Installment 9                
 After Cyrus had met with his end, Cambyses inherited the kingdom, who was the son of Cyrus and Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, for whom, since she had died first, Cyrus himself had sorrowed greatly and had commanded all the others over whom he ruled to sorrow. Of that very woman and Cyrus being the son, Cambyses considered the Ionians and Aeolians that they were his father’s slaves and so drove his army against Egypt while he took along others whom he ruled and especially those of the Greeks of whom he was master.




The Egyptians, before Psammetichus became king of them, considered themselves to be the first born of all human beings. But, when Psammetichus had become king and wished to know who were the first born, from that time they considered the Phrygians to be earlier born than themselves and themselves than all the others. Now, Psammetichus, when he could not in trying to learn by inquiry find out any way of knowing that, who were the first born of human beings, devised a plan like this: he gave two newly born young children of the first human beings he had met with to a shepherd to bring up amid the flocks of sheep with an upbringing like this: he enjoined that no one should utter any sound, but in a desolate chamber they should be put alone by themselves and at the right time he should bring goats to them and, after filling up on milk, they should accomplish everything else. That Psammetichus did and enjoined, since he wished to hear from the young children, once their unintelligible whimperings were gotten rid of, what would be the first utterance they would let out. That very desire then was actually fulfilled. For, after two years’ time had passed for the shepherd who was doing the aforementioned, as he opened the door and went in, the young children fell before him and said “bekos” while they reached out their hands. At the first then, after he had heard, the shepherd was silent and, when for him who resorted there often and had a care, that word was prevalent, just then he indicated it to his master and brought the young children at his bidding into his sight. On hearing, Psammetichus himself inquired who of human beings called anything “bekos” and inquiring found the Phrygians called wheat bread that. Thus the Egyptians agreed by forming an estimate by a matter just like that the Phrygians were older than they. That in this way happened I heard from the priests of Hephaestus in Memphis, but the Greeks say many other foolish things and that Psammetichus had the tongues of women cut out and thus had the young children live among those women.

Regarding the upbringing of the young children, then, they said so much and I heard other things as well in Memphis when I came into speeches with the priests of Hephaestus and, in particular, I turned my steps to Thebes and to the City of the Sun for that very reason, since I wished to know whether they would agree with the speeches in Memphis; for the inhabitants of the City of the Sun are said to be the Egyptians’ greatest spokesmen. Now, the kinds of relations of the gods’ matters that I heard, I am not eager to fully describe except the names only, since I consider men to know equally about them, but whichever of them I mention, utterly compelled by my account I will mention.

As to all that are human affairs, however, they said as follows in agreement with themselves: the Egyptians were the first of all human beings to discover the year’s duration, in that they made a division of twelve parts in the seasons that come to it. That they discovered from the stars they said further. So they have a wiser observation than the Greeks, as it seems to me, in so far as the Greeks every other year intercalate an intercalary month for the seasons’ sake, whereas the Egyptians observe twelve months of thirty days and add annually five days besides that number and so for them the seasons’ cycle in its going round arrives back at the same point. The twelve gods’ names, they said, the Egyptians were the first to use customarily and the Greeks took them up from them; altars, images and temples they were the first to portion out to gods as well as to carve figures on stones. Now, the greater number of those things by deed they made clear originated thus and then they said that Min was the first human being to become king of Egypt; that in his time, except for the Theban district, all Egypt was marsh and none of it was projecting of what is now below lake Moiris, to which there is seven days’ sailing up the river from the sea.

And they seemed to me to speak well concerning their country. For it’s quite clear to anyone, even if he has not heard before, but sees, at least who has intelligence, that the Egypt to which the Greeks voyage is a land acquired lately by the Egyptians and a gift of the river and further there’s the upper parts of that lake during three days’ sailing, about which they said nothing further like this, but which is also like that. For the land of Egypt’s nature is like this: first sailing forth still and being a day’s course distant from land, if you let down sounding line, you will bring up mud and be in eleven fathoms. That makes clear the land’s alluvium is over so great an extent.

Egypt itself’s length along the sea is sixty ropes, according as we determine Egypt to be from the Plinthinetes gulf up to lake Serbonis, along which Mount Casium stretches; starting from that point then are the sixty ropes. (All of the human beings who are poor in land, have measured the country in fathoms; all who are less poor in land, in stades; they who have much land, in parasangs; and those who have very abundant, in ropes. The parasang equals thirty stades and each rope, being an Egyptian measure, sixty stades. Thus the measurement of Egypt along the sea would be three thousand six hundred stades.)

From there up to the City of the Sun into the inland country Egypt, being flat, well-watered and slime, is broad, and the road to the City of the Sun from the sea for one going inland is pretty near in its length to the road from Athens that leads from the twelve gods’ altar into Pisa and to Olympian Zeus’ temple. Someone would find the difference between those roads a small one, should he compute it, their not being equal in length not more than fifteen stades; for the one to Pisa from Athens wants fifteen stades from being fifteen hundred and the one to the City of the Sun from the sea fills up that number.

However, from the City of the Sun for one going inland Egypt is narrow. For, where in Arabia a mountain extends that lies from the Bear to the south and its wind and continually stretches inland to the so-called Red sea, on which are the stone -quarries made by cutting for the pyramids in Memphis, there the mountain ends and bends back to the places that have been mentioned and, where it itself is its longest, as I learned by inquiry, it is two months’ journey from east to west and the places that produce frankincense to the east are its limits. Now, that mountain is like that and the other stone mountain toward Libya of Egypt extends, on which are the pyramids and which is wrapped up in sand and stretched out in the same direction as the parts of the Arabian that lie toward the south. Then indeed the place from the City of the Sun is large no farther, considering that it is Egypt’s, but is about fourteen days’ sailing upstream, since it is Egypt at its narrow part. Between the said mountains there’s level land and its stades seemed to me to be, where it is narrowest, not more than two hundred from the Arabian mountain to the so-called Libyan. Thereafter Egypt is broad again.

Now, that country is thus by nature and from the City of the Sun to Thebes is nine days’ sailing upstream and the journey’s stades are four thousand eight hundred and sixty, the ropes being eighty one. As to those stades of Egypt, when they are put together, the part along the sea by now it has been made clear by me earlier that it is three thousand six hundred stades and how large a distance is from the sea to the inland up to Thebes, I will indicate: its stades are six thousand one hundred and twenty. And the distance from Thebes to the so-called city of Elephantina is a thousand eight hundred stades.

The greater part of that said country, just as the priests said, seemed to myself as well acquired lately by the Egyptians. For between the said mountains that are situated over the city of Memphis it appeared to me there was once a gulf of sea, exactly like that round Ilium, Teuthrania, Ephesos and Maeander’s plain, at least so far as it is possible to compare those places, small as they are, to great, because of the rivers that formed those places alluvially to one of the mouths of the Nile, which is five-mouthed, no one of them concerning volume is worth comparing. There are also other rivers, although they are not like the Nile in size, that did show forth great actions, whose names I can point out, both others and not least the Achelous, which, flowing through Acarnania and discharging into the sea, has by now made half of the Echinadian islands mainland.

There is in the country of Arabia, not far from Egypt, a gulf of sea that stretches from the so-called Red somewhat so very long and narrow as I am going to point out; in length of sailing for one beginning from its most inland part to sail through to the broad sea forty days are used up, if one rows, and in breadth, where the gulf is broadest, half a day’s sailing. In it flow and ebb every day are produced. I think Egypt too proves another gulf like that surely; the one stretches from its north sea toward Ethiopia and the other lies from its south toward Syria; near to each other they bore through their most inland parts and diverge a little from the country. If then the Nile will divert its stream into that Arabian Gulf, what prevents it, as that river keeps flowing, from being silted up, at least within twenty thousand years? For I for my part at least suppose even within ten thousand it could be silted up. Just how then in the time used up previously before I was born could the gulf not be silted up even far larger than that by so great and so active a river?

The matters concerning Egypt then --I both am persuaded by those who speak of them and by myself very much think they are thus, since I see Egypt is situated before the neighboring land, sea-shells come to light on top of its mountains, a salt incrustation forms on their surface so as to harm even the pyramids, the mountain over Memphis is the only in Egypt to have sand and, in addition, Egypt neither is similar to the country of Arabia that is bordering nor that of Libya, and not indeed even to that of Syria (for the Syrians inhabit the places along the sea in Arabia), but black-soiled and friable, seeing that it is slime and alluvium carried down from Ethiopia by the river, whereas we know Libya is a redder land and beneath rather sandy, and Arabia and Syria are rather clayey and beneath stony.

