Isis

In the ancient sources

Egyptian texts

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“great of magic” hymns and spells

• Pyramid Texts, Utterance 366 Spoken to the dead king as Osiris: his sister Isis comes to him rejoicing in her love, and from their union comes Horus.
• Turin papyrus: Ra and Isis Isis makes a serpent from Ra's spittle and earth; when it bites him, she will cure him only if he tells her his secret name, and so gains his power.

The Egyptian sources tell the Osiris story in allusions and spells rather than as one continuous narrative.

Greek and Roman writers

• Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 13 Typhon (Set) and seventy-two conspirators trick Osiris into a chest, seal it with lead and throw it into the Nile.
• Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 15–16 At Byblos the chest is found inside a tree used as a palace pillar; Isis nurses the queen's child, burns away his mortality at night and flies around the pillar as a swallow.
• Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 18 Typhon finds the body while hunting by moonlight and cuts it into fourteen pieces; Isis searches the marshes for them in a papyrus boat.
• Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.5 Isis appears to Lucius and says the peoples of the world worship her under many names, but the Egyptians call her by her true name, Queen Isis.

Plutarch wrote around 100 CE for Greek readers, using Greek names for most of the gods; his account is the only complete telling of the myth.

Cross-checked against these texts and records, in public-domain or freely available versions where they exist. Line, section and chapter numbers follow the standard editions, so a particular translation may differ slightly.