Typhon

Family: Greek names in Plutarch · Role: adversary of Isis · First appears: The History of Isis and Osiris, collected by Plutarch · Part 1

In Plutarch’s “Isis and Osiris,” Typhon was born on the third day through a wound he made in his mother Rhea’s side; Plutarch names Kronos as his father. He later married Nephthys. After returning to Egypt, Typhon plotted against Osiris with Aso and seventy-two others. The conspirators sealed Osiris inside a chest and sent it down the river; in one account, Typhon later found the chest at the full moon and pulled Osiris’s body to pieces.

In another account, Typhon found the chest while hunting by moonlight, tore Osiris’s body into fourteen pieces, and scattered them across the country. He was an adversary of Isis and Osiris, and Plutarch calls him Isis’s “professed adversary.” After Horus defeated Typhon and took him prisoner, Isis freed him from her custody. Typhon then accused Horus of illegitimacy; with Hermes’s assistance, a decree established Horus’s legitimacy, and Horus defeated Typhon in two further battles.