CHAPTER II.
RELIGION, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, DRESS, AND ANIMALS OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Egypt possesses more wonders than any other country, and exhibits works greater than can be described, in comparison with all other regions; therefore more must be said about it. The Egyptians besides having a peculiar climate and a river differing in its nature from all other rivers, have adopted customs and usages in almost every respect different from the rest of mankind. Amongst them the women attend markets and traffic, but the men stay at home and weave. Other nations, in weaving, throw the wool upward; the Egyptians, downward. The men carry burdens on their heads; the women, on their shoulders. No woman can serve the office for any god or goddess; but men are employed for both offices. Sons are not compelled to support their parents unless they choose, but daughters are compelled to do so, whether they choose or not. In other countries the priests of the gods wear long hair; in Egypt they have it shaved. With other men it is customary in mourning for the nearest relations to have their heads shorn; the Egyptians, on occasions of death, let the hair grow both on the head and face, though till then shaven. Other men feed on wheat and barley, but it is a very great disgrace for an Egyptian to make food of them; but they make bread from spelt, which some call zea. They knead the dough with their feet; but mix clay with their hands. Every man wears two garments; the women, but one. Other men fasten the rings and sheets of their sails outside; but the Egyptians, inside. The Greeks write and cipher, moving the hand from left to right; but the Egyptians, from right to left: and doing so, they say they do it right-ways, and the Greeks left-ways. They have two sorts of letters, one of which is called sacred, the other common.
They are of all men the most excessively attentive to the worship of the gods, and observe the following ceremonies: They drink from cups of bronze, which they scour every day. They wear linen garments, constantly fresh-washed, thinking it better to be clean than handsome. The priests shave their whole body every third day, that no impurity may be found upon them when engaged in the service of the gods. The priests wear linen only, and shoes of byblus, and are not permitted to wear any other garments, or other shoes. They wash themselves in cold water twice every day and twice every night, and use a great number of ceremonies. On the other hand, they enjoy no slight advantages, for they do not consume or expend any of their private property; but sacred food is cooked for them, and a great quantity of beef and geese is allowed each of them every day, with wine from the grape; but they must not taste of fish. Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country, nor do they eat those that happen to grow there. The priests abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it impure. The service of each god is performed, not by one, but by many priests, of whom one is chief; and, when one of them dies, his son is put in his place. The male kine they deem sacred to Epaphus, and to that end prove them in the following manner: If the examiner finds one black hair upon him, he adjudges him to be unclean; one of the priests appointed for this purpose makes this examination, both when the animal is standing up and lying down; and he draws out the tongue, to see if it is pure as to the prescribed marks, which I shall mention in another part of my history. He also looks at the hairs of his tail, to see whether they grow naturally. If the beast is found pure in all these respects, he marks it by rolling a piece of byblus round the horns, and then having put on it some sealing earth, he impresses it with his signet; and so they drive him away. Any one who sacrifices one that is unmarked is punished with death. The established mode of sacrifice is this: they lead the victim, properly marked, to the altar where they intend to sacrifice, and kindle a fire; then having poured wine upon the altar, near the victim, they invoke the god, and kill it; then cut off the head, and flay the body of the animal. Having pronounced many imprecations on the head, they who have a market and Greek merchants dwelling amongst them, carry it there and sell it; but those who have no Greeks amongst them throw it into the river; and they pronounce the following imprecations on the head: "If any evil is about to befall either those that now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head." But a different mode of disembowelling and burning the victims prevails in different sacrifices. The practice with regard to the goddess whom they consider the greatest, and in whose honor they celebrate the most magnificent festival, is this: When they have flayed the bullocks, having first offered up prayers, they take out all the intestines, and leave the vitals with the fat in the carcass: they then cut off the legs and the extremity of the hip, with the shoulders and neck, and fill the body of the bullock with fine bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other perfumes, and burn it, pouring on it a great quantity of oil. They sacrifice after they have fasted; and while the sacred things are being burnt, they all beat themselves; after which they spread a banquet of what remains of the victims.
All the Egyptians sacrifice the pure male kine and calves, but they are not allowed to sacrifice the females, for they are sacred to Isis; the image of Isis is made in the form of a woman with the horns of a cow, as the Greeks represent Io; and all Egyptians alike pay a far greater reverence to cows than to any other cattle. No Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Greek on the mouth; or use the knife, spit, or cauldron of a Greek, or taste of the flesh of a pure ox that has been divided by a Greek knife. They bury the kine that die in the following manner: The females they throw into the river, and the males they inter in the suburbs, with one horn, or both, appearing above the ground, for a mark. When it is putrified, and the appointed time arrives, a raft comes to each city from the island called Prosopitis, in the Delta, which is nine schœni in circumference. Now in this island Prosopitis there are several cities; but that from which the rafts come to take away the bones of the oxen, is called Atarbechis; in it a temple of Venus has been erected. From this city then many persons go about to other towns; and having dug up the bones, carry them away, and bury them in one place; and they bury all other cattle that die in the same way that they do the oxen; for they do not kill any of them. All those who have a temple erected to Theban Jupiter, or belong to the Theban district, abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats only. For the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods in the same manner, except Isis and Osiris, who, they say, is Bacchus. On the other hand, those who frequent the temple of Mendes, and belong to the Mendesian district, abstain from goats, and sacrifice sheep. The Thebans say that this custom was established among them in the following way: that Hercules was very desirous of seeing Jupiter, but Jupiter was unwilling to be seen by him; at last, however, as Hercules persisted, Jupiter flayed a ram, cut off the head, and held it before himself, and then having put on the fleece, showed himself to Hercules. From this circumstance the Egyptians make the image of Jupiter with a ram's face; and the Ammonians, who are a colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians, and who speak a language between both, have adopted the same practice; and, as I conjecture, the Ammonians thus derived their name, for the Egyptians call Jupiter, Ammon. The Thebans then do not sacrifice rams, being for this reason accounted sacred by them; on one day in the year, however, at the festival of Jupiter, they kill and flay one ram, put it on this image of Jupiter, and bring an image of Hercules to it; then all who are in the temple beat themselves in mourning for the ram, and bury him in a sacred vault.
