text:
Osiris myth

The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt, and its consequences. Osiris's murderer, his brother Set, usurps his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris's wife Isis restores her husband's body, allowing him to posthumously conceive their son, Horus. The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the product of the union of Isis and Osiris, who is at first a vulnerable child protected by his mother and then becomes Set's rival for the throne. Their often violent conflict ends with Horus's triumph, which restores maat (cosmic and social order) to Egypt after Set's unrighteous reign and completes the process of Osiris's resurrection.

The myth, with its complex symbolism, is integral to ancient Egyptian conceptions of kingship and succession, conflict between order and disorder, and especially death and the afterlife. It also expresses the essential character of each of the four deities at its center, and many elements of their worship in ancient Egyptian religion were derived from the myth.

The Osiris myth reached its basic form in or before the 24th century BCE. Many of its elements originated in religious ideas, but the struggle between Horus and Set may have been partly inspired by a regional conflict in Predynastic or Early Dynastic times. Scholars have tried to discern the exact nature of the events that gave rise to the story, but they have reached no definitive conclusions.

Parts of the myth appear in a wide variety of Egyptian texts, from funerary texts and magical spells to short stories. The story is, therefore, more detailed and more cohesive than any other ancient Egyptian myth. Yet no Egyptian source gives a full account of the myth, and the sources vary widely in their versions of events. Greek and Roman writings, particularly On Isis and Osiris by Plutarch, provide more information but may not always accurately reflect Egyptian beliefs. Through these writings, the Osiris myth persisted after knowledge of most ancient Egyptian beliefs was lost, and it is still well known today.

Death and resurrection of Osiris
At the start of the story, Osiris rules Egypt, having inherited the kingship from his ancestors in a lineage stretching back to the creator of the world, Ra or Atum. His queen is Isis, who, along with Osiris and his murderer, Set, is one of the children of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Little information about the reign of Osiris appears in Egyptian sources; the focus is on his death and the events that follow. Osiris is connected with life-giving power, righteous kingship, and the rule of maat, the ideal natural order whose maintenance was a fundamental goal in ancient Egyptian culture. Set is closely associated with violence and chaos. Therefore, the slaying of Osiris symbolizes the struggle between order and disorder, and the disruption of life by death.

Some versions of the myth provide Set's motive for killing Osiris. According to a spell in the Pyramid Texts, Set is taking revenge for a kick Osiris gave him, whereas in a Late Period text, Set's grievance is that Osiris had sex with Nephthys, who is Set's consort and the fourth child of Geb and Nut. The murder itself is frequently alluded to, but never clearly described. The Egyptians believed that written words had the power to affect reality, so they avoided writing directly about profoundly negative events such as Osiris's death. Sometimes they denied his death altogether, even though the bulk of the traditions about him make it clear that he has been murdered. In some cases the texts suggest that Set takes the form of a wild animal, such as a crocodile or bull, to slay Osiris; in others they imply that Osiris's corpse is thrown in the water or that he is drowned. This latter tradition is the origin of the Egyptian belief that people who had drowned in the Nile were sacred. Even the identity of the victim can vary, as it is sometimes the god Haroeris, an elder form of Horus, who is murdered by Set and then avenged by another form of Horus, who is Haroeris's son by Isis.

By the end of the New Kingdom, a tradition had developed that Set had cut Osiris's body into pieces and scattered them across Egypt. Cult centers of Osiris all over the country claimed that the corpse, or particular pieces of it, were found near them. The dismembered parts could be said to number as many as forty-two, each piece being equated with one of the forty-two nomes, or provinces, in Egypt. Thus the god of kingship becomes the embodiment of his kingdom.

Osiris's death is followed either by an interregnum or by a period in which Set assumes the kingship. Meanwhile, Isis searches for her husband's body with the aid of Nephthys. When searching for or mourning Osiris, the two goddesses are often likened to falcons or kites, possibly because kites travel far in search of carrion, because the Egyptians associated their plaintive calls with cries of grief, or because of the goddesses' connection with Horus, who is often represented as a falcon. In the New Kingdom, when Osiris's death and renewal came to be associated with the annual flooding of the Nile that fertilized Egypt, the waters of the Nile were equated with Isis's tears of mourning or with Osiris's bodily fluids. Osiris thus represented the life-giving divine power that was present in the river's water and in the plants that grew after the flood.

The goddesses find and restore Osiris's body, often with the help of other deities, including Thoth, a deity credited with great magical and healing powers, and Anubis, the god of embalming and funerary rites. Osiris becomes the first mummy, and the gods' efforts to restore his body are the mythological basis for Egyptian embalming practices, which sought to prevent and reverse the decay that follows death. This part of the story is often extended with episodes in which Set or his followers try to damage the corpse, and Isis and her allies must protect it. Once Osiris is made whole, Isis conceives his son and rightful heir, Horus. One ambiguous spell in the Coffin Texts may indicate that Isis is impregnated by a flash of lightning, while in other sources, Isis, still in bird form, fans breath and life into Osiris's body with her wings and copulates with him. Osiris's revival is apparently not permanent, and after this point in the story he is only mentioned as the ruler of the Duat, the distant and mysterious realm of the dead. Although he lives on only in the Duat, he and the kingship he stands for will, in a sense, be reborn in his son.

The cohesive account by Plutarch, which deals mainly with this portion of the myth, differs in many respects from the known Egyptian sources. Set—whom Plutarch, using Greek names for many of the Egyptian deities, refers to as "Typhon"—conspires against Osiris with seventy-two unspecified accomplices, as well as a queen from ancient Aethiopia (Nubia). Set has an elaborate chest made to fit Osiris's exact measurements and then, at a banquet, declares that he will give the chest as a gift to whoever fits inside it. The guests, in turn, lie inside the coffin, but none fit inside except Osiris. When he lies down in the chest, Set and his accomplices slam the cover shut, seal it, and throw it into the Nile. With Osiris's corpse inside, the chest floats out into the sea, arriving at the city of Byblos, where a tree grows around it. The king of Byblos has the tree cut down and made into a pillar for his palace, still with the chest inside. Isis must remove the chest from within the tree in order to retrieve her husband's body. Having taken the chest, she leaves the tree in Byblos, where it becomes an object of worship for the locals. This episode, which is not known from Egyptian sources, gives an etiological explanation for a cult of Isis and Osiris that existed in Byblos in Plutarch's time and possibly as early as the New Kingdom.

Plutarch also states that Set steals and dismembers the corpse only after Isis has retrieved it. Isis then finds and buries each piece of her husband's body, with the exception of the penis, which she has to reconstruct with magic, because the original was eaten by fish in the river. According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish. In Egyptian accounts, however, the penis of Osiris is found intact, and the only close parallel with this part of Plutarch's story is in "The Tale of Two Brothers", a folk tale from the New Kingdom with similarities to the Osiris myth.

A final difference in Plutarch's account is Horus's birth. The form of Horus that avenges his father has been conceived and born before Osiris's death. It is a premature and weak second child, Harpocrates, who is born from Osiris's posthumous union with Isis. Here, two of the separate forms of Horus that exist in Egyptian tradition have been given distinct positions within Plutarch's version of the myth.

Birth and childhood of Horus
In Egyptian accounts, the pregnant Isis hides from Set, to whom the unborn child is a threat, in a thicket of papyrus in the Nile Delta. This place is called Akh-bity, meaning "papyrus thicket of the king of Lower Egypt" in Egyptian. Greek writers call this place Khemmis and indicate that it is near the city of Buto, but in the myth, the physical location is less important than its nature as an iconic place of seclusion and safety. The thicket's special status is indicated by its frequent depiction in Egyptian art; for most events in Egyptian mythology, the backdrop is minimally described or illustrated. In this thicket, Isis gives birth to Horus and raises him, and hence it is also called the "nest of Horus". The image of Isis nursing her child is a very common motif in Egyptian art.

