 Booked II. Part III. OF HERODOTUS HISTORIES. HISTORIES. Volume I. by Herodotus of Halecarnassus. Translated by A. D. Godly. Book II. Part III. Paragraphs 42 to 65. 42. All that have a temple of Zeus, of Thebes, or are of the Theban district sacrifice goats, but will not touch sheep. For no gods are worshipped by all Egyptians in common except Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus. These are worshipped by all alike. Those who have a temple of Mendes or are of the Mendesian district sacrifice sheep, but will not touch goats. The Thebans and those who by the Theban example, will not touch sheep, give the following reason for their ordinance. They say that Heracles wanted very much to see Zeus, and that Zeus did not want to be seen by him. But at finally, when Heracles prayed, Zeus contrived to show himself, displaying the head and wearing the fleece of a ram which he had flayed and beheaded. It is from this that the Egyptian images of Zeus have a ram's head, and in this the Egyptians are imitated by the Ammonians, who are colonists from Egypt and Ethiopia, and speak a language compounded of the tongues of both countries. It was from this, I think, that the Ammonians got their name too, for the Egyptians call Zeus Ammon. The Thebans, then, consider rams sacred for this reason, and do not sacrifice them. But one day a year, at the festival of Zeus, they cut in peace and flay a single ram, and put the fleece on the image of Zeus, as in the story. Then they bring an image of Heracles near it. Having done this, all that are at the temple mourn for the ram, and they bury it in a sacred coffin, paragraph 43. Concerning Heracles, I heard it said that he was one of the twelve gods. But nowhere in Egypt could I hear anything about other Heracles, whom the Greeks know. I have indeed a lot of other evidence that the name of Heracles did not come from Hellas to Egypt, but from Egypt to Hellas, and in Hellas to those Greeks who gave the name Heracles to the son of Anfitrian. Besides this, that Anfitrian and Al-Khmine, the parents of these Heracles, were both Egyptian by descent, and that the Egyptians, denying the names Poseidon and the Dioscuri, nor are these gods reckoned among the gods of Egypt. Yet, if they got the name of any deity from the Greeks, of these, not least, but in particular, would they preserve a recollection, if indeed they were already making sea voyages, and some Greeks, too, were seafaring men, as I expect and judge, so that the names of these gods would have been even better known to the Egyptians than the name of Heracles. But Heracles is a very ancient god in Egypt, as the Egyptians themselves say. The change of the eight gods to the twelve, one of whom they acknowledged Heracles to be, was made seventeen thousand years before the reign of Amasus, paragraph forty-four. Moreover, wishing to get clear information about this matter, where it was possible to do so, I took ship for Tyre in Phoenicia, where I had learned by inquiry that there was a holy temple of Heracles. There I saw it, richly equipped with many other offerings, besides two pillars, one of refined gold, one of emerald, a great pillar that shone at night, and in conversation with the priests, I asked how long it was since their temple was built. I found that their account did not tally with the belief of the Greeks, either, for they said that the temple of the god was founded when Tyre first became a city, and that was two thousand three hundred years ago. At Tyre, I saw yet another temple of the so-called Thaisian Heracles. Then I went to Thaisos, too, where I found the temple of Heracles built by the Phoenicians, who made a settlement there when they voyaged in search of Europe. Now they did so as much as five generations before the birth of Heracles, the son of Antifitrion in Halas. Therefore, what I have discovered by inquiry plainly shows that Heracles is an ancient god, and furthermore, those Greeks, I think, are most in the right, who have established and practiced two worships of Heracles, sacrificing to one Heracles as to an immortal, and calling him the Olympian. But to the other, bringing offerings as to a dead hero. Paragraph 45. And the Greeks say many other ill-considered things, too. Among them, this is a silly story which they tell about Heracles, that when he came to Egypt, the Egyptians crowned him and let him out in a procession to sacrifice him to Zeus. And for a while, they say, he followed quietly. But when they started in on him at the altar, he resisted and killed them all. Now it seems to me that by this story the Greeks show themselves altogether ignorant of the character and customs of the Egyptians. For how should they sacrifice men when they are forbidden to sacrifice even beasts, except swine and bulls and bull-calfs, if they are unblemished and geese? And furthermore, as Heracles was alone, and still only a man, as they say, how is it natural that he should kill many myriads? In talking so much about this, may I keep the goodwill of gods and heroes? Paragraph 46. This is why the Egyptians of whom I have spoken sacrifice no goats, male or female. The Mendesians reckon pan among the eight gods who, they say, were before the twelve gods. Now in their painting and sculpture, the image of pan is made with the head and the legs of a goat, as among the Greeks. Not that he is thought to be in fact such, or unlike other gods. But why they represent him so? I have no wish to say. The Mendesians consider all goats sacred, the male even more than the female, and goat herds are held in special estimation. One he goat is most sacred of all. When he dies, it is ordained that there should be great mourning in all the Mendesian district. In the Egyptian language, Mendes is the name both of the he goat and for pan. In my lifetime, a strange thing occurred in this district. A he goat had intercourse openly with a woman. This came to be publicly known. Chapter 47 Swine are held by the Egyptians to be unclean beasts. In the first place, if an Egyptian touches a hog in passing, he goes to the river and dips himself in it, closer that he is. And in the second place, Swine herds, the native-born Egyptians, are alone of all men forbidden to enter any Egyptian temple, nor will any give a Swine herd his daughter in marriage, nor take a wife from their women. But Swine herds intermarry among themselves. Nor do the Egyptians think it right to sacrifice Swine to any god except the moon and Dionysus. To these, they sacrifice their Swine at the same time, in the same season of full moon. Then they eat the meat. The Egyptians have an explanation of why they sacrifice Swine at this festival yet abominates them at others. I know it, but it is not fitting that I relate it. But this is how they sacrifice Swine to the moon. The sacrifices lays the end of the tail and the spleen, and the call together, and cover them up with all the fat that he finds around the belly. Then consigns it all to the fire. As for the rest of the flesh, they eat it at the time of full moon when they sacrifice the victim. But they will not taste it on any other day. Poor men, with what slender means, roll Swine out of dough, which they then take and sacrifice. To Dionysus, on the evening of his festival, everyone offers a piglet, which he kills before his door, and then gives to the Swineherd, who has sold it, for him to take away. The rest of the festival of Dionysus is observed by the Egyptians, much as it is by the Greeks, except for the dances. But in place of the phallus, they have invented the use of puppets, two feet high, moved by strings. The male member nodding and nearly as big as the rest of the body, which are carried about the village by women. A flute player goes ahead. The women follow behind singing of Dionysus. Why the male member is so large, and is the only part of the body that moves, there is a sacred legend that explains. Paragraph 49 Now then, it seems to me that Melampus, son of Amethion, was not ignorant of, but was familiar with the sacrifice. For Melampus was the only one who taught the Greeks the name of Dionysus and the way of sacrificing to him and the public procession. He did not exactly unveil the subject, taking all its details into consideration. For the teachers who came after him made a fuller revelation. But it was from him that the Greeks learned to bear the phallus along in honour of Dionysus, and there got their present practice from his teaching. I say then that Melampus acquired the prophetic art, being a discerning man, and that, besides many other things which he learned from Egypt, he also taught the Greeks things concerning Dionysus, altering few of them. I will not say that what is done in Egypt in connection with the God and what is done among the Greeks originated independently, for they would then be of an Hellenic character and not recently introduced. Nor again will I say that the Egyptians took either this or any other custom from the Greeks. But I believe that Melampus learned the worship of Dionysus chiefly from Cadmus of Tyre, and those who came with Cadmus from Phoenicia to the lands now called Boesia, paragraph 50. In fact, the names of nearly all the gods came to Hellus from Egypt, for I am convinced by inquiry that they have come from foreign parts, and I believe that they came chiefly from Egypt. Except the names of Poseidon and the Dioscury, as I have already said, and Hera and Hestia and Femis and the Graces and the Nereids, the names of all the gods have always existed in Egypt. I only say what the Egyptians themselves say. The gods whose names they say they do not know were as I think, named by the Pelasgians, except Poseidon, the knowledge of whom they learned from the Libyans. Alone of all nations, the Libyans have had among them the name of Poseidon from the beginning, and they have always honored this god. The Egyptians, however, are not accustomed to pay any honors to heroes. These customs, then, and others beside, which I shall indicate, were taken by the Greeks from the