I am briefly unretiring this blog to share some thoughts on comparing Sumerian and Egyptian Mythology. This is not based on a Joseph Campbell like “all mythologies are the same” kind of Comparative mythology. Civilization began in Sumer first as early as at least 4000 BC, but then Egypt second between 3300 and 3100 BC, and they were close enough that cultural exchange between them probably happened while Egypt was forming.
Osiris and Dumuzid are both “dying and rising gods” associated with fertility and the underworld and both are depicted as Shepherds. Osiris is sometimes depicted as the fifth of the God-Kings while Dumuzid is the fifth of the Antediluvian kings on the Sumerian Kings list.
So they are the lynchpin, not every Sumerian or every Egyptian deity is going to be relevant to this analysis, it’s still not about claiming there is an across the board one to one line up. It’s just particular thoughts I’ve had on the topic.
The father of Osiris is Geb or Gebeb (Seb is an Victorian era incorrect form of the name) whose name means The Earth. The father of Dumuzid is sometimes given as Enki the Sumerian god whose name means Lord of the Earth. Both these deities are associated with Fresh Water and with Serpents and with Kingship.
I also feel like Orisis’s sister Nephthys/Nebet-Het and Dumuzid’s sister Geshtinanna seem like similar archetypes.
There is a duality to Set in Egyptian mythology, he’s not exclusively a villain in the story of Osiris and Horus. Set as a storm-god who kills Osirus could be Jirjire/Gigire of Inanna and Bilulu who also becomes a protective deity of the Desert like Set.
Isis and Osiris do enter the Egyptian pantheon at the same time, in the middle of the Fifth Dynasty. And yet the Isis equals Inanna identification you likely expected is one I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of as I’ve worked on this.
Isis in Egyptian Mythology is neither a Love goddess or a War goddess. And she originally was not a “Queen of Heaven” or associated with the planet Venus either, those were the things the Greco-Romans version of cults started doing, the star Isis was identified with was Sirius. Of all the times modern pop culture thinks of Isis as being a Goddess of, a Mother Goddess is the only one that’s at all correct.
Inanna is the exact opposite, she’s a Goddess of everything I just said Isis was not, and even though a few children are occasionally attributed to her, for the most part being Maternal is not part of her character.
In Pre-Christian Polytheist mythologies every love goddess is a mother and every mother goddess is a lover because there was no conception of a virgin birth in their minds contrary to what edgy internet atheists keep claiming. But not all of them had both those characteristics as equally defining to their character. And this contrast I’ve observed between Isis and Inanna is the starkest example of that.
Another way in which Isis and Inanna were opposites is their relationship to the Underworld. Inanna is an invader of the Underworld, a domain belonging to someone else. Isis does not revive Osiris by traveling to the Underworld, rather once the revived Osiris becomes a King in the Underworld Isis becomes Queen alongside him. It is this underworld aspect of Isis that is most ignored in the modern pop culture conception of her.
Basically, my hot take is that Isis is actually Ereshkigal. Isis as our standard name for her is a Greek construction (as is Osiris who was really Osayir), when I first became aware of this I was exposed to Iset or Aset as the proper Egyptian form, but it seems the pronunciation changed over time and oldest form may have been Rusat, which I could see coming from Eresh.
Ereshkigal is not explicitly depicted as taking Dumuzid as her husband in any of the versions of these myths we currently have. But the texts are inconsistent on who her husband was. But even in the texts as we have them, the ending of Inanna's descent into the underworld can be interpreted as implying Dumuzid is Ereshkigal’s husband while he’s in the underworld.
Horus didn’t enter Egyptian religion at the same time Osiris and Isis did but rather was there from the beginning which is why I’m not really looking for Horus in Sumerian Mythology. The same is true of Set so at one point I didn't intend to do so for him either, but that Gigire connection was compelling.
So I think when the Osiris and Isis cult came to Egypt, they were simply made the parents of Horus.
