MUHAMMAD Well . . . okay, if youre sure. Ive been working with my Dad for the new Sadat government.

Nasser died last year, or so, and theres been the coup in Libya too. JIBRAIL I hear its better in Libya? More of the oil money is getting down to the people? M Yeah, I think so. But of course my father doesnt like Colonel Qathafi, whos apparently taken over the Revolution. He thinks hes not much of a Muslim. Anyway, Dad wants me to join the army, but the doctors say I have epilepsy or something and dont qualify. J Epilepsy, really? I didnt hear that? M Its only a vague diagnosis. They dont know what happens to me. Theres no medical evidence of anything wrong. J Well thats good if it keeps you out of the army. M Definitely. But Dad still doesnt like it. So, Ive been working with some so-called Intelligence Brigades, just as a job. Im just winging it as I go along. Doing, kind of, non-violent type tactics. Its all kind of on a religious scale, Gabby, for want of a better word. Jibrail, I mean. I mean, Ive actually been studying about Osiris a lot, and applying it to some of my lectures at the Military Institute. I give a few lectures a week, on ancient Egyptian religious influences on their military history. J Really? Thats - M Yeah. Its pretty vague alright. J Like your diagnosis. M And yours? J Well, yeah, sort of. Its more in the psychology department. You know thats what I majored in. Psychology. M Yeah. J Where all the wackos go, to study.

M I guess youre more oriented to science, then, than me. j Oh I dont know. Paranoid schizophrenia, what does that mean really? M I like Jung though. The Collective Unconscious makes more sense. Thats a bit like what Osiris taught. J Collective Unconscious. M Yeah. You look tired, Jibby. I can come back tomorrow. J No. Please. I love you. I mean I love to hear you talking. You can do anything you want, you know, Muhammad? M I remember you used to say that. J Its true. Please. Your voice soothes me. Tell me all about . . . Osiris. M And Isis. Well . . . Ive been down at Dendera and Thebes a lot, way south, down, or actually its up the Nile, as it flows, oddly from the south in deepest Africa north to the Med. Ive been studying, learning, hieroglyphics. J (exhausted) Hieroglyphics. Wonderful. M His name is As-Ar, actually, pronounced with a soft A like Us-Ur. J Who? M Osiris. Us-ur. They claim they dont know what his name means, or even that the most ancient, earliest Egyptians didnt know either. J Big mystery, eh?

M Yeah. No. Not to me. Because, you see Jibby, theres also the hieroglyphic for As-t, for him, which is also exactly the name of Isis and Set. Set supposedly killed him. Shes the female counterpart of Osiris, and it is very probable, as the scholar E.A. Wallis Budge writes in his books published almost a hundred years ago, that originally the same conception underlay both names. The same conception. J (eyes closed, wearily) The same conception. M (pulling out a paperback) Here, Ill read it to you. The truth of the matter seems to be that the ancient Egyptians knew just as little about the original meaning of the name As-Ar as we do - J As-Ar as we do. Funny. M - - and that they had no better means of obtaining information about it than we have. J (skeptical) Incredible. M (reading) It is tacitly assumed that the reader will understand that he once possessed human form and lived upon earth, and that by means of some unusual power or powers he was able to bestow upon himself after his death a new life which he lived in a new body in a region over which he ruled as king, and into which he was believed to be willing to admit all such as had lived a good and correct life upon earth, and had been buried with appropriate ceremonies under the protection of certain amulets, and with the proper recital of certain divine words and words of power. The worship of Osiris is, however, very much older than these views which, it is clear, could only belong to a people who had advanced to a comparatively high state of civilization and of mental development. Amazing huh? Jibby? J (only half-alert) Yeah. No. Amazing? Whats amazing? M Well I thought - J Amazing he says. M (reading more)