Egyptians. It was not so with the ethyphalic images of Hermes. The production of these came from the Pelasgians, from whom the Athenians were the first Greeks to take it, and then handed it on to others. For the Athenians were then already counted as Greeks, when the Pelasgians came to live in the land with them, and thereby began to be considered as Greeks. Whoever had been initiated into the rites of the Cabeiri, which the Samothracians learned from the Pelasgians and now practice, understands what my meaning is. Samothrace was formerly inhabited by those Pelasgians who came to live among the Athenians, and it is from them that the Samothracians take their rites. The Athenians, then, were the first Greeks to make ethyphalic images of Hermes, and they did this because the Pelasgians taught them. The Pelasgians told a certain sacred tale about this, which is set forth in the Samothracian mysteries. Formerly, in all their sacrifices, the Pelasgians called upon gods without giving name or appellation to any. I know this because I was told at Dodona. For as yet they had not heard of such. They called them gods from the fact that, besides setting everything in order, they maintained all the dispositions. Then, after a long while, first they learned the names of the rest of the gods, which came to them from Egypt, and much later the name of Dionysus, and presently they asked the Oracle at Dodona about the names. For this place of divination, held to be the most ancient in Hellas, was at that time the only one. When the Pelasgians, then, asked at Dodona whether they should adopt the names that had come from foreign parts, the Oracle told them to use the names. From that time onward, they used the names of the gods in their sacrifices, and the Greeks received these later from the Pelasgians. But once each of the gods came to be, or whether all had always been, and how they appeared in form, they did not know until yesterday or the day before, so to speak. For I suppose Hesiod and Homer flourished not more than four hundred years earlier than I, and these are the ones who taught the Greeks the descent of the gods, and gave the gods their names, and determined their spears and functions, and described their outward forms. But the poets who are said to have been earlier than these men were, in my opinion, later, the earlier part of all this, is what the priestesses of Dodona tell, the later, that which concerns Hesiod and Homer, is what I myself say, paragraph fifty-four. But the poets who wrote about the oracles in Hellas, and that one which is in Libya, the Egyptians give the following account. The priests of Zeus, of Thebes, told me that two priestesses had been carried away from Thebes by Phoenicians. One, they say, they had hurt was taken away and sold in Libya. The other, in Hellas. These women, they say, were the first founders of places of divination in the aforesaid countries. When I asked them how it was that they could speak with such certain knowledge, they said in reply that their people had sought diligently for these women, and had never been able to find them, but had learned later the story which they were telling me. Paragraph fifty-five. Back then I heard from the Sieben priests, and what follows the profitesces of Dodona say, that two black doves had come flying from Thebes in Egypt. One to Libya, and one to Dodona. The latter settled on an oak tree, and their uttered human speech, declaring that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there. The people of Dodona understood that the message was divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine. The dove, which came to Libya, told the Libyans, they say, to make an oracle of Amun. This also is sacred to Zeus. Such was the story told by the Dodonian priestesses, the eldest of whom was Promenia, and the next, Timoreti, and the youngest, Nycandra, and the rest of the servants of the temple at Dodona, similarly held it true. Paragraph fifty-six. But my own belief about this is, if the Phoenicians did in fact carry away the sacred women, and sell one in Libya, and one in Hellas, then in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is now Hellas, but was formerly called Pelagia, was Cesprosia, and then, being a slave there, she established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there, for it was reasonable that, as she had been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in the land to which she had come. After this, as soon as she understood the Greek language, she taught divination, and she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who sold her. Paragraph fifty-seven. I expect that these women were called Doves by the people of Dodona, because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds. Then the women spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the Dove uttered human speech. As long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could the Dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the Dove was black, signifies that the woman was Egyptian. Paragraph fifty-eight. It would seem, too, that the Egyptians were the first people to establish solemn assemblies, and processions, and services. The Greeks learned all that from them. I consider this proved, because the Egyptians' ceremonies are manifestly very ancient, and the Greeks are a recent origin. Paragraph fifty-nine. The Egyptians hold solemn assemblies not once a year, but often. The principal one of these, and the most enthusiastically celebrated, is that in honor of Artemis, at the town of Bubastis, and the next is that in honor of Isis, at Berserys. The town is in the middle of the Egyptian delta, and there is in it a very great temple of Isis, who is demature in the Greek language. The third greatest festival is at Seis, in honor of Athena. The fourth is the festival of the sun at Heliopolis. The fifth of Leto at Buto. And the sixth of Ares at Papremis. Paragraph sixty. When the people are on their way to Bubastis, they go by river. A great number in every boat, men and women, together. Some of the women make a noise with rattles. Others play flutes all the way, while the rest of the women and the men sing and clap their hands. As they travel by river to Bubastis, whenever they come near any other town, they bring their boat near the bank. Then some of the women do, as I have said, while some shout mockery of the women of the town. Others dance, and others stand up and live their skirts. They do this whenever they come alongside any riverside town. But when they have reached Bubastis, they make a festival with great sacrifices, and more wine is drunk at this feast than in the whole year besides. It is customary for men and women, but not children, to assemble there to the number of seven hundred thousand, as the people of the place say. Paragraph sixty-one. This is what they do there. I have already described how they keep the feast of ISIS adversaries. There, after the sacrifice, all the men and women lament in countless numbers. But it is not pious for me to say who it is for whom they lament. Carians, who live in Egypt, do even more than this, in as much as they cut their foreheads with knives, and by this they show that they are foreigners and not Egyptians. Paragraph sixty-two. When they assemble at Sayis, on the night of the sacrifice, they keep lamps burning outside around their houses. These lamps are saucers full of salts and oil on which the wick floats, and they burn all night. This is called the feast of lamps. Egyptians, who do not come to this, are mindful on the night of sacrifice to keep their own lamps burning, and so they are a light not only at Sayis, but throughout Egypt. A sacred tale is told, showing why this night is lit up thus and honored. Paragraph sixty-three. When the people go to Heliopolis and Buto, they offer sacrifice only. At Papremes, sacrifice is offered, and brides performed just as elsewhere. But when the sun is setting, a few of the priests hover about the image, while most of them go and stand in the entrance to the temple with clumps of wood in their hands. Others, more than a thousand men full-filling vows, who also carry wooden clumps, stand in the mass opposite. The image of the God in a little gilded wooden shrine, they carry away on the day before this to another sacred building. The few who are left with the image draw a four-wheeled wagon conveying the shrine and the image that is in the shrine. The others stand in the space before the doors and do not let them enter, while the vow-keepers, taking the side of the God, strike them, who defend themselves. A fierce fight with clubs, a fierce fight with clubs break out there, and their hits on their heads, and many, I expect, even die from their wounds, although the Egyptians said that nobody dies. The natives say that they made this assembly a custom from the following incident. The mother of Aris lived in this temple. Aris had been raised apart from her and came when he grew up, wishing to visit his mother. But as her attendants kept him out and would not let him pass, never having seen him before, Aris brought men from another town. Man handled the attendants and went in to his mother. From this they say, this hitting for Aris became a custom in the festival. Paragraph 64. Furthermore, it was the Egyptians who first made it a matter of religious observance not to have intercourse with women in temples, or to enter a temple after such intercourse without washing. Nearly all other people are less careful in this matter than are the Egyptians and Greeks, and consider a man to be like any other animal. For beasts and birds they say, are seen to mate both in the temple and in the sacred precincts. Now where this displeasing to the god, the beast would not do so. This is the reason given by others for practices which I, for my part, dislike. Paragraph 65. But the Egyptians in this and in all other matters are exceedingly strict against desecration of their temples. Although Egypt has Libya on its borders, it