And the priests said also the following to me as a great proof concerning that country, that in King Moiris’ time, whenever the river went up eight cubits at the least, it watered Egypt below Memphis, and it was not yet nine hundred years from Moiris’ meeting with his end, when I heard that from the priests. But now, if the river ascends not sixteen or fifteen cubits at the least, it goes not over into the country. Consequently those of the Egyptians below the lake of Moiris settled in all the other places and the so-called Delta seem to me, if thus that country proportionally increases in height and gives forth the like in growth, the Nile not washing over it, that they will suffer all the time that remains, although Egyptians, what they themselves asserted the Greeks sometime would suffer. For, having learned by inquiry that the whole of the Greeks’ land is rained on, but not watered by rivers just as their own, they asserted the Greeks, mistaken sometime in their great hope, would hunger badly, and that saying means to state that, if the gods will wish not to rain for them, but to afflict them with drought, the Greeks will be taken off by famine, since indeed no other means of getting water exists for them except from Zeus alone.

And although the existence of that condition with regard to the Greeks by the Egyptians has been spoken of correctly, yet, come, let me now point out for the Egyptians themselves also how it is. If for them, as I spoke of previously, the land below Memphis, since it is that which is growing, proportionally as in time gone by in height should grow, what will those of the Egyptians settled there suffer other than hunger, at least if neither their country will not be rained on nor the river be able to go over into the fields? For indeed truly now at least they obtain fruit most untoilsomely, more so than all the other human beings and the remaining Egyptians, they who have toils without breaking up furrows by ploughs or hoeing or having any other of those tasks in which all the other human beings toil concerning standing crop, but, whenever for them the river of its own goes up and waters the fields and, after watering, falls back, then each sows his own field and sends into it sows and, whenever he has the seed trampled down by the sows, the harvest from then on he awaits and, after having the grain threshed by the sows, he then conveys it home.

Now, if we want to observe the Ionians’ judgements in respect to the matters concerning Egypt, who assert the Delta alone is Egypt, as they say it is in its part along the sea from the so-called watchtower of Perseus up to the Pelousian Taricheians, and it’s there where its ropes are forty, and in its part from the sea inland they say it stretches up to the city of Cercasorus, at which the Nile is split in its flowing to Pelousium and to Canobus, while they say of all the other parts of Egypt some are Libya’s and some Arabia’s, we would show forth, should we observe that theory, that no land was the Egyptians’ before. Well now their Delta at any rate, as the Egyptians say themselves and it seems to me, is alluvial and recently, to exaggerate in speaking, come to light. If then no country belonged to them, why were they superfluously laboring in thinking they had been first born of human beings? Nor had they to go to make trial of the young children regarding what tongue they would utter first. Rather I think both the Egyptians came not into being together with what’s called the Delta by the Ionians and they have existed on each and every occasion since the race of human beings came into being and, as the country advanced, many of them came to be left behind and many gradually moved down. Egypt, however, anciently was called Thebes, whose circumference is six thousand one hundred and twenty stades.

If then we for our part have judged correctly about it, the Ionians think not well about Egypt but, if the Ionians’ judgement is correct, I can show forth the Greeks and the Ionians themselves know not how to count, who say the whole earth is three parts, Europe, Asia and Libya, since indeed as a fourth they must additionally count Egypt’s Delta, if it is neither in Asia nor Libya, because indeed the Nile at any rate is according to that theory of theirs the border separating Asia from Libya. At that Delta’s point the Nile is broken round so that it would prove in the space between Asia and Libya.

And so we let go the Ionians’ judgement and we on our own speak about that matter above in somewhat the following manner: all that is settled by the Egyptians is Egypt, just as what’s settled by the Cilicians is Cilicia and what by the Assyrians Assyria, and the border of Asia and Libya we know is nothing by a correct account if not the boundaries of the Egyptians, but, if we will observe what it’s considered by the Greeks, we will consider all Egypt, beginning from the Cataracts and the city of Elephantina, to be divided in two and partake of both the names, because some parts of it are in Libya and some in Asia. For indeed the Nile, being from the Cataracts, splits the middle of Egypt and flows to the sea. Now, up to the city of Cercasorus the Nile flows and is one, but from that city on splits into three ways. One turns to the east, which is called the Pelousian mouth, the second of the ways extends to the west and that is named the Canobian mouth, and finally the straight one of these ways of the Nile is as follows: it goes from farther inland and comes to the Delta’s point and from there on splits the middle of the Delta and discharges into the sea there where it possesses a portion of its water neither the smallest nor least named, which is called the Sebennytian mouth. There are also two other mouths split off from the Sebennytian that lead to the sea, to which these names are given: to the one of them the Saitian and to the other the Mendesian. The Bolbitian mouth as well as the Boucolian, however, are not original, but dug.

Moreover, what also bears witness to my judgement that Egypt is so large a land as I have shown forth in my account is that which was given as an oracle of Ammon, of which I after my own judgement about Egypt learned by inquiry. For indeed those from the city of Marea and Apis settled in the places of Egypt that border on Libya, thinking themselves to be Libyans and not Egyptians and vexed at the performance of sacred rites, since they wanted not to be kept away from female cows, sent men to Ammon and asserted nothing was common to them and the Egyptians, in that they were settled outside the Delta and in nothing agreed with them, and consequently they wanted to be permitted to them to taste of everything. But the god refused to allow them to do that and asserted Egypt was that which the Nile by going up watered and the Egyptians were those who, settled below the city of Elephantina, drank from that river. Thus that was proclaimed to them.

The Nile goes up over, whenever it is full, not only the Delta, but also some spots in the place said to be Libyan and that said to be Arabian even over two days’ journey’s extent on each side, in fact a still greater than that and a lesser. However, about the river’s nature, neither anything from the priests nor from anyone else was I able to get a grasp of. I was eager to learn by inquiry from them this, why the Nile, when full, went down, beginning from the summer solstice for a hundred days, and when it drew near to the number of those days departed back and fell in its stream, so that it continued to be shallow the whole winter until summer solstice again. About that then I proved not capable of getting a grasp of anything from any of the Egyptians, when I inquired of them what power the Nile had to be by nature the opposite of all the other rivers. That indeed wanting to know, I inquired as well why alone of all rivers it had no breezes blowing from anywhere.

Some of the Greeks, wanting to prove signal for wisdom, spoke about that body of water three ways, two of which I think not even worthy to mention except in so far as I want to give an indication only. One of them said the Etesian winds were the cause that the river was full, since they prevented the Nile from flowing out to sea. However, in any case, although often the Etesians blew not, yet the Nile acted the same. In addition, if the Etesians had been the cause, all the other rivers too that flow opposite the Etesians would have had to suffer similarly and in the same way as the Nile, indeed the more still, the smaller they were and the more lacking strength the flowings they possessed. But many were the rivers in Syria and many in Libya, that suffered not a thing like what the Nile.

The other was more unknowing than the stated but, to exaggerate in speech, more marvellous, which said it flowed from the Oceanus and contrived that and Oceanus flowed round all the earth.

The third of the ways, being far the most specious, was the most false. For indeed that too said nothing in asserting the Nile flowed from melting snow, that river that flowed from Libya through the middle of the Ethiopians and discharges into Egypt. So just how then could it flow from snow, when it flowed from the hottest places into those of which the greater number are colder? For a man able to reason about a matter like that at any rate, that its flowing from snow was not even likely, the first and greatest testimony the winds furnished, since they blew hot from those lands, the second was that the land continued to be rainless and iceless and after snow’s falling there was every necessity for it to rain within five days, so that if it had snowed, those places would have been rained on, and thirdly was human beings’ being black by the burning heat’s agency, hawks and swallows ceased not to be throughout the year and cranes, fleeing from the coming of winter in Scythian land, resorted for wintering to those spaces. If then it had snowed even ever so little on that land through which the Nile flowed and from which it began flowing, not a single one of the above events would have taken place, as necessity proves.

He who spoke about Oceanus, however, carried up the myth to obscurity and admits of no proof, for I for my part know not of the existence of a river Oceanus, but Homer or one of the poets born earlier, I think, found and brought the name into poetry.

Hence, if one who finds fault with the proposed judgements must himself show forth a judgement about the obscure, I will point out on account of what the Nile seems to me to become full in the summer. During the winter season the sun is driven out of its original pathway by the storms and comes to Libya’s upper parts. Now, so far as making things clear in smallest compass, all has been said, because that country, nearest to whichever or at whichever that god is, it’s reasonable to be most thirsty for water and the flowings of that country’s rivers to shrink.

