Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the course of his journey toward the far west for the apples of the Hesperides, Heracles passed through Egypt. There reigned Busiris, a son of Poseidon (by Lysianassa daughter of Epaphus, in Apollodorus), who sacrificed strangers on an altar of Zeus. The custom began after nine years of dearth: the Cypriot seer Phrasius arrived and declared that the barrenness would end if they slaughtered a foreign man each year and offered him to Zeus. Busiris began by killing Phrasius himself, then seized every stranger thereafter for the altar. Heracles was bound and led to the sacrifice. At the altar he burst his bonds, killed Busiris, Busiris’s son Amphidamas (or Iphidamas), and the attendant heralds and priests, and so ended the murderous rite. Greek art loves the moment of the hero breaking free beside the Egyptian altar. Herodotus, defending Egyptian piety, calls the whole story foolish invention—Egyptians would never sacrifice humans—yet the myth remains standard in Apollodorus and the handbook tradition as a Heraclean civilizing kill on the Libyan–Egyptian road: the strong stranger destroys the king who had made Zeus’s altar a trap for guests.