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Cover: Ra and Usir sit on thrones, fittingly, since Ra rules aboveground and Usir rules below. In front of each stands a challenger. Aset nearly killed Ra with the snakebite. Set did kill Usir.

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All artwork by Christina Balit unless otherwise noted below: Willyam Bradberry/Shutterstock; foto76/Shutterstock; Public Domain; Prill/Shutterstock; Shutterstock; Jose Fuste Raga/Corbis; Richard Barnes/National Geographic Stock; Peter Langer/Design Pics/Corbis; Universal Images Group/Getty Images; Frank Lukasseck/Corbis; Sandro Vannini/Corbis; Universal Images Group/Getty Images; Nataliya Hora/Shutterstock; Sandro Vannini/Corbis; mareandmare/Shutterstock; DEA/G. Dagli Orti/DeAgostini/Getty Images; Diana Taliun/Shutterstock; Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic Stock; Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic Stock; Lori Epstein/National Geographic Stock

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-4263-1861-0

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4263-1380-6

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v3.1

Version: 2017-07-06

For the spirit of my maternal grandmother, who was born in Alexandria. —DJN

To my special friend Tessa. —CB

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Preface

RA

(HELIOS)

God of Radiance

THE GREAT PESEDJET

A Hierarchy of Gods

SET

(SETH)

Envious God

ASET

(ISIS)

Devoted Wife and Mother

USIR

(OSIRIS)

God of the Afterlife

NEBET HUT

(NEPHTHYS)

Goddess of Service

HERU SA ASET

(HORUS THE YOUNGER)

Young Warrior God and King

INPU

(ANUBIS)

God of Mummification

TEFNUT

(TPHENIS)

Goddess of Moisture

THE GREAT NILE

The Source of So Much

TEHUTI

(THOTH)

God of Knowledge

HERU WER

(HORUS THE ELDER)

Winged Sun Disk and Protector of Egypt

HUT HERU

(HATHOR)

Goddess of Delights

SEKHMET

(SACHMIS)

Goddess of Vengeance

NIT

(NEITH)

Warrior Goddess and Weaver of the Cosmos

KHNUM

(CHNOUMIS)

God of the Potter’s Wheel

SOBEK

(SOUCHOS)

Crocodile God

BASTET

(BAST)

Cat Goddess

FUNERAL RITES

The Importance of Preparation and Judgment

IMHOTEP

(IMUTHES)

God of Medicine and Architecture

Map of Ancient Egypt

Time Line of Ancient Egypt

Cast of Characters

Postscript

Bibliography

Find Out More

Index

About the Authors

INTRODUCTION

All people count on the sun. It gives them light and warmth. And they count on fresh water, too. Animals and plants need rain, even those that live in the sea, for the sea would grow too salty without it. In modern times, farmers still are concerned with sun and fresh water, because they rely on both to make plants grow, but city people might not think about it much. Our light can be turned on with a wall switch. Our water comes to us through pipes. But in ancient times, sun and fresh water were everyone’s concern.

Humans wandered through the Nile valley thousands and thousands of years ago. But around the year 7000 B.C., humans settled there for good. They lived in small, scattered tribes. They foraged and hunted for food, and they raised domesticated animals, such as cows and sheep. In those days Egypt had plenty of grassy land for animals to feed on, especially to the west of the Nile valley, and it also had a mild, wet climate.

But then the climate grew drier. The grasslands known as savannas shrank. Deserts formed. Wild animals had to move close to the Nile shores for water. People followed the animals. Soon towns appeared up and down the riverbanks. And by around 4000 B.C. people turned to farming to produce food. Perhaps there weren’t enough plants for foraging anymore. Or perhaps they learned farming from foreigners. Either way, farming meant they could feed lots of people. So towns grew large and stable.

Egyptian farmers relied on three seasons. One season was the flood, when the Nile would overflow its banks. As the floods withdrew, they left behind a muddy substance called silt. Silt is rich in minerals, and it made the soil fertile. Next came the planting and growing season. Finally came the hot and dry harvest season, the time when farmers gathered their crops.

Ancient Egyptian mythology put the sun god Ra in charge of these seasons. After all, his movement across the sky made day and his movement across the underworld made night. Because of his light, crops grew. The very pattern of Egyptian life depended upon Ra.

