As Gods Above

by Andre Labuschagne

  “We will wait for whoever returns from the battle, and then we will decide how best to approach this Osiris…”

  *** *** ***

  Osiris announced a general amnesty for everyone who were willing to sue for peace, and except for a few unregenerates who fled to N’Zandile, the queen of southern Ethiopia, this was gladly taken up by the remaining tribesmen. Clearly the gods favoured these invaders, and even fought o their side.

  Everyone knew the stories which told of a great falcon which swooped down, and struck down the leaders of the coalition with his shafts of lightning.

  It was reputed that the falcon was the son of Osiris and Isis, the mighty Horus, and the shafts of lightning were the bow and arrows which his companion Nekhbet had developed.

  Thus Osiris and his tribe – who became known as the Egyptians - conquered the valley of the Nile. They built a village at Thebes, and started civilising the local tribes.

  These had no agriculture, but lived by hunting wild animals and gathering what they could of plants. They wandered in family and clan groups hither and thither, up and down the valley and among the mountains, Gathering in tribes to contend fiercely in battle, each always ready to stand against his neighbour if he could see some gain thereby.

  Osiris ushered in a new age. He made good and binding laws, he uttered just decrees, and he judged with wisdom between men.

  He caused peace to prevail at length over all the land of Egypt.

  His queen was Isis, a woman of great wisdom. She gathered the ears of barley and wheat which she found growing wild, and gave them to the king.

  Osiris set in place a number of measures to improve agriculture. He was assisted by Isis as well as Ash and Bat.

  They taught the people to break up the land which had been under flood, and sow the seed and, in due season, how to reap the harvest. They instructed them in how to grind corn, knead flour and meal, and how to prepare them.

  As the people became more proficient they had food in plenty.

  They also showed how to train vines to grow on poles and how to cultivate fruit trees to give better and more fruit.

  The priests moved among the people and regulated their religion, building temples to help centralise religious activity. These temples were also important in training acolytes and new priests, as well as recruiting new immortals. This last function was of course not advertised.

  Slowly peace came to Egypt and everyone prospered.

  Then the king went travelling throughout the world to educate people and to bring peace to their neighbours. He did this not by force, but by force of personality and negotiation.

  Isis reigned over the land while the king was away.

  On the eve of his departure, she sought to remonstrate with Osiris: “Heed me, Osiris, for I believe you do ill to leave your kingdom at this time. Well do you know that many of the old chieftains are restless, and there are even some disaffected amongst our own?”

  “I know my love, but you are well capable of handling any problems there may be, especially the youth Set, for I know he is the main author of the unrest that is brewing.

  But it is even more important at this time that I carry that which we have tested here to our neighbours, that they may be civilised and reduce their depredations on our borders. Remember, if you really get in trouble, you only have to call me.

  Enough now, let us rest.”

  *** *** ***

  Set was jealous of the good works done by Osiris and his followers.

  He was one who had been tested, but did not gain immortality or power. He was filled with hate and evil and he loved warfare better than peace. He desired to stir up rebellion in the kingdom.

  The queen frustrated his wicked designs. He sought in vain to beat her in battle, so he plotted to overcome Osiris by guile. He was supported by seventy two men who were subjects of the dusky queen of Ethiopia, N’Zandile who also financed him in his endeavours

  When Osiris returned from his mission, there was great rejoicing in the land.

  A royal feast was held, and everyone of importance came to the palace to celebrate and make merry.

  When Set arrived he brought with him his fellow conspirators as well as finely shaped and beautifully decorated chest, inlaid with gold and precious stones. The chest had been made according to the measurements of the king's body.

  The Guests at the feast praised the chest, admiring its beauty, and many desired greatly to possess it.

  Waiting until everyone were well on the way to being drunk, Set announced that he was tired of being importuned by people wishing to buy the chest from him.

  “I will give this chest to the person whose body fits into it exactly.”

  There was no suspicion that there was any evil intention in this challenge.

  The guests joked that they should take advantage of the offer, before Set sobered up. There was a great deal of competition and joking about who would fit, each new guest approaching the trial in a cloud of friendly abuse and a great deal of laughter.

  “Old Zindashe need not even try” declaimed Porthiros the chief of the royal guard – “He is so fat, he could fill two of those chests!”

  “Ha!” Responded the victim of this gibe: “at least it won’t be able to take two of me! It would take a Man to fill that chest properly.”

  Before this exchange could degenerate to a vulgar brawl, someone remarked: “He’s right you know – it will take a real man – I bet that chest will fit the king exactly!”

  At first Osiris was loath to come forward, but at last he yielded to the catcalls and the exhortations to try and see if he could get the better of Set in the challenge.

  Amid a chant of: “Osiris! Osiris! Osiris...” he approached the chest and lay down within it. , and he filled it perfectly.

