Amulet of the God Osiris

A solid gold amulet of Osiris in his typical guise, wearing the atef crown and a divine beard, and holding the crook and flail in his hands held against the chest. A ring is attached to the back, allowing this figure to be worn as an amulet. 

The material gold is precious and easily recycled, which explains why comparatively few statues survive in this material. It is an appropriate material for the statues of deities because this metal, which shines like the sun, was considered to be the material of which the bodies of the gods were made.

“The god wears the atef-crown with a uraeus [and two horns linking him to the sun god, Re, who is often depicted as a ram-headed man], sports a false beard, and carries the crook and flail over his shoulders. All these are accoutrements shared by the royal and Osirian ideologies.

Osiris was the hypostasis of royalty and the ‘king-in-death,’ a role that transformed him into the great ruler of the dead and the ultimate source of mortuary power and judgement. Combined with all these functions was his ineffable association with fertility in all its forms, and especially with the Nile.

In the Late Period, the cult of Isis and Osiris developed an aspect of personal salvation, which promised protection from damnation to devotees. In the Greco-Roman Period, this cult transformed itself into one of the international mystery religions.”

— “Statue of Standing Osiris,”, Betsy M. Bryan in , Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, by Zahi Hawass,The National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, USA, p. 167, 2008

Third Intermediate Period, 9th-8th century BC. Now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Inv. 5107