Egyptian mythology reflects this. Ra is one of the earliest gods, and he remains an important god throughout the long history of ancient Egypt. Most other deities begin somehow from Ra. His tongue, his eye, his saliva, his breath even—they all can step forward as independent gods and goddesses. His thoughts and words create objects and living beings. From his tears came the first humans. Perhaps the Egyptians, then, really believed in only one god—the sun god—who could take many forms.

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PREFACE

History of Egyptian Names

It’s hard to know what ancient Egyptians called their gods because they wrote names differently at different times and left out important information. For example, in the earliest hieroglyphs the god Tehuti’s name was:

The first symbol, the ibis, is Tehuti’s sacred bird. The second is a symbol for the first sound of “top”: This shows us that his name started with a t. Under that is a symbol for the first sound of “yet.” The last is a symbol showing this is a god’s name.

By the time of the Old Kingdom (2575–2125 B.C.), the ibis was often replaced by three symbols:

The “snake” stands for the first sound of “June.” The “twisted flax” stands for a harsh h sound like the one we make when we exhale on glasses before cleaning them, and the “quail chick” stands for the sound(s) following l in “glue.”

By the Middle Kingdom (2010–1630 B.C.), the first symbol was often replaced with , representing the first sound of “dog.” And in the late period (664–332 B.C.) the first symbol was often , perhaps representing the first and maybe second sounds of “tell.”

So the initial sound of Tehuti’s name changed three times. And linguists argue over what the rest of the sounds in his name were.

When the Greeks invaded, they recorded myths using their alphabet. But Egyptian and Greek did not have exactly the same sounds, so transcribing from one alphabet to the other was only approximate. In addition, Greek spellings were based on more modern pronunciations than those of early Egypt.

For the names in this book, I chose to use the older Egyptian names, not filtered through Greek: hence Tehuti. Nevertheless, I call the country “Egypt” instead of the hardly known ancient name Kemet. And since the Greek names are more familiar, I provide a reference chart below and list the gods’ and goddesses’ names both ways in the Table of Contents and on the opening pages of each chapter.

Egyptian Name | Greek Name
Ra | Helios
Set | Seth
Aset | Isis
Usir | Osiris
Nebet Hut | Nephthys
Heru Sa Aset | Horus the Younger
Inpu | Anubis
Tefnut | Tphenis
Tehuti | Thoth
Heru Wer | Horus the Elder
Hut Heru | Hathor
Sekhmet | Sachmis
Nit | Neith
Khnum | Chnoumis
Sobek | Souchos
Bastet | Bast
Imhotep | Imuthes

Ra: Ra’s first eye felt betrayed when Ra took a second. But Ra, ever resourceful, turned that old eye into a cobra and put her on the front of his crown, where she felt important again.

RA (HELIOS)

God of Radiance

In the beginning, before there was time, water spread in every direction, though there was no direction really because there was no up, no down; no east, no west; no inside, no outside. This water lay cold and colorless. A wet nothingness that hummed nnnnnnnun. Nun, Nun. This was the cosmos, hardly more than empty chaos. There was but a single entity, so there was no question of order: The cosmos was ordered perforce. The order of a dot, a circle, a sphere, without beginning or end. Utter consistency. Perfect order.

But something there is that doesn’t like order. Order can be tolerated temporarily, but on and on like that? Infinite order? How unutterably intolerable. Boring, really.

A hint came. A slight poke. Then another, a little firmer. A full-fledged beat now. More of them. Insistent beats, breaking up the hum, moving the water imperceptibly at first, then in tiny waves, then bigger ones, huge ones now, tsunamis, yet still in a pattern, still ordered, one after another at regular intervals. Thump thump thump thump.

A heart formed around this pulse, for every rhythm evokes an origin.

And in that heart nestled a thought. After all, some think with the head and others think with the heart. This was definitely a heart thought.

Ah, the first and the profound disorder: thought.

Language: The True Origin

Most life-forms require water. So it makes sense that Egyptian tales of creation involve a huge water mass. What is striking here, though, is the importance of words, reminiscent of the Bible’s Book of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” Today many scientists would argue that humanity really started with the development of language. Perhaps the ancients were focusing not so much on the creation of life as on the creation of humans.

A strong ocean wave at sunset illustrates the majesty and power of water.

