332 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XIII. 



" At length she received more particular news 

 of the chest. It had been carried by the waves of 

 the sea to the coast of By bios, 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 w^as con- 

 cealed, 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 

 (Orus), who was brought up at Butus, she depo- 

 sited the chest in the mean time in a remote and 

 unfrequented place. Typho, however, as he was 

 one night hunting by the light of the Moon, ac- 

 cidentally met with it, and knowing the body en- 

 closed 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 pa- 

 pyrus rush, in order more easily to pass through 

 the lower and fenny parts of the country. . . . And 

 c.ie reason assigned for the many different sepul- 

 chres of Osiris shown in Egypt, is, that wherever 

 rny 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 



* Plut. de Is. s. 18. 



