"Up to the present no evidence has been deduced from the hieroglyphic texts which enables us to say specifically when Osiris began to be worshipped, or in what town or city his cult was first established, but the general information which we possess on this subject indicates that this god was adored as the great god of the dead by dynastic Egyptians from first to last." (E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians pg. 116.)
Dionysos was not a late-comer to Greece, as so many seem to believe. He was clearly known in all of his particulars to the Minoans and Mykeneans, as is attested by the appearance of his name on a clay tablet at Pylos: di-wo-nu-so-jo. Another tablet speaks of "Eleuther, son of Zeus" to whom two oxen were sacrificed jo-i-je-si me-za-na e-re-u-te-re di-wi-je-we qu-o and even of wo-no-wa-ti-si or oinoatisi "Women of Oinoa, Place of Wine" showing that already the wine-god had his female attendants in the thirteenth century BCE. Further, as Thucydides said, the "Old Dionysia" or Anthesteria was common to all the Ionians - hence it must have preceded the migration of the Ionian tribes. The oldest sanctuaries in Athens were to Dionysos of the Swamps. And Dionysos is found even in Homer, where it "speaks of him in the same manner in which it speaks of the deities who have been worshipped since time immemorial, however the poet himself and his audience may feel about him." (Walter Otto, Dionysos pg 54)
Copyright 2005 Sannion
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Posted with permission
Shared Epithets and Invocations
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