[We have taken our description of this spectacle entirely from the Osiris-myth, as we find it in Plutarch, Isis and Orisis 13-19.  Diod.  I. 22. and a thousand times repeated on the monuments.  Horus is called “the avenger of his father,” &c.  We copy the battle with all its phases from an inscription at Edfu, interpreted by Naville.]

“The little boats fled with the swiftness of the wind, and the trembling boy helmsman dropped his lotus-blossom.

“The dreadful monster then rushed on Osiris, and, with the help of his comrades, killed him, threw the body into a coffin and the coffin into the lake, the waters of which seemed to carry it away as if by magic.  Isis meanwhile had escaped to land in one of the small boats, and was now running hither and thither on the shores of the lake, with streaming hair, lamenting her dead husband and followed by the virgins who had escaped with her.  Their songs and dances, while seeking the body of Osiris, were strangely plaintive and touching, and the girls accompanied the dance by waving black Byssus scarfs in wonderfully graceful curves.  Neither were the youths idle; they busied themselves in making a costly coffin for the vanished corpse of the god, accompanying their work with dances and the sound of castanets.  When this was finished they joined the maidens in the train of the lamenting Isis and wandered on the shore with them, singing and searching.

“Suddenly a low song rose from some invisible lips.  It swelled louder and louder and announced, that the body of the god had been transported by the currents of the Mediterranean to Gebal in distant Phoenicia.  This singing voice thrilled to my very heart; Neithotep’s son, who was my companion, called it ‘the wind of rumor.’

“When Isis heard the glad news, she threw off her mourning garments and sang a song of triumphant rejoicing, accompanied by the voices of her beautiful followers.  Rumor had not lied; the goddess really found the sarcophagus and the dead body of her husband on the northern shore of the lake.

[It is natural, that Isis should find the body of her husband in the north.  The connection between Phoenicia and Egypt in this myth, as it has been handed down to us by Plutarch, is very remarkable.  We consider the explanation of the close affinity between the Isis and Osiris and the Adonis myths to be in the fact, that Egyptians and Phoenicians lived together on the shores of the Delta where the latter had planted their colonies.  Plutarch’s story of the finding of Osiris’ dead body is very charming.  Isis and Osiris.  Ed. Parth. 15.]

“They brought both to land with dances; Isis threw herself on the beloved corpse, called on the name of Osiris and covered the mummy with kisses, while the youths wove a wonderful tomb of lotus-flowers and ivy.

“When the coffin had been laid under this beautiful vault, Isis left the sad place of mourning and went to look for her son.  She found him at the east end of the lake, where for a long time I had seen a beautiful youth practising arms with a number of companions.