There are texts such as the Metternich Stela that date to the Late Period in which Isis travels in the wider world. She moves among ordinary humans who are unaware of her identity, and she even appeals to these people for help. This is another unusual circumstance, for in Egyptian myth, gods and humans are normally separate. As in the first phase of the myth, she often has the aid of other deities, who protect her son in her absence. According to one magical spell, seven minor scorpion deities travel with and guard Isis as she seeks help for Horus. They even take revenge on a wealthy woman who has refused to help Isis by stinging the woman's son, making it necessary for Isis to heal the blameless child. This story conveys a moral message that the poor can be more virtuous than the wealthy and illustrates Isis's fair and compassionate nature.

In this stage of the myth, Horus is a vulnerable child beset by dangers. The magical texts that use Horus's childhood as the basis for their healing spells give him different ailments, from scorpion stings to simple stomachaches, adapting the tradition to fit the malady that each spell was intended to treat. Most commonly, the child god has been bitten by a snake, reflecting the Egyptians' fear of snakebite and the resulting poison. Some texts indicate that these hostile creatures are agents of Set. Isis may use her own magical powers to save her child, or she may plead with or threaten deities such as Ra or Geb, so they will cure him. As she is the archetypal mourner in the first portion of the story, so during Horus's childhood she is the ideal devoted mother. Through the magical healing texts, her efforts to heal her son are extended to cure any patient.

Conflict of Horus and Set
The next phase of the myth begins when the adult Horus challenges Set for the throne of Egypt. The contest between them is often violent but is also described as a legal judgment before the Ennead, an assembled group of Egyptian deities, to decide who should inherit the kingship. The judge in this trial may be Geb, who, as the father of Osiris and Set, held the throne before they did, or it may be the creator gods Ra or Atum, the originators of kingship. Other deities also take important roles: Thoth frequently acts as a conciliator in the dispute or as an assistant to the divine judge, and in "Contendings", Isis uses her cunning and magical power to aid her son.

The rivalry of Horus and Set is portrayed in two contrasting ways. Both perspectives appear as early as the Pyramid Texts, the earliest source of the myth. In some spells from these texts, Horus is the son of Osiris and nephew of Set, and the murder of Osiris is the major impetus for the conflict. The other tradition depicts Horus and Set as brothers. This incongruity persists in many of the subsequent sources, where the two gods may be called brothers or uncle and nephew at different points in the same text.

The divine struggle involves many episodes. "Contendings" describes the two gods appealing to various other deities to arbitrate the dispute and competing in different types of contests, such as racing in boats or fighting each other in the form of hippopotami, to determine a victor. In this account, Horus repeatedly defeats Set and is supported by most of the other deities. Yet the dispute drags on for eighty years, largely because the judge, the creator god, favors Set. In late ritual texts, the conflict is characterized as a great battle involving the two deities' assembled followers. The strife in the divine realm extends beyond the two combatants. At one point Isis attempts to harpoon Set as he is locked in combat with her son, but she strikes Horus instead, who then cuts off her head in a fit of rage. Thoth replaces Isis's head with that of a cow; the story gives a mythical origin for the cow-horn headdress that Isis commonly wears.

In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus. Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful and indiscriminate sexuality. In the earliest account of this episode, in a fragmentary Middle Kingdom papyrus, the sexual encounter begins when Set asks to have sex with Horus, who agrees on the condition that Set will give Horus some of his strength. The encounter puts Horus in danger, because in Egyptian tradition semen is a potent and dangerous substance, akin to poison. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands. Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk. He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; other accounts imply that Thoth himself was produced by this anomalous birth.

Another important episode concerns mutilations that the combatants inflict upon each other: Horus injures or steals Set's testicles and Set damages or tears out one, or occasionally both, of Horus's eyes. Sometimes the eye is torn into pieces. Set's mutilation signifies a loss of virility and strength. The removal of Horus's eye is even more important, for this stolen Eye of Horus represents a wide variety of concepts in Egyptian religion. One of Horus's major roles is as a sky deity, and for this reason his right eye was said to be the sun and his left eye the moon. The theft or destruction of the Eye of Horus is therefore equated with the darkening of the moon in the course of its cycle of phases, or during eclipses. Horus may take back his lost Eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him. The Egyptologist Herman te Velde argues that the tradition about the lost testicles is a late variation on Set's loss of semen to Horus, and that the moon-like disk that emerges from Set's head after his impregnation is the Eye of Horus. If so, the episodes of mutilation and sexual abuse would form a single story, in which Set assaults Horus and loses semen to him, Horus retaliates and impregnates Set, and Set comes into possession of Horus's Eye when it appears on Set's head. Because Thoth is a moon deity in addition to his other functions, it would make sense, according to te Velde, for Thoth to emerge in the form of the Eye and step in to mediate between the feuding deities.

In any case, the restoration of the Eye of Horus to wholeness represents the return of the moon to full brightness, the return of the kingship to Horus, and many other aspects of maat. Sometimes the restoration of Horus's eye is accompanied by the restoration of Set's testicles, so that both gods are made whole near the conclusion of their feud.

Resolution
As with so many other parts of the myth, the resolution is complex and varied. Often, Horus and Set divide the realm between them. This division can be equated with any of several fundamental dualities that the Egyptians saw in their world. Horus may receive the fertile lands around the Nile, the core of Egyptian civilization, in which case Set takes the barren desert or the foreign lands that are associated with it; Horus may rule the earth while Set dwells in the sky; and each god may take one of the two traditional halves of the country, Upper and Lower Egypt, in which case either god may be connected with either region. Yet in the Memphite Theology, Geb, as judge, first apportions the realm between the claimants and then reverses himself, awarding sole control to Horus. In this peaceable union, Horus and Set are reconciled, and the dualities that they represent have been resolved into a united whole. Through this resolution, order is restored after the tumultuous conflict.

A different view of the myth's end focuses on Horus's sole triumph. In this version, Set is not reconciled with his rival but utterly defeated, and sometimes he is exiled from Egypt or even destroyed. His defeat and humiliation is more pronounced in sources from later periods of Egyptian history, when he was increasingly equated with disorder and evil, and the Egyptians no longer saw him as an integral part of natural order.

With great celebration among the gods, Horus takes the throne, and Egypt finally has a rightful king. The divine decision that Set is in the wrong corrects the injustice created by Osiris's murder and completes the process of his restoration after death. Sometimes Set is made to carry Osiris's body to its tomb as part of his punishment. The new king performs funerary rites for his father and gives food offerings to sustain him—often including the Eye of Horus, which in this instance represents life and plenty. According to some sources, only through these acts can Osiris be fully enlivened in the afterlife and take his place as king of the dead, paralleling his son's role as king of the living. Thereafter, Osiris is deeply involved with natural cycles of death and renewal, such as the annual growth of crops, that parallel his own resurrection.

An alternate version of the myths where Set is defeated has Osiris return to life after the fight between Set and Horus.

Origins
As the Osiris myth first appears in the Pyramid Texts, most of its essential features must have taken shape sometime before the texts were written down. The distinct segments of the story—Osiris's death and restoration, Horus's childhood, and Horus's conflict with Set—may originally have been independent mythic episodes. If so, they must have begun to coalesce into a single story by the time of the Pyramid Texts, which loosely connect those segments. In any case, the myth was inspired by a variety of influences. Much of the story is based in religious ideas and the general nature of Egyptian society: the divine nature of kingship, the succession from one king to another, the struggle to maintain maat, and the effort to overcome death. For instance, the lamentations of Isis and Nephthys for their dead brother may represent an early tradition of ritualized mourning.

