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 lotusblossom.

"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