I had been learning a bit about some mythologies before coming across Halo 5’s information on the story and there is something that has been bothering me a bit: do we have any official explanation on why 343I chose the name “Osiris” for Locke’s team, or it was just because?
In Egyptian mythology, Anubis used to be considered the god of the necropolis before they started adoring Osiris as such. And thus, they “retconned” and labelled Anubis as his son instead in some of the writings —it gets more complicated than that, let’s just leave it there—.
So yeah, Osiris is pretty much the god of the dead…
Was the naming intentional then? Foreshadowing or just manifesting some deadly characteristic that defines Locke, Vale, Tanaka (and Buck)?
Westerners see death as a negative, whereas in Egyptian culture is was manifested transcendence into the afterlife. Osiris’ role in Egyptian mythos serves to be the one who judges the dead, granting passage into the afterlife or damning those to the underworld.
Anubis was effectively the god of the funeral rite. He watched over entombing, embalming, guiding the dead to the afterlife and then, judged the heart of the newly buried, either allowing them either passage to Osiris’ kingdom, or death from their heart being fed to Ammit the devourer. The Egyptians placed quite a bit of ceremony on the concept of burial. It was the only way the afterlife could start, as Anubis required a corpse to have gone through the proper rituals. This is why the Pyramids were built.
Osiris on the other hand is often depicted as an actual Pharaoh, the ruler of the afterlife and himself a partaker after his death, resurrection, and subsequent death directly after. Moreover his benevolence was the defining trait of his character, as even in death, it was said that the life he exhumed was the reason plants grew out of the ground. As Hot Juicy Pie said, a proper burial, a well-lived life and the promise of eternity in Osiris’ kingdom ensured that the poetic undertones of death weren’t quite as negative in Egypt as those of their Hellenistic contemporaries, who had no such afterlife besides the promise of eternal wandering as a shade in Erebus. Elysium was for the heroes only, and Tartarus only for the malignant.
So, what meaning could be derived from naming a Fireteam of Spartans after the benevolent god of postmortem eternity? Perhaps, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, Chief is dead and is resisting his judgement (even though judgement isn’t technically Osiris’ domain, but Anubis’) and therefore, the powers of the underworld are animated to bring him forward so his heart can be weighed on the scales, and he can be seen for who he really is?
Or maybe, you know, it doesn’t mean anything. Fireteam Anubis sounds pretty cool. It might have fit the story a bit better, too.
Osiris is the name of an Egyptian mythological god that taught the people how to do agricultural fertility. Maybe we are going to see something about Fireteam Osiris and them doing something that will be something new, or maybe something that will renew humanity.
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> > Osiris’ job was the Judgement of dead souls. So like it was said above, that’s the way I interpret the name.
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> Ding ding ding. That’s what I agree with.
Technically, the ones judging the souls are Anubis (who weights the heart in the balance), Ammit (the beast the unpure souls are fed to if judged like that) and Thoth, based on the 42 commandments of Ma’at.
Osiris is the one that comes after death. His very skin color represents the dead.
And I’d prefer this topic not to deviate… I know what Osiris and other Egyptian gods’ roles are when it comes to the judgement of death and I have a general idea of what they thought the afterlife is like. The initial thread of this this topic was to read for suggestions as to what this inclusion of Osiris as a metaphorical figure means in Halo.
Well the context would be that the team would have been named by an ONI spook - so what of all the meanings of Osiris would an ONI spook be alluding to? Broadly, death, resurrection (guardians), Afterlife (something to do with this new cult who are seeking to ‘ascend’? or those covenant still seeking the great journey, or the alternate meaning of the great jounrey (the forerunner extragalactic one).
Osiris is also heavily tied to the idea of re-incarnation and renewal - this idea could have something to do with the Geas which we know Chief definitely harbours (and we suspect all of the Spartan II’s do), possibly another reason for ONI to send them.
And just to discredit everything I wrote above, how about this for a stretch? Osiris, it could be said, was analagous for Odin, who was also a god of death, they share the same kind of position in their pantheon and as cultures met and blurred some would argue that these figures often share a common theme or link, now Odin had a spear called Gungnir, and it’s said that this spear CAN’t miss, so perhaps team Osiris is a little bit analogous to a weapon being thrown, one that can’t miss. Ok now THAT’s far-fetched.