MASKED GOD, HEADLESS GOD By Dimitri Meeks, CNRS (Universite d’Aix-en-Provence, 1991) Retrieved from http://www.archeonil.fr/revue/AN01-1991-Meeks.pdf Unauthorized Unauthorized translation from the French by Len Warner, New York (N.B. references in parentheses are from the original text; footnotes are unauthorized additions by the translator.) Abstract
An attempt toward a new approach to the funeral mask is proposed, which takes into account different mythical records. Mainly borrowed from the Coffin Texts and from the Book of the Dead, these texts reveal the links existing between the masked dead and the headless Osiris. The missing head of this aspect of the the god, and of the dead alike, refers to invisibility assimilated to the invisibility in visibility period of the moon or of o f the decans. The figures represented on the hypocephalus, an object closely related to the funeral mask, point to an assimilation between the dead, the sun as creator referred to by pantheistic trigrams, the masked god Bes and the Akephalos theos of the GrecoEgyptian magical texts.
The face is, for the Egyptians of antiquity, more than a simple sign of one’s individuality. individuality. It doesn’t simply identify a person, it is rather the very mark of a person’s existence. existence. In a passage in the Coffin Texts a god of primordial times proclaims “I am one of those gods, one of those blessed gods who reside in the light, whom Atum has made of his own flesh…and whose faces he fixed and differentiated so that they might remain with him while he was alone in the Noun.” (1) (1) In this sense, the first companions of the demiurge only began to exist when the latter gave them their faces. A Theban hymn of the New Kingdom also says of the solar demiurge demiurge “ It is you who created their aspect (that of the living beings) thanks to the face, each of them being different from its neighbor.” (2) In an ultimate ultimate sense, the faces faces themselves are the creatures, creatures, the humans, particularly for the Egyptians. (3) By placing a head, a face, on an artifact, one aims to give it a personality, an identity that exceeds that of the simple object (4) and makes it a living being in its own right. Here, as in other civilizations, civilizations, donning a mask mask is a significant act, act, both for gods and men. We will examine the the gods first of all. Herodotus (II, 42) recounts recounts how Heracles (who represents Khonsu) wanted at all costs to see his father Zeus (that is to say, Amon). The latter, when he could no longer avoid the meeting, skinned skinned a ram, put on its fleece, and held the animal’s head in front of his face so that he would not be revealed. revealed. In doing so, Zeus reveals as much as he hides an aspect of his nature (Bleeker 1963). 1963). It is in the same way that certain hieroglyphics of the Coffin Texts or the undifferentiated symbol that that is generally used to designate the gods
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(Gardiner A 40) is completed by a bird’s head emerging from the figure’s forehead 1, and which corresponds to the most well-known aspect of the divinity in question. (5) The bird’s head in this case plays a similar role to the ram’s head, for Amon the god reveals himself in the image of the bird; however, the ram’s head conceals the totality of the being represented by the god seated within human form. The same idea is also found in the legend of the beheading beheading of Isis. (6) In some of the tales of the serial combats and challenges between Seth and Horus, Isis shows more indulgence towards towards Seth than her own son, Horus, and the latter decapitates her in an outburst of fury. Instead of losing her her life, the goddess goddess transforms herself into a headless statue made of flint. Her personality can no longer be recognized recognized in the figure of the statue, to the point that Re-Herakhty, upon seeing it, asks “ Who is this newcomer who has no head? ” It becomes necessary necessary for Thoth to replace the missing missing piece with a cow’s head so that the goddess once again acquires an identity that is recognizable recognizable by all; she then becomes the bucephalous Isis of Aphroditopolis. (7) This narrative reproduces reproduces a pattern that we will find again and again, usually in the form of brief allusions, in a series series of religious or magical magical texts. As a result of a generally disastrous event, one or more divine entities lose their heads, retake possession of them, and accede to a new stage of their existence by modifying or supplementing their identity. identity. The analysis of these texts reveals other constants. One myth, of which we have retained a few fragments (8) and to which the episode of the decapitated Isis could be connected, transports us also back to the period when Seth and Horus disputed over who would inherit the power and leadership of the late Osiris. The whole community community of the gods was agitated with violent quarrels, quarrels, to which a judgment judgment of the court of the gods would put an end. end. In the Ritual to Abolish Evil, a figure identified as the demiurge proclaims “ I have calmed the tumult in Heliopolis after the judgment, I have restored heads to those who no longer had them, I have ended the mourning in this country.” (9) The dramatic papyrus of the Ramesseum (10), (10), for its part, associates the same event with the introduction of offerings of a particular type which are found in the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, a ritual that makes it possible to awaken life in mummies as well as statues, funerary or not, and the bas-reliefs of temples. Judgment is the lynchpin lynchpin here, the pivotal element. element. It is at the end of a process process of judgment that the gods recover their lost heads; the event is assimilated at the end of a period of mourning and provokes the institution of a new type of offering particularly linked linked to the rites that revitalize them. There is, in fact, a constant parallelism between the events which enable the reconciled reconciled gods to accede to a new identity, the one no doubt that will henceforth be associated with them in human iconography (11), and the funerary rites intended intended to have the same effect on the mundane deceased. deceased. The entirety of this is celebrated by the offerings offerings in which one 1 Possibly a
reference to the headdresses headdresses worn by figures of the gods in some depictions, such as the goose headdress worn by Geb and the vulture headdress headdress worn by goddesses such as Nekhebet.
