stabbed with pain at the news, as if a knife had been driven into her
body, ran out distraught with grief. It seems that she had gone to
perform a religious ceremony in honour of Osiris in a temple near
Hetep-hemt, leaving her child carefully concealed in Sekhet-An. During
her absence the scorpion Uhat, which had been sent by Set, forced its
way into the biding-place of Horus, and there stung him to death. When
Isis came and found the dead body, she burst forth in lamentations, the
sound of which brought all the people from the neighbouring districts
to her side. As she related to them the history of her sufferings they
endeavoured to console her, and when they found this to be impossible
they lifted up their voices and wept with her. Then Isis placed her
nose in the mouth of Horus so that she might discover if he still
breathed, but there was no breath in his throat; and when she examined
the wound in his body made by the fiend Aun-Ab she saw in it traces of
poison. No doubt about his death then remained in her mind, and
clasping him in her arms she lifted him up, and in her transports of
grief leaped about like fish when they are laid on red-hot coals. Then
she uttered a series of heartbreaking laments, each of which begins
with the words "Horus is bitten." The heir of heaven, the son of Un-
Nefer, the child of the gods, he who was wholly fair, is bitten! He
for whose wants I provided, he who was to avenge his father, is bitten!
He for whom I cared and suffered when he was being fashioned in my
womb, is bitten! He whom I tended so that I might gaze upon him, is
bitten! He whose life I prayed for is bitten! Calamity hath overtaken
the child, and he hath perished.


Whilst Isis was saying these and many similar words, her sister
Nephthys, who had been weeping bitterly for her nephew Horus as she
wandered about among the swamps, came, in company with the Scorpion-