This hymn to Osiris is engraved on a semi-circular stele of limestone which forms part of the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. It comprises 28 lines of hieroglyphics, in a very good state of preservation, excepting only that the name of the god Amon, which once figured in several proper names, has been carefully chiselled out, in the age of the so-called heretic kings Khu-n-Aten (Amenophis IV) and his successors.
The text may have been sculptured on the stele in the time of the eighteenth dynasty — Chabas has remarked that the wife of Amon-mes, the father of Amon-em-ha, bore the same name as the favourite wife of Amenophis I — but it reproduces a religious work of more ancient date, which goes back at least to the epoch of the twelfth dynasty, as is shown on the one hand by the small number of determinatives and on the other by the use of certain formulæ, e.g. the position of the father's name before that of the son: "Osiris son Horus" in the sense of "Horus son of Osiris." The references of the monument to the cult of Osiris are consequently very ancient, and they thus possess all the greater importance for the history of the Egyptian religion.
Translated by D. Mallet
With additional content by Pietro Testa