The Girls' Book of Famous QueensFarmer, Lydia Hoyt
History
The Girls' Book of Famous Queens
Farmer, Lydia Hoyt
Queens -- Biography -- Juvenile literature
“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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