Osiris is returning to Egypt after conquering the world by gentleness. Once he gets back, he immediately gets an invitation to come to a great dinner festival, alone, by Set. He feels he must accept. As he is sitting there waiting for dinner, Set's men bring in a long beautifully carved box and they begin laughing and climbing into it and jumping back out again. Whoever fits it perfectly gets to keep it. Osiris is invited to try. He climbs in, and Set slams it shut, nails it closed, and throws it into the Nile where Osiris drowns. But the box drifts out into the Mediterranean. It drifts across and lands on the shore of Byblos of Canaan. It comes to rest at the foot of a straggly tree. The tree grows like crazy, encloses the box, and grows very tall. The king of the city is building a palace so he sends men out to fell the tree. The moment the axe bites into it, a smell fills the air -- the sweetest smell ever. Isis hears about this and figures out what happened. She goes to Byblos and asks the king if they can cut the tree open because Osiris is inside. The king agrees. She takes Osiris back to Egypt. (This is an explanation for the existence of the cedars of Canaan.) She wants to bring Osiris back to life but must first return to the throne and tend to business. She decides to hide the body deep in the swamps of the Nile Delta to protect it from Set. Set sneaks into the delta, finds the body, chops it into fourteen pieces, and scatters them all over the world. Isis discovers what has happened. She patiently goes out and gathers all the pieces, finding the last one on the shore of China. [Alternate: Isis finds thirteen of the fourteen pieces. The piece not found was the phallus. It was not found because "it had fallen into the brackish water of the Nile Delta and was devoured by crabs." The crabs were then made so bitter that they could not be eaten, even today.] She brings him to life, and from that union comes Horus.
Isis worries about Horus as he grows up because of the threat of Set and his desire to take the throne. Isis hides Horus in the swamps of the Nile Delta. Set immediately comes slithering in as a poisonous snake, bites Horus, and leaves. So Horus begins to die. Isis is unable to cure him because she doesn't know the source of the curse. Isis prays to Ra who is passing over head at that moment. Ra stops the sun for two hours, during which time he and Shu and Thoth come to Earth and the four of them stand around Horus and focus their powers and cure him (breaking the archetype). Horus safely grows up because Set doesn't know he is still alive. (In Biblical history, Joshua prays to God to stop the sun so that he can continue battle.) Horus becomes ready to claim the throne, but Set wants it, too. They battle one another in different forms of animals to no avail. Isis won't relinquish the throne until this is settled.
The feud between Horus and Set was much too big for Thoth to resolve. So a tribunal was called. Ra presides. Set and Horus stand up one at a time and argue back and forth. The gods agree with whomever most recently spoke, or Ra inhibits the decisionmaking with his senility. The trial continues for eighty years. At one point, Isis is ejected because she is so vociferously on her son's side. She turns herself into a beautiful young woman, slips into the trial, and sits beside Set. She begins to weep heavily. Set asks her why she is weeping. She tells him and everyone hears what she says. She says that she and her husband have a flock of sheep, intended to be left to their son. But her husband's brother treacherously murdered her husband to steal the flock from her son. Set exclaims that this is horrible. "Your son deserves your flock. Your husband's brother should be punished." Isis immediately turns into a swallow, flies into the rafters, and screams out, "You have condemned yourself!" The gods agree. Set disagrees. Ra disagrees (because it wasn't his idea). And the trial has made no progress. The only way to resolve this is to call the only god who isn't there - "He Who Is True of Voice," Osiris who is in the Underworld. He comes and stands before them and tells them he has thought it over carefully and that Horus is best suited to the throne. The gods agree. But Ra says the decision is invalid because Osiris is Horus's father. Osiris steps up a second time and says that they can reach any conclusion they want, but that he has at his disposal savage-faced messengers who can drag down to the Underworld the heart of anyone Osiris commands. Horus becomes Pharaoh. Set is chained in the desert where he must be the god of sterility, where he must provide the wind which drives the Man Jet Boat. Thoth becomes Horus's counselor. Thoth eventually becomes the last pharaoh.