There are, however, important points of disagreement. The origins of Osiris are much debated, and the basis for the myth of his death is also somewhat uncertain. One influential hypothesis was given by the anthropologist James Frazer, who in 1906 said that Osiris, like other "dying and rising gods" across the ancient Near East, began as a personification of vegetation. His death and restoration, therefore, were based on the yearly death and re-growth of plants. Many Egyptologists adopted this explanation. But in the late 20th century, J. Gwyn Griffiths, who extensively studied Osiris and his mythology, argued that Osiris originated as a divine ruler of the dead, and his connection with vegetation was a secondary development. Meanwhile, scholars of comparative religion have criticized the overarching concept of "dying and rising gods", or at least Frazer's assumption that all these gods closely fit the same pattern. More recently, the Egyptologist Rosalie David maintains that Osiris originally "personified the annual rebirth of the trees and plants after the [Nile] inundation."

Another continuing debate concerns the opposition of Horus and Set, which Egyptologists have often tried to connect with political events early in Egypt's history or prehistory. The cases in which the combatants divide the kingdom, and the frequent association of the paired Horus and Set with the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, suggest that the two deities represent some kind of division within the country. Egyptian tradition and archaeological evidence indicate that Egypt was united at the beginning of its history when an Upper Egyptian kingdom, in the south, conquered Lower Egypt in the north. The Upper Egyptian rulers called themselves "followers of Horus", and Horus became the patron god of the unified nation and its kings. Yet Horus and Set cannot be easily equated with the two halves of the country. Both deities had several cult centers in each region, and Horus is often associated with Lower Egypt and Set with Upper Egypt. One of the better-known explanations for these discrepancies was proposed by Kurt Sethe in 1930. He argued that Osiris was originally the human ruler of a unified Egypt in prehistoric times, before a rebellion of Upper Egyptian Set-worshippers. The Lower Egyptian followers of Horus then forcibly reunified the land, inspiring the myth of Horus's triumph, before Upper Egypt, now led by Horus worshippers, became prominent again at the start of the Early Dynastic Period.

In the late 20th century, Griffiths focused on the inconsistent portrayal of Horus and Set as brothers and as uncle and nephew. He argued that, in the early stages of Egyptian mythology, the struggle between Horus and Set as siblings and equals was originally separate from the murder of Osiris. The two stories were joined into the single Osiris myth sometime before the writing of the Pyramid Texts. With this merging, the genealogy of the deities involved and the characterization of the Horus–Set conflict were altered so that Horus is the son and heir avenging Osiris's death. Traces of the independent traditions remained in the conflicting characterizations of the combatants' relationship and in texts unrelated to the Osiris myth, which make Horus the son of the goddess Nut or the goddess Hathor rather than of Isis and Osiris. Griffiths therefore rejected the possibility that Osiris's murder was rooted in historical events. This hypothesis has been accepted by more recent scholars such as Jan Assmann and George Hart.

Griffiths sought a historical origin for the Horus–Set rivalry, and he posited two distinct predynastic unifications of Egypt by Horus worshippers, similar to Sethe's theory, to account for it. Yet the issue remains unresolved, partly because other political associations for Horus and Set complicate the picture further. Before even Upper Egypt had a single ruler, two of its major cities were Nekhen, in the far south, and Naqada, many miles to the north. The rulers of Nekhen, where Horus was the patron deity, are generally believed to have unified Upper Egypt, including Naqada, under their sway. Set was associated with Naqada, so it is possible that the divine conflict dimly reflects an enmity between the cities in the distant past. Much later, at the end of the Second Dynasty (c. 2890–2686 BCE), King Peribsen used the Set animal in writing his serekh-name, in place of the traditional falcon hieroglyph representing Horus. His successor Khasekhemwy used both Horus and Set in the writing of his serekh. This evidence has prompted conjecture that the Second Dynasty saw a clash between the followers of the Horus-king and the worshippers of Set led by Peribsen. Khasekhemwy's use of the two animal symbols would then represent the reconciliation of the two factions, as does the resolution of the myth.

Noting the uncertainty surrounding these events, Herman te Velde argues that the historical roots of the conflict are too obscure to be very useful in understanding the myth and are not as significant as its religious meaning. He says that "the origin of the myth of Horus and Seth is lost in the mists of the religious traditions of prehistory."

Influence
The effect of the Osiris myth on Egyptian culture was greater and more widespread than that of any other myth. In literature, the myth was not only the basis for a retelling such as "Contendings"; it also provided the basis for more distantly related stories. "The Tale of Two Brothers", a folk tale with human protagonists, includes elements similar to the myth of Osiris. One character's penis is eaten by a fish, and he later dies and is resurrected. Another story, "The Tale of Truth and Falsehood", adapts the conflict of Horus and Set into an allegory, in which the characters are direct personifications of truth and lies rather than deities associated with those concepts.

Osiris and funerary ritual
From at least the time of the Pyramid Texts, kings hoped that after their deaths they could emulate Osiris's restoration to life and his rule over the realm of the dead. By the early Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE), non-royal Egyptians believed that they, too, could overcome death as Osiris had, by worshipping him and receiving the funerary rites that were partly based on his myth. Osiris thus became Egypt's most important afterlife deity. The myth also influenced the notion, which grew prominent in the New Kingdom, that only virtuous people could reach the afterlife. As the assembled deities judged Osiris and Horus to be in the right, undoing the injustice of Osiris's death, so a deceased soul had to be judged righteous in order for his or her death to be undone. As ruler of the land of the dead and as a god connected with maat, Osiris became the judge in this posthumous trial, offering life after death to those who followed his example. New Kingdom funerary texts such as the Amduat and the Book of Gates liken Ra himself to a deceased soul. In them, he travels through the Duat and unites with Osiris to be reborn at dawn. Thus, Osiris was not only believed to enable rebirth for the dead; he renewed the sun, the source of life and maat, and thus renewed the world itself.

As the importance of Osiris grew, so did his popularity. By late in the Middle Kingdom, the centuries-old tomb of the First Dynasty ruler Djer, near Osiris's main center of worship in the city of Abydos, was seen as Osiris's tomb. Accordingly, it became a major focus of Osiris worship. For the next 1,500 years, an annual festival procession traveled from Osiris's main temple to the tomb site. Kings and commoners from across Egypt built chapels, which served as cenotaphs, near the processional route. In doing so they sought to strengthen their connection with Osiris in the afterlife.

Another major funerary festival, a national event spread over several days in the month of Khoiak in the Egyptian calendar, became linked with Osiris during the Middle Kingdom. During Khoiak the djed pillar, an emblem of Osiris, was ritually raised into an upright position, symbolizing Osiris's restoration. By Ptolemaic times (305–30 BCE), Khoiak also included the planting of seeds in an "Osiris bed", a mummy-shaped bed of soil, connecting the resurrection of Osiris with the seasonal growth of plants.

Horus, the Eye of Horus, and kingship
The myth's religious importance extended beyond the funerary sphere. Mortuary offerings, in which family members or hired priests presented food to the deceased, were logically linked with the mythological offering of the Eye of Horus to Osiris. By analogy, this episode of the myth was eventually equated with other interactions between a human and a being in the divine realm. In temple offering rituals, the officiating priest took on the role of Horus, the gifts to the deity became the Eye of Horus, and whichever deity received these gifts was momentarily equated with Osiris.

