Depictions of the Egyptian Osiris (3500BC), Greek Dionysus (c.600BC), and Roman Bacchus (200AD) each holding or standing next to their thyrsus.

“When Orpheus visited Egypt in search of wisdom and knowledge, he was initiated into the mysteries of Osiris/Dionysus, but wanting to make the Thebans of Greece happy, he changed the place of Dionysus’ birth to Hellenic Thebes and then initiate the Thebans in the mysteries.”

“Ethiopians inhabit the country immediately above Elephantine, and one half of the island; the other half is inhabited by Egyptians. Meroe is said to be the capital of all Ethiopia. The inhabitants worship no other gods than Jupiter and Bacchus; but these they honor with great magnificence; they have also an oracle of Jupiter; and they make war, whenever that god bids them by an oracular warning, and against whatever country he bids them.

All the Egyptians sacrifice the pure male kine and calves, but they are not allowed to sacrifice the females, for they are sacred to Isis; for the image of Isis is made in the form of a woman with the horns of a cow, as the Grecians represent Io; and all Egyptians alike pay a far greater reverence to cows than to any other cattle. So that no Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Grecian on the mouth, or use the knife, spit, or caldron of a Greek, or taste of the flesh of a pure ox that has been divided by a Grecian knife. They bury the kine that die in the following manner: the females they throw into the river, and the males they severally inter in the suburbs, with one horn, or both, appearing above the ground for a mark. When it is putrefied and the appointed time arrives, a raft comes to each city from the island called Prosopitis; this island is in the Delta, and is nine schoeni in circumference: now in this island Prosopitis there are several cities; but that from which the rafts come to take away the bones of the oxen is called Atarbechis; in it a Temple of Venus has been erected. From this city, then, many persons go about to other towns; and having dug up the bones, all carry them away, and bury them in one place; and they bury all other cattle that die in the same way that they do the oxen; for they do not kill any of them. All those who have a temple erected to Theban Jupiter, or belong to the Theban district, abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats only. For the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods in the same manner, except Isis and Osiris, who, they say, is Bacchus; but these deities they all worship in the same manner.”

“The initiatory rites of Demeter in Eleusis were transferred from Egypt (1.29.2). The rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus and that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter; the names alone having been interchanged, and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many - all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs. (1.96.4-5). Isis, after having invented the practice of medicine, taught this art to her son Orus [Horus], named also Apollo, who was the last of the gods that reigned in Egypt.”

“The histories on which the most solemn feasts of Bacchus, the Titania and Nuktelia, are founded, exactly correspond with what are related of the cutting to pieces of Osiris, of his rising again, and of his new life.”

“The Egyptian Bacchus was brought up at Nysa, and is famous as having been the conqueror of India. In Egypt he was called Osiris, in India Dionysus, and not improbably Chrishna, as he was called Adoneus, which signifies the ‘lord of heaven’, or the ‘lord and giver of light’, in Arabia; and Liber, throughout the Roman dominions, from whence is derived our term liberal, for every thing that is generous, frank, and amiable.”

“From the works of classical writers we know that Isis worship spread from Egypt into several places in Western Europe, and she was identified with Persephone, Tethys, Athene, etc., just as Osiris was identified with Hades or Pluto, Dionysus-Bacchus, and other foreign gods.”

“Herodotus found the similarity between the rites of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the latter could have arisen independently; they must, he thought, have been recently borrowed, with slight alternations, by the Greeks from the Egyptians.”

“It is impossible to ignore the similarities between the Egyptian quarternity: Isis and Nephthys (known as 'the Two Goddesses' in Egypt), Osiris and Set (personifications of life and death), and the leading characters of the Eleusinian drama: Demeter and Persephone (also known simply as 'the Two Goddesses'), Dionysus and Hades. Diodorus of Sicily, first century BC, clearly states that the initiatory rites of Demeter in Eleusis were transferred from Egypt (Diodorus Siculus, 1.29.2). Later he states: The rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus and that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter; the names alone having been interchanged, and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many - all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs.' (1.96.4-5).”

“The important thing in our context is that the thyrsus was an attribute of Dionysus/Bacchus. Partial or full identifications of Dionysus with Osiris are well attested ever since Herodotus, who says that Dionysus is the Greek name of Osiris (2.42). There is also some late evidence for the use of ivy in the cult of Osiris, probably an import from the cult of Dionysus in the Roman period. But there is no parallel in the cult of Osiris for the use of a thyrsus. Apart from that, the fact that a significant identification of Dionysus and Osiris in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses [c.160AD] is made only in our passage would seem to call for an explanation anyway.”

— Stefan Tilg (2014), Apuleius’ Metamorphoses [3]