is not a country of many animals. All of them are held sacred. Some of these are part of men's households and some not. But if I were to say why they are left alone as sacred, I should end up talking of matters of divinity, which I am especially averse to treating. I have never touched upon such, except where necessity has compelled me. But I will indicate how it is customary to deal with the animals. Men and women are appointed guardians to provide nourishment for each kind respectively. A son inherits this office from his father. Townsfolk in each place, when they pay their vows, pray to the god to whom the animals is dedicated. Shaving all, or one-half, or one-third of their children's heads, and weighing the hair in a balance against the sum of silver. Then the weight and silver of the hair is given to the female guardian of the creatures, who buys fish with it and feeds them. Thus food is provided for them. Whoever kills one of these creatures intentionally is punished with death. If he kills accidentally, he pays whatever penalty the priests appoint. Whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, intentionally or not, must die for it. And a book two, part three. Book two, part four of Herodotus Histories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Recording by J. C. Guan. Histories, volume one, by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Translated by A. D. Godley. Book two, part four. Paragraph 66, 292. There are many household animals, and there would be many more, where it's not for what happens among the cats. When the females have a litter, they are no longer receptive to the males. Those that seek to have intercourse with them cannot. So their recourse is to steal and carry off and kill the kittens. But they do not eat what they have killed. The mothers, deprived of their young and desiring to have more, will then approach the males, for they are creatures that love offspring. And when a fire breaks out, very strange things happen among the cats. The Egyptians stand the wrong in a broken line, thinking more of the cats than of quenching the burning. But the cats slip through or leap over the men and spring into the fire. When this happens, there is great mourning in Egypt. The occupants of a house where a cat has died a natural death, shaved their eyebrows and no more. Where a dog has died, the head and the whole body are shaven. Dead cats are taken away to sacred buildings in the town of Bubastis, where they are in balm and buried. Female dogs are buried by the townsfolk in their own towns in sacred coffins. And the like is done with mongooses. Shroom ice and hawks are taken away to Buto, Ibis' to the city of Hermes. There are few piers, and the wolves are little bigger than foxes. Both these are buried wherever they are found lying. The nature of crocodiles is as follows. For the four winter months, it eats nothing. It has four feet, and lifts both on land and in the water. For it lays eggs and hatches them out on land, and spends the greater part of the day on dry ground, and the nights in the river, the water being warmer than the air and dew. No mortal creature of all which we know grows from so small a beginning to such greatness. For its eggs are not much bigger than goose eggs, and the young crocodile is of a proportional size, but it grows to a length of 28 feet and more. It has eyes like pig's eyes, and long, protruding teeth. It is the only animal that has no tongue. It does seem to move the lower jaw, but brings the upper jaw down upon the lower, uniquely among beasts. It also has trunk claws, and a scaly, impenetrable hide on its back. It is blind in the water, but very keen of sight in the air. Since it lives in the water, its mouth is all full of leeches. All birds and beasts flee from it, except the sandpiper, with which it is at peace, because this bird does the crocodile's service. For whenever the crocodile comes ashore out of the water, and then opens its mouth, and it does this mostly to catch the west wind, the sandpiper goes into its mouth and eats the leeches. The crocodile is placed by the service, and does the sandpiper no harm. Some of the Egyptians consider crocodiles sacred. Others do not, but treat them as enemies. Those who live near thebes and lake Moeires consider them very sacred. Every household raises one crocodile, trained to be tame. They put ornaments of glass and gold on its ears and bracelets on its forefeet, provide special food and offerings to it, and give the creatures the best of treatment while they live. After death, the crocodiles are embalmed and buried in sacred coffins. But around Elephantine, they are not held sacred, and are even eaten. The Egyptians do not call them crocodiles, but Kampse. The Ionians name them crocodiles, from their resemblance to the lizards which they have in their walls. There are many different ways of crocodile hunting. I will write of the way that I think most worth mentioning. The hunter baits a hook with a hog's back, and then lets it float into the midst of the river. He himself stays on the bank with a young life pig, which he beats. Hearing the squeals of the pig, the crocodile goes after the sound and meets the bait, which it swallows. Then the hunters pull the line. When the crocodile is drawn ashore, first of all the hunter smears its eyes over its mud. When this is done, the quarry is very easily mastered. No light matter without that. Hippopotamuses are sacred in the district of Papremis, but not elsewhere in Egypt. They present the following appearance. Four-footed with cloven hooves like cattle, blunt-nosed with a horse's mane, visible tusks, a horse's tail and voice. Big as the biggest ball. Their hide is so thick that when it is dried, spare shafts are made of it. Paragraph 72. Otters are found in the river, too, which the Egyptians consider sacred. And they consider sacred that fish, too, which is called the scalefish and the eel. These and the fox-goos among birds are said to be sacred to the god of the Nile. There is another sacred bird, too, whose name is Phoenix. I myself have never seen it. Only pictures of it. For the bird seldom comes into Egypt, once in five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say. It is said that the Phoenix comes when his father dies. If the picture truly shows his size and appearance, his plumage is partly golden and partly red. He is most like an eagle in shape and size. What they say this bird manages to do is incredible to me. Flying from Arabia to the temple of the sun, they say, he conveys his father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of the sun. This is how he conveys him. He first mow the neck of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and he conveys him encased to the temple of the sun in Egypt. This is what they say this bird does. Near thieves there are sacred snakes, harmless to men, small in size, and bearing two horns on the top of their heads. These, when they die, are buried in the temple of Zeus, to whom they are said to be sacred. There is a place in Arabia, not far from the town of Bhutto, where I went to learn about the Winged Serpents. When I arrived there, I saw innumerable bones and backbones of serpents, many heaps of backbones, great and small, and even smaller. This place, where the backbones lay scattered, is where a narrow mountain pass opens into a great plain, which adjoins the plain of Egypt. Winged serpents are said to fly from Arabia at the beginning of spring, making for Egypt. But the Ibis birds encounter the invaders in this pass and kill them. The Arabians say that the Ibis is greatly honored by the Egyptians for this service, and the Egyptians give the same reason for honoring these birds. Now this is the appearance of the Ibis. It is all quite black, with the legs of a crane, and the beak sharply hooked, and it is as big as a land rail. Such is the appearance of the Ibis, which fights with the serpents. Those that most associate with men, for there are two kinds of Ibis, have the whole head and neck bare of feathers. Their plumage is white, except the head and neck and wing tips and tail, these being quite black. The legs and beak of the bird are like those of the other Ibis. The serpents are like water snakes. Their wings are not feathered, but very like the wings of a bat. I have now said enough concerning creatures that are sacred. Among the Egyptians themselves, those who live in the cultivated country, are the most assiduous of all men at preserving the memory of the past, and none whom I have questioned are so skilled in history. They practice the following way of life. For three consecutive days in every month, they purge themselves, pursuing health by means of emetics and drenters. For they think that it is from the food they eat that all sicknesses come to men. Even without this, the Egyptians are the healthiest of all men, next to the Libyans. The explanation of which, in my opinion, is that the climate in all seasons is the same. For change is the great cause of men's falling sick, more especially changes of seasons. They eat bread, making loaves which they call a celestis, of course grain. For wine, they use a drink made from barley, for they have no wines in their country. They eat fish, either raw and sun-dried, or preserved with brine. Quails and ducks and small birds are salted and eaten raw. All other kinds of birds, as well as fish, except those that the Egyptians consider sacred, are eaten roasted or boiled. After rich men's repasts, a man carries around an image in a coffin, painted and carved in exact imitation of a corpse, two or four feet long. This he shows to each of the company, saying, while you drink and enjoy, look on this, for to this stage you must come when you die. Such is the custom at their symposia. They keep the customs of their fathers, adding none to them. Among other notable customs of theirs is this, that they have one song, the Linus song, which is sung in Phoenicia and Cyprus and elsewhere. Each nation has a name