The myth influenced popular religion as well. One example is the magical healing spells based on Horus's childhood. Another is the use of the Eye of Horus as a protective emblem in personal apotropaic amulets. Its mythological restoration made it appropriate for this purpose, as a general symbol of well-being.

The ideology surrounding the living king was also affected by the Osiris myth. The Egyptians envisioned the events of the Osiris myth as taking place sometime in Egypt's dim prehistory, and Osiris, Horus, and their divine predecessors were included in Egyptian lists of past kings such as the Turin Royal Canon. Horus, as a primeval king and as the personification of kingship, was regarded as the predecessor and exemplar for all Egyptian rulers. His assumption of his father's throne and pious actions to sustain his spirit in the afterlife were the model for all pharaonic successions to emulate. Each new king was believed to renew maat after the death of the preceding king, just as Horus had done. In royal coronations, rituals alluded to Osiris's burial, and hymns celebrated the new king's accession as the equivalent of Horus's own.

Set
The Osiris myth contributed to the frequent characterization of Set as a disruptive, harmful god. Although other elements of Egyptian tradition credit Set with positive traits, in the Osiris myth the sinister aspects of his character predominate. He and Horus were often juxtaposed in art to represent opposite principles, such as good and evil, intellect and instinct, and the different regions of the world that they rule in the myth. Egyptian wisdom texts contrast the character of the ideal person with the opposite type—the calm and sensible "Silent One" and the impulsive, disruptive "Hothead"—and one description of these two characters calls them the Horus-type and the Set-type. Yet the two gods were often treated as part of a harmonious whole. In some local cults they were worshipped together; in art they were often shown tying together the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypt to symbolize the unity of the nation; and in funerary texts they appear as a single deity with the heads of Horus and Set, apparently representing the mysterious, all-encompassing nature of the Duat.

Overall Set was viewed with ambivalence, until during the first millennium BCE he came to be seen as a totally malevolent deity. This transformation was prompted more by his association with foreign lands than by the Osiris myth. Nevertheless, in these late times, the widespread temple rituals involving the ceremonial annihilation of Set were often connected with the myth.

Isis, Nephthys, and the Greco-Roman world
Both Isis and Nephthys were seen as protectors of the dead in the afterlife because of their protection and restoration of Osiris's body. The motif of Isis and Nephthys protecting Osiris or the mummy of the deceased person was very common in funerary art. Khoiak celebrations made reference to, and may have ritually reenacted, Isis's and Nephthys's mourning, restoration, and revival of their murdered brother. As Horus's mother, Isis was also the mother of every king according to royal ideology, and kings were said to have nursed at her breast as a symbol of their divine legitimacy. Her appeal to the general populace was based in her protective character, as exemplified by the magical healing spells. In the Late Period, she was credited with ever greater magical power, and her maternal devotion was believed to extend to everyone. By Roman times she had become the most important goddess in Egypt. The image of the goddess holding her child was used prominently in her worship—for example, in panel paintings that were used in household shrines dedicated to her. Isis's iconography in these paintings closely resembles and may have influenced the earliest Christian icons of Mary holding Jesus.

In the late centuries BCE, the worship of Isis spread from Egypt across the Mediterranean world, and she became one of the most popular deities in the region. Although this new, multicultural form of Isis absorbed characteristics from many other deities, her original mythological nature as a wife and mother was key to her appeal. Horus and Osiris, being central figures in her story, spread along with her. The Greek and Roman cult of Isis developed a series of initiation rites dedicated to Isis and Osiris, based on earlier Greco-Roman mystery rites but colored by Egyptian afterlife beliefs. The initiate went through an experience that simulated descent into the underworld. Elements of this ritual resemble Osiris's merging with the sun in Egyptian funerary texts. Isis's Greek and Roman devotees, like the Egyptians, believed that she protected the dead in the afterlife as she had done for Osiris, and they said that undergoing the initiation guaranteed to them a blessed afterlife. It was to a Greek priestess of Isis that Plutarch wrote his account of the myth of Osiris.

Through the work of classical writers such as Plutarch, knowledge of the Osiris myth was preserved even after the middle of the first millennium AD, when Egyptian religion ceased to exist and knowledge of the writing systems that were originally used to record the myth were lost. The myth remained a major part of Western impressions of ancient Egypt. In modern times, when understanding of Egyptian beliefs is informed by the original Egyptian sources, the story continues to influence and inspire new ideas, from works of fiction to scholarly speculation and new religious movements.

title: Osiris myth


text:
Wikipedia:Copyrights

 Important note: The Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on Wikipedia article texts or illustrations. It is therefore pointless to email our contact addresses asking for permission to reproduce articles or images, even if rules at your company, school, or organization mandate that you ask web site operators before copying their content.

The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission.

Permission to reproduce and modify text on Wikipedia has already been granted to anyone anywhere by the authors of individual articles as long as such reproduction and modification complies with licensing terms (see below and Mirrors and forks for specific terms). Images may or may not permit reuse and modification; the conditions for reproduction of each image should be individually checked. The only exceptions are those cases in which editors have violated Wikipedia policy by uploading copyrighted material without authorization, or with copyright licensing terms which are incompatible with those Wikipedia authors have applied to the rest of Wikipedia content. While such material is present on Wikipedia (before it is detected and removed), it will be a copyright violation to copy it. For permission to use it, one must contact the owner of the copyright of the text or illustration in question; often, but not always, this will be the original author.

If you wish to reuse content from Wikipedia, first read the Reusers' rights and obligations section. You should then read the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and the GNU Free Documentation License.

The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by Wikipedia editors and contributors and is formally licensed to the public under one or several liberal licenses. Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Some text has been imported only under CC BY-SA and CC BY-SA-compatible license and cannot be reused under GFDL; such text will be identified on the page footer, in the page history, or on the discussion page of the article that utilizes the text. Every image has a description page that indicates the license under which it is released or, if it is non-free, the rationale under which it is used.

The licenses Wikipedia uses grant free access to our content in the same sense that free software is licensed freely. Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included (a link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement; see below for more details). Copied Wikipedia content will therefore remain free under an appropriate license and can continue to be used by anyone subject to certain restrictions, most of which aim to ensure that freedom. This principle is known as copyleft in contrast to typical copyright licenses.

To this end,
 * Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify Wikipedia's text under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and, unless otherwise noted, the GNU Free Documentation License, unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts.
 * A copy of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License is included in the section entitled "Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License"
 * A copy of the GNU Free Documentation License is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
 * Content on Wikipedia is covered by disclaimers.

The English text of the CC BY-SA and GFDL licenses is the only legally binding restriction between authors and users of Wikipedia content. What follows is our interpretation of CC BY-SA and GFDL, as it pertains to the rights and obligations of users and contributors.

Contributors' rights and obligations
If you contribute text directly to Wikipedia, you thereby license it to the public for reuse under CC BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Non-text media may be contributed under a variety of different licenses that support the general goal of allowing unrestricted re-use and re-distribution. See Guidelines for images and other media files, below.

If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available under terms that are compatible with the CC BY-SA license. You do not need to ensure or guarantee that the imported text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License, unless you are its sole author. Furthermore, please note that you cannot import information which is available only under the GFDL. In other words, you may only import text that is (a) single-licensed under terms compatible with the CC BY-SA license or (b) dual-licensed with the GFDL and another license with terms compatible with the CC BY-SA license. If you are the sole author of the material, you must license it under both CC BY-SA and GFDL.

If the material, text or media, has been previously published and you wish to donate it to Wikipedia under appropriate license, you will need to verify copyright permission through one of our established procedures. See Donating copyrighted materials for details. If you are not a copyright holder, you will still need to verify copyright permission; see the Using copyrighted work from others section below.

