Abstract
This final part of the lecture on the relationship between Osiris and the living is devoted to the role of the god as a recourse in legal proceedings. As early as the Old Kingdom, the " tribunal of the great god " was invoked as a place of justice in the realm of the dead, and the advent of Osiris at the end of the Old Kingdom gradually made him the key interlocutor for this type of request. The living addressed the dead as part of the Osirian ritual, as can be seen from the genre of " letters to the dead ", well attested until the Middle Kingdom, but more sporadically thereafter. The New Kingdom saw the development of oracular practices, in which Osiris played a fairly limited role in the Abydenian context. In the 1st millennium, the " letters to the gods " bear witness to direct recourse to divine power to intervene on behalf of the petitioner. The letter to Osiris in Old Coptic from the Schmidt papyrus, recently studied by E. Love, provides an exceptional case showing that the request can be formulated in the context of the Osirian rites of de Khoiak, which may shed light on earlier practices.
