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Chapter 3  
     
1.
 Isis, and Thout, and Nephthys, following the tracks that Sêth and his crew had made, came to the river-bank when it was daylight, but by that time the current of the river had. brought the chest out into the sea.
  
2.
 Isis followed along the bank of the river, lamenting for Osiris.
 
3.
 She came to the sea, and she crossed over it, but she did not know where to go to seek for the body of Osiris.
 
4.
 She wandered through the world, and where she went bands of children went with her, and they helped her in her search.
  
5.
 The chest that held the body of Osiris had drifted in the sea.
 
6.
 A flood had cast it upon the land.
 
7.
 It had lain in a thicket of young trees.
 
8.
 A tree, growing, had lifted it up.
 
9.
 The branches of the tree wrapped themselves around it;
 
10.
 the bark of the tree spread itself around it;
 
11.
 at last the tree grew there, covering the chest with its bark.
  
12.
 The land in which this happened was Byblos (Judea/Palestine).
 
13.
 The king and queen of the city, Melquart and Astarte, heard of the wonderful tree, the branches and bark of which gave forth a fragrance.
 
14.
 And then Isis, coming to Byblos, was told of the wonderful tree that grew by the sea.
 
15.
 She was told of it by a band of children who came to her.
 
16.
 She came to the place: she found that the tree had been cut down and that its trunk was now set up as a column in the king's house.
  
17.
 She knew from what she heard about the wonderful fragrance that was in the trunk and branches of the tree that the chest she was seeking was within it.
 
18.
 She stayed beside where the tree had been.
 
19.
 Many who came to that place saw the queenly figure that, day and night, stood near where the wonderful tree had been.
 
20.
 But none who came near was spoken to by her.
 
21.
 Then the queen, having heard about the stranger who stood there, came to her.
 
22.
 When she came near, Isis put her hand upon her head, and thereupon a fragrance went from Isis and filled the body of the queen.
  
23.
 The queen would have this majestical stranger go with her to her house.
 
24.
 Isis went.  
25.
 She nursed the queen's child in the hall in which stood the column that had closed in it the chest which she sought.
  
26.
 She nourished the queen's child by placing her finger in its mouth.
 
27.
 At night she would strip wood from the column that had grown as a tree, and throw the wood upon the fire.
 
28.
 And in this fire she would lay the queen's child.
 
29.
 The fire did not injure it at all; it burned softly around the child.
 
30.
 Then Isis, in the form of a swallow, would fly around the column, lamenting.
  
31.
 One night the queen came into the hall where her child was being nursed.
 
32.
 She saw no nurse there; she saw her child lying in the fire.
 
33.
 She snatched the child up, crying out.
 
34.
 Then Isis spoke to the queen from the column on which, in the form of a swallow, she perched.
 
35.
 She told the queen that the child would have gained immortality had it been suffered to lie for a night and another night longer within the fire made from the wood of the column.
 
36.
 Now it would be long-lived, but not immortal.
 
37.
 And she revealed her own divinity to the queen, and claimed the column that had been made from the wonderful tree.
  
38.
 The king had the column taken down; it was split open, and the chest which Isis had sought for so long and with so many lamentations was within it.
 
39.
 Isis wrapped the chest in linen, and it was carried for her out of the king's house.
 
40.
 And then a ship was given to her, and on that ship, Isis, never stirring from beside the chest, sailed back to Egypt.  

 
 
 

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