thee, go not far from me.  O Beautiful Boy, come to thy house, straightway, straightway.  I cannot see thee, and my heart weepeth for thee; my eyes follow thee about.  I am following thee about so that I may see thee.  Lo, I wait to see thee, I wait to see thee; behold, Prince, I wait to see thee.  It is good to see thee, it is good to see thee; O An, it is good to see thee.  Come to thy beloved one, come to thy beloved one, O Un-Nefer, whose word is truth.  Come to thy wife, O thou whose heart is still.  Come to the lady of thy house; I am thy sister from thy mother’s [womb].  Go not thou far from me.  The faces of gods and men are turned towards thee, they all weep for thee together.  As soon as I saw thee I cried out to thee, weeping with a loud voice which pierced the heavens, and thou didst not hear my voice.  I am thy sister who loved thee upon earth; none other loved thee more than [thy] sister, thy sister.”

NEPHTHYS SAITH:  “O Beautiful Prince, come to thy house.  Let thy heart rejoice and be glad, for thine enemies have ceased to be.  Thy two Sisters are nigh unto thee; they guard thy bier, they address thee with words [full of] tears as thou liest prone on thy bier.  Look thou at the young women; speak to us, O our Sovereign Lord.  Destroy thou all the misery that is in our hearts; the chiefs among gods and men look upon thee.  Turn thou towards us thy face, O our Sovereign Lord.  At the sight of thy face life cometh to our faces; turn not thou thy face from us.  The joy of our heart is in the sight of thee.  O Beautiful Sovereign, our hearts would see thee.  I am thy sister Nephthys who loveth thee.  The fiend Seba hath fallen, he hath not being.  I am with thee, and I act as the protectress of thy members for ever and ever.”

The second work, the “Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys,” was sung during the great festival of Osiris, which took place in the fourth month of the Season of Akhet and lasted five days (from the twenty-second to the twenty-sixth day).  It was sung by two virgins who wore fillets of sheep’s wool on their heads, and held tambourines in their hands; one was called Isis and the other Nephthys.  According to the rubrical directions given in the British Museum papyrus, the sections were sung by both women together.  The following passage will illustrate the contents of the work: 

“Come, come, run to me, O strong heart!  Let me see thy divine face, for I do not see thee, and make thou clear the path that we may see thee as we see Ra in heaven, when the heavens unite with the earth, and cause darkness to fall upon the earth each day.  My heart burneth as with fire at thy escape from the Fiend, even as my heart burneth with fire when thou turnest thy side to me; O that thou wouldst never remove it from me!  O thou who unitest the Two Domains (i.e. Egypt, North and South), and who turnest back those who are on the roads, I seek to see thee because of my love for thee....  Thou fliest like a living being, O Everlasting King;