Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 20 (part 2)

τὴν τε γὰρ Διοχίτην ὀνομάζεσθαι πολίχνην λέγουσιν, ὡς μόνην τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἔχουσαν, ἔν τʼ Ἀβύδῳ τοὺς εὐδαίμονας τῶν Αἰγυπτίων καὶ δυνατοὺς μάλιστα θάπτεσθαι, φιλοτιμουμένους ὁμοτάφους εἶναι τοῦ σώματος Ὀσίριδος, ἐν δὲ Μέμφει τρέφεσθαι τὸν Ἆπιν, εἴδωλον ὄντα τῆς ἐκείνου ψυχῆς, ὅπου καὶ τὸ σῶμα κεῖσθαι· καὶ τὴν μὲν πόλιν οἱ μὲν ὅρμον ἀγαθῶν ἑρμηνεύουσιν, οἱ δʼ ἰδίως τάφον Ὀσίριδος. τὴν δὲ πρὸς Φίλαις †νιστιτάνην ἄλλως μὲν ἄβατον ἅπασι καὶ ἀπροσπέλαστον εἶναι καὶ μηδʼ ὄρνιθας ἐπʼ αὐτὴν καταίρειν μηδʼ ἰχθῦς προσπελάζειν, ἑνὶ δὲ καιρῷ τοὺς ἱερεῖς διαβαίνοντας ἐναγίζειν καὶ καταστέφειν τὸ σῆμα μηθίδης φυτῷ περισκιαζόμενον, ὑπεραίροντι πάσης ἐλαίας μέγεθος.

These are nearly all the important points of the legend, with the omission of the most infamous of the tales, such as that about the dismemberment of Horus and the decapitation of Isis. There is one thing that I have no need to mention to you: if they hold such opinions and relate such tales about the nature of the blessed and imperishable (in accordance with which our concept of the divine must be framed) as if such deeds and occurrences actually took place, then Much need there is to spit and cleanse the mouth, as Aeschylus has it. But the fact is that you yourself detest those persons who hold such abnormal and outlandish opinions about the gods. That these accounts do not, in the least, resemble the sort of loose fictions and frivolous fabrications which poets and writers of prose evolve from themselves, after the manner of spiders, interweaving and extending their unestablished first thoughts, but that these contain narrations of certain puzzling events and experiences, you will of yourself understand. Just as the rainbow, according to the account of the mathematicians, is a reflection of the sun, and owes its many hues to the withdrawal of our gaze from the sun and our fixing it on the cloud, so the somewhat fanciful accounts here set down are but reflections of some true tale which turns back our thoughts to other matters; their sacrifices plainly suggest this, in that they have mourning and melancholy reflected in them; and so also does the structure of their temples, which in one portion are expanded into wrings and into uncovered and unobstructed corridors, and …