But, so far as making things clear in a larger account, it is as follows: going through Libya’s upper parts, the sun does this: seeing that all the time the lower air that’s at those places is clear and the country is open to the heat and without cold winds, going through, it does the very thing that also during the summer it is accustomed to do when it goes across the middle of the sky, in that it draws the water to itself and, after drawing it, thrusts it away to the upper places, and the winds by taking up and scattering disperse it. Indeed those blowing from that country, the South and the South-West, are, as is reasonable, far the rainiest of all winds. Also the sun seems to me not to send away all the year’s water on each occasion from the Nile, but in fact to leave some behind round itself. And, as the winter grows mild, the sun departs back to the middle sky and by then thereafter draws from all rivers alike. To that time some, as rain-water was mixed in a large amount with them, seeing that their country was rained on and cleft by gullies, have flowed big, but in the summer, when the rains fail them and they are drawn up by the sun, they are without strength, whereas the Nile, being rainless and drawn up by the sun, alone of rivers during that time, as is reasonable, by itself has flowed in its volume far inferiorly to what it does in the summer, since then it is drawn up equally as all bodies of water and during the winter it alone is exhausted.

Thus I have considered the sun to be the cause of that and that same is the cause in my judgement that also the lower air there is dry, since it burns thoroughly its pathway; thus Libya’s upper parts summer on each and every occasion occupies. Hence, if the position of the seasons were altered and in the sky, where now the North wind and the winter stand, there were the South wind’s position and the noon’s and, where the South wind now stands, there were the North wind, if that were thus, the sun, driven from the middle sky by the winter and the North wind, would go across the upper parts of Europe, just as now it goes across Libya’s, and I suppose it, going through all Europe, would affect the Ister the very way it now acts on the Nile.

Finally, about the breeze, why it blows not from anywhere, I have a judgement as follows, that from very hot countries it is not reasonable for it to blow from anywhere at all, but a breeze loves to blow from somewhere cold.

Now, let that be as it is and as to begin with it proved, and the Nile’s sources no one of either the Egyptians or the Libyans or the Greeks who came into speeches with me professed to know, except in Egypt in the city of Sais, the scribe of Athena’s sacred money, and he, to me at any rate, seemed to joke in asserting he knew exactly. For he spoke this way: there were two mountains brought to a point at their peaks, situated between the Theban city of Syena and Elephantina, and the names of the mountains were Crophi and Mophi; the sources of the Nile indeed then, being bottomless, flowed from the middle of those mountains and one half of the water flowed toward Egypt and to the North wind and the other half toward Ethiopia and the South. How the sources were bottomless, he asserted Psammetichus, Egypt’s king, came to make trial of that, since he himself, after plaiting a rope of many thousands of fathoms, let it go down there and it reached not a bottom. That very scribe, if he was saying that really was done, was bringing out to light, so far as I understand, some eddies were there strong as well as a backwater and, seeing that the water kept throwing it against the mountains, the sounding line, let go down, was unable to go to the bottom.

From no one else was I able to learn anything by inquiry, but just so much else as follows I did learn by inquiry over the greatest extent, on going an eyewitness up to the city of Elephantina and inquiring by that time from then on by hearsay. From the city of Elephantina for one going up the place is uphill; there then men must bind their boat tight on both sides just as a cow and make there way, but if it breaks away, the boat is gone, borne by the strength of the current. That place is a sailing for five days and the Nile there, just as the Maeander, is twisted; they are twelve ropes which one must sail through in that manner and thereafter you will come to a smooth plain, in which the Nile flows round an island (Tachompso is its name). The Ethiopians are settled here in the parts from Elephantina inland and on half the island; the Egyptians on the other half. A large lake is next to the island round which pastoral Ethiopians have their habitations; when you sail through it, you will have come to the Nile’s stream, which discharges into that lake and thereafter, on alighting alongside the river, you will make your way by road forty days, since sharp peaks emerge in the Nile and there are many low rocks, through which it is not possible to sail. On going through that place in the forty days, after embarking again on another ship, twelve days you will sail and thereafter you will have come to a great city, whose name is Meroe. That city is said to be the mother-city of all the other Ethiopians. Those in it reverence Zeus and Dionysus alone of gods and honor them greatly and a seat of prophecy of Zeus has been established by them. They advance with an army, whenever that god bids them through divine utterances and, whenever he bids, thither.

From that city, after sailing another length of time equal to the very in which you went from Elephantina to the mother-city of the Ethiopians, you will have come to the deserters. Those deserters’ name is Asmach and that word means in the Greek tongue those who stand by the king on the left side. They, twenty four myriads of Egyptian fighters, revolted to those Ethiopians for a reason like this: in the time of king Psammetichus, garrisons were established in the city of Elephantina toward the Ethiopians, another in Pelousian Daphnae toward the Arabians and the Syrians and another in Marea toward Libya. Still in my time and the Persians’ the garrisons are in the same arrangement as they were in Psammetichus’ time, for in fact the Persians keep guard in Elephantina and in Daphnae. Indeed then the Egyptians, after their keeping guard three years, no one would release from guarding; so they, having taken counsel and spoken a common speech, all revolted from Psammetichus and went to Ethiopia. And Psammetichus, when he had learned of it by inquiry, gave pursuit. After he had overtaken them, he asked for many things in his speech and refused to allow them to abandon the gods of their fathers and their offspring and wives. Then one of them, it is said, showed his pudendum and stated wherever that was, there would be both their offspring and wives. Those, when they had come to Ethiopia, gave themselves to the Ethiopians’ king. And he in return presented them with this: there were some among the Ethiopians become quarrellers; he bade those remove them and be settled in their land. Hence, those having made their homes with the Ethiopians, the Ethiopians have become gentler by learning Egyptian customs.

Now, during four month’s sailing and walking the Nile is known besides its flowing in Egypt; for so many months, if one reckons, is found to be used up by one making his way from Elephantina to those deserters; it flows from the west and the sun’s setting. But from here on no one can point out anything distinctly, because that country is desolate by burning heat’s agency.

The following, however, I heard from Cyrenian men who asserted that they came to Ammon’s oracle and came in to speeches with Etearchus, the Ammonians’ king; that indeed somehow after other speeches they came into a conversation about the Nile, how no one knew its source, and Etearchus asserted that once Nasamonian men came to him --that nation is Libyan and inhabits Syrtis and the country to the east of Syrtis not over a large extent --and the Nasamonians, on coming and being asked whether they were able to say anything advantageous about the desolate parts of Libya, asserted that among them were born chief men’s insolent children, who, become men, contrived other extravagances and especially chose by lot five of themselves to see the desolate parts of Libya and whether they could catch sight of anything more than they who had seen the farthest --for, regarding Libya’s parts off the North sea, beginning from Egypt, the Libyans and the Libyans’ many nations extend along the whole way up to the promontory of Soloeis, which ends in Libya, except for all that the Greeks and the Phoenicians have, but regarding the parts above the sea and the human beings who extend along the sea, Libya is beast-filled and the parts inland of the beast-filled land are sand, terribly waterless and bereft of everything; that then, when the young men were sent off by their contemporaries, furnished with water and food, they went at the first through settled land, having gone through that, came to the beast-filled, after that went through the desolate as they made their way to the West wind and, having gone through many a sandy spot and in many days, saw at last grown trees on a plain, when they approached and touched the fruit that was on the trees and on them as they touched advanced short men, smaller than ordinary men, and, on taking hold, led them off (as to language, neither the Nasamonians understood any of theirs nor those leading any of the Nasamonians’); and that they indeed led them through very large marshes, when, having gone through that, they came to a city, in which all were equal in their height to those leading and black in color, and by the city flowed a large river and flowed on its own from west to the sun’s rising and in it crocodiles appeared.

Let, then, Ammonian Etearchus’ speech to that great an extent be made clear by me, except for this, that he asserted, as the Cyrenians said, the Nasamonians returned and the human beings to whom they had come were wizards all. Moreover that very river that flowed by, Etearchus concluded, was the Nile and, what’s more, reason thus demands. For the Nile flows from Libya, even cuts the middle of Libya, and, as I conclude by taking what’s plain as evidence for what’s not known, starts from distances equal to the Ister. The Ister river flows beginning from the Celts and the city of Pyrene and splits the middle of Europe. The Celts are outside of Heracles’ pillars and border on the Cynesians, who are settled farthest toward the sun’s setting of those settled down in Europe. And the Ister ends at the sea and flows the way of the Hospitable sea through all Europe, where in Istria the Milesians are settled as colonists.

The Ister, then, because it flows through settled land, is known by many, but about the Nile’s source no one can know, since the Libya, through which it flows, is unsettled and desolate; so about its flowing, as much as was possible by inquiry to reach, has been said; finally it discharges into Egypt. And Egypt is situated somewhere pretty nearly opposite the mountainous Cilicia. Thence to Sinope on the Hospitable sea is five days’ straight road for a well-girt man and Sinope is situated opposite the Ister’s discharge into the sea. Thus the Nile, I think, goes through all Libya and is equal to the Ister. Now, about the Nile let so much be said.
 