This single thought rubbed fast and faster until it warmed and finally ignited into language. The god Ra sprang to life with a word already in his mouth. More bubbled up. Words now crowded his mouth. They trampled his tongue and pushed against his teeth, his lips. He had so many words to enunciate. The need hammered at him. From that very need came lungs and a voice box and muscles to make it all move. Ra shouted the first word, over and over, and those shouts rose in molten mass up and up and spewed forth through the waters of Nun in a fiery explosion.

That was the first firmament, the mound of creation that Ra called benben—it all started with a single tip, like a volcano mouth. Ra stood upon it in triumph and knew he must speak more. For in his voice lay all creation. He must create, he must never stop creating.

Ra spat and the moisture from within him formed the goddess Tefnut, and the breathy force that propelled that moisture formed the god Shu. The products of his new mouth, his new lungs.

So there were three of them now, three deities distinct from the vast wallow of Nun. It felt wonderful to be a triad; it felt sturdy, invincible even. With three backs together, you could face everything at once. With three, you could explore the three dimensions simultaneously. Though there was no music yet, though there were no colors yet, Ra sensed the possibilities of three at some level he was not yet ready to understand.

But even more than the possibilities was the reality. Life mattered. And being a father mattered. Ra rejoiced in his self-creation. He rejoiced in his creation of his daughter and son. This was a good beginning. Ah, what water had yielded. Ah, indeed.

Shu and Tefnut, these royal children, played constantly. They stalked each other and pounced and wrestled. They rolled around and swatted each other. They were like lion cubs, and Ra was like a huge patient lion father, posing contentedly as they chased his tail or combed his mane, though of course there were no lions yet. There were only Shu and Tefnut and Ra, and the vast spreading Nun around the island the triad roamed.

Ra, his spittle-born daughter Tefnut, and his breath-born son Shu, mingle as one and as three at the same time. They form the first of many triads among the Egyptian gods.

One night, instead of sleeping, Shu and Tefnut went off wandering in the dark. Shu was air and Tefnut was moisture and neither of them had special powers to let them see through the blackness. So, as children will, they got lost.

When Ra realized they were absent, he felt bereft. The difference between being alone in the vastness and being with his two children was the difference between sorrow and delight. He was lonely. And, worse, he grew anxious. There could be nothing out there to hurt the children, for, after all, there could be nothing out there period. What existed existed only because Ra had made it. Yet anxiety made this god itch all over until he wanted to scream and scratch his own skin off. He needed those children. He loved them.

At this time Ra had only one eye. He plucked it out from his forehead and sent his eye searching for Shu and Tefnut, for his darlings.

Then he settled down and waited for the eye to return. He waited and waited. While he waited, blind and cold, he curled in on himself and wondered what he would do if his eye didn’t find the children. It might search in vain forever. But the children could come back on their own anyway—that was possible. But that was terrible, too, for their father wouldn’t even be able to see them. Ra rolled in wretchedness.

And so Ra fashioned for himself a new eye, as he waited and waited some more.

Meanwhile the first eye of Ra, the original eye, lit up the world and flew across the firmament. It hugged the sands. It seeped into rock crevices. And now it soared across the waters, rising with each wave, falling as it crested. The old eye checked everywhere, everywhere and at last found the cowering cubs, who had grown all gangly and awkward, almost full size by now, and led them back to their father, dripping and skinny and needy.

Tefnut and her brother Shu coiled up in fear, lost without the warmth and light of their father Ra. This is how Ra’s original eye found them—shivering.

Ra’s tears of relief and love fell freely, bursting as they hit the earth and, thus, releasing human beings into the world. And a whole lot of trouble.

Ra gathered his children to his chest and felt whole again. These children were his very limbs, they were his own breath, his own fluids, they were everything. He broke himself on the joy of being reunited and he wept on his parts. With great huge sobs, he exhausted himself. And strange creatures—human beings—stepped delicately out of each teardrop, resplendent in their wet newness, gaping at the awe-inspiring wonder of creation. Innocent, yes. Yet with hungry hearts that made Ra’s new eye blink, for he sensed those hungry human hearts would allow innocence to be consumed and vanish.