of its own for theirs, but it happens to be the same song that the Greeks sing, and call Linus, so that of many things in Egypt that amaze me, one is, where did the Egyptians get Linus? Plainly they have always sung this song, but in Egyptian Linus is called Maneros. The Egyptians told me that Maneros was the only son of their first king, who died prematurely, and this dirge was sung by the Egyptians in his honor, and this they say, was their earliest and their only chant. There is a custom, too, which no Greeks, except the Lacedimonians, have in common with the Egyptians. Younger men, encountering their elders, yield the way and stand aside, and rise from their seats for them when they approach. But they are like none of the Greeks in this. Passersby do not address each other, but salute by lowering the hand to the knee. They wear linen tunics with fringes hanging about the legs, called calaceris, and lose white woollen mantles over these. But nothing woollen is brought into temples or buried with them. That is impious. They agree in this with practices called Orphic and Bacchic, but in fact Egyptian and Pythagorean, for it is impious, too, for one partaking of these rites to be buried in woollen wrappings. There is a sacred legend about this. Other things originating with the Egyptians are these. Each month and day belong to one of the gods, and according to the day of one's birth, are determined how one will fare, and how one will end, and what will one be like. Those Greeks occupied with poetry exploit this. More portents have been discovered by them than by all other people. When a portent occurs, they take note of the outcome and write it down, and if something of a like kind happens again, they think it will have a like result. As to the art of divination among them, it belongs to no man, but to some of the gods. There are in their country oracles of Heracles, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Aris, and Zeus, and of Leto, the most honored of all, in the town of Futo. Nevertheless, they have several ways of divination, not just one. The practice of medicine is so specialized among them that each physician is a healer of one disease and no more. All the country is full of physicians, some of the eye, some of the teeth, some of what pertains to the belly, and some of internal diseases. They mourn and bury the dead like this. Whenever a man of note is lost to his house by death, all the women of the house dob their faces or heads with mud, and then they leave the corpse in the house and roam about the city lamenting, with the garments skirt around them and their breasts showing, and with them all the women of their relatives. Elsewhere, the men lament with garments skirt likewise. When this is done, they take the dead body to be embalmed. There are men whose sole business this is and who have this special craft. When a dead body is brought to them, they show those who brought it wooden models of corpses, painted likenesses. The most perfect way of embalming belongs, they say, to one whose name it would be empires for me to mention in tweeting such a matter. The second way, which they show, is less perfect than the first and cheaper. And the third is the least costly of all. Having shown these, they asked those who brought the body in which way the desire to have it prepared. Having agreed on a price, the bearers go away, and the workmen left the dune in their place and bombed the body. If they do this in the most perfect way, they first draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with an iron hook and inject certain drugs into the rest. Then, making a cut near the flank with a sharp knife of Ethiopian stone, they take out all the intestines and clean the belly, rinsing it with palm wine and bruised spices. They sew it up again after filling the belly with pure ground myrrh and cashew and any other spices, except frankincense. After doing this, they conceal the body for seventy days, embalmed in Salpeter. No longer time is allowed for the embalming. And when the seventy days have passed, they wash the body and wrap the whole of it in bandages of fine linen cloth, anointed with gum, which the Egyptians mostly use instead of glue. Then they give the dead man back to his friends. These make a hollow wooden figure like a man, in which they enclose the corpse, shut it up, and keep it safe in a coffin chamber, placed erect against the wall. That is how they prepare the dead in the most costly way. Those who want the middle way and shun the costly, they prepare as fellows. The embalmers charge their syringes with cedar oil and fill the belly of the dead man with it, without making a cut or removing the intestines, but injecting the fluid through the anus and preventing it from running out. Then they embalm the body for the appointed days. On the last day, they drain the belly of the cedar oil, which they put in before. It has such great power as to bring out with it the internal organs and intestines all dissolved. Meanwhile, the flesh is eaten away by the Salpeter, and in the end, nothing is left of the body, but hide and bones. Then the embalmers give back the dead body with no more ado. The third manner of embalming, the preparation of the poorer dead, is this. They cleanse the belly with a purge, embalm the body for the seventy days, and then give it back to be taken away. Wives of notable men and women of great beauty and reputation are not at once given to the embalmers, but only after they have been dead for three or four days. This is done to deter the embalmers from having intercourse with the women. For it is said that one was caught having intercourse with the fresh corpse of a woman, and was denounced by his fellow workmen. Anyone, Egyptian or foreigner, known to have been carried off by a crocodile or drowned by the river itself, must by all means be embalmed, and wrapped as attractively as possible, and buried in a sacred coffin by the people of the place where he is cast ashore. None of his relatives or friends may touch him, but his body is considered something more than human, and is handled and buried by the priests of the Nile themselves. The Egyptians shone using Greek customs, and, generally speaking, the customs of all other peoples as well. Yet, though the rest are rary of this, there is a great city called Chemis in the Sieben district, near the new city. In this city is a square temple of Perseus, son of Danae, in a grove of palm trees. Before this temple stand great stone columns, and at the entrance, two great stone statues. In the outer court, there is a shrine with an image of Perseus standing in it. The people of this Chemis say that Perseus is seen often up and down this land, and often within the temple, and that the sandal he wears, which is four feet long, keeps turning up, and that, when it does turn up, all Egypt prospers. This is what they say, and their doings in honor of Perseus are Greek, inasmuch as they celebrate games that include every form of contest, and offer animals and cloaks, and skins as prizes. When I asked why Perseus appeared only to them, and why, unlike all other Egyptians, they celebrate games, they told me that Perseus was by lineage of their city, for Danaeus and Linceus, who traveled to Greece, were of Chemnus, and they traced descent from these down to Perseus. They told how he came to Chemis too, when he came to Egypt for the reason alleged by the Greeks as well, namely, to bring the Gorgons head from Libya, and recognize all his relatives, and how he had heard the name of Chemnus from his mother before he came to Egypt. It was at his bidding, they say, that they celebrated the games. All these are the customs of Egyptians who live about the Marsh Country. Those who inhabit the Marshes have the same customs as the rest of Egyptians, even that each man has one wife just like Greeks. They have, besides, devised means to make their food less costly. When the river is in flood, and flows over their plains, many lilies, which the Egyptians called Lotus, grow in the water. They gather these, and dry them in the sun. Then they crush the puppy-like center of the plant, and bake loaves of it. The root of this Lotus is edible also, and of a sweetish taste. It is round, and the size of an apple. Other lilies grow in the river too, that are like roses. The fruit of these is found in a calyx springing from the root by a separate stalk, and it is most like a comb made by wasps. This produces many edible seeds as big as olive pits, which are eaten both fresh and dried. They also use the biblis, which grows annually. It is gathered from the Marshes, the top of it cut off, and put to other uses, and the lower part, about 20 inches long, eaten, or sold. Those who wish to use the biblis at its very best, roast it before eating it in a red hot oven. Some live on fish alone. They catch the fish, take out the intestines, then dry them in the sun, and eat them dried. End of Book 2, Part 4 Book 2, Part 5 of Herodotus' Histories This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Histories, Volume 1 by Herodotus of Halicarnassus Translated by A.D. Godley Book 2, Part 5 Paragraphs 93-115 Fish that go in schools are seldom born in rivers. They are raised in the lakes, and this is how they behave. When the desire of spawning comes on them, they swim out to sea in schools, the males leading, and throwing out their milk, while the females come after and swallow and conceive from it. When the females have grown heavy in the sea, then all the fish swim back to their own haunts. But the same no longer lead, now the leadership goes to the females. They go before in a school, as the males had, and now and then throw off some of their eggs, which are like millet seeds, which the males devour as they follow. These millet seeds or eggs are fish. The fish that are reared come from the eggs that survive and are not devoured. Those fish that are caught while swimming seawards show bruises on the left side of their heads, those that are caught returning