Isis AEthiopia

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English Choose a language for shopping. Not Enabled Word Wise: Not Enabled Screen Reader: Enabled Amazon Best Sellers Rank: The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, then ends in a large delta, Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. In Coptic, the words piaro or phiaro meaning the river come from the ancient name.

One possible etymology derives it from a Semitic Nahal, meaning river, the standard English names White Nile and Blue Nile, to refer to the rivers source, derive from Arabic names formerly applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,, square kilometers, the source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size.

Gish Abay is reportedly the place where the water of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop. For the remaining part it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the very northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta. Sahara — The Sahara is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,, square kilometres is comparable to the area of the United States. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains.

To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of tropical savanna around the Niger River valley. If all areas with an annual precipitation of less than mm were included. It is one of three physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada, Ergs form only a minor part, wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features, sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, dry lakes, and salt flats.

The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation, the northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years, the northern limit also corresponds to the mm isohyet of annual precipitation. To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, the southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha, or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the Sahel.

According to climatic criteria, the limit of the Sahara corresponds to the mm isohyet of annual precipitation. The Sahara is the worlds largest low-latitude hot desert and this steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere. Atlantic Ocean — The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about ,, square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west.

The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago.

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The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the midth century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans.

Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures , km compared to , km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of ,, km2 or Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,, km2 and has a volume of ,, km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,, km2 and the South Atlantic 40,, km2. The average depth is 3, m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The MAR reaches above m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other. Homer — Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia.

The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius.

The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer.

Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century.

These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy.

He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material. Iliad — The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly. The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC.

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Recent statistical modelling based on language evolution gives a date of — BC, in the modern vulgate, the Iliad contains 15, lines, it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. Note, Book numbers are in parentheses and come before the synopsis of the book, after an invocation to the Muses, the story launches in medias res towards the end of the Trojan War between the Trojans and the besieging Greeks. Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, offers the Greeks wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseis, held captive of Agamemnon, although most of the Greek army is in favour of the offer, Agamemnon refuses.

Chryses prays for Apollos help, and Apollo causes a plague to afflict the Greek army, after nine days of plague, Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidon contingent, calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, angered, Achilles declares that he and his men will no longer fight for Agamemnon but will go home. Odysseus takes a ship and returns Chryseis to her father, whereupon Apollo ends the plague, in the meantime, Agamemnons messengers take Briseis away.

Achilles becomes very upset, sits by the seashore, and prays to his mother, Achilles asks his mother to ask Zeus to bring the Greeks to the breaking point by the Trojans, so Agamemnon will realize how much the Greeks need Achilles. Thetis does so, and Zeus agrees, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon, urging him to attack Troy. Agamemnon heeds the dream but decides to first test the Greek armys morale, the plan backfires, and only the intervention of Odysseus, inspired by Athena, stops a rout.

Odysseus confronts and beats Thersites, a soldier who voices discontent about fighting Agamemnons war. After a meal, the Greeks deploy in companies upon the Trojan plain, the poet takes the opportunity to describe the provenance of each Greek contingent.

When news of the Greek deployment reaches King Priam, the Trojans too sortie upon the plain, in a list similar to that for the Greeks, the poet describes the Trojans and their allies. The armies approach each other, but before they meet, Paris offers to end the war by fighting a duel with Menelaus, urged by his brother and head of the Trojan army, Hector. While Helen tells Priam about the Greek commanders from the walls of Troy, Paris is beaten, but Aphrodite rescues him and leads him to bed with Helen before Menelaus can kill him.

Odyssey — The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy.

It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci. The Odyssey continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into languages around the world.

Many scholars believe the poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos, perhaps a rhapsode. The details of the ancient oral performance and the conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, in the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage. The Odyssey has a lost sequel, the Telegony, which was not written by Homer and it was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta.

In one source, the Telegony was said to have stolen from Musaeus by either Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene. The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war. Odysseus protectress, the goddess Athena, requests to Zeus, king of the gods, to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Odysseus enemy, then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father.

He offers her hospitality, they observe the suitors dining rowdily while the bard Phemius performs a poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius theme, the Return from Troy, because it reminds her of her missing husband and that night Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the suitors. Accompanied by Athena, he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos.

Africa — Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in was Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.

Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean.

This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge.

Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in , stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace. Historical terms for the region or various portions of the Maghreb include Mauretania, Numidia, Libya, the term maghrib is Arabic for west, from the verb gharaba. In the strict sense, the definite form al-maghrib denotes the country of Morocco in particular and it identified the westernmost territories that fell to the Islamic conquests of the 7th century.

Today, it is a noun for the present region of the Maghreb. The Berber languages alternative term for the region, Tamazgha, has been popularized by Berber activists since the second half of the 20th century. As recently as the late 19th century it was used to refer to the Western Mediterranean region of coastal North Africa in general, and to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in particular. The region was unified as an independent political entity during the rule of the Berber kingdom of Numidia.

The most enduring rule was that of the local Berber empires of the Almoravids, Almohads, Hammadids, Zirids, Marinids, Saadi, the Ottoman Turks ruled the region as well. Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya established the Maghreb Union in to promote cooperation and it was envisioned initially by Muammar Gaddafi as a superstate. The union included Western Sahara implicitly under Moroccos membership, putting Moroccos long cold war with Algeria to a rest, however, this progress was short-lived, and the union is now frozen.

Tensions between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara re-emerged strongly, reinforced by the unsolved borderline issue between the two countries and these two main conflicts have hindered progress on the unions joint goals and practically made it inactive as a whole. Around 3, BC a tilt in the Earths orbit created a rapid desertification of the Sahara, the Maghreb or western North Africa is believed to have been inhabited by Berbers since from at least 10, BC.

Maghreb coast ports were predominantly occupied or constructed by the Phoenicians, the main Phoenician settlements centered in the Gulf of Tunis along the North African littoral between the Pillars of Hercules and the Libyan coast east of ancient Cyrenaica. They dominated the trade and intercourse of the Western Mediterranean for centuries, Rome was greatly helped by the defection of King Massinissa and Carthaginians eastern Numidian Massylii client-allies. A century later, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent a force under General Belisarius that succeeded in destroying the Vandal kingdom, the Berbers contested outside-the-area control although after the s AD period the Arabs controlled the entire region.

The Arabs reached the Maghreb in early Umayyad times, Arab expansion and the spread of Islam pushed the development of trans-Saharan trade. While restricted due to the cost and dangers, the trade was highly profitable, commodities traded included such goods as salt, gold, ivory, and slaves. Arab control over the Maghreb was quite weak, various Islamic variations, such as the Ibadis and the Shia, were adopted by some Berbers, often leading to scorning of Caliphal control in favour of their own interpretation of Islam. The Libyan Desert is one of the driest, harshest and most remote parts of the greater Sahara and this extended desert country is barren, bone dry and rainless.

Modern Libya is divided into the regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, the country covers an area of 1,, square kilometres. Most of which is desert save for a coastal strip to the north on the shore of the Mediterranean. Like most of the Sahara, this desert is primarily sand, Sand plains, dunes, ridges, and some depressions typify the endorheic region, with no rivers draining into or out of the desert. The desert features a diversity of landscapes including mountains, oases. To the south lie the main ranges, from the Jebel Uweinat, on the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border, the Tibesti to the south, on the border with Chad.

The main oases are Jaghbub and Jalo in east, in Cyrenaica, Kufra in the southeast, the sand seas lie in a ring around the border of Libya. The sand seas contain dunes up to meters in height, to the southeast, between Kufra and the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border, lies the Jebel Arkenu, with the associated Arkenu structures, thought to be caused by meteorite strikes. North of the Gilf Kebir plateau, among the shallow peripheral dunes of the southern Great Sand Sea, is a field of Libyan desert glass and this is thought to be associated with a meteorite impact, marked by the Kebira crater, on the Libya-Egypt border.

A specimen of the glass was used in a piece of Tutankhamuns ancient jewellery. The Libyan Desert is barely populated apart from the settlements at oases of the lower Cyrenaica region in southeastern Libya. The indigenous population are Bisharin tribe, Mahas, and Berber, where the desert extends into Egypt and no longer in Libya, it is generally known as the Western Desert.

The term Western Desert contrasts with the Eastern Desert to the east of the Nile River, the Libyan desert is said to be one of the least hospitable regions on Earth. Western Sahara — Its surface area amounts to , square kilometres. Occupied by Spain until the late 20th century, Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories since after a Moroccan demand and it is the most populous territory on that list, and by far the largest in area. In , the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on Western Sahara, one year later, a new resolution was passed by the General Assembly requesting that a referendum be held by Spain on self-determination.