Installment 10                
 I am going to lengthen my account about Egypt, because it has the most marvels and possesses works greater of account in comparison with every other country; for that reason more will be said about it. The Egyptians, just like their sky’s being of a different kind and their river’s possessing a nature of a kind other than all the other rivers, established all the greater number of their customs and laws opposite to all the other human beings; among them the women go to the public square and sell merchandise, while the men are at home and weave; further, although all the others weave by thrusting the woof up, Egyptians do by thrusting it down. Burdens men carry on their heads and women on their shoulders. They make water, the women upright and the men sitting down. They defecate in their homes and eat outside in the ways, and explain that the shameful but necessary one must do in concealment and the unshameful openly. No woman is priest either of a male or a female god, but men of all the male and all the female. There’s no necessity for sons, if they do not want to, to maintain their parents, but every necessity for daughters, even if they do not want to.

The priest of gods in every other land have long hair, but in Egypt they shave themselves. For all the other human beings it’s the law in mourning to have their heads shorn whom most it becomes, but the Egyptians at occurrences of death let the hair on their head and their chin grow, although they are shaven until then. Not withstanding all the other human beings’ way of life is separated from beasts, the Egyptians’ way of life is together with beasts. Off wheat and barley all the others live; yet for whoever of the Egyptians maintains his life with that is the greatest reproach, but they make their bread from spelt, which several call “zeiai”. They knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands. Their pudenda all the others leave as they were at birth, except all who have learned from those, as they, the Egyptians, circumcise themselves. As to garments, of the men each has two and of the women one each. All the others attach sails’ rings and ropes on the outside, but the Egyptians on the inside. The Greeks write letters and compute with beads by moving their hand from the left to the right, while the Egyptians do by moving theirs from the right to the left, and although they do that, they say they for their part move rightward and the Greeks leftward. They use two kinds of letters and one of them is called hieratic and the other demotic.

Being excessively reverential to the gods most of all men, they observe laws like these: from bronze cups they drink and rinse them daily, not one man and another not, but all. And they wear linen garments, newly washed on each and every occasion and pursue that most. Additionally their pudenda they circumcise for the sake of cleanliness, as they prefer to be clean rather than comely. Their priests shave all their body every other day, that neither louse nor any other foul thing come on them while they serve the gods; the priests also wear linen clothing and sandals of byblus only; other clothing it is not permitted to them to don nor other sandals; they wash twice each day with cold water and twice each night; in short, they bring to completion the performance of countless other rites, to exaggerate in speech. They also experience no few goods; for they neither wear out nor consume anything of their own, but in fact sacred bread is baked for them and a large multitude of pieces of cow and goose meat accrues to each and wine of the vine also is given them. But fish is not permitted to them to eat and beans the Egyptians both sow nothing at all in their country and, if they grow, they neither eat raw nor boil and eat, and the priests indeed endure not even seeing them, since they consider it not to be a clean legume. There is not one priest for each of the gods, but many, one of which is high-priest, and if any dies, his son is put in his place.

The male cattle they consider to be Epaphus’ and for him examine them this way: if one sees a hair, even one, is on one black, he considers him not to be clean. For one of the priests appointed for it searches for that, when both the victim stands upright and is supine, even pulls out his tongue, to see whether it is free of the ordained marks that I will speak of in another account. He also observes the hairs of the tail, whether he has them grown in accordance with nature. And if he is free of all that, one marks him out by winding with paper round his horns and thereafter plasters on earth for a marking and presses the ring on it; then thus they lead him out. But on whoever sacrifices an unmarked bull, the penalty of death is imposed.

Now, the victim is examined in a manner like this and this is their established way of sacrificing: having led the marked victim to the alter wheresoever they make sacrifices, they kindle a fire and thereafter, on pouring wine on it down over the sacred offering and calling on the god, slit its throat and, after slitting its throat, cut off its head. The body of the victim, then, they flay; then they utter a curse often against that head and carry it away: they whoever have a public square and have their resident Greek merchants, carry it to the public square and then sell it, while they among whom are no Greeks, cast it into the river. And they utter the curse against the head by saying this, that if there is to come about for either themselves the sacrificers or the whole of Egypt any evil, it should make its way to the head there. Now, regarding the heads of the sacrificed victims and the pouring on of the wine, the Egyptians observe the same laws similarly with regard to all the sacred animals and in consequence of that law none of the Egyptians will even taste any other animate being’s head.

But indeed the removal and the burning of the sacred animals is established for them as one way for one sacred animal, another for another. Anyhow, her that they are of the belief is the greatest divinity and for whom they celebrate the greatest festival, I am going to speak of. Whenever they completely flay the bull, while in prayer, they then take out that whole of its intestines, leave its innards and soft fat in the body and cut off its legs, the extreme of its loins, its shoulders and its neck. Having done that, they fill the rest of the body with pure loaves, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh and all the other spices and, after filling it with that, burn it as an offering, as they pour down an unbegrudged amount of olive-oil. They fast beforehand and then sacrifice and, as the sacred animals are burning, all beat themselves; whenever they are finished beating themselves, they put before themselves a banquet of the pieces of the sacred animals that they had left.

Now, the pure male cattle and calves all Egyptians sacrifice, while the female it is not permitted to them to sacrifice, but they are sacred to Isis. For the image of Isis, being that of a woman, is bull-horned, just as the Greeks depict Io, and female cattle all Egyptians alike reverence most of all herd-animals by far. Because of that, neither an Egyptian man nor woman would kiss a Greek man with the mouth nor will use a Greek man’s knife, spits and cauldron nor of a bull’s pure meat cut up with a Greek knife taste. And they bury the dead cattle in this manner: the female they throw away into the river and the male they sink in the ground, each group in their own suburbs, the one horn or both projecting as a marker; whenever it rots and the appointed time advances, a barge comes to each city from the so-called island of Prosopitis. (It is in the Delta and its circumference is nine ropes.) On that island of Prosopitis, then, are numerous other cities and one from which the barges arrive to take up the bulls’ bones; the city’s name is Atarbechis and in it a shrine holy to Aphrodite is set up. From that city wander many variously to various cities and, after digging up the bones, all bring them away and bury them in one place. And after the same fashion as the bulls they bury all the other herd-animals when they die. For in fact concerning them thus it is laid down as law by them, since indeed they do not kill them, too.

All those, then, who have set up a shrine to Theban Zeus or are of the Theban district, keep away from sheep and sacrifice goats, because indeed not the same gods do all Egyptians alike reverence, except for Isis and Osiris, and it’s he whom they say is Dionysus; them all alike reverence. But all those who have acquired a shrine to Mendes or are of the Mendesian district, keep away from sheep, say this law was laid down for them on account of this, that Heracles wished at all events to see Zeus and he refused to be seen by him and finally, when Heracles was persistent, Zeus contrived this: after completely flaying a ram, he held before himself its head, having cut it off the ram, and having put on its fleece, thus displayed himself to him. Because of that, the Egyptians make Zeus’ image ram-faced and following the Egyptians the Ammonians, since they are colonists of the Egyptians and the Ethiopians and customarily use a language between the both of theirs. And, so far as it seems to me, also as for their own name, the Ammonians gave themselves their appellation after this god, in that the Egyptians call Zeus Amoun. So the Thebans usually sacrifice no rams, but they are sacred to them on account of the above. However, one day a year, during Zeus’ festival, after chopping up and flaying entirely one ram in the same fashion, they dress up Zeus’ image and thereafter bring another image, Heracles’, to it. Having done that, all those concerned with the shrine beat themselves for the ram and thereafter bury it in a sacred burial-place.




About the one Heracles I heard this account, that he was one of the twelve gods, but about the other Heracles, whom the Greeks know, nowhere in Egypt was I able to hear. And that at any rate the Egyptians took the name not from the Greeks but the Greeks rather from the Egyptians and of the Greeks those who gave the name Heracles to the child of Amphitryon, many other proofs are mine that was so and moreover this, that both the parents of that Heracles, Amphitryon and Alcmene, by descent had come from Egypt and how the Egyptians assert that they know the names neither of Poseidon nor the Dioscori, and those have not been shown forth by them as gods among all the other gods. And if they had taken any divinity’s name from the Greeks, they were to remember those not least, but most, if in fact then both they made voyages and any of the Greeks were voyagers, as I suppose and my judgement requires. Consequently even more those gods’ names would the Egyptians know full well than Heracles’. Heracles rather is an ancient god of the Egyptians and, as they themselves say, there are seventeen thousand years to Amasis’ becoming king, since the twelve gods, of whom they consider Heracles one, originated from the eight gods.

