Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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Osiris in ignorance had fallen in love and united himself with her sister l as with herself, and seeing as proof the honey-clover2 wreath which he had left behind with Nephthys, she sought for the babe — (for she [N.] exposed it immediately she bore it, through fear of Typhon3).
7. And after it was found with toil and trouble — dogs 4 guiding Isis to it — it was reared and became her guard and follower, being called Anubis, and is said to guard the Gods, as their dogs men.
XV. 1. It was from him she got intelligence about the chest : — that after it had been wave-tossed out by the Sea to the Byblos6 country, the land- wash had gently brought it to rest in a certain heather-bush." 6
2. And the heather-bush, in a short time running up into a most beautiful and very large young tree, enfolded, and grew round it,7 and hid it entirely within itself.
3. And the King,8 marvelling at the greatness of the tree, after cutting off the branches, and rounding off the trunk that surrounded the coffin without its being seen,1 set it up as the prop of his roof.
1 Sc. Nephthya
2 Meli-lote — lotos in Greek stands for several plants ; it might be translated as " honey -lotus." Cf. xxxviii. 5.
3 Her legitimate spouse.
4 A term used frequently among the Greeks (who presumably got the idea elsewhere) for the servants, agents, or watchers of the higher Gods ; thus the Eagle is called the " winged dog " of Zeus ^Esch., Pr., 1022). "Dog," as we have seen (xi. 1, n.) signifies a power of the World, Soul or Great Animal, also of individual souls.
6 That is, " Papyrus." This Byblos was a " city in the Papyrus Swamps of the Delta." (So Budge, op. cit., ii. 190.)
6 <?pefK7? — probably a play on the root-meaning of tptiKtiv, "to quiver," is intended. The Egyptian erica was taller and more bushy than ours. Or it may be the tamarisk ; elsewhere it is called a mulberry-tree.
7 Sc. the " coffin " — perhaps here signifying what has lately been called the " permanent atom " in man.
8 The ruler of the form-side of things.
4. And they say that on her hearing of these things by the dainionian spirit of a voice,2 Isis came to Byblos, and, sitting down at a fountain-head, downcast and weeping, held converse with no one else, but she embraced and showed affection to the maids of the Queen, curling 3 their hair and exhaling from herself on their skin a marvellous fragrance.
5. And when the Queen saw her maids, longing for the ambrosia-smelling hair and skin of the stranger came upon her.
And so when she had been sent for and had become an inmate [of the palace, the Queen] made her nurse of her little one.
6. And the name of the King, they say, was Malkander,4 while her name according to some was Astarte, according to others Saosis, and according to others Nemanous,5 — or whatever is the name for which the Greek equivalent would be Atheuai's.6
1 On the erroneously called " Gnostic " gems, the lopped trunk is a frequent symbol ; the lopped " five-branched," presumably.
2 Notice the three stages of awareness : (i.) the babbling of children ; (ii.) the intelligence given by the dog ; (iii.) the daimonian spirit of a voice (Heb. Bath-kol).
3 Isis, when she first lost Osiris, cut off a curl (xiv. 2).
4 Apparently, though curiously, a play on the Semitic MLK or Malek, "king," and the Greek andr, "man" — that is, "king of men."
6 Or " Nemanos." The names seem to have been impartially
maltreated by the copyists ; thus we find such variants as Asparte,
Sooses, Neimanoe.
6 There was among the ancients an art of name-translation, as Plato tells us in the Story of Atlantis, in which the Atlantic names he says, were translated into Greek by Solon or by the priests of Sais. Here, I believe, there is also a word-play intended. Isis, as we have seen, was pre-eminently Nurse, rirdit, a further intensifica-
XVI. 1. And [they say] that instead of giving it1 the breast, Isis reared the little one by putting her finger 2 into its mouth, and that at night she burnt round 3 the mortal [elements] of its body, and, turning herself into a swallow, flew round the pillar and twittered a dirge ; until the Queen, through spying [on her] and crying out4 when she saw the babe being burnt round, deprived it of its immortality.5