But the old eye of Ra, the original eye, was glad to see that humans were corruptible. That eye wanted Ra’s creations to make trouble for him, for Ra had been disloyal—Ra had replaced the old eye with the new eye. The old eye smoldered in fury.

Ra was stupefied at the old eye’s reaction. He understood nothing of jealousy, nothing of loyalty. Those emotions came from interacting, and he had never had to interact with anyone but Tefnut and Shu. Still, as his old eye hissed and spluttered, he understood the need for appeasement. And so he transformed his old eye into a snake, the very first snake ever, a cobra. And he picked it up and put it on the front of his forehead—the place of highest honor—and he called it his iaret. It worked! The iaret was proud to precede Ra wherever he went.

Everything was getting better and better.

But now something else was happening. Snakes slithered across Ra’s feet. They slithered across Shu’s and Tefnut’s feet. Amazing: Creation had led to more creation. Shu and Tefnut considered the snakes and they knew, as though by instinct, that they could create, too. Air and moisture can dance together, after all. A mist, Shu and Tefnut tangoed over the unending sea, they dipped and twirled in graceful embrace, and Shu breathed into Tefnut until they gave birth to Geb and Nut.

The new generation lay there, tangled in a heated hug, so much so that they risked merging entirely.

Ra and his daughter Tefnut looked on with puzzled interest, but the god Shu knew better. Nothing could happen right if Geb and Nut didn’t separate. Shu sensed that life wanted to crawl forth on the back of Geb and for that to happen, light needed to dance between Geb and Nut. So Shu did what a father had to do; he tore Geb and Nut asunder. He raised Nut up in his long strong arms to make an arch of sky, leaving Geb prostrate, the waiting earth, ready for whatever gifts might come from above and below.

But Ra didn’t wait for anything; it wasn’t in his nature. He looked at the bow Nut’s body formed and all those words that filled his heart now spilled out of his mouth in a new form: stories. Ra became brilliant like Nut, brilliant with stories. He had to tell those stories, those stories could make anything happen, anytime, anywhere.

Shu lifted his daughter Nut; the drape of her body formed the sky. He left his son Geb lying at his feet; the expanse of Geb’s body formed the earth.

Ra snuck behind the mountain Manu (which appeared even as he said the name) and climbed into his boat Manjet (again gaining solidity as it was named, yet somehow being as old as forever, millions upon millions of years old) and sailed across the sky as a glowing ball of fire that appeared to roll over Nut’s thighs and buttocks and spine and neck. He landed in the far west horizon (since the directions now existed as he spoke them) and then journeyed back to Manu, to his starting point, this time traveling through the underworld Duat in his second boat, Mesektet.

Manjet carried Ra across the sky, as he changed from a morning babe to an evening sage. Imagine how strange it must have felt to experience a lifetime each day.

There was something exhilarating and renewing at the start of the journey across the sky and something tiring and withering at the end. A tantalizing mix. Ra had to repeat it; it was far too involving to experience only once. He allowed himself to be born again, coming out through Nut as though she were his mother rather than his granddaughter, reversing the order of things, confusing time by letting it circle back on itself. He rose as a baby. By midday, when the boat Manjet arrived at the first knob of Nut’s spine, he was a man in the prime of life, a hero ready to tackle any problem and win. He set in the evening as an old man, tottering on a short stick, a flame fanning to a flicker of heat and finally a memory of warmth. What a journey. What a thrill. He had to repeat it forever.

And so a new order was formed. The sun god Ra defined the fundamental rhythm of life. But disorder could never disappear now; life entails it. And Ra’s words ensured it.

Pay attention, all.

Behold my majesty.

I am the Lord of Radiance.

I am the father of all, the lover of strength, the giant of victory.

So now, let us conquer.

Conquer? What could that mean? Who was there to conquer? Where was the disorder, the discord, that would require vanquishing? Ra couldn’t see it yet. But he knew beyond a doubt it was coming.

