I seem to recall, oddly enough, that I wrote the very first version of Horus BEFORE this. Or perhaps not so oddly, seeing as I did the same thing when I rewrote Horus in 1997 and then attempted the rewrite of Osiris shortly after! (This rewrite was never completed, and will likely be heavily revamped someday itself, along with Horus.) In any case, I was heavily into my ancient Egypt phase back then, but I was VERY stupid about it, and so you'll be seeing a LOT of anachronisms in both this and its sequel. The characters are also presented quite wrongly, according to how I view them now; Thoth is a total wuss, for one thing, and actually comes across as quite stupid. There was more of an emphasis on jokeyness (jokiness?) and buddyhood than on the dramatic plot itself, and Osiris's death comes across as rather...anticlimactic. The timeline of events is also very skewed--for example--HORUS is present in this story!! (He who wasn't even BORN until way after his father's first death!) Back then, the timeline was something like, Horus existed already, then left Osiris's kingdom, went wandering, then returned years later, apparently with no knowledge of who had killed his father, and started trying to figure this out. At least, that's how things go in the original Horus...a story in which Horus himself plays an astonishingly minor role! Yes...I was truly a lousy writer back then. But I did have great fun writing these.
This story was written in pencil in a lined notepad; I still recall the type, and it had a red cover which is now missing. (The kind of notepad that's glued at the top.) I think I was very short on plot and wrote it in a hurry, as a lot of the pad is taken up by a "portfolio" of illustrations of the characters which I drew following the story (which itself contains only one illustration, at the very end--another sign that I wrote it hastily, since I tended to heavily illustrate my stories back then). (There are little "mini-illustrations" and definitions of terms after most chapters, but these do not count as actual illustrations for the story.) The pages of the notebook were detached and ended up in our basement when my dad cleaned everything out of my room; this, as well as the texts of Horus and various other stories, sat in a plastic bag in flooding sewer water for a year or so until I dug them out and managed to salvage them MOSTLY intact. As such, the paper is looseleaf, stained, torn, and sometimes mutilated so badly that some words can't be read. This story was fortunate compared to the others; Horus is currently missing its possible prologue and Chapter 1, as well as the epilogue and at least one interior page, for example, but all of Osiris's pages, barring the notebook's covers, appear to be accounted for. (The first page is heavily damaged, though; some of the material in brackets is uncertain, and is the best guess I could venture.) I seem to recall the actual writing of it, amazingly enough, and if my memory is true then I was working on this in the sixth grade (1988-89). It is of a slightly later date than Horus.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Portfolio
The Prediction
Khnum the bull-ram stomped in ... [text mutilated], ar [or n?]... [text mutilated] down on the padded ... [text mutilated] the walls of the room. [Note--my guess at the general meaning--"Khnum the bull-ram stomped into the palace/building and sat down on the padded benches/seats that lined the walls of the room."]
... [text mutilated] wrong...um?["] [text mutilated] Bastet, the cat, said [.] [Note--estimation--"'What's wrong, Khnum?' Bastet, the cat, said."]
"Everyone is taking me for granted!" Khnum said. "Who shaped everyone around here?" [Note--in reference to Khnum's role as the potter god, who shapes men and animals on his potter's wheel.]
"What do you expect?" Bast asked. "A party?"
"No, just [a simp]le 'thanks'." [Note--misplaced period or single quote.]
"Okay, thanks."
"[Y]ou don't mean it," Khnum said, gett[ing up an]d walking down the hall... [text mutilated] [into] Anubis the jackal... [text mutilated] [n't]... [text mutilated] the room where... [text mutilated] [Osiris]... [text mutilated]... [Note--general estimation--"'You don't mean it,' Khnum said, getting up and walking down the hall, nearly running into Anubis the jackal. He went into the room where Osiris was sitting."]
"What's wrong, Khnum?" Osiris asked.
"Can you make every...[one respect me] more [?"]
"If I made them... [text mutilated] you... [text mutilated] [n]... [text mutilated] they would'nt [sic]," Osiris pointed out. [Note--estimation--"'If I made them respect you, Khnum, they wouldn't,' Osiris pointed out." Meant to illustrate Osiris's wisdom.]
"I guess you're right," Khnum said, looking at the floor, ashamed.
"Do'nt [sic] feel upset," Osiris continued. "Just be nicer [.] You know, you have'nt [sic] been yourself [lat]ely."
"That's 'cause I have a creepy [feel]ing. Something's going to go wrong--" Khnum cut himself off.
"Go wrong with what?"
"With--you do'nt [sic] want to know."
"With me? Come on, I do want to know."
"Yeah, with you. You and a relative."
"A relative?"
"A brother or sister."
"Isis, Nephthys, Set," Osiris named, in order of their age, oldest to youngest. [Note--in my current timeline, their correct age from oldest to youngest is Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys.] "I do'nt [sic] see what you mean."
"A fight," Khnum said, his eyes wide with shock. [Note--Khnum is prophesying here; his eyes should rather be wide as if in a trance. In my current writing he doesn't have this ability/tendency.] "Someone will lose, and someone will win."
Osiris shook his head, frustrated. "You and your predictions," he said. "Sometimes I don't believe you." [Note--while it's likely that I consistently misspelled certain contractions throughout the story--e. g., "do'nt"--at times the writing seems to indicate that they're spelled correctly. I can only type them out as they LOOK on the page--which is itself sometimes difficult to tell, due to how quickly and sloppily I tend to write by hand.]
Khnum sighed and started to walk out. Then he turned back around and said:
"Beware, King of Egypt. For soon [you] might not be King of the world or even of Egypt, but of something much, much worse." With that, he left.
[Illustration: An ankh. Text, in dictionary definition style, reads: "ankh (ahnk)--ancient Egyptian symbol, meaning 'life.'"]
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