You retain copyright to materials you contribute to Wikipedia, text and media. Copyright is never transferred to Wikipedia. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract or alter the license for copies of materials that you place here; these copies will remain so licensed until they enter the public domain when your copyright expires (currently some decades after an author's death).

Using copyrighted work from others
All creative works are copyrighted, by international agreement, unless either they fall into the public domain or their copyright is explicitly disclaimed. Generally, Wikipedia must have permission to use copyrighted works. There are some circumstances under which copyrighted works may be legally utilized without permission; see Non-free content for specific details on when and how to utilize such material. However, it is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Wikipedia's material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under CC BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use or otherwise.

If you want to import media (including text) that you have found elsewhere, and it does not meet the non-free content policy and guideline, you can only do so if it is public domain or available under terms that are compatible with the CC BY-SA license. If you import media under a compatible license which requires attribution, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). You must also in most cases verify that the material is compatibly licensed or public domain. If the original source of publication contains a copyright disclaimer or other indication that the material is free for use, a link to it on the media description page or the article's talk page may satisfy this requirement. If you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under compatible terms, you must make a note of that fact (along with the relevant names and dates) and verify this through one of several processes. See Requesting copyright permission for the procedure for asking a copyright holder to grant a usable license for their work and for the processes for verifying that license has been granted.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt Wikipedia. If in doubt, write the content yourself, thereby creating a new copyrighted work which can be included in Wikipedia without trouble.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely. (See our Copyright FAQ for more on how much reformulation may be necessary as well as the distinction between summary and abridgment.) However, it would still be unethical (but not illegal) to do so without citing the original as a reference (see the plagiarism guideline).

Linking to copyrighted works
Since most recently-created works are copyrighted, almost any Wikipedia article which cites its sources will link to copyrighted material. It is not necessary to obtain the permission of a copyright holder before linking to copyrighted material, just as an author of a book does not need permission to cite someone else's work in their bibliography. Likewise, Wikipedia is not restricted to linking only to CC BY-SA or open-source content.

However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of copyright, do not link to that copy of the work without the permission of the copyright holder. An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry ); cf. GS Media v Sanoma for a landmark case in the European Union. Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors.

The copyright status of web archives in the United States is unclear. On Wikipedia it is currently acceptable to link to archives such as the Wayback Machine, which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time.

In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site.

Context is also important; it may be acceptable to link to a reputable website's review of a particular film, even if it presents a still from the film (such uses are generally either explicitly permitted by distributors or allowed under fair use). However, linking directly to the still of the film removes the context and the site's justification for permitted use or fair use.

Copyright violations
Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material despite appropriate warnings may be blocked from editing by any administrator to prevent further problems.

If you suspect a copyright violation, you should at least bring up the issue on that page's discussion page. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. Some cases will be false alarms. For example, text that can be found elsewhere on the Web that was in fact copied from Wikipedia in the first place is not a copyright violation on Wikipedia's part.

If a page contains material which infringes copyright, that material–and the whole page, if there is no other material present–should be removed. See Copyright violations for more information, and Wikipedia:Copyright problems for detailed instructions.

Guidelines for images and other media files
Images, photographs, video and sound files, like written works, are subject to copyright. Someone holds the copyright unless the work has explicitly been placed in the public domain. Images, video and sound files on the internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow them to be used irrespective of any copyright claims.

On Wikipedia, the use of media files is subject to the image use policy, and additionally the use of non-free content is governed by Non-free content. Image description pages must be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images, as described at Image copyright tags. Untagged or incorrectly-tagged images may be deleted.

Questions about media copyright may be directed to Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, which is generally staffed by volunteers familiar with Wikipedia's media copyright guidelines and policies.

Governing copyright law
The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law. Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States.

A brief summary of non-U.S. copyright laws, including guidelines on determining copyright status of the material in the United States, is available at Non-U.S. copyrights.

Works by the United States Federal Government
Works produced by civilian and military employees of the United States federal government in the scope of their employment are public domain by statute in the United States (though they may be protected by copyright outside the U.S.). It is not enough that the employee was working at the time; he/she must have made the work as part of his/her duties (e.g. a soldier who takes a photograph with his/her personal camera while on patrol in Iraq owns the copyright to the photo, but it may find its way onto a unit webpage or otherwise be licensed to the government).

However, not every work republished by the U.S. government falls into this category. The U.S. government can own copyrights that are assigned to it by others–for example, works created by contractors.

Moreover, images and other media found on .mil and .gov websites may be using commercial stock photography owned by others. It may be useful to check the privacy and security notice of the website, but only with an email to the webmaster can you be confident that an image is in the public domain.

Note that while the United States government does not claim copyright protection on its own works, governments outside the U.S. often do claim copyright over works produced by their employees. (For example, several Commonwealth realms utilize Crown copyright.)

Works by state governments of the United States
In contrast to the federal government, most state and local governments in the United States retain copyright to their employees' work. Such work is not in the public domain, so please make sure to check copyright information before using it.

Reusers' rights and obligations
The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about is the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission (members of the media, see Press room, others see Contact us). If you want to use other Wikipedia materials in your own books/articles/websites or other publications, you can do so, unless it is used under the non-free content provisions—but only in compliance with the licensing terms. Please follow the guidelines below:

Re-use of text

 * Attribution
 * To re-distribute text on Wikipedia in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.) This applies to text developed by the Wikipedia community. Text from external sources may attach additional attribution requirements to the work, which should be indicated on an article's face or on its talk page. For example, a page may have a banner or other notation indicating that some or all of its content was originally published somewhere else. Where such notations are visible in the page itself, they should generally be preserved by re-users.

 * Copyleft/Share Alike
 * If you make modifications or additions to the page you re-use, you must license them under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License or later.

 * Indicate changes
 * If you make modifications or additions, you must indicate in a reasonable fashion that the original work has been modified. If you are re-using the page in a wiki, for example, indicating this in the page history is sufficient.

 * Licensing notice
 * Each copy or modified version that you distribute must include a licensing notice stating that the work is released under CC BY-SA and either a) a hyperlink or URL to the text of the license or b) a copy of the license. For this purpose, a suitable URL is: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

For further information, please refer to the legal code of the CC BY-SA License.

Additional availability of text under the GNU Free Documentation License
For compatibility reasons, any page which does not incorporate text that is exclusively available under CC BY-SA or a CC BY-SA-compatible license is also available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. In order to determine whether a page is available under the GFDL, review the page footer, page history, and discussion page for attribution of single-licensed content that is not GFDL-compatible. Since all text published before June 15th, 2009 on Wikipedia was released under the GFDL, you can ensure GFDL compatibility by using the page history to retrieve content published before that date.

Re-use of non-text media
Where not otherwise noted, non-text media files are available under various free culture licenses, consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation Licensing Policy. Please view the media description page for details about the license of any specific media file.

Non-free materials and special requirements
Wikipedia articles may also include quotations, images, or other media under the U.S. Copyright law "fair use" doctrine in accordance with our guidelines for non-free content. In Wikipedia, such "fair use" material should be identified as from an external source by an appropriate method (on the image description page, or history page, as appropriate; quotations should be denoted with quotation marks or block quotation in accordance with Wikipedia's manual of style). This leads to possible restrictions on the use, outside of Wikipedia, of such "fair use" content retrieved from Wikipedia: this "fair use" content does not fall under the CC BY-SA or GFDL license as such, but under the "fair use" (or similar/different) regulations in the country where the media are retrieved.

