Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

XXXVIII. 1. And of the stars they consider Sirius to be Isis's7 — as being a water-bringer. And they honour the Lion, and ornament the doors of the temples with gaping lions' mouths ; since Nilus overflows:

When first the Sun doth with the Lion join.8

1 Ariston and Alexarchus and Hermseus (c/. xlii. 7) seem to be otherwise unknown to fame.

2 (!/i)3f)jjuos = oj8pj/toy — strong, virile, manly. Of. the Eleusinian sacred name Brimos for lacchos.

3 Flourished latter half of 3rd century B.C.

4 Son of Zeus and lo, born in the Nile, after the long wanderings of his mother. He is fabled by the Greeks to have been subsequently King of Egypt and to have built Memphis. Herodotus (ii. 153 ; iii. 27, 28) says that Epaphos = Apis.

6 A Greek writer subsequent to the time of Alexander the Great.
6 Cf. iii. 1. 7 But c/. Ixi. 5. 8 Aratus, Phcenom., 351.

2. And as they hold the Nile to be " Osiris's efflux," so too they think earth Isis's body — not all [of it], but what the Nile covers, sowing [her] with seed and mingling with her ; and from this intercourse they give birth to Horus.

3. And Horus is the season (wpa) and [fair] blend of air that keeps and nourishes all in the atmosphere — who, they say, was nursed by Leto in the marshes round Buto ; for the watery and soaked-through earth especially nourishes the exhalations that quench and abate dryness and drought.

4. And they call the extremities of the land, both on the borders and where touching the sea, Nephthys; for which cause they give Nephthys the name of " End," l and say she lives with Typhon.

5. And when the Nile exceeds its boundaries and overflows more than usual, and [so] consorts with the extreme districts, they call it the union of Osiris with Nephthys — proof of which is given by the 'springing up of plants, and especially of the honey-clover,2 for it was by its falling [from Osiris] and being left behind that Typhon was made aware of the wrong done to his bed. Hence it is that Isis conceived Horus in lawful wedlock, but Nephthys Anubis clandestinely.

6. In the Successions of the Kings,3 however, they record that when Nephthys was married to Typhon, she was at first barren ; and if they mean this to apply not to a woman but to their Goddess, they enigmatically refer to the utterly unproductive nature of the land owing to sterility.

XXXIX. 1. The conspiracy and despotism of Typhon, moreover, was the power of drought getting the mastery over and dispersing the moisture which both generates the Nile and increases it.

1 Of. xii. 6. 2 Qf. xiv. 6. 3 Cf. xi. 4.

2. While his helper, the ^Ethiopian queen,1 riddles southerly winds from ^Ethiopia. For when these prevail over the Annuals2 (which drive the clouds towards Ethiopia), and prevent the rains which swell the Nile from bursting, — Typhon takes possession and scorches ; and thus entirely mastering the Nile he forces him out into the sea, contracted into himself through weakness and flowing empty and low.

3. For the fabled shutting-up of Osiris into the coffin is, perhaps, nothing but a riddle of the occultation and disappearance of water. Wherefore they say that Osiris disappeared in the mofeth of Athyr,3 — when, the Annuals ceasing entirely, the Nile sinks, and the land is denuded, and, night lengthening, darkness increases, and the power of the light wanes and is mastered, and the priests perform both other melancholy rites, and, covering a cow made entirely of gold 4 with a black coat of fine linen as a mask of mourning for the Goddess — for they look on the "cow" as an image of Isis and as the earth — they exhibit it for four days from the seventeenth consecutively.

4. For the things mourned for are four: first, the Nile failing and sinking ; second, the northern winds being completely extinguished by the southern gaining the mastery ; third, the day becoming less than the night; and, finally, the denudation of the earth, together with the stripping of the trees which shed their leaves at that time.