Note 8 — Chapter I · The Dawn of Civilization

It need not surprise us, therefore, to find, as we do find, not only North African millet in the East Indies, but North African religious beliefs connected with agriculture in widely separated countries. Osirian religious ideas and myths were, it would appear, distributed over wide areas and among various races. There is therefore a germ of historical truth in the account given by Plutarch of the missionary efforts of Osiris. “With the same disposition”, we read, “he (Osiris) afterwards travelled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline.… The Greeks conclude him to have been the same person with their Dionysos or Bacchus.”8