[599] Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Œdip. Colon. 332: where the passage cited by the Scholiast out of Nymphodôrus is a remarkable example of the habit of ingenious Greeks to represent all customs which they thought worthy of notice, as having emanated from the design of some great sovereign: here Nymphodôrus introduces Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, in order that the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate.
[600] The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii, 85-90); the word which he uses for it is the same as that for salting meat and fish,—ταρίχευσις: compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764.
Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone, and undeviating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hieroglyphics; so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision (Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Künste, i, p. 428).
All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their feelings respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped in some nomes which in other nomes were objects even of antipathy, especially the crocodile (Herod. ii, 69; Strabo, xvii, p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of Juvenal).
[601] Herodot. ii, 65-72; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarch, Isid. et Osir. p. 380.
Hasselquist identified all the birds carved on the obelisk near Matarea (Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.)
[602] Herodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points of distinction between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the latter had no surgeons or ἰατροί: they brought out the sick into the market-place, to profit by the sympathy and advice of the passers-by (Herodot. i, 197).
[603] Herodot. ii, 141.
[604] Herodot. iii, 177.
[605] Herodot. ii, 158. Read the account of the foundation of Petersburg by Peter the Great: “Au milieu de ces réformes, grandes et petites, qui faisaient les amusemens du czar, et de la guerre terrible qui l’occupoit contre Charles XII, il jeta les fondemens de l’importante ville et du port de Pétersbourg, en 1714, dans un marais où il n’y avait pas une cabane. Pierre travailla de ses mains à la première maison: rien ne le rebuta: des ouvriers furent forcés de venir sur ce bord de la mer Baltique, des frontières d’Astrachan, des bords de la Mer Noire et de la Mer Caspienne. Il périt plus de cent mille hommes dans les travaux qu’il fallut faire, et dans les fatigues et la disette qu’on essuya: mais enfin la ville existe.” (Voltaire, Anecdotes sur Pierre le Grand, en Œuvres Complètes, ed. Paris, 1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.)