I've written and posted this reply in a format that makes it clearer, to me at least, who has written what.

Corvidius
> And that is my own view, but there is a passage in
> Morenz that has always stuck in my mind, and I'll
> give a full-ish quote for context.
>
> "Nor can it be ruled out that ntr may not
> originally have been a generic name (appellative)
> at all, but rather a proper name. In any case it
> is striking that the most human of gods, Osiris,
> is called ntr in a particular context: in quite a
> number of puns this word is used as though it were
> his name"


Byrd:
I should point out that this was published in 1973, about 50 years ago. Egyptologists have uncovered a lot of material since then (Raffele's predynastic material comes to mind) and some ideas that were considered useful lines of pursuit back then have been abandoned. Wilkinson is one who supports the idea of Khentiamenu as being a possible title for Osiris... but not 'ntr' (at least that I see.)

Corvidius:
Though I don't think that Morenz can be discarded, as while his work that I am refering to, "Aegyptische Religion", was published in 1960, we do not know significantly more now than we did then. Sure there has been work on interpretation since then, though, from what I see as a non professional, more a matter of opinion that any solid new evidence, which would need to come from new discoveries of texts. I also mentioned Hornung, and his work I was refering to, without naming it, was of course, "Der Eine und die Vielen", published in 1971. Is this to be seen as too dated to use, I doubt it, and I find it useful to read Morenz as he is used by Hornung and Assmann. Another old but very useful work is "The Priests of Ancient Egypt" by Serge Sauneron and published in 1957, still the go to work on this subject, and those who have come after him and dealt with temple ritual, Rosalie David, Katherine Eaton and Roger Forshaw, of those I have read, reference Sauneron.

But then, I did start of my post by stating that I agreed with your position, and am only looking at a suggestion made by Morenz, which he hedged around with a caveat, to see if it has any traction in an area that is somewhat of a blank sheet.

Corvidius:
> So while there is no doubt at all that when we see
> ntr that, in the vast majority of cases, it does
> mean "gods", or "divinities" as some prefer, but
> there is this area of doubt as to it's origins and
> original use. So when Morenz ties in the obscure
> origins of the word ntr with Osiris, whose origins
> are also obscure, it does pose interesting
> questions. For instance, Hornung categorically
> states that he sees no God behind all the other
> gods, and that none of the creator gods, even with
> their murky non name names, if you see what I
> mean, quite fits the bill for being The God,
> Osiris, as king on Earth after the departure of
> Ra, and as regenerator of Ra and everything else,
> to an extent fits the bill as being almost an uber
> god, even though he is not a creator.

Byrd:
I am not aware of early texts (4th dynasty or earlier) where Ra departs Earth and leaves Osiris as king. The Ennead was only the regional pantheon for Heliopolis - there were other pantheon groups (the Ogdoad) during the predynastic and early dynasties. And I believe that the story of the end of the universe and Ra involves Ra and Thoth -- not Osiris (again, if I'm mistaken, someone please link the right source.)

Corvidius:
I'm not saying that there are any 4th Dynasty texts, or earlier, that deal with "The Book of the Heavenly Cow", which is what I had in mind, and even the earliest elements of that myth do not appear until the Middle Kingdom, and the work proper not until the New Kingdom. What I was getting at was the idea that Ra is no longer on Earth and that Osiris is the first king, which he was. How far does this go back though? As it was very apparent to the EA that there were no gods moving amongst them, they had to have them as manifestation embodied in man made statues, and create a myth to explain to people why though, to them, there are gods, we cannot see them, the central deceit of all religion to explain why they cannot be seen.


Corvidius:
> The work of
> the creator gods was done once, and that was their
> job done, to an extent excepting Ra, yet Osiris
> has to keep it all running until the end of time,
> and may have, in the minds of the Egyptians, being
> doing this since before dynastic times, just not
> in the name Osiris, but as "God", ntr, until the
> name was used for all gods.

Byrd:
Osiris as "teacher of mankind" comes from Diodorus Siclus and around 60 AD -- Ra does not "create things" and then leave stuff in Osiris' hands.

Also, if you look at the hieroglyphs of the Pyramid Texts on the walls of Unas' South Chamber (https://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/AntesouthH.htm), you will see the names of the gods written without the flags....but (fourth column from the right, for example) the three flags for "gods" as part of a sentence.

Corvidius:
The creator gods only create once, except that Ra, as sungod, has to rise each morning. He cannot do this with having been regenerated by Osiris, and that is what I meant by Osiris taking over a creative role from Ra for he recreates Ra, down there in the depths of the Duat where it interfaces with Nun. While a full description of this does not appear until the New Kingdom, we see the beginnings of this in the PT. I doubt that Osiris is a creation made during the reign of Unas, or that any of the other gods who appear for the first time in the PT were created at that time, but all pre-existed in some form, and that is the entire purpose of my post, to see, in the case of Osiris, where he might exist prior to the PT, and as he has this crucial regenerative role, he might have existed as a force behind the scenes, as it were, and hidden behind other names, potentially, and at a long stretch I admit, as a creative god force, a god behind the gods, but not the ultimate creator, as the closest to that is Ptah, and, as I wrote, Hornung destroyed the idea that there was a god in the sense of the Abrahamic god behind all the other gods, including Ptah. This notion about Osiris may well be totaly wrong, but I don't mind as I'm not nailing any flags to a mast here, only looking at possibilities, possibilities that the AE open up themselves due to their vaguness about the names of their gods, and their admission that they do not know the real name of any of their gods, and here I'll reference Isis alone knowing the true name of Ra. We have in their religion a Russian Doll, mystery within mystery, but no revelation at the core, vide Hornung. Shu and Tefnut are both Atum, Sekhmet is Hathor, Nefertum accompanied Ra as he rose on a lotus out of Nun at Ra's creation, yet Nefertum is also the grandson of Ra. It's all, as you know, contradiction upon contradiction, and I see no specific reason not to investigate the origins of Osiris, and of course many do, but in this case to see if he may have started out in a hidden role of great importance, and this does seem to be reflected in his rise and rise since his first naming as Osiris in the PT.