And when betrayal shuts a chest, the Nile carries it away… but it does not carry away the voice.
I am Osiris,
the just king. When I speak, the fields breathe. When I walk, people stop
trembling. They say I bring civilization. I say: I bring order.
The banquet
smells of warm bread and sweet wine. Torches quiver. Drums pulse softly.
I am Seth,
and that sound scrapes my skin raw. Because the people’s love is not mine.
Because the light that follows him burns my eyes.
“A gift for
the sovereign!” I announce, sliding into the center of the hall a polished chest,
perfect. Too perfect.
Osiris
laughs. He lies down. The wood holds him like a promise.
“It fits
you like fate,” I whisper.
The clasps
snap. Breath breaks. The lid seals shut.
And the
feast, for an instant, goes on—like certain lies that keep living when they
have the right shape.
Development
I am Isis.
When I hear the silence, I understand it isn’t peace: it is theft.
The Nile
smells of silt and night. Its waters look black, but inside they carry
shattered stars. I search. I do not sleep. I do not cry enough.
“Give him
back to me, river,” I tell the dark.
And the
dark, one day, answers with soaked wood and rotted rope.
I find it.
I hold it close. The chest is cold as freshly cut stone.
I am Seth
again. And it isn’t enough to take him from the throne: I want to take him from
memory.
I pry it
open. I tear. I divide.
Each piece
is an insult to Ma’at. Each fragment flies away, scattered over the land
like a curse.
I don’t
care only about breaking the body. I care about breaking the story—so his name
no longer knows where to return.
Climax
I am Anubis,
keeper of thresholds. When flesh is profaned, I do not cry out: I prepare.
Isis
arrives with Nephthys. The two sisters move like wind through
reeds—quick, relentless.
“Here,”
Nephthys says, offering a fragment wrapped in linen.
Isis takes
it with steady fingers. “One at a time. Everything becomes whole again. Even if
it hurts.”
Bandages
glide. Resin burns. Incense sweetens the air, but beneath it the iron tang of
fate remains.
I trace
ancient signs. She murmurs names that are not spoken aloud.
The pieces
begin to recognize each other again, as if the body’s memory is tougher than
the knife.
And then
Isis stops.
Not because
a bone is missing.
Not because a hand is missing.
What is
missing is what begets.
That
fragment is not “hidden” somewhere: it has fallen into the water, followed the
Nile’s course—and the fish have devoured it.
A loss with no return. A void the river will not give back.
So Isis
does not yield.
She does
not beg. She invents.
She takes
sacred matter—resin, linen, word—and where there is absence she builds a form.
Not to trick the eye, but to persuade order back into its place.
“Lack will
not decide what may be born,” she murmurs.
And then—an
instant that is not time.
Osiris’s
chest rises.
Not like a
man returning, but like a king changing realms.
Isis bends
close. Her hands do not reach for the past: they reach for a passage.
A brief union, snatched from time. A flash between doors.
And from
that flash, life takes the shape the myth grants the future: Horus.
But Horus
is not only one name, not always only one story.
There is a Horus who will be avenger and heir, the face of the throne
against Seth—the one who grows for the world’s struggle.
And there is also, in many tellings, a Horus who is child and posthumous,
fragile and quiet, born in the shadow of a father made whole: Harpocrates,
the secret kept.
Two faces
of the same continuity: one for daylight, one for what lies beneath.
Closing
I am Osiris
still, but changed. Light no longer belongs to me. What belongs to me are
closed doors, shadowed corridors, judgment.
I look at
Isis. In her eyes there is dawn, and there is mourning.
“I haven’t
lost you,” she murmurs.
“You have
transformed me,” I answer.
Finale
From that
day on, in the heart of Ancient Egypt, death stops being a wall and becomes a passage.
Not an end, but a jurisdiction.
And life is
no longer only breath: it is succession. It is a child who means
continuity even when the body has been torn to pieces. It is a name that
returns not because nothing happened, but because someone had the strength to
stitch back together what chaos wanted to make irreparable.
Implicit
message: what is
broken can become ritual, and what dies can become law—if someone loves enough
to gather the pieces. And if what is missing is remade not to pretend, but to
set fate moving again.
Symbolism
The
tailor-made chest is betrayal that looks “right.” Dismemberment is chaos
trying to erase the name. Reassembly is memory, care, identity that refuses to
give way.
And the
fragment devoured by the river is the cruelest idea of all: not only to remove
a king, but to remove the future. Isis answers by creating what is
missing: she does not deny the loss—she passes through it, and turns it into
continuity.
Relevance
Today
The myth
still speaks because we all know loss: a person, an era, a version of
ourselves. Osiris teaches that we do not always return as we were. We return other.
And we can reign even in shadow.
And Isis adds: sometimes you don’t recover everything. Sometimes you must recreate. And it isn’t a lie—it is an act of love strong enough to set history in motion again.