Prior to June 15, 2009, Wikipedia did permit some text under licenses that were compatible with the GFDL but might require additional terms that were not required for original Wikipedia text (such as including Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover Texts). However, these materials could only be placed if the original copyright holders did not require that they be carried forward; for that reason, they impose no special burden for reuse.

Reusing text within Wikipedia
When you merge or split an article, or otherwise move text from one page to another within Wikipedia, the page history functionality cannot by itself determine where the content originally came from. This may violate the attribution clause of the project's licenses. If you are copying text within Wikipedia, you must at least put a link to the source page in an edit summary at the destination page. It is encouraged to do the same thing at the source page, and to add notices at the talk pages of both.

If you reuse text which you created yourself, the above may still be a good idea to avoid confusion, but it isn't mandatory.

If you are the owner of Wikipedia-hosted content being used without your permission
If you are the owner of content that is being used on Wikipedia without your permission, then you may request the page be immediately removed from Wikipedia; see Request for immediate removal of copyright violation. You can also contact our designated agent to have it permanently removed (but it may take up to a week for the page to be deleted that way). You may also blank the page and replace it with the words but the text will still be in the page history. Either way, we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership.

Inversely, if you are the editor of a Wikipedia article and have found a copy hosted without following the licensing requirements for attribution, please see Standard license violation letter.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia:Copyrights


text:
Wikipedia:Administrators

Administrators, commonly known as admins or sysops (system operators), are Wikipedia editors who have been granted the technical ability to perform certain special actions on the English Wikipedia. These include the ability to block and unblock user accounts, IP addresses, and IP ranges from editing, edit fully protected pages, protect and unprotect pages from editing, delete and undelete pages, rename pages without restriction, and use certain other tools.

Administrators assume these responsibilities as volunteers after undergoing a community review process. They do not act as employees of the Wikimedia Foundation. They are never required to use their tools, and must never use them to gain an advantage in a dispute in which they were involved. Administrators should not be confused with Wikimedia system administrators ("sysadmins").

The English Wikipedia has administrators (see  or lists of administrators by activity level).

Administrators' abilities
Administrators have the technical ability to perform the following actions:
 * Block and unblock user accounts, IP addresses, and IP ranges from editing
 * Apply, modify, and remove page protection on a particular page to restrict or allow editing, moving, or creation
 * Delete pages with 5,000 or fewer revisions
 * Grant and revoke certain user permissions requested by user accounts
 * View and restore deleted pages
 * Restrict and restore public visibility of information in individual logs and page revisions
 * Edit fully protected pages
 * Edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace, excluding JavaScript and CSS pages
 * Move a page to any desired title
 * Perform other special actions as listed at

By convention, administrators normally take responsibility for judging the outcomes of certain discussions, such as deletion discussions, move discussions, and move-review discussions, but non-admin editors may also close discussions (see, e.g., and ).

Becoming an administrator
The English Wikipedia requires that administrator candidates possess the extended-confirmed user right. Any extended-confirmed user can request adminship ("RFA") from the community. However, administrators are expected to have the trust and confidence of the community, so requests from users who do not have considerable experience are not usually approved. Any editor can comment on a request, and each editor will assess each candidate in their own way. However, only editors possessing the extended-confirmed user right can "vote" in such requests.

Before requesting or accepting a nomination, candidates should generally be active, regular, and long-term Wikipedia editors, be familiar with the procedures and practices of Wikipedia, respect and understand its policies, and have gained the general trust of the community. Candidates are also required to disclose whether they have ever edited Wikipedia for pay. Questions regarding this are permitted to be asked of every candidate, by any editor in the community, throughout the RFA process.

A discussion takes place for seven days about whether the candidate should become an administrator. Per community consensus, RfAs are advertised on editors' watchlists and Template:Centralized discussion. The community has instituted a question limit: no editor may ask more than two questions of a candidate. Also disallowed are multi-part questions that are framed as one question, but which in effect ask multiple questions and exceed the limit. Bureaucrats may "clerk" RfAs, dealing with comments and/or votes which they deem to be inappropriate.

The RfA process allows other editors to get to know the candidate. Editors explore the candidate's involvement and background as an editor, conduct in discussions, and understanding of the role they are requesting. Editors state if they support or oppose the request, along with their reasons and impressions of the candidate. An uninvolved bureaucrat then determines if there is consensus to approve the request. This determination is not based exclusively on the percentage of support, but in practice most RfAs above 75% pass. The community has determined that in general, RfAs between 65 and 75% support should be subject to the discretion of bureaucrats. (Therefore, it logically follows that almost all RfAs below 65% support will fail.)

While RFA is an intensive process, the quality of feedback and review on the candidate's readiness and demeanor by experienced editors is often very high. Applicants who are unsuccessful but take steps to address points raised will often succeed on a subsequent request some months later. If you are interested in requesting adminship, you should first read the guide to requests for adminship and the nomination instructions. When you are ready to apply, you may add your nomination to the Requests for adminship ("RFA") page, according to the instructions on that page.

Only one account of a given person may have administrative tools. The only exception is administrators may own bots with administrative access. See WP:ADMINSOCK.

Adminship is granted indefinitely, and is removed only upon request, under circumstances involving high-level intervention (see administrator abuse below), or due to inactivity.

Places where administrators in particular can assist
Administrator rights can be particularly helpful in certain areas of Wikipedia:
 * Administrative backlogs
 * Anti-vandalism
 * Copyright problems (advice for admins)
 * Incidents for admin attention
 * Main Page sections, such as In the news or Did you know
 * Recent changes patrol
 * Speedy deletion requests
 * Three-revert rule and edit warring violations

See also Admins willing to make difficult blocks and the administrators channel on IRC for IRC users.

"Uninvolved administrators" can also help in the management of Arbitration Committee remedies and the dispute resolution concerning disruptive areas and situations. Administrators acting in this role are neutral; they do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people with. Lists of sanctions that are to be enforced by neutral administrators can be found at General sanctions and Arbitration/Active sanctions (see also requests for enforcement at Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement).

Administrator noticeboards
Three main noticeboards exist on which general administrator discussions take place (any user may post or take part in discussions there):
 * Administrators' noticeboard (WP:AN) – Used for things administrators may wish (or need) to know, such as notices and general information.
 * Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (WP:ANI) – Used for matters needing attention from passing administrators. Although threads here can become long, this board is primarily for incidents and other matters needing advice or attention.
 * Administrative action review (WP:XRV/WP:AARV) – Is a noticeboard where administrative actions by administrators can be discussed and reviewed by the broader community.

Care and judgment
If granted access, administrators must exercise care in using these new functions, especially the ability to delete pages and to block users and IP addresses (see the administrators' how-to guide and new administrator page to learn how to do these things). New administrators should also look at the pages linked from the administrators' reading list before using their administrative abilities. Occasional lapses are accepted but serious or repeated lapses, or lapses involving breaches of 'involved' administrator conduct may not always be.

Administrator tools are also to be used with careful judgment; it can take some time for a new administrator to learn when it's best to use the tools, and it can take months to gain a good sense of how long a period to set when using tools such as blocking and page protection in difficult disputes. New administrators are strongly encouraged to start slowly and build up experience in areas they are used to, and to ask others if unsure.

Administrator conduct
Administrators should lead by example and, just like all editors, should behave in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others at all times. Administrators should follow all Wikipedia policies and perform their duties to the best of their abilities. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with the admin toolset; administrators are not expected to be perfect. However, sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia through behavior such as incivility or bad faith editing is incompatible with the expectations and responsibilities of administrators, and consistent or egregious poor judgment may result in the removal of administrator tools. Administrators should strive to model high standards of courtesy and civility, and their conduct should set the example for all other editors.