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decapitates a goat and a goose, a sacrifice which takes on all of the symbolic force of the myths previously described. (12) This perfect correspondence between mythical events and the process by which death is transformed is already clearly expressed in the chapter of the Coffin Texts entitled “to restore the head to a man in the necropolis”. necropolis”. (13) The deceased states “My head was reattached by Chou, my neck was fixed by Tefnut on that day when the heads of the gods were reattached to them. My eyes were restored to me so that I could see through them…Doun-aouy hid my two children (Chou and Tefnut), stretching out his arms over me to undo the mutilation that Seth inflicted on me, to hide what he did to me…I tied back my hair in Heliopolis on the day of the end of mourning.” All the themes previously discussed are present and one notices, in the formulation of the Coffin Text, several sequences that are reprised in the Ritual to Abolish Evil referenced above. above. It is noted that in the process of reconstitution, the replacement of the head plays plays an essential role. It is, in fact, thanks to this operation operation that the deceased can breathe again and return to life. “ Greetings to you, perfect sovereign that raises the head of Osiris…place my head on my neck and reconnect my life to my throat.” (14) The identify conferred by the face is precious to the dead, who must escape “ the one that removes faces. ” (15) The damned, in fact, must have their heads heads definitively cut off and therefore to avoid a mistake in the afterlife, the justified dead challenge the executioners, saying “You do not have the power to bring my face (equivalent to ‘my head’) to he who slashes the necks of the blessed ones in his abbatoir .” .” (16) It is important to note that these formulae are most often inscribed on the sarcophagus near the head of the mummy and are found to have excerpts from the Ritual of the Opening Opening of the Mouth. (17) Several of these formulae formulae are the prototypes for specific chapters of the Book of the Dead that are associated with the head of the deceased and and the funerary mask which reveals it. The latter, more than a face or a surrogate plaque that is placed over the face, is truly a complete head. Its history is practically identical with that of the Egyptian religion as a whole; from the creation of molds of the face in the Old Kingdom, carried out at the same time as mummification, through the portraits of Fayoum, to the miniature plaster masks of Abydos or Mirgissa, all met the same needs (George, 1981; Wildun, 1990). The beginning of Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead is devoted to this essential element of funerary ritual and ornamentation and reveals its dual purpose. The text, first of all, enumerates each part of the face and head by identifying it with a particular deity. With these correspondences, correspondences, the deceased acquires the appearance of a god. This transfiguration transfiguration is emphasized by the material or colors most frequently used to prepare funerary funerary masks. The face is painted an ochre yellow or gold leafed while the rest of the head is a deep blue. Now we know that the gods of Egypt have golden flesh and hair of lapis lazuli. By changing the face, the funerary mask imparts a new identity to the dead.
