Ra nothing
was unknown either in heaven or upon earth." She contrived a most
ingenious stratagem. When man or god was struck down by illness, the
only chance of curing him lay in knowing his real name, and thereby
adjuring the evil being that tormented him. Isis determined to cast a
terrible malady upon Ra, concealing its cause from him; then to offer
her services as his nurse, and by means of his sufferings to extract
from him the mysterious word indispensable to the success of the
exorcism. She gathered up mud impregnated with the divine saliva, and
moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the dust of the road.
Suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily round, the god
cried out aloud, "his voice ascended into heaven and his Nine called:
'What is it? what is it?' and his gods: 'What is the matter? what is the
matter?' but he could make them no answer so much did his lips tremble,
his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the Nile
seizeth upon the land which it invadeth." Presently he came to himself,
and succeeded in describing his sensations. "Something painful hath
stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand
hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth it what it is, yet
have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that
may overpass it.... Fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in
flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born
of breaths of magic. Behold! let there be brought unto me children of
the gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and
whose science reacheth unto heaven." They came, these children of the
gods, all with their books of magic. There came Isis with her sorcery,
her mouth full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of
pain, her words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said:
"What is it? what is it, O father of the gods? May it not be that a
serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children
hath lifted up his head against thee? Surely he shall be overthrown by
beneficent incantations, and I will make him to retreat at the sight
of thy rays." On learning the cause of his torment, the Sun-god is
terrified, and begins to lament anew: "I, then, as I went along the
ways, travelling through my double land of Egypt and over my mountains,
that I might look upon that which I have made, I was bitten by a serpent
that