In , Spain relinquished the control of the territory to a joint administration by Morocco. A war erupted between those countries and a Sahrawi nationalist movement, the Polisario Front, which proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic with a government in exile in Tindouf, Algeria.

Mauritania withdrew its claims in , and Morocco eventually secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all the major cities and natural resources. As of , no member state of the United Nations has ever recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

However, a number of countries have expressed their support for a recognition of the Moroccan annexation of the territory as an autonomous part of the Kingdom. Overall, the annexation has not garnered as much attention in the community as many other disputed annexations. Internationally, countries such as Russia have taken a generally ambiguous and neutral position on each sides claims, both Morocco and Polisario have sought to boost their claims by accumulating formal recognition, essentially from African, Asian, and Latin American states in the developing world.

Morocco has won recognition or support for its position from several African governments and from most of the Muslim world, in both instances, recognitions have, over the past two decades, been extended and withdrawn according to changing international trends. The land is some of the most arid and inhospitable on the planet, the land along the coast is low, flat desert and rises, especially in the north, to small mountains reaching up to metres on the eastern side.

While the area can experience flash flooding in the spring, there are no permanent streams, at times a cool off-shore current can produce fog and heavy dew. The earliest known inhabitants of Western Sahara were the Gaetuli, depending on the century, Roman-era sources describe the area as inhabited by Gaetulian Autololes or the Gaetulian Daradae tribes.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea — The text has been ascribed to different dates between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, but a mid-1st-century date is now the most commonly accepted.

The Erythraean Sea, or in modern spelling, Eritrean Sea is presently a Greek name for the Red Sea, to the ancient Greeks it included the Indian Ocean, the work consists of 66 chapters, most of them about the length of a long paragraph in English. For instance, the short Chapter 9 reads in its entirety, the imports to this are as aforesaid, and from it likewise are exported the same goods, and fragrant gum called mokrotou. The inhabitants who trade here are more peaceful, in many cases, the description of places is sufficiently accurate to identify their present locations, for others, there is considerable debate.

The description of the Indian coast mentions the Ganges River clearly, yet after that is somewhat garbled, the Periplus says that a direct sailing route from the Red Sea to the Indian peninsula across the open ocean was discovered by Hippalus. Many trade goods are mentioned in the Periplus, but some of the words naming trade goods are seen nowhere else in ancient literature, for example, one trade good mentioned is lakkos chromatinos.

The name lakkos appears nowhere else in ancient Greek or Roman literature, some other named trade goods remain obscure. In the 10th-century manuscript, the text is attributed to Arrian, the Periplus was edited by Sigmund Gelen and first published in a modern edition by Hieronymus Froben in One historical analysis, published by Schoff in , narrowed the date of the text to 60 CE. Schoff additionally provides an analysis as to the texts original authorship, and arrives at the conclusion that the author must have been a Greek in Egypt. By Schoffs calculations, this would have been during the time of Tiberius Claudius Balbilus, john Hill maintains that the Periplus can now be confidently dated to between 40 and 70 AD and, probably, between AD40 and Because of the absence of any account of the journey up the Nile and across the desert from Coptos, ships from Himyar regularly traveled the East African coast.

The Frankincense kingdom is described further east along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, the ruler of this kingdom is named Eleazus, or Eleazar, thought to correspond to King Iliazz Yalit I, Inland from this lies the metropolis Sabbatha, in which the King lives. All the frankincense produced in the country is brought by camels to that place to be stored, and to Cana on rafts held up by inflated skins after the manner of the country, and in boats. And this place has a trade also with the ports, with Barygaza and Scythia and Ommana.

Ras Hafun in northern Somalia is believed to be the location of the ancient trade center of Opone, Ancient Egyptian, Roman and Persian Gulf pottery has been recovered from the site by an archaeological team from the University of Michigan.

The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea has an area of roughly , km2, is about km long and. It has a depth of m in the central median trench. However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life, the sea is the habitat of over 1, invertebrate species, and soft and hard corals. It is the worlds northernmost tropical sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Red Sea as follows, On the North. A theory favored by modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south.

The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions, herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably. Historically, it was known to western geographers as Mare Mecca. C, in that version, the Yam Suph is translated as Erythra Thalassa.

