The war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. According to a very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a neighbouring city, Thot, lord of Hermopolis Parva, as the arbitrator of their quarrel. Sit was the first to plead, and he maintained that Horus was not the son of Osiris, but a bastard, whom Isis hao conceived after the death of her husband. Horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy of his birth; and Thot condemned Sit to restore, according to some, the whole of the inheritance which he had wrongly retained,--according to others, part of it only. The gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to the arbitrator the title of _Uapirahuhui_: he who judges between two parties. A legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the worship of Osiris had spread over all Egypt, affirmed that the case had remained within the jurisdiction of Sibu, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the other party. Sibu, however, had pronounced the same judgment as Thot, and divided the kingdom into halves--_poshui_; Sit retained the valley from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the first cataract, while Horus entered into possession of the Delta. Egypt henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the North, recognized Horus, the son of Isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the South, placed itself under the protection of Sit Nubiti, the god of Ombos.[*] * Another form of the legend gives the 27th Athyr as the date of the judgment, assigning Egypt to Horus, and to Sit Nubia, or _Doshirit_, the red land. It must have arisen towards the age of the XVIIIth dynasty, at a time when their piety no longer allowed the devout to admit that the murderer of Osiris could be the legitimate patron of half the country. So _the half_ belonging to Sit was then placed either in Nubia or in the western desert, which had, indeed, been reckoned as his domain from earliest times. The moiety of Horus, added to that of Sit, formed the kingdom which Sibu had inherited; but his children failed to keep it together, though it was afterwards reunited under Pharaohs of human race.