... The early generations of men thought there were two principal gods that were eternal, that is to say, the sun and the moon; the former they called "Osiris," and the latter "Isis."  The name Osiris means "many-eyed" (πολυόφθαλμον), and is rightly applied to the sun, which darts his rays everywhere, seeing as it were with many eyes what is on land and sea... (Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, Budge, v.1, 1911)

OSIRIS.  The deity Ra in his attribute of judge of the deceased, the Rho-t-amenti.  He was one of the principal as well as the oldest of the Egyptian deities, and the deceased when justified was by some mysterious inspiration believed to partake of his divine nature, and was henceforth called the Osirian.  On the monuments and in the statuettes Osiris was represented as a man clothed in a very light robe, which descends to his feet, and in which his arms up to the hands are covered.  On his head was the Atef crown, peculiar to himself, and in his hands he held the cucufa staff, the flabellum, the pedum or crook, and the crux ansata.  The head of the divinity was covered with a closely fitting skull cap, and he wore his beard long and closely plaited into the form of the letter J.  This shape of beard was characteristic of Osiris alone, and of the statues of kings and defunct persons who were assimilated to him.  In the genealogy of the gods Osiris was the brother of Typhon, and of Isis and Nephthys, and the father of the deity Horus by his sister wife Isis.  He was considered to have reigned as one of the divine kings in Egypt in the prehistoric period, and to have been dethroned and slain by Typhon, who cut him to pieces, scattering portions of his body throughout the country.  Ultimately, however, his son Horus Teti ("The Conqueror"), aided by his mother Isis, raised an army, and defeating Typhon, dismembered him in the like manner as Osiris was mutilated.  In the meantime the goddesses Isis and Nephthys had gone over the land seeking the remains of the god, and raising a temple tomb over every portion of his body wherever it was found; the chief members and consequently the principal tombs of Osiris being at This or Abydos, and on the Island of Philae.  As the deity Ra in the lower world Osiris was regarded as the judge of the dead, or the Rho-t-amenti, in the hall of the two truths, where were the openings respectively of heaven (Aalu), hell (Karr), and purgatory (Ker-neter), and where a court composed of forty-two assessors adjudicated with him on the life and actions of the deceased.  As the author of all life, animal and vegetable, Osiris was also regarded as the god of agriculture, probably on account also of the resurrection being pictorially represented by the growth of a plant.  The offices and characteristics of Osiris were many, and were very complicated, as is the case with the characteristics of all the Egyptian deities.  His worship dated back to the earliest times of the empire, and continued almost without interruption till the Roman conquest, when the cultus of Osiris-Apis, or the god Serapis, was introduced.  He had a variety of names, many of them mystical, and to which Herodotus refers when he declares that the name of the deity was not to be uttered.  The chief titles of Osiris were Unnefer, "The Good Being," par excellence; Neb-er-jer, "The Lord over All;" Neb-ua, "The One;" Rhotamenti, "Judge in Amenti," etc.  See also Horus, Isis, Nephthys. (An Archaic Dictionary, Cooper, 1876).