Osiris myth

The earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, one such expedition took place around BC, and another around BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea, historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible. Nubia — Nubia is a region along the Nile river located in what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, with a history that can be traced from at least B. Before the 4th century, and throughout classical antiquity, Nubia was known as Kush, or, in Classical Greek usage, until at least , the Birgid language was spoken north of Nyala in Darfur, but is now extinct.

Nubia was divided into two regions, Upper and Lower Nubia, so called because of their location in the Nile river valley.

The Neolithic people in the Nile Valley likely came from Sudan, as well as the Sahara, by the 5th millennium BC, the people who inhabited what is now called Nubia participated in the Neolithic revolution. Saharan rock reliefs depict scenes that have been thought to be suggestive of a cult, typical of those seen throughout parts of Eastern Africa. Megaliths discovered at Nabta Playa are early examples of what seems to be one of the worlds first astronomical devices, around BC, the second Nubian culture, termed the A-Group, arose.

The Egyptians believed that written words had the power to affect reality, so they avoided writing directly about profoundly negative events such as Osiris's death. This latter tradition is the origin of the Egyptian belief that people who had drowned in the Nile were sacred. By the end of the New Kingdom, a tradition had developed that Set had cut Osiris's body into pieces and scattered them across Egypt. Cult centers of Osiris all over the country claimed that the corpse, or particular pieces of it, were found near them.

The dismembered parts could be said to number as many as forty-two, each piece being equated with one of the forty-two nomes , or provinces, in Egypt. Osiris's death is followed either by an interregnum or by a period in which Set assumes the kingship. Meanwhile, Isis searches for her husband's body with the aid of Nephthys.

The goddesses find and restore Osiris's body, often with the help of other deities, including Thoth , a deity credited with great magical and healing powers, and Anubis , the god of embalming and funerary rites. Osiris becomes the first mummy , and the gods' efforts to restore his body are the mythological basis for Egyptian embalming practices, which sought to prevent and reverse the decay that follows death. This part of the story is often extended with episodes in which Set or his followers try to damage the corpse, and Isis and her allies must protect it.

Once Osiris is made whole, Isis conceives his son and rightful heir, Horus. Although he lives on only in the Duat, he and the kingship he stands for will, in a sense, be reborn in his son. The cohesive account by Plutarch, which deals mainly with this portion of the myth, differs in many respects from the known Egyptian sources. Set—whom Plutarch, using Greek names for many of the Egyptian deities, refers to as " Typhon "—conspires against Osiris with seventy-two unspecified accomplices, as well as a queen from ancient Aethiopia Nubia.

Set has an elaborate chest made to fit Osiris's exact measurements and then, at a banquet, declares that he will give the chest as a gift to whoever fits inside it. The guests, in turn, lie inside the coffin, but none fit inside except Osiris.

When he lies down in the chest, Set and his accomplices slam the cover shut, seal it, and throw it into the Nile. With Osiris's corpse inside, the chest floats out into the sea, arriving at the city of Byblos , where a tree grows around it. The king of Byblos has the tree cut down and made into a pillar for his palace, still with the chest inside. Isis must remove the chest from within the tree in order to retrieve her husband's body. Having taken the chest, she leaves the tree in Byblos, where it becomes an object of worship for the locals.

This episode, which is not known from Egyptian sources, gives an etiological explanation for a cult of Isis and Osiris that existed in Byblos in Plutarch's time and possibly as early as the New Kingdom. Plutarch also states that Set steals and dismembers the corpse only after Isis has retrieved it. Isis then finds and buries each piece of her husband's body, with the exception of the penis, which she has to reconstruct with magic, because the original was eaten by fish in the river.

According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish. In Egyptian accounts, however, the penis of Osiris is found intact, and the only close parallel with this part of Plutarch's story is in " The Tale of Two Brothers ", a folk tale from the New Kingdom with similarities to the Osiris myth. A final difference in Plutarch's account is Horus's birth.

The form of Horus that avenges his father has been conceived and born before Osiris's death. It is a premature and weak second child, Harpocrates , who is born from Osiris's posthumous union with Isis. Here, two of the separate forms of Horus that exist in Egyptian tradition have been given distinct positions within Plutarch's version of the myth. In Egyptian accounts, the pregnant Isis hides from Set, to whom the unborn child is a threat, in a thicket of papyrus in the Nile Delta. This place is called Akh-bity , meaning "papyrus thicket of the king of Lower Egypt " in Egyptian. In this thicket, Isis gives birth to Horus and raises him, and hence it is also called the "nest of Horus".