on the right side. This happens because they keep close to the left bank as they swim seawards, and keep to the same bank also on their return, grazing it and keeping in contact with it as well as they can. I suppose lest the current make them miss their way. When the nile begins to rise, hollow and marshy places near the river are the first to begin to fill, the water trickling through from the river, and as soon as they are flooded, they are suddenly full of little fishes. Where these probably come from, I believe that I can guess. When the nile falls, the fish have dropped their eggs into the mud before they leave with the last of the water, and when in the course of time the flood comes again in the following year from these eggs at once come the fish. So much then for the fish. The Egyptians who live around the marshes use an oil drawn from the castorberry, which they call kiki. They sow this plant, which grows wild in Helas, on the banks of the rivers and lakes. So in Egypt it produces abundant fruit, though malodorous. When they gather this, some bruise and press it, others boil after roasting it, and collect the liquid that comes from it. This is thick and useful as oil for lamps, and gives off a strong smell. Against the mosquitoes that abound, the following have been devised by them. Those who dwell higher up than the marshy country are well served by the towers where they ascend to sleep, for the winds prevent the mosquitoes from flying aloft. Those living about the marshes have a different recourse instead of the towers. Every one of them has a net, with which he catches fish by day, and at night he sets it round the bed where he rests, then creeps under it and sleeps. If he sleeps wrapped in a garment or cloth, the mosquitoes bite through it, but through the net they absolutely do not even venture. The boats in which they carry cargo are made of the acacia, which is most like the lotus of Cyrene in form, and its sap is gum. Of this tree they cut logs of four feet long, and lay them like courses of bricks, and build the boat by fastening these four-foot logs to long and close set stakes, and having done so they set crossbeams a-thwart and on the logs. They use no ribs. They cork the seams within with biblis. There is one rudder passing through a hole in the boat's keel. The mast is of acacia wood, and the sails of biblis. These boats cannot move upstream unless a brisk breeze continues. They are towed from the bank, but downstream they are managed thus. They have a raft made of tamarisk wood, fastened together with matting of reeds, and a pierced stone of about two talants weight. The raft is let go to float down ahead of the boat, connected to it by a rope, and the stone is connected by a rope to the after-part of the boat. So, driven by the current, the raft floats swiftly and tows the barris, which is the name of these boats, and the stone dragging behind on the river bottom keeps the boat's course straight. There are many of these boats. Some are of many thousand talants burdened. When the Nile overflows the land, only the towns are seen high and dry above the water, very like the islands in the Aegean Sea. These alone stand out, the rest of Egypt being a sheet of water. So, when this happens, folk are not ferried as usual in the course of the stream, but clean over the plain. Indeed, the boat going up from Naucratus to Memphis passes close by the pyramids themselves, though the course does not go by here, but by the delta's point, and the town Kerkasaurus. But your voyage from the sea and cannabis to Naucratus will take you over the plain, near the town of Antilla, and that which is called Arkandrus' town. Antilla is a town of some reputation, and is especially assigned to the consort of the reigning king of Egypt to provide her shoes. This has been done since Egypt has been under Persian dominion. The other town, I think, is named after Arkandrus, son of Theus the Achaean, and son-in-law of Danauus, for it is called Arkandrus' town. It may be that there was another Arkandrus, but the name is not Egyptian. So far, all I have said is the record of my own autopsy and judgment and inquiry. Henceforth, I will record Egyptian chronicles, according to what I have heard, adding something of what I myself have seen. The priests told me that Min was the first king of Egypt, and that first he separated Memphis from the Nile by a dam. All the river had flowed close under the sandy mountains on the Libyan side, but Min made the southern bend of it, which begins about twelve and one-half miles above Memphis, by damming the stream, thereby drying up the ancient channel, and carried the river by a channel so that it flowed midway between the hills. And to this day the Persians keep careful watch on this bend of the river, strengthening its dam every year to keep the current in. For were the Nile to burst its dykes and overflow here, all Memphis would be in danger of flooding. Then, when this first king Min had made dry land of what he thus cut off, he first found it in it that city which is now called Memphis, for even Memphis lies in the narrow part of Egypt, and outside of it he dug a lake from the river to its north and west, for the Nile itself bounds it on the east, and secondly he built in it the great and most noteworthy temple of Hephaistus. After him came 330 kings, whose names the priests recited from a papyrus roll. In all these many generations there were 18 Ethiopian kings, and one queen, native to the country, the rest were all Egyptian men. The name of the queen was the same as that of the Babylonian princess Nitochris. She, to avenge her brother, he was king of Egypt, and was slain by his subjects, who then gave Nitochris the sovereignty. Put many of the Egyptians to death by treachery. She built a spacious underground chamber, then with the pretence of inaugurating it, but with quite another intent in her mind, she gave a great feast, inviting to it those Egyptians whom she knew to have had the most complicity in her brother's murder. And while they feasted, she let the river in upon them by a vast secret channel. This was all that the priests told of her, except that when she had done this, she cast herself into a chamber full of hot ashes to escape vengeance. But of the other kings, they related no achievement or act of great note, except of Moiris, the last of them. This Moiris was remembered as having built the northern forecourt of the temple of Hephaistus, and Duggar Lake, of as great a circumference as I shall later indicate, and built pyramids there also, the size of which I will mention when I speak of the lake. All this was Moiris' work, they said, of none of the rest had they anything to record. Leaving the latter aside then, I shall speak of the king who came after them, whose name was Sosostris. This king, the priests said, set out with a fleet of longships from the Arabian Gulf, and subjugated all those living by the Red Sea, until he came to a sea which was too shallow for his vassals. After returning from there back to Egypt, he gathered a great army, according to the account of the priests, and marched over the mainland, subjugating every nation to which he came. When those that he met were valiant men and strove hard for freedom, he set up pillars in their land, the inscription on which showed his own name and his countries, and how he had overcome them with his own power. But when the cities had made no resistance, and had been easily taken, then he put an inscription on the pillars, just as he had done where the nations were brave, but he also drew on them the private parts of a woman, wishing to show clearly that the people were cowardly. He marched over the country, doing this until he had crossed over from Asia to Europe, and defeated the Scythians and Thracians. Thus far and no farther, I think, the Egyptian army went, for the pillars can be seen standing in their country, but in none beyond it. From there he turned around and went back home, and when he came to the Fassis River, that king, Sysostris, may have detached some part of his army, and left it there to live in the country, for I cannot speak with exact knowledge, or it may be that some of his soldiers grew weary of his wanderings, and stayed by the Fassis. For it is plain to see that the Caucasians are Egyptians, and what I say I myself noted before I heard it from others. When it occurred to me, I inquired of both peoples, and the Caucasians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Caucasians. The Egyptians said that they considered the Caucasians part of Sysostris's army. I myself guessed it, partly because they are dark-skinned and woolly-haired. Though that indeed counts for nothing, since other peoples are, too. But my better proof was that the Caucasians and the Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have, from the first, practiced circumcision. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledged that they learnt the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbours, the Macrones, say that they learnt it lately from the Caucasians. These are the only nations that circumcise, and it is seen that they do just as the Egyptians. But as to the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I cannot say which nation learnt it from the other, for it is evidently a very ancient custom. That the others learnt it through traffic with Egypt, I consider clearly proved by this, that Phoenicians who traffic with Hellas cease to imitate the Egyptians in this matter, and do not circumcise their children. Listen to something else about the Caucasians in which they are like the Egyptians. They and the Egyptians alone work linen and have the same way of working it, a way peculiar to themselves, and they are alike in all their way of life and in their speech. Linen has two names, the Caucasian kind is called by the Greeks Sardonian, that which comes from Egypt is called Egyptian. As to the pillars that Cisostris, king of Egypt, set up in the countries, most of them are no longer to be seen, but I myself saw them in the Palestine district of Syria with the aforesaid writing and the women's private parts on them. Also, there are in Ionia two figures of this man carved in rock, one on the road from Ephesus to Fokia, and the other on that from Sardis to Smyrna. In both places the figure is over 20 feet high with a spear in his right hand and a bow in his left, and the rest of his equipment proportional, for it is both Egyptian and Ethiopian, and right across the breast from one shoulder to the other a text is cut in the Egyptian sacred characters, saying, I myself won this land with the strength of my shoulders. There is nothing here to show who he is and whence he comes, but it is shown elsewhere. Some of those who have seen these figures guess they are memnon, but they are far indeed from the truth. Now, when this Egyptian Cisostris, so the priests said, reached Daphnei of Pelusium on his way home, leading many captives from the peoples whose lands he had subjugated, his brother, whom he had left in charge in Egypt, invited him and his sons to a banquet, and then piled wood around the house and set it on fire. Whence Cisostris was aware of this, he had once consulted his wife, whom it was said he had with him, and she advised him to lay two of his six sons on the fire and make a bridge over the burning, so that they could walk over the bodies of the two and escape. This Cisostris did. Two of his sons were thus burnt, but the rest escaped alive with their father. After returning to Egypt and avenging himself on his brother, Cisostris found work for the multitude which he brought with him from the countries which he had subdued. It was these who dragged the great and long blocks of stone which were brought in this king's reign to the temple of Hephaistus, and it was they who were compelled to dig all the canals which are now in Egypt, and involuntarily made what had been a land of horses and carts empty of these. For from this time Egypt, although a level land, could use no horses or carts, because there were so many canals going every which way. The reason why the king thus intersected the country was this. Those Egyptians whose towns were not on the Nile, but inland from it, lacked water whenever the flood left their land, and drank only brackish water from wells. For this reason Egypt was intersected. The king also, they said, divided the country among all the Egyptians by giving each an equal parcel of land, and made this his source of revenue, assessing the payment of a yearly tax. And any man who was robbed by the river of part of his land could come to Cisostris and declare what had happened. Then the king would send men to look into it, and calculate the part by which the land was diminished, so that thereafter it should pay in proportion to the tax originally imposed. From this in my opinion, the Greeks learnt the art of measuring land. The sunclock and the sundial, and the twelve divisions of the day, came to Helas from Babylonia, and not from Egypt. Cisostris was the only Egyptian king who also ruled Ethiopia. To commemorate his name, he set before the temple of Hephaistus two stone statues, of himself and of his wife, each fifty feet high, and statues of his four sons, each thirty-three feet. Long afterwards Darius the Persian would have set up his statue before these, but the priest of Hephaistus forbade him, saying that he had achieved nothing equal to the deeds of Cisostris the Egyptian. For Cisostris, he said, had subjugated the Scythians, besides as many nations as Darius had conquered, and Darius had not been able to overcome the Scythians. Therefore it was not just that Darius should set his statue before the statues of Cisostris, whose achievements he had not equaled. Darius, he said, let the priest have his way. When Cisostris died, he was succeeded in the kingship, the priest said, by his son Feros. This king waged no wars, and chanced to become blind, for the following reason. The Nile came down in such a flood as there had never been, rising to a height of thirty feet, and the water that flowed over the fields was roughened by a strong wind. Then it is said, the king was so audacious as to seize a spear, and hurl it into the midst of the river Eddys. Right after this he came down with a disease of the eyes, and became blind. When he had been blind for ten years, an oracle from the city of Buto declared to him that the term of his punishment was drawing to an end, and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never had intercourse with any man but her own husband. Feros tried his own wife first, and as he remained blind, all women, one after another. When he at last recovers his sight, he took all the women who he had tried, except the one who had made him see again, and gathered them into one town, the one which is now called Red Clay. Having concentrated them together there, he burnt them and the town, but the woman by whose means he had recovered his sight, he married. Most worthy of mention among the many offerings which he dedicated in all the noteworthy temples for his deliverance from blindness are the two marvellous stone obelisks, which he set up in the Temple of the Sun. Each of these is made of a single block, and is over 166 feet high and 13 feet thick. Feros was succeeded, they said, by a man of Memphis, whose name in the Greek tongue was Proteus. This Proteus has a very attractive and well-appointed temple precinct at Memphis, south of the Temple of Hephaistus. Around the precinct live Phoenicians of Tyre, and the whole place is called the Camp of the Tyrians. There is in the precinct of Proteus a temple called the Temple of the Stranger Aphrodite. I guess this is a temple of Helen, daughter of Tindarus, partly because I have heard the story of Helen's abiding with Proteus, and partly because it bears the name of the foreign Aphrodite, for no other of Aphrodite's temples is called by that name. When I inquired of the priests, they told me that this was the story of Helen. After carrying off Helen from Sparta, Alexandrus sailed away for his own country. Violent winds caught him in the Aegean and drove him into the Egyptian Sea, and from there, as the wind did not let up, he came to Egypt to the mouth of the Nile called the Canopic Mouth, and to the Salters. Now there was, and still is, on the coast a temple of Heracles. If a servant of any man takes refuge there, and is branded with certain sacred marks, delivering himself to the God, he may not be touched. This law continues today the same as it has always been from the first. Hearing of the temple law, some of Alexandrus' servants ran away from him, threw themselves on the mercy of the God, and brought an accusation against Alexandrus, meaning to injure him, telling the whole story of Helen and the wrong done Menelaus. They laid this accusation before the priests and the warden of the Nile mouth, whose name was Thonis. When Thonis heard it, he sent this message the quickest way to Proteus at Memphis. A stranger has come, a Trojan, who has committed an impiety in Helas. After defrauding his guest friend, he has come bringing the man's wife, and a very great deal of wealth, driven to your country by the wind. Are we to let him sail away untouched, or are we to take away what he has come with? Proteus sent back this message. Whoever this is, who has acted impiously against his guest friend, seize him and bring him to me, that I may know what he will say. Hearing this, Thonis seized Alexandrus, and detained his ships there, and then brought him with Helen and all the wealth and the suppliance, too, to Memphis. When all had arrived, Proteus asked Alexandrus who he was, and whence he sailed. Alexandrus told him his lineage and the name of his country, and about his voyage whence he sailed. Then Proteus asked him where he had got Helen. When Alexandrus was evasive in his story and did not tell the truth, the men who had taken refuge with the temple confuted him and related the whole story of the wrong. Finally Proteus declared the following judgment to them, saying, If I did not make it a point never to kill a stranger who has been caught by the wind and driven to my coasts, I would have punished you on behalf of the Greek, you most vile man. You committed the gravest impiety after you had had your guest friend's hospitality. You had your guest friend's wife. And as if this were not enough, you got her to fly with you and went off with her. And not just with her either, but you plundered your guest friend's wealth and brought it too. Now then, since I make it a point not to kill strangers, I shall not let you take away this woman and the wealth, but I shall watch them for the Greek stranger until he come and take them away. But as for you and your sailors, I warn you to leave my country for another within three days. And if you do not, I will declare war on you. End of book two part five, book two part six of Herodotus's Histories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Histories, volume one by Herodotus of Halecarnassus, translated by A.D. Godly. Book two part six, paragraphs 116 to 133. This, the priests said, was how Helen came to Proteus. And in my opinion, Homer knew this story too, but seeing that it was not so well suited to epic poetry, as the tale of which he made use, he rejected it, showing that he knew it. This is apparent from the passage in the Iliad, and nowhere else does he return to the story where he relates the wanderings of Alexander, and shows how he and Helen were carried off course, and wandered to, among other places, Sidon in Phoenicia. This is in the story of the prowess of Diomedes, where the verses run as follows. They were the robes all embroidered, the work of women of Sidon, whom Godlike Alexander himself brought from Sidon crossing the broad sea, the same voyage on which he brought back Helen of noble descent. He mentions it in the Odyssey also. The daughter of Zeus had such ingenious drugs, good ones, which she had from Thon's