Isis and Osiris:
Isis loved Osiris very deeply but his brother Set, who had been banished, was jealous of his throne so he lured Osiris to a secret place and there attacked him. He separated his body into many pieces and scattered them across the land so that he could never be found, the world became barren and lifeless as Isis mourned for him. She searched for him and when she had found all the missing parts put him back together all except for one part. She performed a spell that brought him back to life for a short period and became pregnant with Horus. so he was born after Osiris’s resurrection. So he is both the god of new life and the afterlife.
There is of course a story older than this, it predates all other Egyptian myths of life and death winter an spring. This is the story of
Ishtar & Tammuz:
Ishtar was a seducer of men, but there was one man she loved above all others, Tammuz, the Shepard. He became her consort. A demon came for Ishtar to take her soul to the underworld, but if she would give him another he would agree to spare her. So escorted by the demon, unseen, Ishtar sees Tammuz under a tree in the palace gardens and crying points her finger at him. The demon drags Tammuz to the underworld.
Soon after he is taken, Ishtar regrets her decision and mourns for him beneath the tree. She decides to enter the underworld, repentant for her actions.
she demands that the gatekeeper let her in:
If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.
And the dead will outnumber the living.
he runs to the queen of the underworld she bids him to let her enter “according to ancient decree”
When she she enters through seven different gates, as she passed through them she is stripped of her jewels and garments. Once she reaches there thrown room she stands before her sister, Erechkigal, queen of the underworld and her sister passes judgement on her, the living, for entering the underworld and, she comes as the dead, hung from a nail.
When Ishtar entered the underworld all sexual activity on earth ceased. The King of the gods, Ishtar’s father, Ea sends a creature called Asu-shu-namir to ask the queen of the underworld for the waters of life, as she cannot refuse and although enraged, she hands it over. Asu-shu-namir sprinkles the waters over Ishtar and she is revived. as she passed back through the seven gates she is redressed in all her jewels and garments. When she returns to the world, life returns.
There is of course anther myth that Ishtar descended to the under world because she wanted to rule there and on finding Ishtar on her throne Erechkigal and the demons pass judgment on her and although she is given the waters of life cannot return without sending one back in her place. Each person she meets is a friend so she turns away until she enters the throne room and finds her husband on her throne and he is neither mourning her nor feels her loss. So she sends the demons to drag him to the under world.
There is also a note about Ishtar:
“Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigour: they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them. ‘Thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength’, says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, ‘and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits! Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad and the whip.’ Even for the gods Ishtar’s love was fatal. In her youth the goddess had loved Tammuz, god of the harvest, and—if one is to believe Gilgamesh—this love caused the death of Tammuz.
Check
Tammuz and Ishtar Chapter V
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