Of this Hercules I have heard that he is one of the twelve gods; but of the other Hercules, who is known to the Greeks, I could never hear in any part of Egypt. That the Egyptians did not derive the name of Hercules from the Greeks, but rather the Greeks from the Egyptians, I have many proofs to show. The parents of this Hercules, Amphitryon and Alcmene, were both of Egyptian descent, and the Egyptians say they do not know the names of Neptune and the Dioscuri, yet if they had derived the name of any deity from the Greeks, they would certainly have mentioned these above all others, since even at that time they made voyages, and some of the Greeks were sailors. But Hercules is one of the ancient gods of the Egyptians; and they say themselves it was seventeen thousand years before the reign of Amasis, when the number of their gods was increased from eight to twelve, of whom Hercules was accounted one. Being desirous of obtaining certain information from whatever source I could, I sailed to Tyre in Phœnicia, having heard that there was there a temple dedicated to Hercules; and I saw it richly adorned with a great variety of offerings, and in it were two pillars, one of fine gold, the other of emerald stone, both shining exceedingly at night. Conversing with the priests of this god, I inquired how long this temple had been built, and I found that they did not agree with the Greeks. For they said that the temple was built at the time when Tyre was founded, and that two thousand three hundred years had elapsed since the foundation of Tyre. In this city I also saw another temple dedicated to Hercules by the name of Thasian; I went therefore to Thasos, and found there a temple of Hercules built by the Phœnicians, who founded Thasos, when they sailed in search of Europa, and this occurred five generations before Hercules the son of Amphitryon appeared in Greece. The researches then that I have made evidently prove that Hercules is a god of great antiquity, and therefore those Greeks appear to me to have acted most correctly, who have built two kinds of temples sacred to Hercules, and who sacrifice to one as an immortal, under the name of Olympian, and paid honor to the other as a hero. The Mendesians pay reverence to all goats; at the death of a he-goat public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district.
The Egyptians consider the pig to be an impure beast, and therefore if a man in passing by a pig should touch him only with his garments, he forthwith goes to the river and plunges in; and in the next place, swineherds, although native Egyptians, are the only men who are not allowed to enter any of their temples; neither will any man give his daughter in marriage to one of them, nor take a wife from among them; but the swineherds intermarry among themselves. The Egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice swine to any deities but the moon and Bacchus. In this sacrifice of pigs to the moon, when the sacrificer has slain the victim, he puts together the tip of the tail, with the spleen and the caul, covers them with the fat found about the belly of the animal, and consumes them with fire: the rest of the flesh they eat during the full moon in which they offer the sacrifices; but on no other day would any one even taste it. The poor amongst them, through want of means, form pigs of dough, and having baked them, offer them in sacrifice.
Whence each of the gods sprung, whether they existed always, and of what form they were, was, so to speak, unknown till yesterday. For I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms.
The Egyptians were also the first who introduced public festivals, processions, and solemn supplications; and the Greeks learned these from them. The Egyptians hold public festivals several times in a year; that which is best and most rigidly observed is in the city of Bubastis, in honor of Diana; the second, in the city of Busiris, is in honor of Isis; the largest temple of Isis is in this city, in the middle of the Egyptian Delta. Isis is in the Grecian language called Demeter. The third festival is held at Sais, in honor of Minerva; the fourth, at Heliopolis, in honor of the sun; the fifth, at the city of Buto, in honor of Latona; the sixth, at the city of Papremis, in honor of Mars. When they are assembled at the sacrifice, in the city of Sais, they all on a certain night kindle a great number of lamps in the open air, around their houses; the lamps are flat vessels filled with salt and oil, the wick floats on the surface and burns all night; hence the festival is named "the lighting of lamps." The Egyptians who do not come to this public assembly observe the rite of sacrifice, and all kindle lamps, not only in Sais, but throughout all Egypt.
Egypt, though bordering on Libya, does not abound in wild beasts; but all that they have are accounted sacred. Superintendents, consisting both of men and women, are appointed to feed every kind separately; and the son succeeds the father in this office. All the inhabitants of the cities perform their vows to the superintendents. Having made a vow to the god to whom the animal belongs, they shave either the whole heads of their children, or a half, or a third part of the head, and then weigh the hair in a scale against silver, and whatever the weight may be, they give to the superintendent of the animals; she in return cuts up some fish, and gives it as food to the animals; such is the usual mode of feeding them. Should any one kill one of these beasts, if wilfully, death is the punishment; if by accident, he pays such fine as the priests choose to impose. But whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, whether wilfully or by accident, must necessarily be put to death. When a conflagration takes place, a supernatural impulse seizes on the cats. The Egyptians, standing at a distance, take care of the cats, and neglect to put out the fire; but the cats often make their escape, leap over the men, and throw themselves into the fire; when this happens great lamentations are made among the Egyptians. In whatever house a cat dies of a natural death, all the family shave their eyebrows; but if a dog die, they shave the whole body and the head. All cats that die are carried to certain sacred houses, where they are first embalmed, and then buried in the city of Bubastis. All persons bury their dogs in sacred vaults within their own city; and ichneumons are buried in the same manner as the dogs; but field-mice and hawks they carry to the city of Buto; the ibis to Hermopolis; the bears, which are few in number, and the wolves, which are not much larger than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying.