And so wishing to know something distinct about that from whom I was able, I sailed also to Tyre in Phoenicia, because I had learned by inquiry in that very place was a shrine holy to Heracles, and saw it richly furnished with many other offerings and also in it were two pillars, one of refined gold and the other of emerald stone that shone through the nights for magnitude. I then came into speeches with the priests of the god and asked how long a time there had been since their shrine had been set up. I found they too could not agree with the Greeks, as they asserted at the founding of Tyre was the shrine of the god set up and from when they were settled in Tyre had been two thousand three hundred years. I saw in Tyre there was another shrine of Heracles with the appellation of Thasian and then came to Thasos too, in which I found a shrine of Heracles set up by the Phoenicians, who had sailed out in search of Europe and colonized Thasos and that was five generations of men earlier than Amphitryon’s son Heracles originated in Greece. Now, the results of my inquiry make clear distinctly Heracles was an early god and those of the Greeks seem to me to act most correctly, who set up and have two temples of the Heracles’s and to the one, on the ground that he’s an immortal and under the name of Olympian, make sacrifices and to the other, on the ground that he’s a hero, make offerings.

However, the Greeks make many other statements without investigation and the following myth is a silly one of theirs which they say about Heracles, that on his coming to Egypt, the Egyptians crowned and led him away in procession with the intention of sacrificing him to Zeus, but although he a while was at peace, yet when they began the sacrifice of him near the altar, he turned his attention to resistance and slaughtered all. Now, the Greeks seem to me in saying that to be wholly without knowledge of the Egyptians’ nature and laws; for, to whom it is holy to sacrifice not even herd-animals, except sheep, male cattle and calves, however many are pure, and geese, how could they sacrifice human beings? And further Heracles, being one and further a human being, as indeed they assert, how did he have a nature to kill many myriads? And so for us, who said so much about that, let there be good will both from the gods and from the heroes.




Indeed the abovementioned of the Egyptians for this stated reason sacrifice no she-goats and he-goats. Pan the Mendesians count to be one of the eight gods and those eight gods, they assert, originated earlier than the twelve gods. Their figure-painters and image-makers paint and carve Pan’s image, just as the Greeks, goat-faced and goat-legged, although they in no way consider him to be like that, but similar to all the other gods. And why they paint him like that, is not pleasant for me to say. So the Mendesians reverence all goats and the male more than the female; moreover, among them the goatherds have greater honors and of those there’s one especially who, whenever he dies, is sorrowed for greatly by the whole Mendesian district. The goat and Pan then are called Mendes in Egyptian. There happened in that district in my time that following portent: a goat had intercourse with a woman openly. That came to be displayed to human beings.

The Egyptians are of the opinion that the swine is a polluted beast; indeed on the one hand, if any of them touches, while he goes by, a swine, with his clothes and all he then walks to and dips himself into the river, and on the other, the swineherds, being native Egyptians, may go into no shrine of those in Egypt, alone of all, and everyone refuses to give a daughter in marriage to them and to take one home in marriage from them, but the swineherds give in marriage and take in marriage daughters from one another. Now, to all the other gods the Egyptians think right not to sacrifice swine, but to the Moon and Dionysus alone in the same time, at the same full moon, they sacrifice swine and eat of their meat. Wherefore they have abhorred swine during the other festivals, but during that one they sacrifice them, although an account about that is given by the Egyptians, yet to me, who know it, it is not becoming that the account should be given. This, however, is the manner of sacrificing the swine to the Moon practiced: whenever one makes a sacrifice, he then puts together the tip of the tail, the spleen and the caul and covers them over with all the animal’s soft fat that grows round the belly and thereafter burns that as an offering with fire; all the other parts they consume during whichever full moon they sacrifice the sacred victims, but during another day no longer would they taste of them. Their poor for their part because of lack of strong livelihood, after moulding dough sows and baking them, sacrifice them.

In Dionysus’ honor on the festival’s eve each cuts the throat of a porker before their doorway and gives the porker to any seller among the swineherds to take away. Then the Egyptians celebrate the rest of the festival of Dionysus, except for choruses, in almost entirely the same fashion as the Greeks, but instead of phalluses, other images have been invented by them, approximately a cubit long and drawn by strings, that the women carry round village by village, the pudendum of the images moving up and down, which is not a great deal smaller than the rest of the body --a flute leads in front and the women follow while they sing of Dionysus --and wherefore it has a larger pudendum and moves that alone of its body, there is a sacred account given about that.

Well now, Melampous, the son of Amytheon, seems to me not to be ignorant of that manner of sacrificing, but acquainted with it. For indeed for the Greeks Melampous is he who brought forward Dionysus’ name, the manner of sacrificing to him and the procession of the phallus, although he comprehended not all the account and brought it to light, but the wise men who came after him brought it out to light at greater length. Anyhow, the phallus sent in procession for Dionysus Melampous is he who brought it down and, having learned it from him, the Greeks do what they do. Now, I assert Melampous, proven a wise man, got the art of prophecy for himself and, having learned them by inquiry from Egypt, brought in many other things for the Greeks and those concerned with Dionysus with little change of them; for indeed I will not assert what’s done in Egypt for the god and what among the Greeks coincide at any rate, since that would have been brought up with the Greeks and not recently brought in. And moreover I will not assert that the Egyptians took from the Greeks either that or any other custom surely. Melampous especially seems to me to have learned by inquiry the matters concerning Dionysus from Cadmus the Tyrian and those who came with him from Phoenicia to the country now called Boeotia.

And almost all the gods’ names have gone from Egypt to Greece. For that they have come from the barbarians, I have learned by inquiry and found that it is thus; however, I think they especially have arrived from Egypt, since except for Poseidon and Dioscuri, as they have been said by me before, as well as Hera, Istia, Themis, the Charites and the Nereids, all the other gods’ names in the country on each and every occasion from of old have been the Egyptians’. I have said what the Egyptians themselves say. They, however, deny they knew the gods’ names from them and they seem to me to have been given their names by the Pelasgians, except Poseidon; of that god they learned by inquiry from the Libyans, in that none from the beginning have been in possession of Poseidon’s name except the Libyans and they have been honoring that god on each and every occasion. Anyhow, the Egyptians make common use of no heroes at all.

Now, those following other customs in addition to those preceding, which I will point out, the Greeks have from the Egyptians, but to render Hermes’ images with their pudenda erect they have learned not from the Egyptians, but from the Pelasgians. The Athenians were the first of all Greeks to take that over and out of their hands all the others. For by that very time of the Athenians, who were counted among the Greeks, did the Pelasgians become fellow colonists in the country, since they began to be considered Greeks and that man whoever has been initiated in the rituals of the Cabeiri that the Samothracians have been bringing to completion after taking them over from the Pelasgians, knows what I am saying, because the very Pelasgians who became fellow colonists of the Athenians were previously settled in Samothrace and from them the Samothracians took over their rituals. Therefore, to render for themselves with their pudenda erect the images of Hermes the Athenians were the first of the Greeks, after learning it from the Pelasgians. And the Pelasgians gave a sacred account about that, the details of which has been made clear in the mysteries in Samothrace.

The Pelasgians previously were performing all sacrifices while they called out to the gods in prayer, as I know, since I heard it in Dodona, but gave an epithet or proper name to none of them, since they had not yet heard any. But they did name them “theoi”, gods, after a thought like that following, that they had “the”d, placed, all things and all divisions in order and kept them so. Thereafter, when much time had gone past, they learned by inquiry the gods’ names that had come from Egypt and Dionysus’ far later they learned by inquiry; so after a time they consulted the oracle in Dodona about the names, because indeed that seat of prophecy is considered to be the most ancient of the oracles among the Greeks and was during that time the only one. Then, when the Pelasgians consulted the oracle in Dodona and asked whether they should take up the names that had gone forth from the barbarians, the seat of prophecy ordained they should use them. From that time they have been performing sacrifices and using the gods’ proper names. From the Pelasgians the Greeks received them later.

However, whence each of the gods came into being, whether all had been on each and every occasion and of what sorts they were in their looks, they knew not until yesterday or the day before, to exaggerate in speech, in that Hesiod and Homer, I think, prove four hundred years earlier than me in date and not more and they are the makers of the Greeks’ theogony both by giving epithets and distributing honors and skills to the gods and indicating their looks. The poets said to be born earlier than those men were born later, so far as it seems to me at least. Of the above accounts the Dodonian priestesses give the former and the latter that relate to Hesiod and Homer I give.




About oracles, that among the Greeks and that in Libya, the Egyptians give this account: the priests of Theban Zeus asserted that two women, priestesses, were led out from Thebes by Phoenicians, that one of them, they learned by inquiry, was sold to Libya and the other to the Greeks and that those women were they who first set up seats of prophecy in the said nations. And, when I had asked whence they knew and gave an account thus exactly, thereupon they asserted a great search was made by them for those women and they proved not able to discover them, but they learned by inquiry later those very things about them that I spoke of.