wife, Polydamna, an Egyptian, whose countries fertile plains bear the most drugs, many mixed for good, many for harm. And again Menelaus says to Telemachus, I was eager to return here, but the gods still held me in Egypt, since I had not sacrificed entire hecatombs to them. In these verses the poet shows that he knew of Alexander's wanderings to Egypt, for Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, dwell in Syria. These verses and this passage prove most clearly that the Cyprian poems are not the work of Homer, but of someone else, for the Cyprian poems relate that Alexandrus reached Ileon with Helen in three days from Sparta, having a fair wind and a smooth sea, but according to the Iliad he wandered from his course in bringing her. Enough then of Homer and the Cyprian poems, but when I asked the priests whether the Greek account of what happened at Troy were idle or not, they gave me the following answer, saying that they had inquired anew from Menelaus himself. After the rape of Helen a great force of Greeks came to the Trojan land on Menelaus' behalf. After disembarking and disposing their forces they sent messengers to Ileon, one of whom was Menelaus himself. When these were let inside the city walls, they demanded the restitution of Helen and of the property which Alexandrus had stolen from Menelaus and carried off, and they demanded reparation for the wrongs. But the Trojans gave the same testimony then and later, sworn and unsworn, that they did not have Helen or the property claimed, but all of that was in Egypt, and they could not justly make reparation for what Proteus the Egyptian had. But the Greeks, thinking that the Trojans were mocking them, laid siege to the city until they took it, but there was no Helen there when they breached the wall, but they heard the same account as before, so, crediting the original testimony, they sent Menelaus himself to Proteus. Menelaus then went to Egypt and up the river to Memphis. There, relating the truth of the matter, he met with great hospitality and got back Helen, who had not been harmed, and also all his wealth besides. Yet, although getting this, Menelaus was guilty of injustice towards the Egyptians, for adverse weather detained him when he tried to sail away. After this continued for some time, he carried out something impious, taking two native children and sacrificing them. When it became known that he had done this, he fled with his ships straight to Libya, hated and hunted, and where he went from there the Egyptians could not say. The priests told me that they had learnt some of this by inquiry, but that they were sure of what had happened in their own country. The Egyptians' priests said this, and I myself believed their story about Helen, for I reasoned thus. Had Helen been in Ileon, then with or without the will of Alexandrus, she would have been given back to the Greeks. For surely, Prime was not so mad or those nearest to him as to consent to risk their own persons and their children and their city so that Alexandrus might cohabit with Helen. Even if it were conceded that they were so inclined in the first days, yet when not only many of the Trojans were slain in fighting against the Greeks, but Prime himself lost to death two or three or even more of his sons in every battle, if the poets are to be believed. In this turn of events, had Helen been Prime's own wife, I cannot but think that he would have restored her to the Greeks, if by so doing he could escape from the evils besetting him. Alexandrus was not even heir to the throne, in which case matters might have been in his hands since Prime was old, but Hector, who was an older and a better man than Alexandrus, was going to receive the royal power at Prime's death, and ought not to have acquiesced in his brother's wrongdoing, especially when that brother was the cause of great calamity to Hector himself and all the rest of the Trojans. But since they did not have Helen there to give back, and since the Greeks would not believe them, although they spoke the truth, I am convinced and declare the divine powers provided that the Trojans, perishing in utter destruction, should make this clear to all mankind, that retribution from the gods for terrible wrongdoing is also terrible. This is what I think, and I state it. The next to reign after Proteus, they said, was Ramsinitus. The memorial of his name left by him was the western forecourt of the temple of Hephaistus. He set two statues here, 41 feet high. The northernmost of these, the Egyptians call Summer, and the southernmost Winter. The one that they call Summer, they worship and treat well, but do the opposite to the statue called Winter. This king, they told me, had great wealth in silver, so great that none of the succeeding kings could surpass or come near it. To store his treasure safely, he had a stone chamber built, one of its walls abutting on the outer side of his palace. But the builder of it shrewdly provided that one stone should be so placed as to be easily removed by two men, or even by one. So when the chamber was finished, the king stored his treasure in it, and as time went on, the builder, drawing near the end of his life, summoned his sons, he had two, and told them how he had provided for them, that they have an ample livelihood, by the art with which he had built the king's treasure house. Explaining clearly to them how to remove the stone, he gave the coordinates of it, and told them that if they kept these in mind, they would be the custodians of the king's riches. So when he was dead, his sons got to work at once, come into the palace by night, they readily found and managed the stone in the building, and took away much of the treasure. When the king opened the building, he was amazed to see the containers lacking their treasure, yet he did not know whom to accuse, seeing that the seals were unbroken, and the building shut fast. But when less treasure appeared the second and third times he opened the building, for the thieves did not stop plundering, he had traps made, and placed around the containers in which his riches were stored. The thieves came just as before, and one of them crept in. When he came near the container, right away, he was caught in the trap. When he saw the trouble he was in, he called to his brother right away, and explained to him the problem, and told him to come in quickly and cut off his head, lest he be seen and recognised, and destroy him too. He seemed to have spoken rightly to the other, who did as he was persuaded, and then, replacing the stone, went home, carrying his brother's head. When day came, the king went to the building, and was amazed to see in the trap the thief's body without a head, yet the building intact, with no way in or out. At a loss he did as follows. He suspended the thief's body from the wall, and set guards over it, instructing them to seize and bring to him any whom they saw weeping or making lamentation. But the thief's mother, when the body had been hung up, was terribly stricken. She had words with her surviving son, and told him that he was somehow to think of some way to cut loose and bring her his brother's body, and if he did not obey, she threatened to go to the king and denounce him as having the treasure. So, when his mother bitterly reproached the surviving son, and for all that he said he could not dissuade her, he devised a plan. He harnessed asses and put skins full of wine on the asses, then set out driving them, and when he was near those who were guarding the hanging body, he pulled at the feet of two or three of the skins, and loosed their fastenings. And as the wine ran out, he beat his head and cried aloud like one who did not know to which ass he should turn first, while the guards, when they saw the wine flowing freely, ran out into the road with cups and caught what was pouring out, thinking themselves in luck. Feigning anger, the man cursed all, but as the guards addressed him peaceably, he pretended to be soothed and to relent in his anger, and finally drove his asses out of the road and put his harness in order. And after more words passed, and one joked with him and got him to laugh, he gave them one of the skins, and they lay down there just as they were, disposed to drink, and included him, and told him to stay and drink with them, and he consented and stayed. When they cheerily saluted him in their drinking, he gave them yet another of the skins, and the guards grew very drunk with the abundance of liquor, and lay down right there where they were drinking, overpowered by sleep. But he, when it was late at night, cut down the body of his brother and shaved the right cheek of each of the guards for the indignity, and loading the body on his asses drove home, fulfilling his mother's commands. When the king learnt that the body of the thief had been taken, he was beside himself, and, obsessed with finding out who it was who had managed this, did as follows, they say, but I do not believe it. He put his own daughter in a brothel, instructing her to accept all alike, and before having intercourse, to make each tell her the shrewdest and most impious thing he had done in his life. Whoever told her the story of the thief, she was to seize and not let go. The girl did as her father told her, and the thief, learning why she was doing this, did as follows, wanting to get the better of the king by craft. He cut the arm off a fresh corpse at the shoulder, and went to the king's daughter, carrying it under his cloak. And when asked the same question as the rest, he said that his most impious act had been when he had cut the head off his brother, who was caught in a trap in the king's treasury, and his shrewdest, that after making the guards drunk, he had cut down his brother's hanging body. When she heard this, the princess grabbed for him, but in the darkness, the thief let her have the arm of the corpse, and clutching it, she held on, believing that she had the arm of the other. But the thief, after giving it to her, was gone