Administrators should bear in mind that they have hundreds of colleagues. Therefore, if an administrator cannot adhere to site policies and remain civil (even toward users exhibiting problematic behavior) while addressing a given issue, the administrator should bring the issue to a noticeboard or refer it to another administrator to address, rather than potentially compound or escalate the problem with poor conduct.

Accountability
Administrators are accountable for their actions involving administrator tools, as unexplained administrator actions can demoralize other editors who lack such tools. Subject only to the bounds of civility, avoiding personal attacks, and reasonable good faith, editors are free to question or to criticize administrator actions. Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions, especially during community discussions on noticeboards or during Arbitration Committee proceedings. Administrators should justify their actions when requested.

Administrators who seriously or repeatedly act in a problematic manner, or who have lost the trust or confidence of the community, may be sanctioned or have their administrator rights removed by the Arbitration Committee. In the past, this has happened or been suggested for the following actions:
 * "Bad faith" adminship (sock puppetry, gross breach of trust, etc.)
 * Breach of basic policies (attacks, biting/civility, edit warring, privacy, etc.)
 * Conduct elsewhere incompatible with adminship (off-site attacking, etc.)
 * Failure to communicate – this can be either with editors (e.g., lack of suitable warnings or explanations of actions), or to address concerns of the community (especially when explanations or other serious comments are sought)
 * While best practices are for administrators to have email and notifications enabled, they are not required to do so, nor are they required to read and/or respond if they are enabled. Administrators who do not have notifications enabled are strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.
 * Repeated, consistent, or egregious misuse of a tool or user permission that is bundled with the administrator toolset (such as moving files or the use of rollback) An administrator can be stripped of their administrative privileges completely just to remove access to a bundled user permission.
 * Repeated or consistent poor judgment.

Security
Wikipedia's policy on password strength requirements requires administrators to have strong passwords and follow appropriate personal security practices. Because they have the potential to cause site-wide damage with a single edit, a compromised admin account will be blocked and its privileges removed on grounds of site security. In certain circumstances, the revocation of privileges may be permanent. Any administrator who is discovered to have a password less than 8 bytes in length or among the 10,000 most common passwords may also be desysopped. Discretion on resysopping temporarily desysopped administrators is left to the Arbitration Committee, who will consider whether the rightful owner has been correctly identified, and their view on the incident and the management and security (including likely future security) of the account.

Two-factor authentication is available to further secure accounts from unauthorized use.

Administrators must never share their password or account with any other person, for any reason. If they find out their password has been compromised, or their account has been otherwise compromised (even by an editor or individual they know and trust), they should attempt to change it immediately, or otherwise report it to a bureaucrat for temporary desysopping. Users who fail to report unauthorized use of their account will be desysopped. Unauthorized use is considered 'controversial circumstances', and access will not be automatically restored.

Involved admins
In general, editors should not act as administrators in disputes in which they have been involved. This is because involved administrators may be, or appear to be, incapable of making objective decisions in disputes to which they have been a party or about which they have strong feelings. Involvement is construed broadly by the community to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute.

One important caveat is that an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits that do not show bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. Warnings, calm and reasonable discussion and explanation of those warnings, advice about community norms, and suggestions on possible wordings and approaches do not make an administrator involved.

In straightforward cases (e.g., blatant vandalism), the community has historically endorsed the obvious action of any administrator – even if involved – on the basis that any reasonable administrator would have probably come to the same conclusion. Although there are exceptions to the prohibition on involved editors taking administrative action, it is still the best practice in cases where an administrator may be seen to be involved to pass the matter to another administrator via the relevant noticeboards.

Non-administrators closing discussions and assessing consensus are held to the same standards; editors closing such discussions should not have been involved in the discussion itself or related disputes.

Grievances by users ("administrator abuse")
If a user believes an administrator has acted improperly, they should express their concerns directly to the administrator responsible and try to come to a resolution in an orderly and civil manner. If the matter is not resolved between the two parties, users can proceed with dispute resolution (see this section below for further information). One possible approach is to use administrative action review or the administrators' noticeboard to request feedback from the community however, complainants should be aware that the behavior of the filer is often also scrutinized. If a user believes they have been blocked improperly, they may appeal the block.

While the Arbitration Committee does not review short or routine blocks, concerns about an administrator's suitability for the role may be brought to the committee with a Request for Arbitration, usually when other dispute resolution approaches are unsuccessful (see this section below).

Reversing another administrator's action
Administrators are expected to have good judgment, and are presumed to have considered carefully any actions or decisions they carry out as administrators. Administrators may disagree, but administrative actions should not be reversed without good cause, careful thought, and (if likely to be objected to), where the administrator is presently available, a brief discussion with the administrator whose action is challenged.

Special situations
In some situations, the usual policy for reversing another administrator's action does not apply:
 * Blocks made by the Arbitration Committee: Blocks authorized by the Arbitration Committee must include a clear indication of their source, such as "For the Arbitration Committee", "Appeal is only to the Arbitration Committee", or "ArbComBlock". Administrators must only place, reduce, or remove such blocks with the prior, written consent of the committee. (See also: .)
 * CheckUser blocks: Blocks designated as "CheckUser blocks" (that is, blocks relying on confidential checkuser findings) may not be reversed by administrators who do not have access to the CheckUser permission. Appeal of these blocks may be made to the Unblock Ticket Requests System (which has a designated "checkuser" area) or to the Arbitration Committee. Administrators were reminded in July 2010 that they may not reverse CheckUser blocks without prior consent from the committee or a checkuser.
 * Oversight blocks: Blocks designated as "Oversight blocks" (that is, blocks relying on information that has been suppressed) may not be reversed by administrators who do not have access to the oversight permission. The Arbitration Committee ruled in March 2013 that oversight blocks cannot be reversed without prior consent from the committee or an oversighter.

Reinstating a reverted action ("wheel warring")
When another administrator has already reversed an administrative action, there is very rarely any valid reason for the original or another administrator to reinstate the same or similar action again without clear discussion leading to a decision by consensus. Wheel warring is when an administrator's action is reversed by another administrator, but rather than discussing the disagreement, administrator tools are then used in a combative fashion to undo or redo the action. With very few exceptions, once an administrative action has been reverted, it should not be restored without consensus.

 Do not repeat a reversed administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it. Do not continue a chain of administrative reversals without discussion. Resolve administrative disputes by discussion.

Wheel warring usually results in an immediate request for arbitration. Sanctions for wheel warring have varied from reprimands and cautions, to temporary blocks, to desysopping, even for first-time incidents. There have been several relevant arbitration cases on the subject of wheel-warring. The phrase was also used historically for an administrator improperly reversing some kinds of very formal action.

Wikipedia works on the spirit of consensus; disputes should be settled through civil discussion rather than power struggles. There are few issues so critical that fighting is better than discussion, or worth losing your own good standing for. If you feel the urge to wheel war, try these alternatives:
 * Seek constructive discussion, and aim to cool the situation and bring it back to normal processes, if able. Adopting a deliberately calming manner and approach as you explain may help. In some cases, email may allow heartfelt personal advice to be given that could not easily be posted on-wiki.
 * If concerned by improper conduct, follow dispute resolution processes, as with any other conduct matter. For example: move the issue to WP:AN or WP:ANI and wait for input. For serious and egregious misuse of tools consider filing an Arbitration Committee case request.
 * If you are concerned that not acting (or the delay needed for dialog) could quickly cause the situation to get much worse or would be grossly inappropriate, it can sometimes be sensible to email the Arbitration Committee and let them know about the situation or request intervention or speedy advice. (This might be the case where non-public information or harm could result).
 * And remember that you have hundreds of colleagues: you are not alone and most issues are made worse by poor judgment. If you are seen to conduct yourself well, usually the matter will blow over soon, however bad it may seem. Sometimes it's best simply to take a break and calm down.