  “Well Set, you are fairly answered in your challenge” Osiris remarked quietly.

  “And well am I rewarded for my trouble O King” replied Set, gloatingly.

  Before the King could rise from the chest, which he suddenly realised was to be his coffin, and before any of his loyal followers could react, Set and his evil followers sprang forward and shut down the lid, which they nailed fast and soldered with lead. The few of the loyalists who tried to respond were swiftly overpowered ands dispatched to follow their king in death.

  While the fighting was going on, Set commanded his followers: “Carry that chest out of here as quickly as possible, and get rid of it, so that it never bothers me again. And make sure that no one knows what happened to it1”

  “Immediately my Lord!” Nefer-atun the chief of the servants of Set replied.

  “You men, get that chest out of here!”

  As they left the palace, one of the men asked Nefer-atun, “What shall we do with it, my lord!”

  “Follow me!” replied Nefer-atun, and led the way through the night, to the banks of the Nile. “Now throw it in.” He commanded. “And make sure you get it out into the current!”

  Obediently the men flung the chest out into the bosom of the Nile.

  The current bore it away in the darkness, and in the morning it reached the great ocean where it was driven hither and thither, tossing among the waves.

  In this way ended the days of Osiris and the years of his wise and prosperous reign in the land of Egypt.

  *** *** ***

  When Isis was informed of what had happened, she seemed stricken with great sorrow. She wept bitter tears and cried aloud.

  Her attendants tried to comfort her, but she rebuffed them. Then she made an unbreakable vow: “By all that is holy, I shall neither rest, nor refrain from searching until my Lord shall be found and returned to his true estate.”

  Her attendants were dismayed, but she spoke thus knowing that Osiris was not dead, but was trapped within a shield of gold and electrum, which not even his powers of telepathy and teleportation could penetrate.

  She knew however that he had the skill of suspending his faculties and bodily functions in such a way that h
e could survive such imprisonment for thousands of days, without harm coming to him thereby. If only she could find him, he could be easily revived.

  She then cut off a lock of her shining hair, and put on the garments of mourning. Thereafter the widowed queen wandered up and down the land, seeking for the body of Osiris.

  She questioned each one she encountered: “Have you seen a chest of gold and precious stones, proportioned like a man?”

  Everywhere she received the answer: “Lady, it grieves us, we have not seen such a wondrous object.”

  Eventually, after a long and soul searing search, she found some shore land children who told her of a strange object that had floated down the Nile, and entered the sea.

  While the queen was distracted by her search, Set usurped the throne of Osiris and declared himself the ruler of the land of Egypt.

  The whole land descended into anarchy and misrule. Men were wronged and their possessions seized. During the ensuing time of tyranny and terror, those who remained loyal to Osiris and Isis were persecuted at every turn.

  Isis herself was outlawed and became a fugitive in the kingdom. She hid from her enemies in swamps and deep jungle of the Delta.

  She was accompanied by seven of the king’s private guard, the Scorpions, who refused stoutly to leave her, but protected her from the violence of her enemies. She also managed to contact their old friend Ra who out of pity at her plight, sent Anubis, "the opener of the ways" one of the most powerful searchers amongst the immortals to help her. He was a son of Osiris by Nepthys, and he became her guide.

  One day Isis sought shelter at the house of a poor woman, but she was so afraid of the Queen’s bodyguard, that she closed the door in her face. But her son was stung by some insect, and went into a coma. When Isis heard the mother mourning for her son, whom she thought dead, her heart was filled with pity. She administered some medicine to the boy, and he came out of his coma. The woman was so grateful that she gave the queen shelter and hid her from her enemies.

  While she was hiding Isis gave birth to a son whom she name Ammon. Set discovered where she was hiding, and tried to capture her, but Horus, who was fighting against Set in another part of the country, managed to get a warning to her in time, and she fled with her child into the night.

  She left her son with Uazit, the virgin goddess of Buto, to hide him from the evil attentions of Set while she set forth once again to search got Osiris.

  Then she heard that her son Horus had been wounded severely and was lying close to death. In her grief she managed to contact King Ra back in Ethiopia. Ra sent a force to relieve Horus, who was under the leadership of Thoth, the great healer. Thoth administered strong medicine, and exercised his power, which aided healing, so that Horus was soon mended, and once again became a thorn in the side of the evil Set.

  *** *** ***

  Meanwhile the coffin of Osiris was driven by the wind and then waves, and cast up on the shores of what was to become Byblos in later years. Here it became wedged in a great hollow tree.

  During the time it had been drifting, the gold on the coffin had become worn in some areas. Through these worn spots, some of the aura of Osiris leaked forth. Those passing the tree felt that it was somehow holy. The king of the land caused the tree to be cut down and erected in his house as a sacred pillar.

