Hercules and Busiris
Hercules traveled to Egypt, where he met the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh Busiris. Busiris was a bad king. He captured Hercules, because Hercules was a stranger there, and tried to sacrifice Hercules to the Egyptian gods.
Busiris hides in a jar, while
Hercules threatens him with his dog Cerberus
But just as they were about to sacrifice him, Hercules used his giant muscles to break the chains that were tying him up. Busiris was so frightened that he hid in a big jar, and Hercules got away.
Mostly the point of this story is just to make the racist point that Egyptians are cowards. You might compare the breaking-the-chains part of the story to the Jewish story of Samson.
To find out more about Hercules, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Twelve Labors of Hercules (Step into Reading, Step 3), by Marc Cerasini. Very easy, for beginning readers.
The Story of Hercules (Dover Children's Thrift Classics), by Robert Blaisdell (1997). For kids, very cheap.
Hercules, by Nancy Loewen (1999). Still for kids, but more sophisticated, with a look at how the myth was passed on and what it meant to people, as well as the story itself.
D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, by Edgar and Ingri D'Aulaire. (Look under Heracles).
The Myths of Herakles in Ancient Greece, by Mark W. Padilla (1998). By a specialist, for adults.
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