There are texts in which Isis travels in the wider world. She moves among ordinary humans who are unaware of her identity, and she even appeals to these people for help. This is another unusual circumstance, for in Egyptian myth, gods and humans are normally separate. They even take revenge on a wealthy woman who has refused to help Isis by stinging the woman's son, making it necessary for Isis to heal the blameless child.

In this stage of the myth, Horus is a vulnerable child beset by dangers. The magical texts that use Horus's childhood as the basis for their healing spells give him different ailments, from scorpion stings to simple stomachaches, [54] adapting the tradition to fit the malady that each spell was intended to treat.

As she is the archetypal mourner in the first portion of the story, so during Horus's childhood she is the ideal devoted mother. The next phase of the myth begins when the adult Horus challenges Set for the throne of Egypt. The contest between them is often violent but is also described as a legal judgment before the Ennead , an assembled group of Egyptian deities, to decide who should inherit the kingship.

The judge in this trial may be Geb, who, as the father of Osiris and Set, held the throne before they did, or it may be the creator gods Ra or Atum, the originators of kingship. Thoth frequently acts as a conciliator in the dispute [59] or as an assistant to the divine judge, and in "Contendings", Isis uses her cunning and magical power to aid her son.

The rivalry of Horus and Set is portrayed in two contrasting ways. Both perspectives appear as early as the Pyramid Texts , the earliest source of the myth. In some spells from these texts, Horus is the son of Osiris and nephew of Set, and the murder of Osiris is the major impetus for the conflict. The other tradition depicts Horus and Set as brothers. The divine struggle involves many episodes. In this account, Horus repeatedly defeats Set and is supported by most of the other deities. At one point Isis attempts to harpoon Set as he is locked in combat with her son, but she strikes Horus instead, who then cuts off her head in a fit of rage.

In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus. Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful and indiscriminate sexuality. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands.

Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk. He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; in earlier accounts, it is Thoth who is produced by this anomalous birth.

Another important episode concerns mutilations that the combatants inflict upon each other: Horus injures or steals Set's testicles and Set damages or tears out one, or occasionally both, of Horus's eyes. Sometimes the eye is torn into pieces.

One of Horus's major roles is as a sky deity, and for this reason his right eye was said to be the sun and his left eye the moon. The theft or destruction of the Eye of Horus is therefore equated with the darkening of the moon in the course of its cycle of phases, or during eclipses. Horus may take back his lost Eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him. If so, the episodes of mutilation and sexual abuse would form a single story, in which Set assaults Horus and loses semen to him, Horus retaliates and impregnates Set, and Set comes into possession of Horus's Eye when it appears on Set's head.

Because Thoth is a moon deity in addition to his other functions, it would make sense, according to te Velde, for Thoth to emerge in the form of the Eye and step in to mediate between the feuding deities. In any case, the restoration of the Eye of Horus to wholeness represents the return of the moon to full brightness, [74] the return of the kingship to Horus, [75] and many other aspects of maat.

As with so many other parts of the myth, the resolution is complex and varied. Often, Horus and Set divide the realm between them. This division can be equated with any of several fundamental dualities that the Egyptians saw in their world. Horus may receive the fertile lands around the Nile, the core of Egyptian civilization, in which case Set takes the barren desert or the foreign lands that are associated with it; Horus may rule the earth while Set dwells in the sky; and each god may take one of the two traditional halves of the country, Upper and Lower Egypt , in which case either god may be connected with either region.

Yet in the Memphite Theology, Geb, as judge, first apportions the realm between the claimants and then reverses himself, awarding sole control to Horus. In this peaceable union, Horus and Set are reconciled, and the dualities that they represent have been resolved into a united whole. Through this resolution, order is restored after the tumultuous conflict. A different view of the myth's end focuses on Horus's sole triumph. With great celebration among the gods, Horus takes the throne, and Egypt at last has a rightful king. Thereafter, Osiris is deeply involved with natural cycles of death and renewal, such as the annual growth of crops, that parallel his own resurrection.

As the Osiris myth first appears in the Pyramid Texts , most of its essential features must have taken shape sometime before the texts were written down. The distinct segments of the story—Osiris's death and restoration, Horus's childhood, and Horus's conflict with Set—may originally have been independent mythic episodes.

If so, they must have begun to coalesce into a single story by the time of the Pyramid Texts , which loosely connect those segments. In any case, the myth was inspired by a variety of influences. There are, however, important points of disagreement.

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