"Cursed spirit of darkness! Thou rousest the whirlwinds of the desert,
Thou rousest the sea, darkenest the light of day! Mayst Thou fall into
the pit from which the father of the gods himself could not free thee.
Cursed! Cursed Set! May thy name be a disgust and a terror!"
While cursing in this way they all attacked Typhon with fists and clubs; the red-haired god fled, and rushed at last out of the building.
Again the bronze plates sounded thrice, and the solemnity was ended.
"Well, that is enough!" cried the senior priest to the assembly which had begun to fight in earnest. "Thou, Isis, mayest return to the city, but the rest of us must go to other departed ones who are waiting for our services. We must not neglect the ordinary dead, for it is unknown how much they will pay us for this one."
"Not much indeed!" interrupted the embalmer. "People say that there is nothing in the treasury, while the Phoenicians threaten to cease lending unless new rights are given them."
"May death destroy all those Phoenicians! Soon a man will be forced to beg a barley cake of them; even now they have snatched away everything."
"But unless they lend the pharaoh money we shall get nothing for the funeral."
Conversation ceased gradually, and those present left the heavenly hall. Only at the vat where the body of the pharaoh lay steeping was a guard left.
All this solemnity, representing the legend of the slaying of Osiris (the sun) by Typhon (the god of night and crime), served to open and clean the body of the pharaoh, and in this way prepare it for the embalming proper.
During seventy days the departed must lie in a solution of soda, in memory, it seems, of this, that the wicked Typhon had sunk the body of his brother in the Soda Lakes. During all these days a priestess, dressed as Isis, came to the heavenly hall, morning and evening. There, groaning and tearing her hair, she inquired of all present whether any one had seen her divine consort and brother.