  Once the aura of Osiris started radiating from the chest, Isis was able to detect it, and she set out in a ship to find him.

  When she reached Syria she travelled incognito to the house of the king. There she managed to save the son of the queen from a terrible fever, which burned in him for days.

  In return she begged the king for the sarcophagus of Osiris which he gladly granted. Isis consecrated the tree trunk to the gods, and it was long after revered by the people of that land.

  She boarded her ship again, taking with her the coffin.

  Once they were at sea, the Queen opened the chest. She looked upon Osiris, lying there like one dead. She bent over him, and kissed him passionately, while she called him as loud as she could in her mind. A man called Maneros, who was secretly an agent of Set, tried to intervene, but was struck dead by a mental bolt from Isis.

  Once Osiris had somewhat recovered, they put the body of Maneros into the chest, and sealed it as before. The ship sailed on back to Egypt.

  When Isis reached the land of Egypt, she hid the body in the chest, while Osiris went under cover to one of their secret temples. She travelled to Buto, where she fetched her son, and met their elder son Horus.

  Meanwhile, it chanced that Set went boar hunting at full moon in the Delta jungle, and he found the chest which Isis had taken back from Syria. Knowing that the body of Osiris would have a powerful unifying power for the loyalist forces, he commanded his men to open the chest, take out the body it held, and cut it into fourteen pieces, and throw them into the and rent into fourteen pieces, which he cast into the Nile, to be consumed by the crocodiles.

  But the fragments of the corpse seemed to be imbued with something strange by its residence in the coffin of Osiris, for the reptiles refused to touch them.

  The fragments drifted down the river until they were cast up at various points along the river.

  Isis was devastated by the evil of a man who would desecrate what he thought was the corpse of the king in this way.

  She had the fragments buried where they were found, each in its own tomb. These places forever after were regarded as holy, and much later temples were erected, where Osiris was worshipped by the people for long centuries.

  Meanwhile Set continued to rule over Egypt, and he persecuted the followers of Osiris and Isis severely. Osiris and Isis had decided that the time had come for them to move on, but they could not do so when it meant leaving Egypt in the power of Set. They decided that Horus was the proper person to rule over Egypt.

  *** *** ***

  Horus, as the rightful king, started consolidating his forces. He was attended by a group of cunning workers in metal who were called Mesniu (smiths). Their weapons of war were bright and keen. The sun hawk was blazoned on their battle banners.

  Isis and Osiris met with Horus to decide on a strategy to overthrow Set, who had proven to be both treacherous and tyrannical. Horus vowed to drive his Set and all his followers out of the land of Egypt. Gathering his army he went forth to battle.

  During the great battle of Edfu, Set came close to defeating Horus and many of his followers were slain. Fortunately the tribes, who remained faithful to Osiris and Isis, as well as some who had been uncertain, but were given hope by the word that Osiris lived, rallied to the banner of Horus.

  Set was driven back defeated, and driven back towards the eastern frontier. At Zaru the final great battle was fought. Both Horus and Set were wounded, but after days of battle the forces loyal to Set were defeated and driven from Egypt.

  Set was taken captive, and after both he and Horus had been healed of their wounds, brought before a tribunal consisting of Osiris, Isis and the elders of the tribes.

  Thoth, who had been with Horus in the final battle, attended as envoy of King Ra to ensure that the tribunal was conducted fairly, and that the outcome was acceptable to the great king.

  Set made an impassioned plea to the council, claiming the right to rule, in the name of his father who had been one of the tribes who had formed the original emigration from Ethiopia and by right of conquest, having defeated Osiris. He accused Horus as a rebel and usurper for seeking to overthrow the rightful king. He ended off by asking for mercy, saying that if he had erred it had been because he had been led astray by evil companions.

  Then Osiris spoke before the council: “O Set; you have been weighed by the gods, and found too light. I made you a chieftain in my council, gave you the honours of your birth, while you swore to be my loyal subject till the end of your days.

  At my behest you ruled over a province and commanded my warriors.

  Yet when I went forth to secure our borders and bring friendship with our neighbours
, you disturbed the peace of the land, and attempted to overthrow Isis, my Queen.

  When I returned, you plotted with the enemies of our people and sought to destroy me by vile treachery, usurping my throne and cheating my acknowledged son of his legacy.

  You oppressed my wife and children, and sought their death.

  When you discovered what you thought to be the body of the king, you had it ripped to pieces and scattered to the crocodiles

  Know o Set, that for each or any of those offences your life and rule would be forfeit. But your greatest offence has been your misrule of Egypt.

  You have oppressed my people and robbed them of their possessions. You and yours have murdered and raped our populace and denied them their rights. But above all you have delivered up our land in tribute to N’Zandile, the queen of southern Ethiopia.