At the sight hatred and anger came upon him in a red cloud, and he raged like a panther of the south. He tore open the chest, took the body of Osiris, and rent it into fourteen pieces which, by his divine strength, he scattered up and down the whole length of the Nile so that the crocodiles might eat them.
"It is not possible to destroy the body of a god!" cried Set. "Yet I have done it - for I have destroyed Osiris!" His laughter echoed through the land, and all who heard it trembled and hid
.
Now Isis had to begin her search once more. This time she had helpers, for Nephthys left her wicked husband Set and came to join her sister. And Anubis, the son of Set and Nephthys, taking the form of a jackal, assisted in the search. When Isis travelled over the land she was accompanied and guarded by seven scorpions. But when she searched on the Nile and among the many streams of the delta she made her way in a boat made of papyrus: and the crocodiles, in their reverence for the goddess, touched neither the rent pieces of Osiris nor Isis herself. Indeed ever afterwards anyone who sailed the Nile in a boat made of papyrus was safe from them, for they thought that it was Isis still questing after the pieces of her husband's body.
Slowly, piece by piece, Isis recovered the fragments of Osiris. And wherever she did so, she formed by magic the likeness of his whole body and caused the priests to build a shrine and perform his funeral rites. And so there were thirteen places in Egypt which claimed to be the burial place of Osiris. In this way also she made it harder for Set to meddle further with the body of the dead god.
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