“Osiris, having become king of Egypt, applied himself towards
civilizing his countrymen by turning them from their former barbarous
course of life, teaching them, moreover, to cultivate and improve the
fruits of the earth. With the same good disposition he afterwards
travelled over the rest of the world, inducing the people everywhere to
submit to his discipline, by the mildest persuasion. During his absence
from his kingdom, Typho had no opportunity of making any innovations
in the state, Isis being extremely vigilant in the government and
always on her guard. After the return of Osiris, however, Typho, having
persuaded seventy-two other persons to join him in the conspiracy,
together with a certain queen of Æthiopia, named Aso, who chanced to
be in Egypt at the time, contrived a proper stratagem to execute his
base designs. For, having privately taken a measure of Osiris’s body,
he caused a chest to be made exactly of that size, as beautiful as
possible, and set off with all the ornaments of art. This chest he
brought into the banqueting-room, where, after it had been much admired
by all present, Typho, as if in jest, promised to give it to any one
of them whose body upon trial it might be found to fit. Upon this the
whole company, one after the other, got into it; but as it did not fit
any of them, last of all Osiris laid himself down in it, upon which the
conspirators immediately ran together, clapped on the cover, and then,
fastening it on the outside with nails, poured melted lead over it.
“After this, having carried it away to the riverside, they conveyed it
to the sea by the Tanaïtic mouth of the Nile, which for this reason is
still held in the utmost abhorrence by the Egyptians, and never named
by them but with proper marks of detestation.
“These things happened on the 17th day of the month Athor, when the sun
was in Scorpio, in the 28th year of Osiris’s reign, though others say
he was no more than twenty-eight years old at the time.
“The first who knew the accident that had befallen their king were
the Pans and Satyrs, who lived about Chemmis; and they, immediately
acquainting the people with the news, gave the first occasion to the
name of _Panic terrors_.... Isis, as soon as the report reached her,
cut off one of the locks of her hair and put on mourning.
“At length she received more particular news of the chest. It had been
carried by the waves of the sea to the coast of Byblos, and there
gently lodged in the branches of a tamarisk bush, which in a short time
had shot up into a large tree, growing round the chest and enclosing
it on every side, so that it could not be seen; and the king of the
country, having cut down the tree, had made the part of the trunk
wherein the chest was concealed a pillar to support the roof of his
house. Isis, having gone to Byblos, obtained possession of this pillar,
and then set sail with the chest for Egypt. But intending a visit to
her son Horus, who was brought up at Butus, she deposited the chest in
the meantime in a remote and unfrequented place. Typho, however, as he
was one night hunting by the light of the moon, accidentally met with
it; and knowing the body enclosed in it, tore it into fourteen pieces,
disposing them up and down in different parts of the country.
“Being acquainted with this event, Isis set out once more in search
of the scattered members of her husband’s body, using a boat made of
the papyrus rush in order the more easily to pass through the lower
and fenny parts of the country. And one reason assigned for the many
different sepulchres of Osiris shown in Egypt is, that wherever any
one of his scattered limbs was discovered, she buried it in that spot;
though others suppose that it was owing to an artifice of the queen,
who presented each of those cities with an image of her husband, in
order that, if Typho should overcome Horus in the approaching conquest,
he might be unable to find the real sepulchre. Isis succeeded in
recovering all the different members, with the exception of one, which
had been devoured by the lepidotus, the phagrus, and the oxyrhinchus;
for which reason these fish are held in abhorrence by the Egyptians. To
make amends, therefore, for this loss, she consecrated the phallus, and
instituted a solemn festival to its memory.
“A battle at length took place between Horus and Typho, in which the
latter was taken prisoner. Isis, however, to whose custody he was
committed, so far from putting him to death, set him at liberty;
which so incensed Horus that he tore off the royal diadem she wore;
but Hermes substituted in its stead a helmet made in the shape of an
ox’s head. At length two other battles were fought, in which Typho was
defeated.”