He invited Osiris to a banquet along with seventy-two officers whose support he had ensured, made a wooden chest of cunning workmanship and ordered that it should be brought in to him, in the midst of the feast. As all admired its beauty, he sportively promised to present it to any one among the guests whom it should exactly fit. All of them tried it, one after another, and all unsuccessfully; but when Osiris lay down within it, immediately the conspirators shut to the lid, nailed it firmly down, soldered it together with melted lead, and then threw it into the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which carried it to the sea. The news of the crime spread terror on all sides. The gods friendly to Osiris feared the fate of their master, and hid themselves within the bodies of animals to escape the malignity of the new king. Isis cut off her hair, rent her garments, and set out in search of the chest. She found it aground near the mouth of the river[*] under the shadow of a gigantic acacia, deposited it in a secluded place where no one ever came, and then took refuge in Buto, her own domain and her native city, whose marshes protected her from the designs of Typhon even as in historic times they protected more than one Pharaoh from the attacks of his enemies. There she gave birth to the young Horus, nursed and reared him in secret among the reeds, far from the machinations of the wicked one.[**] * At this point the legend of the Saite and Greek period interpolates a whole chapter, telling how the chest was carried out to sea and cast upon the Phoenician coast near to Byblos. The acacia, a kind of heather or broom in this case, grew up enclosing the chest within its trunk. This addition to the primitive legend must date from the XVIIIth to the XXth dynasties, when Egypt had extensive relations with the peoples of Asia. No trace of it whatever has hitherto been found upon Egyptian monuments strictly so called; not even on the latest. ** The opening illustration of this chapter (p. 221) is taken from a monument at Phihe, and depicts Isis among the reeds. The representation of the goddess as squatting upon a mat probably gave rise to the legend of the floating isle of Khemmis, which HECATAEUS of Miletus had seen upon the lake of Buto, but whose existence was denied by Herodotus notwithstanding the testimony of Hecataeus.