THE GREAT PESEDJET

A Hierarchy of Gods

The sun god Ra created himself, then his children: the air god Shu and the moisture goddess Tefnut. They created their children: the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Now the ball was rolling; Geb, in all his lush splendor with plants growing from him, and Nut, in all her quiet splendor with winds caressing her, did their part, singly and together. Soon there were five children in the next generation: the goddess Nebet Hut and her husband-brother god Set, the goddess Aset and her husband-brother god Usir, and the god Heru Wer. Ra was progenitor to nine more deities now, the Great Pesedjet. (See illustration)

Ra had been pleased at the triad that he and Shu and Tefnut formed. But now, all these progeny totaled nine, and nine was better. Nine was three squared. A nine-pointed star could be formed by superimposing three identical equilateral triangles, so that each was rotated precisely 40 degrees over from the next lower one. A magic square could be formed by making a matrix of nine cells within a square, each one filled with a distinct numeral from 1 to 9, where the numbers in each row, the numbers in each column, and the numbers in each of the two diagonals added up to the same total. The geometric and algebraic games one could play with nine were a delight. They were a promise of an extraordinary future. And the best thing about the Great Pesedjet was that Ra’s great-grandson Heru Wer was really just the embodiment of Ra himself at midday. So Ra could count himself as part of this miraculous nine. Ra was pleased beyond measure.

Hut Heru was grace itself, enriching the world with the joys of the senses. She was dance and music, inextricably intertwined, and decoratively beautiful, night and day.

That pleasure excited Ra into an even more heated frenzy of creativity that needed to live up to the cleverness of the number nine. The molten flow that had emerged from the watery Nun with Ra’s first words still sizzled. It now inspired Ra. With flame coming from his pointing finger he made the basic elements to build all things. He started with iron and blew it over this rapidly forming ball of a world. It glittered golden. A royal satisfaction enveloped Ra; this was fated to be his color, the rightful color of the father of everything and everyone.

But the world needed more colors. Another jab of Ra’s fire fingertip scattered red lithium to the winds. Next calcium burned bright orange. Then sodium flamed yellow, copper sparkled green, selenium glowed blue, cesium flashed indigo, potassium gave violet luster.

The luminosity of colors seduced Ra’s new eye to step forward as a goddess, and she called herself Hut Heru. She danced over the earth, on which the iron had now cooled into a crust, and laughed, filling the cosmos with music. The twirling of her skirts swished the remaining gassy colors high. When the sun god Ra shone his light through the moisture goddess Tefnut, a rainbow arched across the world, echoing the arched body of Nut, the daughter of Tefnut and Shu.

Hut Heru didn’t always dance, though. She loved night. She lay back in those hours and gazed upward into nothingness. So she wanted calming colors for those quiet times. Ra knew this, of course, for Hut Heru was his very eye. With a scorching finger, he made the silver of aluminum. From it the stars and moon formed, and Hut Heru was glad and grateful.

Now there were nine colors. Nine again. Luscious nine.

Ra shrugged and a cloud of insects filled the air in all imaginable colors. He loved scarabs best. They rolled dung into balls and laid their eggs inside, so the little balls emitted heat as the dung decayed. Later, when the eggs hatched, it seemed like spontaneous generation—like the self-generation of the royal Ra. What charming creatures! Ra took to assuming scarab form and calling himself Ra-Khepra in the morning, when he was just a babe pushing the sun up into the sky. From then on the scarab was sacred before all other creatures.

But the insects swarmed, far too many, plaguing the Pesedjet of deities. So the tongue of Ra stepped forward, as the god Tehuti, and with ever-powerful words he created birds to eat them. Clever Ra was wiser now about the ways of life, so he didn’t stop there; he made Tehuti speak again, and now some birds preyed upon others, to keep the pop-ulations of both insects and birds under control. The master predator and most intelligent was the falcon, and so Ra declared it his bird. Ra often assumed the head of a falcon, particularly in midday at the sun’s zenith. In that form he called himself Ra-Herakhty.

The falcons were such skillful hunters, they would soon have eaten up all the smaller birds except for the fact that they had the snakes to prey upon, as well. Perfect.

There was a whole world to fill, and Ra did it all. Just a blink, a shrug, a chin flick, and wings flapped, feet scurried, bodies wriggled.

And those snakes—good glory, what killers the cobras were! Their tongues picked up the faintest smells and the pits behind their nostrils were so sensitive to heat that they could hunt even at night. Ra had been brilliant to add the sacred iaret to his headdress.

Through words, Ra created little creatures of land and sea and air. Then medium-size ones. Then enormous ones. He created plants and mushrooms. He created rocks and metals and gases. And it was all so painfully beautiful.

