phases of the moon and lunar eclipses are almost invariably accounted for in savage science by the attacks of a beast—dog, pig, dragon, or what not—on the heavenly body. Either of these hypotheses (the Egyptians adopted the latter[1]) is consistent with the character of early myth, but both are merely tentative suggestions.[2] The phallus of Osiris was not recovered, and the totemistic habit which made the people of three different districts abstain from three different fish—lepidotus, phagrus, and oxyrrhyncus—was accounted for by the legend that these fish had devoured the missing portion of the hero's body.
So far the power of evil, the black swine Typhon, had been triumphant. But the blood-feud was handed on to Horus, son of Isis and Osiris. To spur Horus on to battle, Osiris returned from the dead, like Hamlet's father. But, as is usual with the ghosts of savage myth, Osiris returned, not in human, but in bestial form, as a wolf.[3] Horus was victorious in the war which followed, and handed Typhon over bound in chains to Isis. Unluckily Isis let him go free, whereon Horus pushed off her crown and placed a bull's skull on her head.
There the Greek narrator ends, but[4] he expressly declines to tell the more blasphemous parts of the story, such as "the dismemberment of Horus and the beheading of Isis." Why these myths should be
- ↑ De Is. et Os., xxxv.
- ↑ Compare Lefébure, Les Yeux d'Horus, pp. 47–48.
- ↑ Wicked squires in Shropshire (Miss Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore) "come" as bulls. Osiris, in the Meudes nome, "came" as a ram (Mariette, Denderah, iv. 75).
- ↑ De Is. et Os., xx.
