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Orion is the hunter; the constellation Orion dominates the sky in winter, the hunting season . Late in April, Orion's left foot begins to disappear below the early evening horizon.
In ancient Egypt, the stars in the constellation we call Orion were connected with the god Osiris. As you have now see the ancient Egyptians saw in the Heavens events and forces that they later personified into characters to better explain what they believed they saw. These cosmological ideas of ancient Egypt were expressed by myth and symbolism, which are a superior means for expressing metaphysical concepts. Philosophy, mathematics and science are dry subjects with many abstracts. Mythology incorporates philosophical and scientific ideas into a story form, like a sacred drama or mystery play, which can be easily digested. Pure philosophical and scientific abstracts and terms do not guarantee understanding. Information alone is useless, unless it is transformed into understanding. Well-crafted mythology can achieve that understanding. Again it needs to be stressed that this understanding of the Creator and His actions exhibited and observed by these Egyptians were later personified and symbolized by various entities which were narrated in story form to express such Divine concepts. Egyptian symbolism could be compared in some sense to modern day caricature. The use of symbols are arbitrary and reveal nothing functional of the entity they symbolize. As such, a symbol, by definition, is not what it represents, but what it stands for, what it suggests. A symbol reveals to the mind a reality other than itself. Central to their complete understanding of the universe, was the knowledge that man was made in the image of god, and as such, man represented the created image of all creation. Accordingly, Egyptian symbolism and all measures were therefore simultaneously scaled to man, to the earth, to the solar system, and ultimately to the universe. In order to simplify and convey these abstract notions of god’s attributes, some fixed representations were invented. As a result, the figures of Ptah, Osiris, Amun, Mut, etc., became the signs of such attributes/functions; these are no more than personifications of what these stargazers saw in the Heavens.
According
to Plutarch, the Egyptian god Osiris was killed by his brother Seth. Isis,
the faithful wife of Osiris, revived his 
body
long enough to conceive their son, Horus. Osiris rose from the dead; after
his resurrection he took a different form, becoming god of the dead. His
tribunal passed judgment on every soul bound for the world beyond.
The son Horus found himself in the same situation that Hamlet, Prince of Denmark would face, thousands of years later. When Horus grew up, he avenged his father by battling his uncle Seth and defeating him. However, Horus sacrificed an eye in the battle, which he took to the underworld and gave to Osiris. This gift was interpreted as giving Osiris back his soul.
The belt stars of Orion point to Sirius, a bright blue star associated with the goddess Isis. Both Orion/Osiris and Sirius/Isis are on the west bank of the Milky Way.
Orion was a mortal son of Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. His father gave him the gift of walking under water. Orion was very strong and handsome, and was always getting into trouble over women. Depending on the story teller, Orion is either a brute or is very unlucky.
Orion was asked by King Oenopion of Chios to rid his island of wild animals. Orion fell in love with the King's daughter, Princess Merope, but the King was opposed. Some say Orion became drunk and attacked Merope, others say the King made Orion drunk and put out Orion's eyes while he slept. Orion's blindness explains why the stars in the head of Orion are faint.
Orion regained his eyesight when he asked to be led in the direction of the rising sun. (At first glance this doesn't appear to make sense: when Orion is visible, he is always running toward the west, not east. It might make more sense in the context of precession of the equinoxes.)
In another story, Orion was involved with Artemis (Diana), goddess of hunting and twin sister of Apollo. (Artemis is strongly associated with the moon.)
Some say Orion challenged Artemis, who sent a scorpion to bite him. (In spring, the constellation Scorpius rises in the east as Orion dies his seasonal death in the west.) Others say it was Gaia who sent the scorpion, when she heard that Orion had threatened to kill every animal on earth.
Still others say Artemis loved Orion, but her brother Apollo disapproved and tricked his sister into shooting Orion with an arrow. Orion was walking in a river with only his hair above water, so Artemis didn't recognize him. (The head of Orion is in the Milky Way, known in the far east as Silver River. So the story about walking under water was intended to remind us that the head of Orion is in the celestial river, the Milky Way. The arrow in the story may come from Mesopotamian sky lore: they saw the bright star Sirius as the point of an arrow aimed at Orion from the constellation we call Canis Major, the dog.)
The Orion Nebula, located near the star theta Orionis, is avidly studied by astronomers today because it is a region of intense star formation. The nebula is a huge cloud of hot gas heated by radiation from nearby young stars: a sort of blister on a cloud of molecules. Radiation pressure and particle winds streaming from these young stars heats and compresses the neighboring clouds of molecules, which helps form new stars. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken some stunning photographs of the Orion Nebula and its star formation process. (R.C. Bless, Discovering the Cosmos, University Science Books, 1996, pp. 327-8, 346-7.)