Now, that I heard from the priests in Thebes and this the prophetesses of the Dodonians say, that two black pigeons from Egyptian Thebes flew up and one of them came to Libya and the other to them; then she, sitting in a wild oak, made an utterance in human speech that there must be made right there a seat of Zeus’ prophecy and they assumed the instruction announced to them was divine and on the basis of that made it. The pigeon that had gone to the Libyans also, they say, bade the Libyans make an oracle of Ammon (that, too, then is Zeus’). So the priestesses of the Dodonians of whom the oldest’s name was Promeneia, the one after her’s Timarete and the youngest’s Nicandre, said that and all the others concerned with the shrine spoke similarly to them.

But I have this judgement about the preceding: if the Phoenicians truly brought away the sacred women and sold one of them to Libya and the other to Greece, that woman of that land that’s now Greece, the same that previously was called Pelasgia, seems to me to have been sold to the Thesprotians; thereafter, as a slave, right there to have set up under a grown wild oak Zeus’ shrine, as in fact it was reasonable for one who had been a servant in Thebes of Zeus’ shrine to remember that there, whither she had come. And from there she brought in an oracle, after she had comprehended the Greek tongue. She also seems to have asserted her sister had been sold by the same Phoenicians by whom she herself had been sold.

Moreover, the women seem to me to have been called pigeons by the Dodonians after this thinking, that they were barbarians and seemed to them to make sounds similar to birds, and they said the pigeon made an utterance in human speech, when after a time the woman gave voice to sounds intelligible to them, but as long as she spoke a barbarian language, like a bird she seemed to them to make sounds, since in what manner could a pigeon make an utterance in human speech? Further, by saying the pigeon had been black, they indicated that the woman had been Egyptian. The manner of prophesying in Egyptian Thebes and in Dodona are in fact pretty near to each other. Indeed the art of prophesying from sacred animals’ entrails has come from Egypt.




Now, of festival gatherings, processions and approaches to shrines the Egyptians are the first of human beings to have been the makers and from them the Greeks have learned. And here’s proof of mine for that: the one nation’s rites manifestly have been performed for a long time and the Greeks’ got performed only recently.

The Egyptians hold a festival gathering not once a year, but hold numerous festival gatherings, especially and most eagerly in the city of Boubastis in Artemis’ honor, secondly in the city of Bousiris in Isis’ honor, because indeed in that city is the largest shrine of Isis (that city is set up in Egypt in the middle of the Delta and Isis in the Greeks’ tongue is Demeter). Thirdly, in the city of Sais in Athena’s honor they have a festival gathering, fourthly in the City of the Sun in the Sun’s honor, fifthly in the city of Bouto in Leto’s honor and sixthly in the city of Papremis in Ares’ honor.

Now, when they convey themselves to the city of Boubastis, they act like this: indeed they sail, men together with women, and a large multitude of each in each barge; some of the women with clappers make a clapping sound and some men play the flute during the whole sailing, while the remaining women and men sing and clap their hands. And whenever in their sailing they come to be off any other city, they bring their barge near to the land and act like this: some of the women do the very thing of which I have spoken, some mock with shouts the women in the city, some dance and some stand up and pull up their clothes. That at every city by the river they do. And whenever they come to Boubastis, they observe a festival by celebrating with great sacrificings and more wine from the vine is used up in that festival than in all the year remaining. They come together regularly, whatever is a man or a woman, except young children, even up to seventy myriads, as the natives say.

That, then, in that way is done and in the city of Bousiris, that they celebrate the festival in Isis’ honor, has been previously said by me. For indeed they beat themselves after the sacrificing, all men and all women, very many myriads of human beings, and for whom they beat themselves is not holy for me to say. All those of the Carians who are settlers in Egypt, do still more than those in so far as they strike their foreheads with knives and by that it is clear that they are foreigners and not Egyptians.

In the city of Sais, whenever they are collected for the sacrificings, on a certain night all kindle many lamps in the open air round their houses in a circle. The lamps are saucers filled with salt and olive-oil and on top is the wick by itself and it burns all night; to the festival the name “lampkindling” has been given. And whoever of the Egyptians go not to that festival gathering, all on their own wait for the night of sacrificing and kindle their lamps; thus not in the city of Sais alone is there kindling, but also throughout all Egypt. Why that night gets as its lot light and honor, a sacred account is given about that.

To the City of the Sun and Bouto they go regularly and bring sacrificings alone to completion. In Papremis they perform sacrificings and sacred deeds just precisely as everywhere else, but at whichever time the sun comes to decline, a few of the priests are busy round the image and the greater number of them with clubs of wood stand in the shrine’s entrance, while others, bringing vows to completion, more than a thousand men, each with pieces of wood, they indeed stand gathered together on the other side. The image which is in a small gilded wooden shrine they convey out previously into another sacred building the day before. The few left round the image, then, draw a four-wheeled wagon that carries the temple and the image that is in the temple and the others, standing in the foregates, refuse to allow them to enter, while those under vows lend aid to the god and smite them when they fight back. Then a fierce battle with pieces of wood is waged and men have their heads smashed and, as I think, many even die from their wounds; the Egyptians, however, asserted no one dies. That festival gathering the natives assert they have customarily in consequence of the following: there dwelt in that shrine Ares’ mother and Ares, brought up abroad, came, fully become a man, and wished to commune with his mother; the attendants of his mother, seeing that they had not seen him before, would not allow him to go by, but tried to keep him away, but he, after taking with himself human beings from another city, treated the attendants harshly and went in to his mother. Because of that they assert they hold customarily in Ares’ honor that clubbing during the festival.

Of not having intercourse with women in shrines nor going unbathed from women into shrines they are the first to be observant, in that almost all the other human beings, except the Egyptians and the Greeks, have intercourse in shrines and go from women unbathed to a shrine, since they consider human beings are just precisely as all the other animals; for in fact they see all herd-animals and kinds of birds mounted for intercourse in the temples and in the precincts of the gods; if then that were not dear to the god, the animals too would not do it. Now, they give an explanation like that and do deeds unpleasing to me, whereas the Egyptians are excessively observant of all else concerning the sacred and, especially of, these things mentioned here.




Egypt, being a neighbor of Libya, is not very beast-filled, but all that are theirs are considered sacred, those brought up with them and those not. As to why they are set apart as sacred, if I should speak of it, I would get to in my account the gods’ affairs, which I am trying to flee from relating most. What I have said in touching on them, overtaken by necessity, I said. A law exists concerning the beasts that is as follows: caretakers of the upbringing of each group separately are appointed, both males and females among the Egyptians, among whom son from father inherits the honor, and those in the cities, each group, fulfil their vows as follows: they pray to whichever god the beast belongs, shave either their young children’s whole head or its half or a third part of their head, and weigh the hairs in a scale against silver; that amount whichever it comes to, one gives to the caretaker and she cuts up fish to its value and furnishes it as food for the beasts. An upbringing for them like that, then, has been shown forth and, whenever anyone kills one of those beasts, if willingly, the penalty is death, if unwillingly, he pays off whichever penalty the priests impose, but whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, whether willingly or unwillingly, it’s a necessity for him to be put to death.

Although many beasts are brought up with human beings, still far more would prove so, if calamities like the following were not befalling the cats: whenever the females bring forth, they no longer resort to the males and the males, seeking to have intercourse with them, are not able. Then thereupon they devise this wise course: on seizing and stealthily taking away the offspring from the females, they kill them, but after killing them, eat them not. So the females, bereaved of their offspring and desiring other, just then come to the males, because the beast’s a lover of offspring. And when a conflagration comes about, divine things befall the cats; for the Egyptians stand at intervals and keep guard over the cats, with no care to extinguishing what’s burning, while the cats slip between or leap over the human beings and jump into the fire. That coming about, great sorrow befalls the Egyptians. In whichever house a cat dies naturally, all who live therein shave their brows alone, whereas, at whichever a dog does, their whole body and head.

The cats are carried away on dying to sacred chambers, where they are buried mummified, in the city of Boubastis; the dogs, however, each group buries in their own city in sacred burial-places and in the same way as the dogs the ichneumons are buried. They carry away shrews and hawks to the city of Bouto and ibises to the city of Hermes. Bears, which are rare, and wolves, which are not a great deal larger than foxes, they bury right wherever they are found lying.

 
The crocodile’s nature is like this: the four wintriest months it eats nothing and it, being four-footed, is an inhabitant of dry land and of marsh; for it brings forth and hatches eggs on land and spends the greater part of the day on what’s moistureless and the whole night in the river, since indeed the water is hotter than the clear air and the dew. Of the mortal beings of which we know, it grows the largest after being the smallest, in that, although it brings forth eggs not much larger than those of geese and its young develop in proportion to the egg, yet it grows and comes to be even up to seventeen cubits and larger still. It has swine’s eyes and large teeth and tusks. Alone of beasts, it produces no tongue, nor moves its lower jaw, but it, also alone of beasts, brings its upper jaw to its lower. It has both strong claws and scaly, invulnerable skin on its back. It’s blind in water and most keen-sighted in the clear air. So indeed, seeing that it dwells in water, it carries a mouth entirely full of leeches on the inside; all the other birds and beasts, then, flee it, but the running-bird is at peace with it, seeing that it is benefited by him, in that, whenever the crocodile goes out of the water to the land and thereafter yawns --it is wont generally to do that to the west --then the running-bird slips into its mouth and swallows the leeches; then the other takes pleasure at being benefited and harms the running-bird not at all.