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The other function of this ‘beautiful face’ according to the Book of the Dead is to be “gifted with sight” in order to discern the best paths that crisscross the underworld and thus escape its traps. traps. A formula of the Coffin Texts Texts that had to be inscribed “inside the face” of the deceased, in fact within the sarcophagus in proximity to the head, already indicated “ Once your face is relaxed, how mysterious is that which you perceive while it (the face) looks here and there.” (19) Through the funerary funerary mask, the dead person acquires a new vision of things; that which is invisible to ordinary mortals becomes perceptible to them. Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead, besides being actually inscribed on the funerary mask or the head of the sarcophagus, is accompanied on occasion by Chapter 166 dedicated to the headrest, magical formulae whose purpose is to restore the head forever to the dead after it had been cut off, as had previously been done for Horus, according according to the text. On the sarcophagus sarcophagus of Tutankhamen, for example, these two chapters cover the exterior of the head. (20) The mask thus appears to function as a new head that the deceased receives at the end of the judgment pronounced by by the judges of the underworld. Nevertheless, the parallel between the fate of the deceased and that of the gods, if it is to serve as a mythological argument to explain the role of the funerary mask, does not fail to equally evoke the assimilation assimilation of the deceased to Osiris. It will be remembered that Osiris was dismembered dismembered and the pieces of his body scattered. Isis, his wife, went to look for them, gathered them together, and restored the body of her late husband. To find the head of the god and to restore it to its place was evidently indispensable. indispensable. It is for this reason that the deceased implore the ‘sovereign of faces’ to give a man’s face to Busiris (Osiris) and demand of him “ Give me my face! I am Osiris, I have arrived on the island of the flame” (the (the sojourn of the blessed ones). (21) The funerary mask, which the Book of the Dead also calls “the head which conceals” (George, 1981; Wildung, 1990), 1990), is also used to dissipate the mutilations inflicted by Seth on the corpse of his brother, brother, Osiris. A magic formula intended intended to cure headaches (22) (22) proceeds in the same fashion as the funerary texts, whose imposition will hide and dispel dispel the pain. Each of these parts is also identified with a god that allows the patient to acquire an increased perception perception of his environment, environment, to discern and dominate the forces that threaten him. However, the mummy of Osiris seems to have undergone a treatment, which at least in appearance, appearance, departs from the schemes which have just been described. described. The ritual of Khoiak (23) teaches us that the sarcophagus of the god contained only a headless mummy, the head being enclosed, separately from the body, in a reliquary of the Abydenian Abydenian type and placed in front of the sarcophagus. The text is evidently a later document; it is known that the reliquary of Abydos represented the god in its totality and was not supposed to contain the head alone until after the New Kingdom. (24) Yet, step by step, the tradition of an acephalous (headless) (headless) Osiris seems to be quite ancient. On certain phylacteries phylacteries dating from the Kushite epoch (25), the deceased, in order to escape the misdeeds of the demons who attack
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bodies resting in their graves, pretend to identify themselves with “the corpse without a head, the faceless mummy,” making this aspect of Osiris a specific divine entity. The relative antiquity of this deity is confirmed by a small group of mummiform statuettes without heads, heads, all dating from the New New Kingdom. (26) (26) Only one of them is inscribed. It carries Chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead, which is generally found on shabtis, but with a crudely appended appended phrase that specifies tha th at the statuette represents “the one with the powerful face in the Mansion of the Phoenix.” (27) This mansion was a place near to or identical to Diospolis Parva 2. Certain traditions confirm that it was in this city that the head of Osiris was preserv preserved. The procession of Dendara’s Osirian relics, in the note devoted to this city, states “I bring your divine head. Put it on the top (of your your body) so that you may become as you were born in the world that came before.” (29) The restitution of the head head explicitly refers refers to a rebirth. The choice of the place itself itself is not fortuitous – the province province where Diospolis is located has a fetish, Bat , which is specifically a divine face and the face of Osiris seems to be its counterpart. (30) It is remarkable that the acephalous statuette refers to a place that preserves preserves and venerates that which it lacks the most. This also appears somewhat paradoxical, paradoxical, since the religious texts indicate that being deprived of one’s head is associated with the impossibility of rebirth and to be condemned condemned to eternal death. (31) We have seen, however, that the Book of the Dead gives t he funerary mask the name of the “head that hides.” On the basis of this name, one may reconcile the apparent apparent paradox by realizing that the deity, as well as the deceased, are not in fact deprived of their heads, but thanks to the funerary mask, they are rendered invisible and unrecognizable unrecognizable and therefore are able to escape their enemies. Another magical text from the New Kingdom allows further progress in this direction. It is a list of the types of deaths deaths with which the gods may threaten threaten humans, the symptoms that announce them, and the methods by which they can be remedied. remedied. (32) For each of the gods the physical symptoms mirror, by mimetism, certain characteristics characteristics peculiar to the deity from which they emanate. The one who is promised an Osirian-type death is plunged “into total unconsciousness like a corpse, but his legs and hands are agitated while while the head rests immobile.” Death thus advances through the head. To remedy this, it is necessary to draw (among other things) a headless figure and and a new moon. The latter is represented, represented, for the Egyptians, by a thin crescent as it appears on the first day after the period of the moon’s invisibility. A subtle connection is thus established between between the headless figure, in its context as an aspect of Osiris, and the moment at which the invisibility 2 Diospolis
Parva was located located at the contemporary contemporary city of Hu, Egypt. The name translates as “Little Zeus-City” Zeus-City” from the Ptolemaic times. Diospolis Parva was the center of the cult of the goddess Bat, a cow goddess represented by a human face with bovine additions that was subsumed into Hathor by the time of the Middle Kingdom (Wikipedia, “Bat (goddess)”, retrieved 30 May 2017).
