Abstract
This paper deals with the issue of the appearance of the god Osiris in the Old Kingdom. So far, the earliest attestations of this god have been dated to the late Fifth Dynasty, and particularly to the reign of Niuserra.
New documents (both unpublished and revisited ones) are however presented here, that seem to point towards a slightly earlier date, possibly the reign of Neferirkara. The analysis of this new material, combined with the re- consideration of all the available mentions of the god Osiris in private funerary formulas from the entire Fifth Dynasty, seems also to demonstrate that the god's appearance was primarily a royally-oriented phenomenon, connected with other pivotal changes in the Egyptian society of the time and, most importantly, with the religious-ideological landscape of early Fifth Dynasty Egypt.