To some of the Egyptians, then, the crocodiles are sacred and to others not, but they treat them as if they are enemies. They, then, who are settled round Thebes and the lake of Moiris are of the opinion they are very sacred and each of the two groups bring up one crocodile from all, taught to be tame, by putting rings of melted stone and gold into their ears and bracelets round their forefeet, by giving them specially set aside food and sacred victims and by treating them as beautifully as possible while they are alive; when they are dead, they mummify and bury them in sacred burial-places. But they who are settled round the city of Elephantina even eat them, since they believe them not to be sacred. They are properly called not “crocodiles”, but “champsai”; yet the Ionians named them “crocodiles”, because they likened their looks to those crocodiles that come to be among them in fencing-walls.

Many ways of hunting them of all kinds are established; anyhow, of that which to me at least seems to be most worthy of relating I write. Whenever one puts a swine’s back as bait round a hook, he lets it go into the middle of the river and for his part, as he has a live pig on the lip of the river, he beats it. Then the crocodile overhears its cry and rushes after the cry; he comes upon the back and swallows it, while the men drag him along. Whenever he is dragged out onto land, first of all the hunter with mud then plasters over its eyes. Because he does that, he executes the remaining parts of the capture very easily, but if he does not do that, he does them with toil.

The hippopotamuses are sacred to the Papremisian district, but not sacred to all the other Egyptians. They have a nature of appearance like this: it is four-footed, cloven-hoofed; its hooves are a bull’s; it’s snub-nosed with a horse’s mane, with a display of tusks, of horse’s tail and voice; in size it’s as big as the largest bull. Its skin is something just so thick as for, when it becomes dry, spear-shafts to be made of it.

Otters too originate in the rivers, which they are of the opinion are sacred, and they consider also among the fish the so-called scaly to be sacred as well as the eel. Those of the Nile, they assert, are sacred and among the birds the foxgeese.

There is also another sacred bird, whose name is the Phoenix. I for my part did not see him except only in picture; for indeed he in fact resorts to them quite rarely, at intervals of five hundred years, as the inhabitants of the City of the Sun say. He resorts then, they assert, when his father dies. He is, if closely resembling his picture, of this size and of this kind: some of his feathers are of golden plumage and some red. In the highest degree he’s most similar in shape and his size to an eagle. He then, they say, contrives the following, although they make statements not credible to me: starting out from Arabia, he conveys his father, after plastering him in myrrh, to the shrine of the Sun and buries him in the Sun’s shrine and he conveys him thus: first he moulds as large an egg of myrrh as he is able to carry and afterward makes trial of carrying it; next, when he is done with making trial, just then after hollowing the egg, he puts his father into it and with other myrrh he plasters in that space at whichever point in the egg he made the hollow and puts in his father; finally, his father placed within, the object becomes the same weight and, after finishing the plastering in, he conveys him toward Egypt to the Sun’s shrine. That, they say, that bird does.

There are round Thebes sacred serpents, in no way harmful to human beings, that are small in size and have two horns grown at the top of their head, which serpents they bury at their death in Zeus’ shrine; for to that god those, they assert, are sacred.

There is a place in Arabia situated somewhere pretty nearly in line with the city of Bouto and to that spot I came in an attempt to learn by inquiry about the feathered serpents. And, on coming, I saw bones of serpents and spines, the former impossible to relate because of their multitude, while of the latter, the spines, were heaps, large, inferior in size and smaller still than that and they were many. That land, in which the spines are strewn, is something like this: it’s a pass from close mountains into a large plain and that plain joins with the Egyptian plain. There is an account that at spring feathered serpents fly from Arabia toward Egypt and the ibises, which are birds, meet them at the pass in that country and refuse to let the serpents by, but kill them. And the ibis on account of that action is honored greatly, say the Arabians, by the Egyptians and the Egyptians too agree that on account of that they honor those birds.

The look of the ibis is this: it’s terribly black all over, has crane’s legs and a face hooked to the highest degree and in size it’s as big as a crake. Of the black ones that fight with the serpents this’s the appearance, but of those clustered more at human being’s feet --for indeed two kinds off ibises exist --it’s this: it’s bald on its head and all of its throat, white in feathers except for head, neck, wing-tips and tip of rump (in respect to all those parts I just spoke of it is terribly black) and in legs and face resembling the other. The serpent’s shape is very like the water-snakes’; it has no feathered wings, but ones very pretty nearly resembling the wings of the bat. Let so much be said about sacred beasts.








Of the very Egyptians themselves, they that are settled round the Egypt that is sown practice remembering most of all human beings and are far the greatest spokesmen of those of whom I came to make trial. And they use a manner of living like this: they take purgatives three days in a row each month, since they hunt after health with vomitings and clysters, because they consider all illnesses of human beings to come about from the foods that provide nourishment. And indeed the Egyptians are actually the healthiest of all human beings after the Libyans because of their seasons, so far as it seems to me, in that their seasons undergo no alteration; for on the occasion of changes human beings’ illnesses come about most, changes in everything else and most especially the seasons. They eat loaves and make loaves of spelt, which they call by the name “cyllestis”. And wine made from barley they use, since no vines exist in their country. Of the fish some they dry in the sun and eat raw and some pickled in brine, while of the birds the quails, the ducks and the small young birds they eat raw after pickling them beforehand, but all the other remaining beings that are among them of the nature either of birds or fish, except however many are dedicated as sacred, they eat baked or boiled.

In the companies of the happy among them, whenever they are done with dinner, a man brings round a corpse made of wood in a coffin, an imitation wrought in the highest degree through both painting and carving, in size about one cubit long or two cubits long every way, and showing it to each of the symposiasts, says, “Looking at that, drink and enjoy yourself; for you will be, when dead, like that.” That they do at symposia and, observing their fathers’ laws, they acquire no other besides.

Theirs are other worthy usages and, what’s more, is one song, that of the very Linus who is famous in song in Phoenicia, in Cyprus and elsewhere and yet has a different name in each nation; the same, however, is like him whom the Greeks name Linus and sing of, so as for me to marvel at many other of the things that are in Egypt and moreover also that Linus, whence they took hold of him. Linus is called Maneros in Egyptian and the Egyptians said he had been born the only-begotten son of the first to become king of Egypt and on his untimely death was honored with those threnodies and that was the first and only song to be composed by them.

The Egyptians also resemble in this following other matter the Lacedaemonians alone of the Greeks: the younger of them, when they meet with their elders, yield the way and turn aside and, when they approach, stand up from their seat in deference. Yet in this following other matter they resemble none of the Greeks: instead of greeting each other in the ways they prostrate themselves by letting their arm down to their knee.

They dress in linen tunics tasselled round their legs that they call “calasiris”. On top on them white wool cloaks thrown over they wear. However, to the shrines at any rate no woolens are brought in nor are buried with them; for it’s not holy. And they agree in that with the practices that are called Orphic and Bacchic but are Egyptian and Pythagorean, because in fact for one that has a share in those rites it is not holy to be buried in wool cloaks. A sacred account is given about that.

Also the following other things have been found out by the Egyptians: each month and day, whose of the gods it is, and the day each was born, what he will fall in with and how he will meet with his end and what sort of a person he will be. Of those discoveries those of the Greeks who prove engaged in poetry make use. In short, more portents have been found out by them than by all the other human beings, since, when a portent comes about, they await, after they have written it down, the outcome and, if some time later one pretty near to that comes about, they consider it will come out in the same way.

The art of prophecy is arranged for them this way: the skill is assigned to none of the human beings, but to several of the gods, in that in the very place is a seat of prophecy of Heracles, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Ares and Zeus, and finally there is that which they hold in esteem most of all seats of prophecy, Leto’s in the city of Bouto. Yet their methods of prophecy are instituted not in the same way, but are different.

The art of medicine has been apportioned by them in this way: each physician is of one illness and no more. And everything is full of physicians; for some are established as physicians of the eyes, some of the head, some of the teeth, some of what concerns the belly and some of doubtful illnesses.

Their threnodies and burials are as follows: whenever a human being of whom there is any estimation departs from the house of any people, all the female kind of that house then plaster over their head with mud or maybe their face and thereafter leave the corpse in the house and by themselves, roaming throughout the city, beat themselves, while they have their clothes girt up and their breasts exposed and with them are all their female relatives. On the other side the men beat themselves, while they too have their clothes girt up. And whenever they do that, thus they convey the body to mummification.