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of the moon ceases. A later text extends this analysis, specifically specifically an astronomical treatise which describes, describes, among other things, the movement of decans in the sky. It relates how these lose their heads by disappearing in the underworld and find them again when they reappear reappear anew in the east. (33) More importantly, the text associates a period of invisibility of 70 days, during which the decans are acephalous, to the 70 days that the body of the deceased must normally pass in the embalming hall before it can become a completed mummy. Neugebauer and Parker emphasize that this ideal timeframe for embalming had to be suggested to the Egyptians by the behavior of Sirius, prototype of decanal stars. Invisible for 70 days, while sojourning in the underworld, and thus in the embalming hall, the disappearance and reappearance reappearance of this star came to play an essential role in Egyptian religious religious life. The accuracy of this analysis is confirmed by the famous representation representation of the acephalous Osiris of Philae. (35) The god, lying supine, rests at each end on the knees of the goddesses Isis-Hededyt and Sothis (Sirius), who collect in their palms the flood of the Nile, which springs from a knee 3.
3 Or based on the
image (see center of panel), from a location approximately midthigh of the supine, headless headless Osiris. Image retrieved retrieved from www.egyptology.com from Rossellini: Monumenti dell’Egitto e della Nubia, Vol. III (Pisa, 1844), Plate XXIII.
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It is known that the annual rise of the flood is linked, in the calendar, to the reappearance reappearance of Sirius in the sky and that it is actually supposed to emanate from one of the legs of Osiris. Curiously enough, the vignette in the cella of the temple of Hibis, evocative of the Elephantine4 gods from which this flood is supposed to issue forth, represents that leg enclosed in the Abydenian reliquary, reliquary, (37) a reliquary which at that time was supposed to contain only only the head of Osiris. Undoubtedly the the leg evokes the acephalous body which, in Philae, is called ‘the legs,’ (38) the reason for which this mutilated leg is closely associated with the mutilated moon, hence invisible, and the lunar divinities divinities Khonsu and Thoth. (39) (39) For the rest, it is as though by showing the Abydenian Abydenian mask, one desired to evoke the invisible part which is yet mysteriously present, a pledge of an imminent resurrection and a veritable engine of the flood. A text of the temple of Edfou devoted to the acephalous Osiris of Diospolis, described above, has it say to Nephthys "I glorify your mummy as Kheresket and your head as Anuket.” (40) This text therefore places the head of the god, the principal relic of the city, in the sphere of Anuket, Elephantine goddess, goddess, and at the place of the rising of the waters. (41) In all the cases which have just been examined, the acephalous aspect of Osiris is directly related to the period of invisibility of an astral body: the moon, Sirius, the sun, and as we shall see later, more specifically at the precise moment that this invisibility will end and the astral body in question will begin a new cycle, manifesting its own rebirth rebirth as well as that of the god. god. In the same way, the human human being, in dying, enters a period of invisibility that corresponds to the time necessary for the mummification of the body. The laying of the funerary mask on the mummy is the final phase of this process (42). This placement, which is accompanied by the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, brings to it a new life, and confers on it its definitive identity identity while hiding the insults caused by death death (43). A funerary mask from the beginning of the first century of our era bears on the top of the head a demotic inscription unique in its kind (44) which still emphasizes the ties of this adornment with the end of the mummification process and rebirth. It is said that the funeral of its owner was conducted on the 25th Khoiak and on the 26th in the morning. Now these two days are key dates in the Osirian and Sokarian ceremonies, whose timetable tends to be confused from the New Kingdom. Kingdom. They correspond to the moment when the mummy of the god having been completed, the god is reborn like the sun to a new life. It is found that a funeral text, also a later document (46), associates the offerings of the 25 and 26 Khoiak with the town of Hardai, of which we shall see also housed the head of Osiris (47).
