The Osiris Myth: The Pillar in the Palace

The queen praised the beautiful pillar in her palace. The stranger beside her could barely look at it. Her husband was inside.

Long before she entered that palace, Isis had followed the river in search of Osiris. His brother had sealed him in a chest and sent it into the water.

The chest reached a tamarisk tree by the sea. In the strange way of this story, the tree grew around it until there was no seam left to see.

A king admired the tree and cut it down. Its trunk became a pillar. Above a dead man, a roof stood firm.

Isis heard where it had gone. At a fountain in Byblos, she met the queen’s attendants and braided their hair. A wonderful fragrance stayed with them.

The queen sent for the stranger. Soon Isis was inside the house, caring for a child while the thing she had crossed the world to find stood beyond her reach.

At night, she became a swallow. She circled the pillar, returning again and again to the wood that kept her from him.

At last she revealed who she was. The queen had welcomed a servant. Now a goddess stood before her, asking for part of her house.

Isis asked for the pillar. It was taken down. She opened the trunk, and the chest appeared inside it.

She wrapped the remaining wood in fine linen and returned it to the household. What she took away was older than their admiration of the tree.

Alone at last, she opened the chest. Osiris did not wake. She laid her face against his and wept.

At dawn, she took the chest aboard a ship bound for Egypt. The sea was wide. This time, she would not have to wonder where it carried him.