This edited article about Ancient Egypt originally appeared in
Look and Learn issue number 802 published on 28th May 1977. What
strange stories are engraved upon the walls within the cavernous
pyramids of ancient Egypt? What does the picture writing in
these tombs of kings tell us of the tribes of the Nile Valley
and their gods? Many learned scholars have studied them and the
stories they read in these stone or brick structures unfold a
narrative of wandering tribes, bearded hunters and of the gods
which led them into battle. Plutarch, a Greek author who lived
in the 1st century A.D., evidently knew what these ancient texts
contained. In writing of events long past, he related happenings
which the kings had engraved inside their pyramids 25 centuries
before him. Somewhere on the sandy-coloured walls may be the
story of Osiris, one of Egypt’s greatest gods, whom Plutarch
tells us about in detail. Osiris was the god of the dead and was
born in Thebes in Upper Egypt. His first job was to banish
cannibalism. He t