4 Elephantine
is an island in the Nile near Aswan.
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Later versions of the Book of the Dead, as well as the funerary ritual known as the Second Book of Breathing, end with a chapter that marks the final stage by the deposit, under under the mummy's head, of a particular particular object: the hypocephalus 5. This object, object, a disk generally inscr inscribed with Chapter 162 of the Book of the Dead and illustrated, could be painted on the top of the funerary funerary mask. (48) (48) The accompanying text is intended to revive the vital heat throughout the body and to generate a radiance that seems to envelop the head in the form of a nimbus. nimbus. (49) This chapter is addressed to an entity whose real identity must remain secret and which is designated by two trigrams (50): sun-scarab-old man and lotus-lion-ram, an incarnation of the solar demiurge. Each of these signs evokes evokes one of the stages of the diurnal diurnal life of a star: rising (sun/lotus), maturation (scarab/lion), and the setting/sunset (old man/ram). On the hypocephali, this divinity takes the aspect of a ram’s head posed on a naos 6; in this form it is revealed to be similar to certain vignettes in Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead (51): a human head or a funerary mask posed on an edicule 7. This similarity is obviously not accidental, as confirmed by a more thorough a thorough analysis nalysis of the trigrams. The sun-scarab-old man is expressly identified in the texts with “the great corpse that rests in Heliopolis.” (52) Fortunately, this character is represented in the mythological papyrus of Bakenmout (53). There is a sun, whose disk contains a scarab and an old man with the head of a ram (the elements of one of the trigrams), shining on a head 5 A
hypocephalus is a small, disk-shaped object generally generally made of stuccoed linen, but also of papyrus, bronze, gold, wood, or clay, which ancient Egyptians from the Late Period onwards placed under the heads of their dead. The circle was believed to magically protect the deceased, cause the head and body to be enveloped in light and warmth, making the deceased divine (Wikipedia, “Hypocephalus”, retrieved 30 May 2017). 2017). Photo: Hypocephalus of Tasheritkhons Tasheritkhons at the British Museum; photographed by Captmondo on 21 August 2008. 6 A naos is a small shrine. 7 An edicule is a small structure (little house).
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placed in the hollow of a hill. hill. To either side is a headless headless mummy lying lying on each of the escarpments. The analyses that have been made made of this scene (54) show that it is necessary to see it as an abridged representation representation of the solar cycle: death of the sun and the loss of its head at sunset and its rebirth and the restoration of its head in the morning. In the minds of the Egyptians the god changed his head during his trek across the sky, he took that of a ram while setting in the west (55) and found a human face just before reappearing in the east (56), according to a now wellestablished pattern. pattern. This is illustrated by a small monument found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, Tutankhamun, which depicts a very young child, with the features of the king, emerging from a lotus flower. The latter, by opening each morning, morning, freed the star of the day, allowing it it to begin its daily journey. journey. The head of the young young child is identified with the sun king reborn. The link w it h Heliopolis is established, in the New Kingdom, by the Book of Amdouat, which t eaches eaches us that the dismembered corpse of the sun lies in the Mansion of Benben 8 (57), which like Diospolis Parva, was also considered a Mansion of the Phoenix. The ‘lotus-lion-ram’ trigram expressly expressly designates the head of a ram on a naos, an image that is found, apart from the hypocephalus, hypocephalus, on the statues of healers. Under the phone phonetic transcription of its Egypt ian name, Sarpotmoui-sro 9, it appears in the Greco-Egy Greco-Egyptian magical texts and an intaglio associates its name with the image of the acephalous god, the Akephalos theos of these same texts. (58) Chapter 162 of the Book of the Dead, which appears in the twenty-first dynasty, and the later hypocephaluses, establish a more solid link between the myth of lost heads, at least as it emerges from the Middle Kingdom, Osiris and the headless dead who benefit from the implications of it, and the acephalous god of Greco-Egyptian magic. The funerary mask is here a meeting point to the extent that, in its form and by the texts that are related to it, it materializes this continuity.