And this is an incredible quote of As-Ar from The Book of the Dead, my all-time favorite. I am Yesterday, and I am To-day; and I have the power to be born a second time. I the hidden Soul create the gods, and I give sepulchral meals to the divine beings in Amenti and in heaven. Now, Amenti is Libya in the glyphs, and, uh, Sekhet-Hetepu are the Elysian Fields, and Budge says, quote, Everything which the texts of all periods - certainly as old as the period of the 1st Dynasty at least - record concerning him goes to show that he was an indigenous god of Africa, and that his home and origin were possibly Libyan. Did you catch that? Dr. Brugsch wrote, this is a great quote, quote, Osiris typified the unbroken rejuvenescence of immortal Nature according to the Divine Will and according to eternal laws. J Rejuvenescence? Thats you all over. M (going on, ignoring her) The natural opponent of Osiris was Set, who typified death and destruction, and who was the god par excellence of the desert. J I thought Osiris typified death. M Yeah. As-t, the same hieroglyph. Interesting. J What happened to him? Set, as-t, I mean. M Good question. He fought a long war with Horus, and lost eventually, and I presume was judged and condemned at the Underworld Court of Osiris and Anubis. But how can a god be condemned, let alone sent to the monster, Eater of Death, as he was called. J Eater of Death? thats encouraging. You dont actually believe all this, do you? Monsters and - M Yes I do. Look, Jibby, Osiris was real. His religion endured for thousands and thousands of years, far more than any other Founder of any religion. The priceless monuments of Egypt are proof, proof that with a true balance in the understanding of Nature Earth doesnt have to be arbitrary with its diseases and death, flies and mosquitoes, and so on. Osiris himself proved it. He died and came back to tell us, them, what it was like over there. He set up a Judgement Court for everyone who dies. The early Egyptians believed that Osiris was a man-god who was murdered and whose body was mutilated, so they could identify with his suffering too. Sounds like Jesus, yeah, and Dionysos hacked to pieces by Hera out of jealousy, and even Julius

Caesar hacked to pieces by twenty-three stabs wounds, including right in the eye, on the floor of the fucking Roman Senate. He knew all about the horror and atrocities and injustice of the human species on Earth, and really, really, did something about it. He was fair. He was the final Judge. Look at all his frescoes and millions of hieroglyphic art-forms, of a green mummy, passing final judgement.Judgement Day, damn right. Thats fair. Jibby, it wasnt, it isnt some protracted punishment of Hell when we die, if weve been bad. You were there? What did it look like to you, before you were resusitated? It was all black, wasnt it? Total Blackness. An eater of death enacts instantaneous annihilation and thats it, thats the end, for bad people. But thats not blackness, thats not the endless infinity of blackness in Outer Space, 96% of the universe. Youre a scientists. Whats the black energy, the dark matter? It has no atoms, or gravity, its massless, lightless, but, by Amen-Ra it is teeming with life and vitality! For the good, who pass a good life before their eyes at the moment of death, the moment of Truth, there isnt some big group Heaven either, with angels playing harps. Few people get past the monster, unfortunately, obviously. Osiris is a very strict Judge. Ethics are everything to him. Theyve chosen death and annihilation probably at birth. They think this is all there is. They think death is an inevitable, viciously unfair, oblivion; or if theyre devout christians or muslims, heaven is inevitable for martyrs. But, no, its all got to do with that choice Amen-Ra gives everyone, probably, at some point in their lives. Or maybe its only given to a few of us. Worship of some false imposter like Jehovah or Allah in the fictional form of a Jesus Christ, who never lived at all except in the propaganda of dishonest Greek Jews who wrote the New Testatment, and idolhating Saudi Arabians who concocted the incoherent Quran, wont do it. The Bible and the Quran wont do it. They arent doing it. Or else wed be living in a fairer, better world, but were not. Are we? Im not romanticizing ancient Egypt, or Rome either for that matter, but they were a lot better than orthodox historians and theologians would have us believe. Ive studied the beautiful, brilliant society Rome really was at Pompeii, where no christian propagandists could get to them and lie about their culture. And the Sahara Desert blessedly covered up Libya and Egypt so they couldnt come in and destroy the truth of those priceless monuments and temples either. j I believe you. Goddess, Ive always loved your passion. Forgive me? M For what? For loving you? J For not this is hard for me to say. For not deserving your love. M (hugging her) Oh Gabriella. Gabriel of the Annunciation. J Now youre not going christian on me?

M No, Im past my christian period. J Good. Maybe youll still make it past the monster. I hope so. oh, please, Hammed, go on. I love what youre saying. Im just . . . not quite up to very much today. Yet. Maybe I will be. Youve given me . . . some . . . just, read some more. Its beautiful. M Yeah it is. Like you. Now lets see, where were we? The goddess assisted in bringing about his resurrection. Thy sister protected thee . . . Isis, the mighty one, the avenger of her brother. She sought thee without weariness . . . She stirred up from his state of inactivity him whose heart was still, she drew from him his seed, she made an heir, she suckled the babe in solitariness, and the place wherein she reared him is unknown.

He keeps reading but we cant quite make out what hes saying. He voice and words slowly dim down and fade out with the lights.