ris was Ruler of Eternity, but by reason of his visible shape
seemed nearly akin to man--revealing a divine humanity. His success
was chiefly due, however, to the gracious speech of Isis, his
sister-wife, whose charm men could neither reckon nor resist. Together
they labored for the good of man, teaching him to discern the plants
fit for food, themselves pressing the grapes and drinking the first
cup of wine. They made known the veins of metal running through the
earth, of which man was ignorant, and taught him to make weapons. They
initiated man into the intellectual and moral life, taught him ethics
and religion, how to read the starry sky, song and dance and the
rhythm of music. Above all, they evoked in men a sense of immortality,
of a destiny beyond the tomb. Nevertheless, they had enemies at once
stupid and cunning, keen-witted but short-sighted--the dark force of
evil which still weaves the fringe of crime on the borders of human
life.

Side by side with Osiris, lived the impious Set-Typhon, as Evil ever
haunts the Good. While Osiris was absent, Typhon--whose name means
serpent--filled with envy and malice, sought to usurp his throne; but
his plot was frustrated by Isis. Whereupon he resolved to kill Osiris.
This he did, having invited him to a feast, by persuading him to enter
a chest, offering, as if in jest, to present the richly carved chest
to any one of his guests who, lying down inside it, found he was of
the same size. When Osiris got in and stretched himself out, the
conspirators closed the chest, and flung it into the Nile.[39] Thus
far, the gods had not known death. They had grown old, with white hair
and trembling limbs, but old age had not led to death. As soon as Isis
heard of this infernal treachery, she cut her hair, clad herself in a
garb of mourning, ran thither and yon, a prey to the most cruel
anguish, seeking the body. Weeping and distracted, she never tarried,
never tired in her sorrowful quest.

Meanwhile, the waters carried the chest out to sea, as far as Byblos
in Syria, the town of Adonis, where it lodged against a shrub of
arica, or tamarisk--like an acacia tree.[40] Owing to the virtue of
the body, the shrub, at its touch, shot up into a tree, growing around
it, and protecting it, until the king of that country cut the tree
which hid the chest in its bosom, and made from it a column for his
palace. At last Isis, led by a vision, came to Byblos, made herself
known, and asked for the c