Osiris, in Plutarch's telling, was a wise and civilizing king of Egypt, teaching agriculture and law, but his brother Set grew jealous of him and plotted his death. Set had a beautifully decorated chest built to Osiris's exact measurements, then at a banquet offered it as a gift to whichever guest fit inside it perfectly. When Osiris lay down in the chest, Set and his accomplices slammed the lid shut, sealed it, and cast it into the Nile, where the current carried it out to sea. Osiris's wife and sister Isis, learning of his death, cut off her hair and mourning garments and set out searching for the chest, eventually tracing it to Byblos, where it had lodged in the trunk of a tree that grew around it and was later cut down and made into a pillar for the local palace.
Isis recovered the chest and brought it back to Egypt, but while she was away visiting her son, Set found the body again, and this time cut it into pieces, scattering them across the length of Egypt. Isis, joined by her sister Nephthys and guided by the jackal-headed Anubis, searched out and gathered the pieces one by one, reassembling Osiris's body, in most versions all but the phallus, which had been eaten by a fish and which Isis instead fashioned anew. Through ritual magic she revived the body long enough to conceive a son, Horus, and only then did Osiris pass fully into the realm of the dead.