His "Followers"--_Shosûû Horû_--defeated the "Accomplices of Sît"--_Samiu Sît_--who were now driven in their turn to transform themselves into gazelles, crocodiles and serpents,--animals which were henceforth regarded as unclean and Typhonian. For three days the two chiefs had fought together under the forms of men and of hippopotami, when Isis, apprehensive as to the issue of the duel, determined to bring it to an end. "Lo! she caused chains to descend upon them, and made them to drop upon Horus. Thereupon Horus prayed aloud, saying: 'I am thy son Horus!' Then Isis spake unto the fetters, saying; 'Break, and unloose yourselves from my son Horus!' She made other fetters to descend, and let them fall upon her brother Sit. Forthwith he lifted up his voice and cried out in pain, and she spake unto the fetters and said unto them: 'Break!' Yea, when Sît prayed unto her many times, saying: 'Wilt thou not have pity upon the brother of thy son's mother?' then her heart was filled with compassion, and she cried to the fetters: 'Break, for he is my eldest brother!' and the fetters unloosed themselves from him, and the two foes again stood face to face like two men who will not come to terms." Horus, furious at seeing his mother deprive him of his prey, turned upon her like a panther of the South. She fled before him on that day when battle was waged with Sît the Violent, and he cut off her head. But Thot transformed her by his enchantments and made a cow's head for her, thereby identifying her with her companion, Hâthor.
[Illustration: 253.jpg ISIS-HATHOR, COW-HEADED. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette of Saïte period in the Gîzeh Museum (Mariette, _Album photographique du musée de Boulaq_, pl. 5, No. 167).
The war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. According to a very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a neighbouring city, Thot, lord of Hermopolis Parva, as the arbitrator of their quarrel. Sît was the first to plead, and he maintained that Horus was not the son of Osiris, but a bastard, whom Isis haô conceived after the death of her husband. Horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy of his birth; and Thot condemned Sît to restore, according to some, the whole of the inheritance which he had wrongly retained,--according to others, part of it only. The gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to the arbitrator the title of _Ûapirahûhûi_: he who judges between two parties. A legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the worship of Osiris had spread over all Egypt, affirmed that the case had remained within the jurisdiction of Sibû, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the other party. Sibû, however, had pronounced the same judgment as Thot, and divided the kingdom into halves--_poshûi_; Sît retained the valley from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the first cataract, while Horus entered into possession of the Delta. Egypt henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the North, recognized Horus, the son of Isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the South, placed itself under the protection of Sît Nûbîti, the god of Ombos.[*]