Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,66

will not live forever, and give me the pillar of your house.’

And greatly wondering they obeyed, and the pillar was replaced and a woodman split it open with his axe to reveal the marvellous sarcophagus inside.

Then Isis was a woman again, and opened the coffin and wept over the dead Osiris inside, and all who heard her weeping were afraid, for it contained all the sorrow in the world. Then she took the coffin with her and rowed it down the Nile and placed it in a thicket while she slept. But while she slept Set came, and found the body; and, in his malice and misery,hacked it into pieces and flung the pieces into the air, and they scattered all over Egypt.

Then Isis called her sisters and Anubis the black dog, son of Set, who came to her and mourned with her afresh.

Then they collected the pieces, crying, ‘Come, holy one, be one, be alive, for Isis has thine hand and Nepthys thine arm.’ But they did not find the phallus, for the fish of the river had eaten it.

Then Isis assembled her husband and made her magic, drawing down time and the moon, even Khons himself as her ally. And making a phallus out of the mud of the river, she descended onto the phallus as a woman, her thighs wrapping his hips, and he entered into her and seeded her body with the divine child, even Horus the Revenger, born to contend with his uncle Set.

‘But what happened to Osiris?’ I asked. ‘He did not come alive in the world again, did he?’

‘He rules the otherworld, my pupil,’ Teacher Khons said.

He reigns over the Field of Reeds, a pleasant place of feasting and little waterways, of lotus and canals, where no sunlight blisters or cold bites; where no sandfly stings or crocodile threatens. No hot winds blow there, where the happy dead live in their houses, attended by their shabti, the answerers who are buried with them.

There each family has its own fig tree and grape vine, and all live in peace with one another. And in the centre of this pleasant place is the House of Osiris, where Kings and Queens dwell and feast and laugh forever.

‘It is not so in the Island,’ said Merope.

‘Tell us,’ I said, leaning on Khons, who nodded at Merope.

‘There all dead persons explain their lives to Gaia, Mistress of Animals, and Dionysus the dancer, her consort. There they say: I have been just, I have not hurt or killed, I have loved and been loved, there are those who will mourn my death.

‘And Gaia welcomes them into her kingdom, to dance with the Dancer and sleep in the green grass, on the mountains where the goats crop, in the Island Underworld where Gaia sits on her flowered throne,’ Merope said.

‘Here, too, one must confess before Osiris,’ returned the teacher. ‘The dead one must say: I have done no murder. I have not oppressed the widow and orphan. I have fed the hungry and given water to the thirsty; and to those who could not cross the river I have given boats.

‘The more power the person had on earth, the more chance they had to do the wrong thing and the more likely they are to see their heart sinking in the balances against the feather of Maat. For the herdsman has little chance to commit sins; he is too poor for gluttony and too ugly for lechery and has too little power to oppress the poor. But the great man has a correspondingly greater scope, and therefore can more easily fall into sin.’

‘What happens to those whose heart is heavy in the balance?’ asked Merope.

‘The heart is eaten by the monster Aphopis, half crocodile and half dog, and they are forgotten,’ replied Khons.

‘Even if they are embalmed in the proper way and all the spells said and offerings made?’

‘Even so,’ said Khons seriously. ‘Unless the dead person is good, they will not survive to live in Osiris’ kingdom. In the Tale of Se-Osiris the Magician, it is told that the good poor man goes on rejoicing to feast with Horus, and the rich greedy and corrupt man lies down at the first keeper’s door, and the socket for the door-pivot is his eye.’

We thought about this. It was a sobering image. For if the more powerful had more scope to commit sins, what could we make of the changes being wrought by the most powerful of all, who had just