Note 152 — Chapter XIV · PART II POPULAR BELIEF

εὐψύχει κυρία καὶ δοίη σοι ὁ Ὄσιρις τὸ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ, IG. Sic. et It. 1488; 1705; 1782; Rev. Arch. 1887, p. 201. (And once the line σοὶ δὲ Ὀσείριδος ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ Εἶσις χαρίσαιτο, inscr. from Alexandria: Rev. Arch. 1887, p. 199.) εὐψύχει μετὰ τοῦ Ὀσείριδος, I. Sic. et It. 2098. The dead man is with Osiris, Ep. 414, 5. Osiris as lord in the world of the blessed: defixio from Rome, I. Sic. et It. 1047; ὁ μέγας Ὄσειρις ὁ ἔχων τὴν κατεξουσίαν καὶ τὸ βασίλειον τῶν νερτέρων θεῶν.—It appears that the legend of the fountain of Mnemosyne and its cold water was independently developed by the Greeks and then associated subsequently with the analogous Egyptian idea or brought into harmony with it (certainly not as e.g. Böttiger, Kl. Schr., thinks, originally belonging to the Egyptians alone and thence imported into Greece from Egypt). Egyptian Books of the dead often speak of the cool water that the dead enjoy (cf. Maspero, Ét. de mythol. et d’arch. égypt. 1893, 1, 366 f.), as well as of the water drawn from the Nile and preserving the youth of the dead man: Maspero, Notices et Extraits, 24, 1883, pp. 99–100. The formula, “may Osiris give you the cold water” (everlasting life), does not seem to occur on original Egyptian monuments. It is prob. therefore modelled by Egyptian Greeks on their own ancient Greek formula.—On Christian inss. we often have the formula: spiritum tuum dominus (or deus Christus, or a holy martyr) refrigeret: see Kraus, Realencykl. d. christl. Alterth. s.v. refrigerium. This is probably, as has been frequently suggested, an imitation of the heathen formula, like so many features of early Christian burial usage.