The link between Dionysus-Osiris
Antiquity
Herodotus, Histories 2.42
“The Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, except Isis and Osiris; and they say that the latter is Dionysus.”
Herodotus, Histories 2.144
“Osiris is, they said, he whom the Greeks call Dionysus.”
Herodotus, Histories 2.49
“For the rites of Dionysus are nearly the same as those of Osiris.”
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.11.3
“Osiris, they say, is the one whom the Greeks call Dionysus.”
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.25.2
“Some of the early Greek mythologists call Osiris Dionysus…”
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35 (356B)
“That Osiris is identical with Dionysus, who could know more fittingly than you, Clea?”
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35 (365A)
“The Titans, having seized Dionysus, tore him to pieces… The Egyptians similarly tell the story of Osiris, how Typhon [Set] plotted against him and dismembered him.”
Strabo, Geography 10.3.13
“In their sacred rites they also associated Dionysus not only with Osiris but also with the infernal deities.”
Modern
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (Abridged, Ch. 37)
“The 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.”
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985)
“The identification of Osiris with Dionysus, which is already fully developed in Herodotus, remains a fixed datum of ancient theology.”
M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (1983)
“The 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.”
Joscelyn Godwin, The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (1991)
“Osiris-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.”
