er despair had been.

[Footnote 1: The king was standing before a statue with movable eyes.]

[Footnote 2: _i.e._ the number of the cubits which the waters of the
Nile shall rise.]

Having left the chamber of the god the king made a decree by which he
endowed the temple of Khnemu with lands and gifts, and he drew up a code
of laws under which every farmer was compelled to pay certain dues to
it. Every fisherman and hunter had to pay a tithe. Of the calves cast
one tenth were to be sent to the temple to be offered up as the daily
offering. Gold, ivory, ebony, spices, precious stones, and woods were
tithed, whether their owners were Egyptians or not, but no local tribe
was to levy duty on these things on their road to Abu. Every artisan
also was to pay tithe, with the exception of those who were employed in
the foundry attached to the temple, and whose occupation consisted in
making the images of the gods. The king further ordered that a copy of
this decree, the original of which was cut in wood, should be engraved
on a stele to be set up in the sanctuary, with figures of Khnemu and his
companion gods cut above it. The man who spat upon the stele [if
discovered] was to be "admonished with a rope."

THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERINGS OF ISIS

The god Osiris, as we have seen in the chapter on the Egyptian Religion
in the accompanying volume, lived and reigned at one time upon earth in
the form of a man. His twin-brother Set was jealous of his popularity,
and hated him to such a degree that he contrived a plan whereby he
succeeded in putting Osiris to death. Set then tried to usurp his
brother's kingdom and to make himself sole lord of Egypt, and, although
no text states it distinctly, it is clear that he seized his brother's
wife, Isis, and shut her up in his house. Isis was, however, under the
protection of the god Thoth, and she escaped with her unborn child, and
the following Legend describes the incidents that befell her, and the
death and revivification of Horus. It is cut in hieroglyphs upon a large
stone stele which was made for Ankh-Psemthek, a prophet of Nebun in the
reign of Nectanebus I, who reigned from 373 B.C. to 360 B.C. The stele
was dug up in 1828 at Alexandria, and was given to Prince Metternich by
Muhammad Ali Pasha; it is now commonly known as the "Metternich Stele."
The Legend is narrated by the goddess herself, who says:

I am Isis. I escaped from the dwelling wherein my brother Set