[2310] The former built a Temple of Isis, now a heap of ruins, at Behbit el-Hagar and a colonnade to the Temple of Hibis in the oasis of Khîrgeh; and his name appears upon a gate in the Temple of Mont at Karnak. Besides the Vestibule of Nektanebos at Philae there is a court of Nektanebos before the Temple of the Eighteenth Dynasty at Medinet Habu.
[2311] Berthelot (1885), pp. 29-30.
[2312] The Syriac version, on the contrary, emphasizes this point less.
[2313] Budge’s translation of the Ethiopic version.
[2314] CLM 215, fols. 176-94, “Egiptiorum gentem in mathematica magica quam in arte fuisse valentem littere tradunt.”
[2315] Pseudo-Callisthenes, I, 4, “casters of horoscopes, readers of signs, interpreters of dreams, ventriloquists, augurs, genethlialogists, the so-called magi to whom divination is an open book.” Budge, Syriac version, p. 4, “The interpreters of dreams are of many kinds and the knowers of signs, those who understand divination, Chaldean augurs and casters of nativities; the Greeks call the signs of the zodiac ‘sorcerers’; and others are counters of the stars. As for me, all of these are in my hands and I myself am an Egyptian prophet, a magus, and a counter of the stars.” Budge, Ethiopic Histories, p. 11, “Then Nectanebus answered and said unto her, ‘Yea. Those who have knowledge of the orbs of heaven are of many kinds. Some are interpreters of dreams, and some have knowledge of what shall happen in the future, and some understand omens, and some cast nativities, and there are besides all those who know magic and who are renowned because they are learned in their art, and some are skilled in the motion of the stars of heaven: but I have full knowledge of all these things.’”
[2316] From Fowler’s translation of Alexander: the False Prophet. See also Plutarch’s Alexander.
[2317] The Syriac and Ethiopic versions are somewhat more detailed as to the magic by which Philip’s dream was produced. Budge, Syriac version, p. 8, “Then Nectanebus ... brought a hawk and muttered over it his charms and made it fly away with a small quantity of a drug, and that night it shewed Philip a dream.” Budge, Ethiopic Histories, p. 21, “Then Nectanebus took a swift bird and muttered over it certain charms and names, and ... in one day and one night it traversed many lands and countries and seas, and it came to Philip by night and stopped. And it came to pass at that very hour ... that Philip saw a marvelous dream.”
[2318] In another place, however, Albert calls Philip Alexander’s father, De causis et proprietatibus elementorum et planetarum, II, ii, 1.
[2319] The story is better told in the Syriac version (Budge, 14-17), where Alexander does not push Nectanebus into the pit until after he has asked the astrologer if he knows his own fate and has been told that Nectanebus is to be slain by his own son. Alexander then attempts to foil fate by pushing Nectanebus into the pit, but only fulfills it. In the Ethiopic version Nectanebus is represented as educating Alexander from his seventh year on in “philosophy and letters and the working of magic and the stars and their seasons.” Aristotle becomes Alexander’s tutor only after the death of Nectanebus. Aristotle, too, is represented as an adept in astrology, amulets, and the use of magic wax images. (Budge, Ethiopic Histories, pp. 31, xlv).