larger stature than that of ordinary mortals. He wore a
crown of ivy on his flowing curls, a panther-skin hung over his shoulders
and he held a crooked staff in the right hand. In the back part of the
ship was a roof made of ivy, lotus-blossoms and roses; beneath it stood a
milk-white cow with golden horns, covered with a cloth of purple. The man
was Osiris, the woman Isis, the boy at the helm their son Horus, and the
cow was the animal sacred to the immortal Isis. The little boats all
skimmed over the water, singing glad songs of joy as they passed by the
ship, and receiving in return showers of flowers and fruits, thrown down
upon the lovely singers by the god and goddess within. Suddenly I heard
the roll of thunder. It came crashing on, louder, and louder, and in the
midst of this awful sound a man in the skin of a wild boar, with hideous
features and bristling red hair, came out of the gloomiest part of the
sacred grove, plunged into the lake, followed by seventy creatures like
himself, and swam up to the ship of Osiris.

[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