in a flash out of the door. When this also came to the king's ears, he was astonished at the man's ingenuity and daring, and in the end, he sent a proclamation to every town, promising the thief immunity, and a great reward, if he would come into the king's presence. The thief trusted the king, and came before him. Ramsinitus was very admiring, and gave him his daughter to marry, on the grounds that he was the cleverest of men. For, as the Egyptians, he said, surpassed all others in craft, so he surpassed the Egyptians. They said that later, this king went down alive to what the Greeks call Hades, and there played dice with Demeter, and after winning some and losing some, came back with a gift from her of a golden hand-tail. From the descent of Ramsinitus, when he came back, they said that the Egyptians celebrate a festival, which I know that they celebrate to this day, but whether this is why they celebrate, I cannot say. On the day of the festival, the priests weave a cloth, and bind it as a headband on the eyes of one of their number, whom they then lead, wearing the cloth, into a road that goes to the temple of Demeter. They themselves go back, but this priest, with his eyes bandaged, is guided, they say, by two wolves to Demeter's temple, a distance of three miles from the city, and led back again from the temple by the wolves to the same place. These Egyptian stories are for the benefit of whoever believes such tales. My rule in this history is that I record what is said by all as I have heard it. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus are the rulers of the lower world. The Egyptians were the first who maintained the following doctrine, too, that the human soul is immortal, and that the death of the body enters into some other living thing, then coming to birth, and after passing through all creatures of land, sea, and air, it enters once more into a human body at birth, a cycle which it completes in 3,000 years. There are Greeks who have used this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own. I know their names, but do not record them. They said that Egypt, until the time of King Ramsinitus, was altogether well-governed and prospered greatly, but that Ceops, who was the next king, brought the people to utter misery. For first he closed all the temples so that no one could sacrifice there, and next he compelled all the Egyptians to work for him. To some he assigned the task of dragging stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and after the stones were ferried across the river in boats, he organised others to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan. They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten years the people wore themselves out, building the road over which the stones were dragged, work which was, in my opinion, not much lighter at all than the building of the Pyramid, for the road is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and it is all of stone polished and carved with figures. The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand. These the king meant to be burial places for himself and surrounded them with water, bringing in a channel from the Nile. The pyramid itself was twenty years in the making. Its bases square, each side eight hundred feet long, and its height is the same. The hole is of stone polished and most exactly fitted. There is no block of less than thirty feet in length. This pyramid was made like stairs which some call steps and others, tiers. When this its first form was completed, the workmen used short wooden logs as levers to raise the rest of the stones. They heaved up the blocks from the ground onto the first tier of steps. When the stone had been raised, it was set on another lever that stood on the first tier, and the lever again used to lift it from this tier to the next. It may be that there was a new lever on each tier of steps, or perhaps there was only one lever, quite portable, which they carried up to each tier in turn. I leave this uncertain as both possibilities were mentioned. But this is certain that the upper part of the pyramid was finished off first, then the next below it, and last of all the base and the lowest part. There are writings on the pyramid in Egyptian characters, indicating how much was spent on radishes and onions and garlic for the workmen, and I am sure that, when he read me the writing, the interpreter said that sixteen hundred talents of silver had been paid. Now if that is so, how much must have been spent on the iron with which they worked, and the workmen's food and clothing, considering that the time before said was spent in building, while hewing and carrying the stone and digging out the underground parts was, as I suppose, a business of long duration. And so evil a man was Keeops, that, needing money, he put his own daughter in a brothel and made her charge a fee, how much they did not say. She did, as her father told her, but was disposed to leave a memorial of her own, and asked of each coming to her that he give one stone. Of these stones, they said the pyramid was built that stands mid-most of the three over against the Great Pyramid. Each side of it measures one hundred and fifty feet. The Egyptians said that this Keeops reigned for fifty years. At his death, he was succeeded by his brother, Kefren, who was in all respects like Keeops. Kefren also built a pyramid smaller than his brothers. I have measured it myself. It has no underground chambers nor is it entered like the other by a canal from the Nile, but the river comes in through a built passage and encircles an island in which they say, Keeops himself lies. This pyramid was built on the same scale as the other, except that it falls forty feet short of it in height. It stands near the Great Pyramid. The lowest layer of it is a variegated Ethiopian stone. Both of them stand on the same ridge, which is about a hundred feet high. Kefren, they said, reigned for fifty six years. Thus they reckon that for a hundred and six years, Egypt was in great misery and the temples so long shut were never opened. The people hate the memory of these two kings so much that they do not much wish to name them and call the pyramids after the shepherd Philites, who then pastured his flocks in this place. The next king of Egypt, they said, was Keeops's son, Missarinas. Disliking his father's doings, he opened the temples and let the people, ground down to the depth of misery, go to their business and their sacrifices, and he was the most just judge amongst all the kings. This is why he is praised above all the rulers of Egypt, for not only were his judgments just, but Missarinas would give any who were not satisfied with the judgment a present out of his own estate to compensate him for his loss. Though mild towards his people and conducting himself as he did, yet he suffered calamities, the first of which was the death of his daughter, the only child of his household. Deeply grieved over this misfortune, he wanted to give her a burial somewhat more sumptuous than ordinary. He therefore made a hollow cow's image of gilded wood and placed the body of his dead daughter therein. This cow was not buried in the earth, but was to be seen even in my time in the town of Sayis, where it stood in a furnished drum of the palace. In sense of all kinds is offered daily before it, and a lamp burns by it all through every night. Near this cow in another chamber statues of Missarinas' concubines stand, so the priests of Sayis said, and in fact there are about twenty colossal wooden figures there, made like naked women. But except what I was told, I cannot tell who these are. But some tell the following story about the cow and the statues, that Missarinas conceived a passion for his own daughter, and then had intercourse with her against her will. And they say that afterwards the girl strangled herself for grief, and that he buried her in this cow, but that her mother cut off the hands of the attendants who had betrayed the daughter to her father, and that now their statues are in the same condition as the living women were. But this I believe to be a silly story, especially about the hands of the figures, for in fact we ourselves saw that the hands have fallen off through age and were lying at their feet even in my day. As for the cow, it is covered with a purple robe, only the head and neck exposed and crusted with a very thick layer of gold. Between the horns is the golden figure of the sun's orb. It does not stand, but kneels. It is as big as a live cow of great size. This image is carried out of the chamber once every year, whenever the Egyptians mourn the god, whose name I omit in speaking of these matters. Then the cow is brought out into the light, for they say that before she died she asked her father, Missourinas, that she see the son once a year. After what happened to his daughter, the following happened next to this king. An oracle came to him from the city of Buto, announcing that he had just six years to live and was to die in the seventh. The king took this badly, and sent back to the oracle a message of reproach, blaming the god that his father and his uncle, though they had shut up the temples and disregarded the gods, and destroyed men, had lived for a long time, but that he, who was pious, was going to die so soon. But a second oracle came, announcing that for this very reason his life was hastening to a close, he had done what was contrary to fate. Egypt should have been afflicted for a hundred and fifty years, and the two kings before him knew this, but not he. Hearing this, Missourinas knew that his doom was fixed. Therefore he had many lamps made, and would light these at nightfall, and drink and enjoy himself, not letting up day or night, roaming to the marsh country and the groves, and wherever he heard of the likeliest places of pleasure. This was his recourse, so that by turning night into day, he might make his six years into twelve, and so prove the oracle false. End of Book Two, Part Six