The Murder

Egyptian sources name Set as the killer of his brother Osiris and treat it as common knowledge, while declining to narrate the killing itself. The familiar sequence — the banquet, the fitted chest, the sealed lid, the river — is preserved by Plutarch, writing in Greek around 100 CE. What the Egyptian material supplies instead is the consequence: a murdered king, a widow, a posthumous heir and a claim that has to be settled. Set is given no motive beyond the obvious one. He wanted what his brother had.