PART
6 –
Ch.XXXVIII.4
The
Great Pelasgian empire
(The
memory of Saturn in Romanian historical traditions)
XXXVIII.
4. The defeat and death of Osyris.
In some Romanian
epic poems, the memory of the defeat of Osyris
in the countries from the lower
In these
traditional songs, Osyris is presented as a Black African, fanatical and ambitious, called “Gol – Negru de Darvis” (TN – read Darvish), meaning a naked Mohammedan monk from
the race of the Blacks [1].
[1. Osyris-Dionysos, writes Diodorus
Siculus, had been reared in a cave at Nysa, under the watchful eye of the
goddess Minerva, and he had there as tutor one so-called Aristeus. This cave
was probably a sort of religious house, or a prehistoric monastery. The fanaticism of Osyris and his monk name, “Darvis” (TN
– Dervish), attributed to him by the Romanian epic poems, can only be explained
this way. The most ancient statue of
Osyris was black (Athenodorus Tarsensis, fr. 80, in Frag.
Hist. gr. III. 488; Pierret, La Gr.
Encycl. t. XXV, p. 639)].
According to
Egyptian traditions, Osyris was caught and cut to pieces by Typhon, the son of
Saturn. But in Romanian historical songs, he is defeated and cut by Saturn
himself, who figures here, like in other Romanian poems, under his traditional
name of Novac.
The style, or
poetic form, of these songs of old is in the epic genus of antiquity. The war
of Osyris with Saturn is represented only by the singular fight of the two
adversaries, as in Homer’s Iliad Achilles fights Hector (Greeks against
Trojans), and in Virgil’s Aeneid, Eneas fights Turnus (Trojans against Latins),
etc.
The text of this
poem, according to a version from
In this traditional
song, in which is commemorated the great war of the southern world against the
northern world, a particular interest is presented by the historical elements
of the Osyric religion.
The principle of
this transformation of the individual, after death, was illustrated by the
symbolic figure of a scarab (TN –
bumblebee, Romanian carabus), the
sacred insect of the Osyric religion (Pierret,
Le Pantheon Egypt. p. 66), whose type is still found today in the upper regions
of the Nile (Ethiopia, Nubia).
In the ancient
Egyptian tombs, a scarab cut from tough stone and bound with gold was placed in
the chest of the mummy (Pierret, Le
livre d. morts, p. 201), magic symbol of this metamorphosis.
Finally, we also
note here that in ancient Egyptian religion, Osyris, as the divinity of the
sun, was also represented by the figure of the scarab and that of a giant serpent,
according to what the priest and historian Manetho
said (fragm. in Fragm. Hist. gr. II. 614).