The reason for this obstinacy of choice is perhaps to be found in the legend or myth of Osiris, which was at once more consistent and more direct in its appeal to human sympathies than those handed down concerning the other gods of Egypt. We are told that Osiris was the first-born of Nut the sky-goddess by Geb the earth-god, that he appeared upon earth as a man among men, and became king of Egypt, which he ruled wisely and well, teaching the Egyptians the art of agriculture, giving them just laws, and instructing them in the proper worship of the gods. Later, he travelled over the whole earth, civilizing and subduing the nations not by force of arms but by persuasion and especially by the art of music which he took with him. On his return, he was entrapped and murdered by his jealous brother Set or Typhon who, with the aid of seventy-two conspirators and an Ethiopian queen called Aso, shut him up in a coffin and threw him into the Nile, by which his body was carried out to sea. We further learn that his sister-wife Isis, who had reigned in his stead during his absence, mourned greatly for his loss and wandered far and wide seeking and lamenting him, until she heard from some children that the coffin containing his remains had been carried away by the Tanitic mouth of the Nile. Following this, she found that it had been washed ashore at Byblus in Phoenicia and had been overgrown by a magnificent tamarisk, which the king of the country had had cut down and made into the roof-tree or pillar supporting his house. Then Isis disguised herself as a servant and became the nurse of the king’s son, whom she would have made immortal but for the timidity of his mother, who cried out when she saw the child surrounded by the flames which were to burn away his mortality. On this, the goddess revealed herself, took away the pillar containing the coffin, and attempted to revive the corpse that it contained by her embrace. Afterwards, she gave birth to her son Horus, whom she destined from his cradle to be the avenger of his father. Meanwhile, the murderer Set had seized the throne of Egypt, and while hunting by moonlight came across the corpse of Osiris, which he tore into fourteen pieces, and scattered them throughout the land. Consequently Isis, who was at the time visiting Horus at nurse in her city of Buto, had to begin again her wanderings, sailing over the swamps in a boat of papyrus, and burying the fragments of the body of Osiris wherever she found them. One part, however, she could not find, this having been thrown into the Nile and devoured by fishes; and henceforth Osiris became king of the Underworld, where he rules for ever over the dead, welcoming those who successfully win through the ordeal of the judgment that all must undergo, and providing for them a happy life like that which the rich live on earth, in which agriculture plays a prominent part. Then Horus grew up to man’s estate, and having provided