8 The
benben was a sacred s acred stone located in a shrine at Heliopolis that could have been a symbol of sunrise and the renewal of life, based perhaps on theological language games that associated sound of its name with that of the word weben (to shine, to rise – as the sun). In the same way, the phoenix phoenix (heron) or benu bird was brought into association with with the cult of this shrine (Kemp, Barry Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. Psychology Press, Press, 2006. Pages 137-140 137-140 via Google Google Books). 9 Sarpot-moui-sro is a phonetic pronunciation pronunciation of the string ‘lotus-lion-ram.’ ‘lotus-lion-ram.’ A gem described in the Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database with this name inscribed on it depicts a god with seven snakes for a head emerging from its shoulders, a humanoid trunk and arms, and scorpion pincers for legs.
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This logic that unites the mask and the hypocephalus with the Akephalos makes it possible to continue the analysis. The trigrams which have just been described and which are designations of the pharaonic prototype of the Akephalos are, on occasion, associated with the images of the gnome Patheque (59) or those of the god Bes. (60) These two divinities possess many features features in common. They are deformed deformed dwarfs closely linked to childhood, and especially to that of the young Horus. They are, therefore, representations representations of the juvenile sun. For this reason they can be acephalous gods, since it is one of the characteristics of the sun to change its head, as we have seen above, throughout its journey. In the case of the god Bes, his links with the headless one must have much more profound reasons, since Greco-Egyptian magic makes him a specific incarnation of the Akephalos. In fact, by the etymology of his name, Bes is related to the dwarfish or puny aspect of the premature birth birth of little Horus. (61) He is above all a god masked with a leonine and grimacing grimacing face. This is a mask associated with a dancing child in the time of the Old Kingdom. Kingdom. (62) This will become the mask of the young Horus who will don it to t o frighten and repel his enemies, which are incarnated as dangerous animals, such as scorpions, snakes and crocodiles. Like the funerary mask, the aim of Bes’ mask is to remove hostile forces, conceal weakness, and obeys an identity that must remain unknowable. Bes-Akephalos Bes-Akephalos was specially renowned in later periods for the oracles he rendered at Abydos. (63) This unexpected role, in a place which is not normally his domain, is nevertheless easily explained in the light of the elements already drawn together. Osiris, for which Abydos is a major center of worship, is an acephalous and masked god and it is through this thi s way that Bes is assimilated to him. Throughout their history the Egyptians have addressed their prayers prayers to the divine ‘face’; It is this which, according to them, allows man to come into contact with the divinity and which best symbolizes symbolizes an oracular function. (64) (64) The acephalous gods, we understand, understand, have a particular vocation to deliver oracles. It is no coincidence that, according to the papyrus of Jumilhac, Osiris' disembodied head began to speak to reveal the locations locations of the rest of the pieces of his body. body. (65) This scene, moreover, moreover, takes place at Hardai, which we found to also be the location of a Mansion of the Phoenix. (66) We can see how Akephalos theos (Delatte 1914), an invisible god since he has no recognizable recognizable face, could be indifferently identified identified with Osiris or Bes and why he became the oracular god par excellence. excellence. His universal and solar character character is drawn from the same sources. The constancy with which the decapitated Osiris is linked to the different Egyptian Mansions of the Phoenix undoubtedly undoubtedly establishes a direct link between this particular aspect of the god of the dead and the bird symbolizing the perpetually reborn reborn sun. (67) Assimilating the solar child, Bes becomes the very very image of the juvenile star triumphant triumphant each day over its enemies. (68) Everything therefore suggests that the Akephalos theos is rooted in the Egyptian tradition more deeply than has been believed to date. (69)
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The funerary mask appears to be the medium by which the deceased assumes the identity and powers powers of the headless god. The texts and the accompanying illustrations also integrate the elements of the solar resurrection (70) following in this way the evolution of the Osirian destiny. Masked and headless, headless, the god, the divinized dead, dead, exhibit a false absence, that of a head which is invisible but yet present in a different reality, by which the whole body is invested with a new life and, like the Sun, eternally eternally renewed.
