Setne Khamwas and his wife Mehusekhe were a happily married couple, yet they longed for a child. One night, Mehusekhe dreamed of a god instructing her to eat the seeds of a magical plant. Miraculously, she became pregnant and gave birth to a boy named Si-Osire, meaning "Son of Osiris." From an early age, Si-Osire displayed extraordinary abilities. By the age of twelve, his intellect and mastery of magic surpassed all the great sorcerers in the royal library, marking him as a prodigy destined for greatness.
One day, while standing on a balcony with his father Setne, Si-Osire witnessed two funerals: one for a wealthy man, lavishly adorned with hired mourners and a splendid coffin, and one for a poor man, whose body was simply wrapped in a tattered mat and carried to a barren field. Setne sighed, wishing his son’s fate might be as prosperous as the rich man’s. Si-Osire boldly responded that he wished his father’s fate in the afterlife to mirror that of the poor man, sparing him the suffering of the wealthy. To demonstrate his point, Si-Osire used magic to transport his father’s soul to the Duat, the Egyptian underworld, where they witnessed the ultimate judgments. The poor man now stood gloriously in white robes beside Osiris, while the wealthy man suffered torment, his eyes cruelly used as door hinges that crushed him whenever someone opened the gates. The lesson was clear: in the afterlife, wealth holds no value, and moral deeds determine one’s fate.
The story reaches its most dramatic moment when a messenger from Kush (Nubia) delivers a sealed scroll, challenging Pharaoh’s magicians to read its contents without opening it. Failure would mean three years of tribute to Nubia. As the royal magicians struggled, Si-Osire, still a boy, stepped forward. Using his unparalleled magical skills, he not only read the scroll flawlessly but also recounted a historical tale from 500 years earlier. The scroll described a Nubian sorcerer who had once kidnapped Pharaoh in the night, only to be defeated by a master Egyptian magician, Hor, son of Punesh.
At that moment, the Nubian messenger turned pale. He was revealed to be the reincarnated evil sorcerer seeking revenge. Si-Osire then disclosed his true identity: he was Hor, son of Punesh, reborn with divine permission in the body of Setne’s son to protect Egypt once more. The final magical battle was fierce, with both sorcerers casting spells of extraordinary power. Ultimately, Si-Osire unleashed divine fire, destroying the Nubian sorcerer and banishing him from the palace forever. After completing his mission, Si-Osire vanished into thin air, leaving Setne astonished and grief-stricken. To console him, Mehusekhe later bore a normal son, restoring some peace to the family.
The story of Si-Osire carries profound meanings. Karma and justice are central, emphasizing that one’s deeds in life determine one’s fate in the afterlife, as shown in the Duat. It celebrates loyalty, intelligence, and the magical prowess of Egyptian sorcerers in protecting the kingdom from foreign threats. It also presents an early concept of reincarnation, showing that a soul can return to the mortal world to fulfill a divine mission. Above all, the tale illustrates that courage, wisdom, and moral integrity can overcome envy, evil, and chaos, leaving a timeless lesson for readers across the ages.