In the primordial age when the gods walked among men, the land of Kemet was a paradise under the benevolent rule of Osiris. Osiris, the first-born son of Geb and Nut, brought the gifts of agriculture, law, and civilization to the people of the Nile. Beside him stood his queen, Isis, whose wisdom and magic were unsurpassed. Together, they represented the perfect balance of Ma'at—the divine order of the universe. However, where there is light, there must also be shadow. This shadow lived in the heart of Set, the younger brother of Osiris. Set was the god of the desert, the storm, and the red lands; he was a creature of chaos and untamed power who looked upon his brother’s throne with a jealousy that burned like the midday sun.
Set’s first betrayal was a masterpiece of deception. He constructed a magnificent coffer of cedar and gold, sized exactly to the dimensions of Osiris’s body. At a grand banquet, Set promised the coffer to whoever could fit perfectly inside it. When Osiris stepped into the chest, Set and his conspirators slammed the lid shut, sealed it with molten lead, and cast it into the Nile. The river carried the king away, and for a time, Set reigned as a tyrant over Egypt. But Isis would not let her husband be lost to the depths. Through a long and agonizing search that took her across the sea to Byblos and back to the papyrus thickets of the Delta, she finally recovered the coffer. She hid the body of Osiris in the deep marshes of the Nile Delta, near the city of Buto, hoping to use her magic to restore him to life or at least provide him with the proper funerary rites that would ensure his transition to the afterlife.
It was during a night of the waning moon that the fate of Osiris took its most violent turn. Set, ever restless and fueled by a predatory instinct, had gone out into the Delta to hunt. He was known to take the form of a great red boar, a beast of immense strength and ferocity. The Delta at night was a place of shifting mists and silver light, where the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the spirits grew thin. Set thrived in this liminal space. He moved through the tall papyrus stalks, his eyes gleaming with a preternatural hunger. The moonlight reflected off the dark, slow-moving waters of the Nile branches, creating a shimmering mosaic of light and shadow that obscured the secrets of the marsh.
As Set pursued a wild boar through the reeds, he stumbled upon a clearing that seemed strangely silent. The air there was heavy with the scent of lotus and ancient incense. There, half-concealed by the emerald fronds, lay the wooden coffer. The silver rays of the moon caught the gold leaf and the lead seal, making it glow with a ghostly radiance. Set stopped in his tracks, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He recognized the craftsmanship instantly; it was the instrument of his own treachery. The realization that Isis had found the body and brought it back to the heart of his kingdom filled him with a cold, terrifying fury. He feared that if Osiris were restored, his own reign of chaos would be extinguished forever.
With a roar that echoed across the Delta, Set transformed back into his divine, humanoid form. He tore the lid from the coffer, exposing the cold, silent form of his brother. In the pale moonlight, Osiris looked peaceful, even in death, which only served to further incense the god of storms. Set did not merely want to kill Osiris—he had already done that. He wanted to unmake him. He wanted to ensure that there was no body left to mummify, no spirit left to dwell in the Duat, and no king left for the people to remember. In an act of unparalleled desecration, Set used his divine strength to tear the body of Osiris into fourteen distinct pieces.