iris an Egyptian king and a successor of Menes, about the sixtieth of
the series, and the builder of Thebes, those better informed by the
Egyptians rejected him altogether. Various esoterical explanations were
given of the myth, and the name not found as a king was recognized as that
of the tomb of Osiris. Busiris is here probably an earlier and less
accurate Graecism than Osiris for the name of the Egyptian god Usiri, like
Bubastis, Buto, for the goddesses Ubasti and Uto. Busiris, Bubastis, Buto,
more strictly represent Pusiri, Pubasti, Puto, cities sacred to these
divinities. All three were situated in the Delta, and would be amongst the
first known to the Greeks. All shrines of Osiris were called _P-usiri_, but
the principal city of the name was in the centre of the Delta, capital of
the 9th (Busirite) nome of Lower Egypt; another one near Memphis (now
Abusir) may have helped the formation of the legend in that quarter. The
name Busiris in this legend may have been caught up merely at random by the
early Greeks, or they may have vaguely connected their legend with the
Egyptian myth of the slaying of Osiris (as king of Egypt) by his mighty
brother Seth, who was in certain aspects a patron of foreigners. Phrasius,
Chalbes and Epaphus (for the grandfather of Busiris) are all explicable as
Graecized Egyptian names, but other names in the legend are purely Greek.
The sacrifice of foreign prisoners before a god, a regular scene on temple
walls, is perhaps only symbolical, at any rate for the later days of
Egyptian history, but foreign intruders must often have suffered rude
treatment at the hands of the Egyptians, in spite of the generally mild
character of the latter.

See H. v. Gartringen, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopadie_, for the
evidence from the side of classical archaeology.

(F. LL. G.)

BUSK, GEORGE (1807-1886), British surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist,
son of Robert Busk, merchant of St Petersburg, was born in that city on the
12th of August 1807. He studied surgery in London, at both St Thomas's and
St Bartholomew's hospitals, and was an excellent operator. He was appointed
assistant-surgeon to the Greenwich hospital in 1832, and served as naval
surgeon first in the _Grampus_, and afterwards for many years in the
_Dreadnought_; during this period he made important observations on cholera
and on scurvy. In 1855 he retired from service and settled in London, where
he devoted himself mainly to the study o