Those Egyptians who live in the cultivated parts of the country, are of all whom I have seen the most ingenious, being attentive to the improvement of the memory beyond the rest of mankind. To give some idea of their mode of life: for three days successively in every month they use purges, vomits, and clysters; this they do out of attention to their health, being persuaded that the diseases of the body are occasioned by the different elements received as food. Besides this, we may venture to assert, that after the Africans there is no people in health and constitution to be compared with the Egyptians. To this advantage the climate, which is here subject to no variation, may essentially contribute: changes of all kinds, and those in particular of the seasons, promote and occasion the maladies of the body. To their bread, which they make with spelt, they give the name of cyllestis; they have no vines in the country, but they drink a liquor fermented from barley; they live principally upon fish, either salted or dried in the sun; they eat also quails, ducks, and some smaller birds, without other preparation than first salting them; but they roast and boil such other birds and fishes as they have, excepting those which are preserved for sacred purposes.
At the entertainments of the rich, just as the company is about to rise from the repast, a small coffin is carried round, containing a perfect representation of a dead body: it is in size sometimes of one but never of more than two cubits, and as it is shown to the guests in rotation, the bearer exclaims, “Cast your eyes on this figure, after death you yourself will resemble it; drink then, and be happy.” Such are the customs they observe at entertainments.
They contentedly adhere to the customs of their ancestors, and are averse to foreign manners. Among other things which claim our approbation, they have a song, which is also used in Phœnicia, Cyprus, and other places, where it is differently named. Of all the things which astonished me in Egypt, nothing more perplexed me than my curiosity to know whence the Egyptians learned this song, so entirely resembling the Linus of the Greeks: it is of the remotest antiquity among them, and they call it Maneros. They have a tradition that Maneros was the only son of their first monarch; and that having prematurely died, they instituted these melancholy strains in his honour, constituting their first, and in earlier times, their only song.
The Egyptians surpass all the Greeks, the Lacedæmonians excepted, in the reverence which they pay to age: if a young person meet his senior, he instantly aside to make way for him; if a senior enter an apartment, the youth always rise from their seats; this ceremony is observed by no other of the Greeks. When the Egyptians meet they do not speak, but make a profound reverence, bowing with the hand down to the knee.
Their habit, which they call calasiris, is made of linen, and fringed at the bottom; over this they throw a kind of shawl made of white wool, but in these vests of wool they are forbidden by their religion either to be buried or to enter any sacred edifice; this is a peculiarity of those ceremonies which are called Orphic and Pythagorean: whoever has been initiated in these mysteries can never be interred in a vest of wool, for which a sacred reason is assigned.
Of the Egyptians it is further memorable that they first imagined what month or day was to be consecrated to each deity; they also, from observing the days of nativity, venture to predict the particular circumstances of a man’s life and death: this is done by the poets of Greece, but the Egyptians have certainly discovered more things that are wonderful than all the rest of mankind. Whenever any prodigy occurs, they commit the particulars to writing and mark the events which follow it: if they afterward observe any similar incident, they conclude that the result will be similar also. The art of divination in Egypt is confined to certain of their deities. There are in this country oracles of Hercules, of Apollo, of Minerva and Diana, of Mars, and of Jupiter; but the oracle of Latona at Buto is held in greater estimation than any of the rest: the oracular communication is regulated by no fixed system, but is differently obtained in different places.
Head-rests for the Dead
(Now in the British Museum)
The art of medicine in Egypt is thus exercised: one physician is confined to one disease; there are of course a great number who practise this art; some attend to disorders of the eyes; others to those of the head; some take care of the teeth, others are conversant with all diseases of the bowels; whilst many attend to the cure of maladies which are less conspicuous.