Ra gazed at the world through his new eye Hut Heru, wearing his sacred iaret, and the complexity impressed him—the deities, the plants, the beasts, the humans. But somehow those humans kept worrying him. They were cunning in a different way from the beasts. Ra had the terrible sense that he had known those humans would bring trouble, that he had willfully played his part. This was how it had to be. And just as strongly he felt all creation was teetering, close to going out of control.

Set: The god Set appeared as a mix of parts from different animals: aardvark, jackal, donkey. Over time, he came to be viewed as increasingly evil. Perhaps this conglomeration reflects the lack of peace within him.

SET (SETH)

Envious God

The goddess Aset, great-granddaughter of Ra, was beautiful in every way. Humans gravitated toward her naturally. She listened to the worries, hopes, dreams of everyone, from the richest to the slaves. She listened to those who were abused and even to their abusers. And by listening, she helped them understand their own thoughts and find their own paths to solving their troubles or fulfilling their dreams. In a sense, it was through Aset’s faithful and careful listening that human beings really learned to trust in the deities. She wished strength and health for all of them; she wished good life. And so she wore the tjet, a girdle with a knot at the front, and carried in one hand the ankh, a small straight key with two straight arms and a loop on top. Both the tjet and the ankh were symbols of life. In her other hand she often held a simple wooden staff.

That wooden staff was useful when she walked with her brother-husband Usir in the fields. Usir loved to wander among the animals, particularly the animals that humans quickly gathered around them. And even more particularly those fat woolly sheep with the wide-set eyes that made that little baaa baaa noise Aset found so pleasing. In fact, Usir was so fond of sheep, he wore ram horns on his crown. He was a benevolent god, bringing robustness to the sheep and fertility to the land. He taught humans to plow and he gave them laws to live by, rising to become king of Lower Egypt and then, so popular was he, king of all Egypt. And so it was impossible for this benevolent god not to love his ever-so-benevolent wife Aset. He adored her. They were meant for each other.

Their brother god Set watched them gaze at each other, this Aset and this Usir, eavesdropping on their fond murmurings. He could smell how they changed when they approached each other. Usir grew musky, like a young ram; his muscles rippled under his skin. Aset became as fragrant as those water flowers she picked so often, those blue lotuses. She grew intoxicating, as though her very essence was lotus oil.

Set had a sister-wife of his own—what was her name? Ah, yes, Nebet Hut. But Set couldn’t think about her. He couldn’t even look at her. He looked instead at Aset.

THE LOTUS: God Scent

Ancient Egypt had both white and blue lotuses, and from both an oil can be extracted that is pungently sweet to smell. People used the flowers as decoration and women used the essence of the lotus as perfume. Egyptian perfumes have been famous from ancient times through modern times. But the blue lotus also has a high plant nutrient content, so this flower may have been used by the ancients in medicines for its healing properties.

Blue lotus flowers are still used in perfume manufacture today.

All that love heaped on his brother galled Set. Alas, he couldn’t think of anything else, he couldn’t enjoy ordinary things, he couldn’t love anyone.

And he looked at Usir. He looked until his eyes burned as dry as the desert he prowled.

Then the strands of envy twisted even tighter around Set’s innards, for his brother Usir fawned over Set’s son Inpu. Set’s teeth went grimy with disgust. And Inpu, the ingrate, he responded to this attention, caring for his uncle Usir too much—he even seemed to take after him. Intolerable—it was Set the boy should love like that! So Set was glad when the boy left home to go work in the underworld Duat. Who needed such a son around?

But still Set had to watch Aset’s face as she gazed at Usir. And now he looked around and noticed how humans adored this sister and this brother that they had chosen as their queen and king, and his top lip curled. There were so many humans by now—they just kept multiplying. And that meant Set’s brother Usir was king of far too much, and was loved by far too many.

Sometimes a brother doesn’t need a reason to be spiteful toward another brother. Set was almost sure he would have hated Usir no matter what, regardless of how Aset loved him, regardless of how his own son Inpu admired him. But the way all those people loved Usir—well, that went beyond the pale. King of Egypt! Bah! Set’s insides swirled like the very strongest of tempests, with lightning and thunder and shrieking winds—and in this stormy state he vowed to himself to crush Usir.

