After Osiris ascended to the heavens, his wife Isis began weeping. The Eve of the 11th of the Ancient Egyptian month of Ba-oo-neh (18 June) is called “Leylet en-Nuktah” (or the Night of the Tear Drop), as it commemorates the first drop that falls into the Nile to begin the annual flood season. Astrologers calculate the precise moment when the “drop” is to fall, which is always in the course of the night above mentioned. This Ancient Egyptian celebration is recognized in northern Cairo as Mouled el Embabi.

This ancient festival was particularly welcomed by the Egyptian peasants all along the Nile Valley. Diodorus of Sicily tells us how the husbandmen indulged in recreations of every kind, and showed their gratitude to God for the benefits of the inundation. According to Heliodorus, it was one of the principal festivals of the Egyptians. Libanius asserts that these rites were deemed of so much importance by the Egyptians throughout the land that unless they were performed at the proper season, and in a becoming manner, by the persons appointed to this duty, they believed that the Nile would refuse to rise and inundate the land.

The Nile begins to rise about, or soon after, the period of the summer solstice. Two weeks after the first teardrop (i.e. from, or about, the 27th of the month Ba-oo-neh [3rd of July]), the incremental increases in the water level of the Nile were proclaimed daily in the streets of the city, as stated by Plutarch, and were continued by Baladi Egyptians until the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1960s.

One of the most compelling parts of the Egyptian Model Story of Isis and Osiris is how these two symbols relate to the flood season in Egypt. The Egyptians associated the beginning of the flood with Isis after her husband/soulmate (namely, Osiris), ascended to heaven 40 days after his death, when she started weeping, begging her dead husband to rise again. Egyptians associated the first teardrop with the beginning of the rise of the Nile. Isis continued to weep, wishing for her husband to rise.

The beauty here is that Isis wishes her husband to rise from the dead, and the water of the Nile is consequently rising, as well. It should be noted that the water of the Nile is symbolized by Osiris himself.

Plutarch described this relationship in his Moralia, Vol. V (366, 38A), as follows:

". . . As the Egyptians regard the Nile as the effusion of Osiris, so they hold and believe the earth to be the body of Isis, not all of it, but so much of it as the Nile covers, fertilizing it and uniting with it. From this union they make Horus to be born. . .'

[Excerpts from Isis: The Divine Female and Egyptian Mystics: Seekers of The Way; both byMoustafa Gadalla]