The term "wheel" comes from the description of highest privileged accounts on the PDP-10 and TOPS-20 mainframe computers, where "wheel" was used the way "root" is used on Linux/Unix systems.

Exceptional circumstances
There are a few exceptional circumstances to this general principle. (Note: these are one-way exceptions.)
 * Biographies of living persons – Material deleted because it contravenes BLP may be re-deleted if reinstated, if it continues to be non-BLP-compliant.
 * Privacy – Personal information deleted under the Foundation's privacy policy may be re-deleted if reinstated.
 * Emergency – In certain situations there may arise an emergency that cannot be adjourned for discussion. An administrator should not claim an emergency unless there is a reasonable belief of a present and very serious emergency (i.e., reasonable possibility of actual, imminent, serious harm to the project or a person if not acted upon with administrative tools), and should immediately seek to describe and address the matter, but in such a case the action should not usually be reverted (and may be reinstated) until appropriate discussion has taken place.
 * Page protection in edit warring – Reasonable actions undertaken by uninvolved administrators to quell a visible and heated edit war by protecting a contended page should be respected by all users, and protection may be reinstated if needed, until it is clear the edit war will not resume or consensus agrees it is appropriate to unprotect.

Review and removal of adminship
If an administrator abuses administrative rights, these rights may be removed by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee. At their discretion, lesser penalties may also be assessed against problematic administrators, including the restriction of their use of certain functions or placement on administrative probation. The technical ability to remove the administrator user right from an account is granted to the bureaucrat and steward user groups (see Special:ListGroupRights). In emergency situations where local users are unable or unavailable to act, stewards are permitted by the global rights policy to protect the best interests of Wikipedia by removing administrative permissions or globally locking accounts and advising the Arbitration Committee after the fact.

There have been several procedures suggested for a community-based desysop process, but none of them has achieved consensus. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see. Users may use dispute resolution to request comment on an administrator's suitability.

– Removal of rights performed by stewards does not show up in the usual user logs. Use for full links to user rights information and full logs, including the stewards' global logs on meta as well, or Special:ListUsers to verify a user's current rights.

Procedural removal for inactive administrators
Administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity:
 * 1) Has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period
 * 2) Has made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period.

This desysopping is reversible in some cases (see ) and never considered a reflection on the user's use of, or rights to, the admin tools. The admin must be contacted on their user talk page on two occasions before the desysopping depending on the criterion:
 * For criterion (1): One month before the request for desysopping and again several days before the desysopping goes into effect.
 * For criterion (2): Three months before the request for desysopping and again one month before the desysopping goes into effect.

In addition, any editors who are falling lower than an average of 50 edits per year over a 5-year period should be notified by talk page message annually that they are at risk of falling below the required level in the future.

Desysopping on inactivity grounds should be handled by English Wikipedia bureaucrats. The summary in the user rights log should make it clear that the desysopping is purely procedural.

If necessary, the user's userpage should be edited to clarify the status — particularly if any categorization is involved.

Voluntary removal
Administrators may request that their access to administrative tools be removed at Bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Disputes or complaints
In most cases, disputes with administrators should be resolved with the normal dispute resolution process. If the dispute reflects seriously on a user's administrative capacity (blatant misuse of administrative tools, gross or persistent misjudgment or conduct issues), or if dialog fails, then the following steps are available:

Administrator recall
Some administrators place themselves "open to recall", whereby they pledge to voluntarily step down if specified criteria are met. The specific criteria are set by each administrator for themselves, and usually detailed in their userspace. The process is entirely voluntary and administrators may change their criteria at any time, or decline to adhere to previously made recall pledges.

Arbitration Committee review
This is an involuntary process. Generally, the Arbitration Committee requires that other steps of dispute resolution are tried before it intervenes in a dispute, such as raising the issue at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. However, if the matter is serious enough, the Arbitration Committee may intervene early on. Remedies that may be imposed, at the discretion of the committee, include warnings, admonishments, restrictions, and removal of administrator privileges.

Administrators subject to bans
In general, administrators who are subject to restrictions such as topic bans, interaction bans, or blocks of any length keep their tools unless one of the above removal processes apply. However, as with all other granted user rights, the administrator tools will be removed from a user who is subject to an indefinite sitewide community ban.

Restoration of admin tools
Regardless of the process by which the admin tools are removed, any editor is free to re-request the tools through the requests for adminship process.

Former administrators may re-request the admin tools subsequent to voluntary removal or removal due to inactivity. The request is granted unless one of these situations applies:

 * The admin tools were removed while the administrator was "under a cloud." If there were serious questions about the appropriateness of the former admin's status as an administrator at the time of resignation or removal, the request will be referred to WP:RFA. In doubtful cases, re-granting of the tools will be deferred until a broader community discussion takes place and is closed.
 * Removed as a result of a community ban. When an editor's admin tools are removed as a result of a community ban, the editor will need to re-apply through the typical process (WP:RFA) to regain the tools.
 * Lengthy inactivity
 * Over two years with no edits. If an editor has had at least two years of uninterrupted inactivity (no edits) between the removal of the admin tools and the re-request, regardless of the reason for removal, the editor will need to request reinstatement through the WP:RFA process. In the case of an administrator desysopped due to a year of inactivity, one additional year of continued uninterrupted inactivity (no edits) from the removal due to inactivity will make a new WP:RFA necessary for reinstatement.
 * Over five years since administrative tools were last used. In the case of removal due to inactivity, for any administrator who does not have a logged administrator action in five years, bureaucrats should not restore administrator access upon request.
 * Security of account cannot be established. At their discretion, bureaucrats may decline to restore admin tools to an editor if they are not satisfied that the account is controlled by the same person who used it previously.
 * A bureaucrat is not reasonably convinced that the user has returned to activity or intends to return to activity as an editor. Should there be doubt concerning the suitability for restoration of the admin tools, the restoration shall be delayed until sufficient discussion has occurred and a consensus established through a discussion among bureaucrats.

Procedure
Former administrators may request restoration of admin tools by placing a request at Bureaucrats' noticeboard. There is a standard 24-hour review period before the request may be granted by a bureaucrat according to resysop procedures. The change is recorded at the list of resysopped users.

History
In the very early days of Wikipedia, only Bomis employees were administrators, as the server password was required to make any administrative changes. The idea of an administrator role was proposed in late 2001 during the development of the first version of MediaWiki. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales directly appointed the first administrators in February 2002.

Under the role-based access control currently used, individual accounts are marked with the special roles they may play; these roles in turn determine any special tools they may access. Administrators were not intended to develop into a special subgroup. Rather, administrators should be a part of the community like other editors. Anyone can perform most maintenance and administration tasks on Wikipedia without the specific technical functions granted to administrators. An often paraphrased comment about the title and process of adminship was made by Wales in February 2003—referred to as "sysops" here:

"I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*. I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone. I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special thing."

- Jimmy Wales

Stated simply, while the correct use of the tools and appropriate conduct should be considered important, merely "being an administrator" should not be.

As Wikipedia's worldwide cultural impact and visibility grew, and as the community grew with it, the role of administrators evolved and standards for adminship rose. Given the lengthy procedures required to remove administrative access, which often include attempts to resolve the dispute prior to arbitration, the community carefully scrutinizes requests for adminship.

title: Wikipedia:Administrators