Set held a banquet. He arranged cones of scented fat in a large circle and set them ablaze to keep away pesky mosquitoes. He gave the goddesses lotus flower necklaces—knowing, of course, that this would endear him to Aset. He filled a basin with sparkling clean water for everyone to wash their hands in. Then he served them bread and great quantities of beer. As they were lolling around, satiated, he pulled a cloth away to reveal a beautiful box.

Usir ran his hand appreciatively along the intricate carvings. “Where did you get this, brother?”

Usir slid happily into the majestic cedar box. It felt like the most comfortable of beds. How cold must Set’s heart have been, planning the doom ahead.

The combination of gold gilt, the color so dear to the great god Ra, and deep blue paint, the color so dear to his beloved wife Aset, made the box nearly irresistible to the unsuspecting Usir.

“It’s superb, isn’t it?” Set leaned in toward Usir with a brotherly intimacy. “Tell you what. Whoever fits perfectly in this box, well, that’s the rightful owner of it. I will regale that person with this fine box.”

Each guest took a turn at lying in the box. But each was too short or too long or too fat or too thin. In contrast, Usir fit perfectly. Naturally. For Set had taken all the relevant measures of his brother as he slept, and had the box built just so.

The instant Usir lay inside, Set and his helpers rushed forward, closed the lid, and sealed it. Set lifted the box over his head and flung it with all his might into the raging Nile River. And for the first time in so long he couldn’t remember, Set felt triumph. He was rid of Usir, rid of the scourge of his life. At last, he could be all he wanted to be; he stood in no one’s shadow.

Such is the brutality unchecked envy can wreak.

But good has its own way of responding—and both Aset and Usir were deeply good. This story was far from its end.

Aset: Aset loved lotuses, the symbol of Upper Egypt. Usir loved papyrus reeds, the symbol of Lower Egypt, especially where the Nile flows into the sea. Together they made the perfect ruling couple for all Egypt.

ASET (ISIS)

Devoted Wife and Mother

The god Set was so envious of his brother Usir that he committed a dastardly act. He nailed Usir into a box and threw it into the Nile River.

“Ahiii,” screamed Aset. She ran along the shore, arms outstretched futilely. She must catch up, she must pull the box to safety. She imagined her husband trapped inside, panicked. She ran.

But the current raced north, carrying her husband inexorably toward the sea. And the wind blew south, impeding Aset’s every step. She ran hard, seeing the white-foamed swirl of the swift and wild river. She ran harder, hearing nothing but the shriek of the wind rasping her ears raw. The box was already out of sight! Aset had to run yet faster. That was her husband—the love of her life!

Aset ran all that day, all that night, all the next day. Her feet bled. Her legs ached. When she arrived at the seashore, she raced back and forth, calling out over the green and blue and purple waters, calling, calling. She rent her hair. She grabbed a clamshell and shaved off her eyebrows. She beat her chest.

The world spun around this goddess, this woman in love, bereft and alone, who had no choice but to prostrate herself on the beach and wait for the dizziness to pass and hope against hope that her husband had managed to get out of the box before he suffocated.

Our Alphabet’s History

The Kenaani’s land became known as Phoenicia. It spread between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. The people were known for sea trading and purple dye made from murex snails. But we know them most for their abjad, a writing system with letters that represented consonant sounds. The Greeks borrowed this abjad and added letters for vowels. The Etruscans then borrowed it, then the Romans, each making changes—hence our alphabet.

A tablet showing the Phoenician alphabet

Meanwhile the box that held Usir had washed out to the middle of the vast Mediterranean Sea and floated in that wadj wer—that great green—aimlessly, a rudderless, sail-less skiff, until the currents eventually carried it toward shore again. But not back to the mouth of the Nile where miserable Aset lay crying, no. The box settled far to the east, near the city of Kubna in the land of the Kenaani.

The coast there was thick with strong reeds that reached out. Like tentacles, they slipped around and over and under each other and pulled the box in, wrapping themselves about it over and over, caressingly. Somehow one reed pushed against another so insistently that the two reeds merged, and then another merged with them, and soon the mass of reeds was a single shrub engulfing the box. And then the shrub grew.

