Having learned what had happened, Isis cut her hair, put on mourning clothes and went to look for the chest with the body of Osiris. Beside herself with grief, the goddess wailed:
The sky merges with the earth, a shadow on the earth today, My heart burns from a long separation from you <...> O my brother, O lord, who has departed to the land of silence, Come back to us in your former appearance! My hands are stretched out to greet you! My hands are raised to protect you! The sky is merging with the earth, A shadow on the earth today, The sky has fallen to the earth. Oh, come to me!
So, crying, Isis walked from one place to another and asked everyone she met if he had seen the chest. But no one could say anything comforting to the grief-stricken goddess. Isis walked many roads, walked around many villages and cities, asked many people before she met those who helped her - a noisy gang of children. As soon as the goddess asked them her question, they surrounded her and, excitedly waving their arms, started shouting with each other:
- We saw how the chest floated along the Great River, to the sea!
Thanking the children, Isis cast a magic spell that her father, the wise god Thoth, taught her, and immediately guessed that the chest should be looked for on the coast of Uaj-Ur, in the Phoenician city of Gebala (Greek Byblos), where it was washed up by the current.
The goddess was not mistaken. The river waves carried the chest with the corpse of Osiris to the shores of Gebal, threw it onto land, and the chest remained lying on a young sprout of heather. While Isis was wandering, the heather managed to grow, became tall, surrounded the chest and hid it inside its trunk. And after some time, King Gebal Malakazr, while walking, saw a beautiful tree and ordered it to be cut down and made into a column for his palace
When Isis, having come to Gebal, found out about this, she sat down exhausted by a spring and cried from hopeless despair:
- Woe is me, woe! Never again will I see my beloved Osiris!
At this time, the maids of Astarte, the queen of Gebal, came to the source. They heard the goddess crying, approached her and asked why she was crying. Isis entered into conversation with them. The girls turned out to be kind and sympathetic, the goddess liked them, and she, wanting to do something nice for them, braided their hair and soaked their skin with a divine aroma.
When the girls returned to the palace and told Astarte about everything, the queen was eager to see the foreigner, whose hair and skin smelled like ambrosia. They sent for Isis, and the goddess, accompanied by the royal servants, soon came to the palace. Astarte really liked her, and Queen Gebala appointed her as the main nanny and nurse of her recently born son.
Isis fell in love with the king's son and decided to grant the baby immortality. She did not breastfeed him, but let him suck the finger of her divine hand; at night she lowered the little prince into a magic flame, which she lit in the hearth, and the fire burned the mortal parts of his body. While the child lay in the fire, Isis, turning into a swallow, flew around the heather column crying.
This went on for many nights in a row. But one day Queen Astarte wanted to see how the foreigner was caring for her child. Having crept up to the chambers where the little prince was, Astarte opened the door, carefully looked inside and, seeing that her beloved child was engulfed in flames, let out a heartbreaking cry. This cry destroyed the magical spell of Isis, and the opportunity to grant the child immortality was lost forever.
The angry queen demanded immediate explanations from Isis, and the goddess had no choice but to open up to Astarte.
- Unhappy! - Isis exclaimed. - Why did you bother me? Know: I am Isis, the great goddess of magic, enchantment and witchcraft. I wanted to make your son immortal; woe to you! Because of you, my spell has lost its power, and your son, like all people, will grow old and die. Now give me the column that adorns your palace, and I will leave Gebal.
The queen, frightened to death, fell prostrate before the goddess. Isis easily tore the heather column out of the ground, cut the wood and removed the chest. She fell face to him and screamed so piercingly that the youngest royal son could not bear her scream and died immediately.
So Astarte was punished for interfering with the goddess.
Isis poured sweet oil over the cut heather trunk, covered it with flax and gave it to Malacander and Astarte. Since then, the wooden Djed pillar has been a fetish and symbol of Osiris.
King Malacander equipped a ship for Isis and sent his eldest son to accompany the goddess on the voyage. When the ship set sail from the shore, Isis opened the chest and, seeing the dead Osiris, burst into tears. The son of Malacander approached the goddess out of curiosity: he wanted to see what was in the chest. Isis turned to the prince and fixed such an angry gaze on him that the young man immediately collapsed dead.
Upon returning to Egypt, Isis hid the chest with the body of Osiris in the Nile Delta, in the reeds.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru