile.	The judgement of Paris.
3	Kupria	The box lands at Bublos. A heather stalk grows around the box. Malkander takes the heather stalk into his house.	The rape of Helene.
4	Kupria	Isis wanders. Nephthus exposes Anoubis. Isis finds Anoubis and takes him as her attendant.	Gathering of the armies. Agamemnon sacrifices Iphegenia, but Artemis replaces her with a deer, makes her immortal, and takes her as her attendant.
5		Isis tracks Osiris to Bublos, sits by a spring, and weeps. Astarte invites her into her house.	[cf. 10]
6	Kupria	Isis kills Astarte's youngest son.	Failed first war on Troia. Troilos dies.
7	Ilias	Isis takes Diktus as her attendant.	Akhilleus commits to dying at Troia.
8		Isis recovers Osiris.	[cf. 11]
9	Aithopis	Isis kills Diktus for his curiosity.	Paris kills Akhilleus.
10	Ilias Mikra	[cf. 5]	Troian horse.
11	Iliou Persis	[cf. 8]	Troia sacked. Menelaus recovers Helene.
12	Nostoi	Isis returns to Egypt. Seth divides Osiris into fourteen pieces. A fish eats the penis. Isis recovers the pieces and reassembles Osiris.	The Akhaians are scattered but eventually return home, except Aias (who dies at sea), Menelaus and Odusseus (who are lost at sea), and Agamemnon (who is assassinated by Aigisthos and Klutaimnestra).
13	Odusseia	Isis draws Osiris's essence from his corpse and gives birth to Horos. When Horos grows up, Osiris trains him from Duat. Horos beheads Isis, is judged by the gods, defeats Seth, and becomes king.	Orestes flees into exile. When Orestes grows up, the Puthia tells him to avenge his father. Orestes kills Aigisthos and Klutaimnestra, is chased by the Erinues, is judged by Athena, and becomes king.

(I have omitted the Telegoneia as it concerns Odusseus and not Orestes, who is a different hero.)

If my associations are correct, then Osiris=Helene, Isis=the Akhaian host (e.g. those oathbound to Menelaus, notably not including Akhilleus who was too young to woo Helene), Seth=Eris, Anoubis=Iphegenia, Bublos=Troia, Astarte's unnamed son=Troilos (and the first Troian war generally), Diktus=Akhilleus (and the second Troian war generally), Horos=Orestes, Osiris as a jackal=the Puthia, Seth as a red bull=Aigisthos, the council of gods=the Athenian jury.

The only difficulty, really, is that it is Osiris that is divided up upon his return to Egypt and not Isis, whereas it is the Akhaians who are divided up on their return to Akhaia (and not Helene). This is a really significant symbolic difference and is necessary for the two narratives to work. From the pattern in the myth, Agamemnon should presumably have to be Osiris's penis, which I guess shouldn't be too surprising, since anybody who's read the Iliad can tell you he's a dick.

Despite that problem, though, the stories are so close there must be something to it. I still don't have a convincing thesis for what's going on here; I'm presently wondering if the version of the Horos-myth we have is, in fact, late and Syrian (presumably the oldest versions of the Horos-myth don't involve Bublos)—in which case it could have been influenced from both sides of the Mediterranean. I'm going to need to go over the Pyramid Texts with more care, I think...