This sort of magic doesn’t happen every day—and magic it surely was. For inside that box lay the corpse of the god Usir, who had known how to bring fertility to the earth, who could make anything grow. So perhaps that very power had transferred from the god to the box as he gave his last breath. Who can know such a thing? Yet that shrub grew faster than any shrub had ever grown before, and became a massive cedar tree, 130 feet tall, studded with cones. Hoopoe birds came in droves to give themselves sand baths under the tree and to nest among its silver-green needle-like leaves.

The mighty cedar could be seen from afar, but it could be smelled even before it was seen, for it gave off a spicy, alluring aroma. Soon the king himself noticed the tree, and he called his queen to his side to inhale its essence. She swooned at the cedar perfume. After all, she was late in her pregnancy and she was given to swooning.

There was no question about it: The tree was majestic, it must grace the king’s palace. It took a troop of workers to cut through the base and haul the tree to the palace, where it became a beautiful column that all could admire. And they did. The column made them feel a certain peace; it offered a sense of assurance that all would be well with the world. It was almost godly in that way. Yet still, no one guessed that inside the trunk nestled the box that held Usir.

The gigantic cedar that held Usir’s trunk was one of many colossal trees in that land. They could live thousands of years. But this tree was doomed.

Grief-stricken Aset somehow sensed the birds knew best. She followed their calls to the palace of Kubna, where her husband Usir was hidden within the cedar column.

Back on the shore of Egypt, the goddess Aset lay desperate. Moons had passed and still she remained immobile. But now she was woken from her grief-stricken stupor by the insistent calls bu bu bu, and again bu bu bu, all around her bu bu bu. She sat up, agog at the flock of hoopoes with their colorful crests, strutting in profusion. These were the birds who had nested in the cedar the king had cut down; they were mourning its loss. They had flown all this way searching for a substitute tree when they’d spotted Aset, and instinctively they were drawn to her, instinctively they understood her grief matched theirs.

The birds called bu bu bu and Aset stood. Bu bu bu. The birds took to the air and circled above her. Aset followed, and the procession moved east, a wavering line along the sands, a spiraling in the heavens.

Aset sensed an urgency in the birds and hope swelled her heart. These birds were leading her to Usir. What else could this mean? With each day her hopes grew till her heart was ready to shred.

There, at long last, was the splendid palace of Kubna. Aset wandered, sure the box would be just past that wall, just ’round that corner, just under that eave. But the box was nowhere!

Without warning, without preamble, reason finally coated Aset’s tongue with a bitter salt: Usir was dead. Whether she found the box or not, he was dead. It was almost as though he was nearby, with his spirit telling her that, forcing her to understand.

Aset found a large, smooth, warm rock in the courtyard. She sat and wept. But these were tears of acceptance and exhaustion. It was over. At last.

So she thought.

But inside the Kubna palace the royal handmaidens whispered. A morose stranger sat in the courtyard. She was thin as a wind-whipped pine, but still one could see a beauty in those cheekbones, that long neck, those cupped hands. The royal handmaidens peeked out at her, wary at first, but then, gradually, worried for her. Grief weighed on the stranger so heavily, it hurt them to watch. This woman was broken. They approached on quiet feet.

Aset turned and saw their frightened faces and her wounded heart opened. After all, her grief was due to no fault of theirs. She smiled through tears and patted the empty spot on the rock beside her. These handmaidens were hardly older than girls, innocent and fresh. She plaited their hair and exhaled perfume onto their golden skin, and when they asked what had happened to her, she talked sweetly of nothing. Deities knew that humans weren’t good at discussions about death.

The afternoon passed and one by one the maidens left. Aset folded one hand inside the other and sat. She wasn’t waiting. There was nothing to wait for. She was resting.

Soon those maidens reappeared and took Aset by both hands and led her to their queen, recommending her sincerely.

The queen paused, a finger pressed to her cheek. “You’re not like what the girls said. Not at all.”

Aset didn’t speak. She wasn’t even sure why she was still standing there. She might as well leave.

“You’re older than my usual handmaidens. But I sense your true value.”

Aset jerked to attention. She looked closely at this queen now, at the tired eyes, the flushed cheeks. Did she really know she was in the presence of a goddess?

“I sense the good in you. You can help me in the way I most need help.” The queen bid Aset to follow her into another chamber—an infant’s chamber. The queen picked up her newborn son and placed him in Aset’s arms. “You’re his new

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