The link between Dionysus-Osiris
Antiquity
Herodotus, Histories 2.42
βThe Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, except Isis and Osiris; and they say that the latter is Dionysus.β
Herodotus, Histories 2.144
βOsiris is, they said, he whom the Greeks call Dionysus.β
Herodotus, Histories 2.49
βFor the rites of Dionysus are nearly the same as those of Osiris.β
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.11.3
βOsiris, they say, is the one whom the Greeks call Dionysus.β
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.25.2
βSome of the early Greek mythologists call Osiris Dionysusβ¦β
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35 (356B)
βThat Osiris is identical with Dionysus, who could know more fittingly than you, Clea?β
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35 (365A)
βThe Titans, having seized Dionysus, tore him to piecesβ¦ The Egyptians similarly tell the story of Osiris, how Typhon [Set] plotted against him and dismembered him.β
Strabo, Geography 10.3.13
βIn their sacred rites they also associated Dionysus not only with Osiris but also with the infernal deities.β
Modern
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (Abridged, Ch. 37)
βThe Egyptian Osiris was identified with the Greek Dionysus. The resemblance between the two gods was indeed so close that even in antiquity they were often regarded as one and the same deity.β
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985)
βThe identification of Osiris with Dionysus, which is already fully developed in Herodotus, remains a fixed datum of ancient theology.β
M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (1983)
βThe story of the dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans corresponds point by point with the Egyptian myth of the dismemberment of Osiris. The identification of the two gods was absolutely explicit in Graeco-Egyptian thought.β
Joscelyn Godwin, The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (1991)
βOsiris-Dionysus is the dying and rising god par excellence, torn apart and reconstituted, whose passion pattern lies behind the mystery cults of the Mediterranean world.β
