of the
wife of Osiris, a second Isis who bore no children to her husband;[*]
for the sterile desert brought barrenness to her as to all that it
touched.

* The impersonal character of Nephthys, her artificial
origin, and her derivation from Isis, have been pointed out
by Maspero (_Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie
Egyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 362-364). The very name of the
goddess, which means _the lady (nibit)_ of the_ mansion
(hait)_, confirms this view.

[Illustration: 190.jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF HELIOPOLIS. 2]

2 Drawn by Thuillier, from the _Description de l'Egypte_
(Atlas, Ant., vol. v. pl. 26, 1).

Yet she had lost neither the wish nor the power to bring forth, and
sought fertilization from another source. Tradition had it that she had
made Osiris drunken, drawn him to her arms without his knowledge, and
borne him a son; the child of this furtive union was the jackal Anubis.
Thus when a higher Nile overflows lands not usually covered by the
inundation, and lying unproductive for lack of moisture, the soil
eagerly absorbs the water, and the germs which lay concealed in the
ground burst forth into life. The gradual invasion of the domain of
Sit by Osiris marks the beginning of the strife. Sit rebels against the
wrong of which he is the victim, involuntary though it was; he surprises
and treacherously slays his brother, drives Isis into temporary
banishment among her marshes, and reigns over the kingdom of Osiris
as well as over his own. But his triumph is short-lived. Horus, having
grown up, takes arms against him, defeats him in many encounters, and
banishes him in his turn. The creation of the world had brought the
destroying and the life-sustaining gods face to face: the history of the
world is but the story of their rivalries and warfare.

None of these conceptions alone sufficed to explain the whole mechanism
of creation, nor the part which the various gods took in it. The priests
of Heliopolis appropriated them all, modified some of their details
and eliminated others, added several new personages, and thus finally
constructed a complete cosmogony, the elements of which were learnedly
combined so as to correspond severally with the different operations by
which the world had been evoked out of chaos and gradually brought to
its present state. Heliopolis was never directly involved in the great
revolutions of political history; but no city ever origin