The Myth of Osiris - Prologue. Prologue

In my recent creative writing workshop, we were set the task of telling the exact same story using three different writing techniques. Firstly as a way to get us used to writing using different styles, but secondly to see how different a story reads and sounds when written using different formats.

I chose perhaps the most well known and most elaborate Ancient Egyptian myth, “The Osiris Myth”. I enjoy religious mythologies, and have studied Egyptology and Classical Studies for a number of years. “The Osiris Myth” is told first in prose, then as a poem and lastly as a play.

There are several different versions of the story of the murder of Osiris around, some containing details not found in other versions and some tell the story slightly differently from other versions. This is largely owing to the fact that no complete text has ever been found in Egyptian hieroglyphics or any other writing; the story has been assembled from multiple sources and multiple languages.

Typically, the version of the story that told is that documented by the Greek writer Plutarch in De Iside et Osiride, which was written in the first century AD. However, it appears as though even that is not the full story, since fragments of the story have been found written in hieroglyphics which tell parts of the story that do not feature in Plutarch’s telling.

Plutarch’s version also uses the Ancient Greek renderings of the names of the gods [Harpocrates instead of Horus (for the son of Osiris and Isis), Silene instead of Khonsu, Typhon instead of Seth and so on]; I have used the traditional Egyptian names for the gods and goddesses.