There are some who are seated for that very purpose and have that as an art. They, whenever a corpse is conveyed to them, show the conveyers wooden models of corpses, imitations wrought with paint, and the most excellent of the methods of mummification, they assert, is one whose name I think not holy to name in a case like that present, and then they show the second method, inferior to the above and cheaper and the third, the cheapest. Finally, once they have pointed the methods out, they inquire of them in accordance with which do they want the corpse to be prepared for them. The latter, then, depart out of the way. The former, left behind in their chambers, perform the details of the most excellent mummification this way: first, with a twisted piece of iron through the nostrils they begin to draw out the brain; they draw out some of it thus and some by pouring in drugs; afterward on making a slit along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, they then take out all of the intestines and, when they have cleaned out and rinsed them with palm wine, again they rinse them with crushed kinds of incense. Thereafter they fill the belly with pure crushed myrrh, cassia and all the other kinds of incense, except frankincense, and sew it back together. Having done that, they mummify the body with carbonate of soda and inter it seventy days; in more than those it is not possible to effect mummification. And whenever the seventy go by, they bathe the corpse and wrap up all of its body with cut up bands of flaxen fine cloth, after smearing them underneath with gum, and it’s that which the Egyptians use for the most part instead of glue. Then the relatives take it up and have a wooden figure in human form made, after having it made, shut up the corpse within and, on shutting up the figure, thus store it in a burial chamber by standing it upright against a wall.

Thus they prepare the corpse in the most expensive way, but those that want what’s moderate and flee great expense they prepare this way: whenever they fill themselves syringes with oil produced from a cedar, then they fill up the corpse’s abdomen, without both cutting it open and taking out the belly and, after making an injection at the seat and keeping the clyster from the way back, they perform mummification the ordained days and on the last they let out of the abdomen the cedar-oil that they let in previously. It has so great a power that together with itself it draws out the belly and the innards that have been melted down; then carbonate of soda melts down the flesh and so there is left the corpse’s skin and bones alone. And whenever they do that, then they give back the corpse thus without any longer taking any trouble.

The third method of mummification is this following, which prepares those lacking strength in money: after rinsing the abdomen with a purgative, they perform mummification the seventy days and thereafter they then give back the body for men to take away with themselves.

The wives of eminent men, whenever they meet with their end, not immediately do they give for mummification nor all the women whoever are very much possessors of good looks and of more account, but whenever they come to be three or four days old, thus they give them over to those who mummify. They do that thus for this reason, that their mummifiers not have intercourse with the women. For they say one was caught having intercourse with the fresh corpse of a woman and his fellow-craftsman disclosed it.

Moreover whoever of either the Egyptians themselves or foreigners alike is seized by a crocodile or by the river itself and manifestly is dead, at whichever city he is brought ashore, there is every necessity, after their mummifying and wrapping him up as beautifully as possible, to bury him in sacred burial-places and it is not permitted for any other to touch him of either his relatives or friends, but the priests themselves of the Nile handle and bury him, just as if he were something more than a human being’s corpse.




Greek customs they flee from using and, to speak of everything together, even any other human beings’ customs. Now, all the other Egyptians are thus on guard against that, but there is Chemmis, a large city in the Theban district near Neapolis. In that city is Perseus the son of Danae’s square shrine and round it palms are grown. The gateways of the shrine are of stone and very tall and on top of them stand two statues of stone and tall. In that encircling structure is a temple and an image stands in it of Perseus. Those Chemmitians say Perseus often appeared to them throughout their land and often within the shrine, and then his sandal that had been worn used to be found, which was in its size two cubits long, and whenever it appeared, all Egypt thrived. That they say and they do the following Greek deeds for Perseus; they hold a gymnastic contest that goes through every kind of contestation and furnish as prizes cattle, cloaks and skins. And when I asked why Perseus was wont to put in appearances among them alone and why they were separated from all the other Egyptians in holding a gymnastic contest, they asserted Perseus originated from their city, in that Danaus and Lynceus, being Chemmitians, sailed to Greece. And they, in giving a genealogy from them, got up to Perseus. He then, having come to Egypt in accordance with a reason that the Greeks also say, to bring from Libya the Gorgon’s head, they asserted, went to them as well and recognized all his relations, because he had come to Egypt with thorough knowledge of the name of Chemmis, since he had learned it by inquiry from his mother; then they brought to completion a gymnastic contest in his honor at his bidding.

All that the Egyptians who are settled upstream of the marshes practice customarily. But indeed those who have their settlements in the marshes observe the same laws as all the other Egyptians, both in all the other respects and with one wife each of them cohabits, just as the Greeks, but for cheapness of food the following other discoveries have been made by them. Whenever the river becomes full and makes the plains open sea, there grow in the water many lilies, which the Egyptians call “lotus”. Whenever they pluck them, they dry them in the sun and thereafter that which comes from the middle of the lotus, which is resembling the poppy-head, they mill and make themselves of it loaves baked by fire. The root of that lotus too is edible and tastes moderately sweet, which is round, in size like an apple. There are also other lilies resembling roses and those are produced in the river, of which the fruit, most similar in looks to the wasps’ comb, is produced on another calix that grows at the side from the root; in that numerous eatables, approximately an olive pit’s size, grow and they are eaten both fresh and dried. Whenever the byblus that became a year old they uproot from the marshes, they cut off its upper parts and convert it to some other use, but the bottom that is left, approximately a cubit’s extent, they eat and sell. Whoever wants to use the byblus, when it’s very good, stews it in a covered earthen vessel and thus eats it. And some of them live off fish alone, which, whenever they catch them and remove their innards, they dry in the sun and thereafter, when they are dry consume.

The fish that swim in schools are not very much born in the rivers, but are brought up in the lakes and act like this: whenever an impulse goes into them to conceive, in schools they swim out to sea; then the males take the lead by spurting some of their milt, while the females, on following, gulp it down and conceive from it. And whenever they become pregnant in the sea, they swim back up, each to their abodes. However, the same no longer take the lead, but the leadership becomes the females’. And they take the lead in schools and do the very deed the males did; for they spurt out some of their eggs, little by little, their seeds, while the males swallow them, on following. And those seeds are fish and from the seeds that survive and are not swallowed the fish that are brought up come. Whoever of them are caught when they are swimming out to sea, are manifestly crushed on the left side of their heads and whoever when they swim back up, are crushed on the right side. And they suffer that on account of this: keeping close to the land on the left, they swim down to sea and, swimming back up, to the same, reversed, keep close, while they bring themselves near and touch as much as possible, just that they may not err on the way on account of the current. And whenever the Nile begins to be filled, the hollows of the land and the swamps by the river are the first places to begin to be made full of the water as it filters through from the river; indeed at once they become full and forthwith of small fish are made full all. Whence it’s reasonable for them to come, I seem to myself to understand that: the former year, whenever the Nile falls, the fish bring forth eggs in the slime at the time of the last of the water and depart; then, whenever, after time’s going round, the water goes back up, from those eggs right at once the fish are born. Indeed, concerning the fish it is thus.

For oil those of the Egyptians who are settled round the marshes use that from the castor-oil plant’s fruit, which the Egyptians call “kiki”, and make it this way: At the lips of the rivers and the lakes they sow those castor-oil plants that grow wild on their own among the Greeks; they, when they are sown in Egypt, bear many a fruit and a foul-smelling; it, whenever they make their collection, some chop up and bring together what flows out of it. It is fat and no less suitable for the lamp than olive-oil, but has a strong odor.

In view of the mosquitoes, which are abundant, the following is contrived by them. Those who are settled in the parts above the marshes towers benefit, into which they ascend and go to bed; for the mosquitoes because of the winds are not able to fly high. But by those who are settled round the marshes the following other things instead of towers have been contrived: every man of them possesses a net, with which in the day he catches fish, while during the night he makes this use of it: round that bed, in which he takes his rest he sets up the net and thereafter slips in under it and sleeps. The mosquitoes, if he sleeps with himself wrapped up in cloth or linen, sting through them, but through the mesh they make no attempt even to begin with.

The boats, indeed, for them who carry loads are made of acacia, whose shape is most similar to Cyrenian lotus, while its sap is gum; from that acacia, then, they chop themselves pieces of wood approximately two cubits long and like bricks put them together and build a ship in a manner like this: round compact and long pegs they fix the two cubits long pieces of wood and, whenever in that manner they build ships, stretch planks on top of them. And of ribs they make no use, but on the inside they then stuff the seams with byblus. Then they make one rudder and it is thrust through the keel and use a mast of acacia wood and sails of byblus. Those boats, although they are not able to sail up the river, if a keen wind prevails not, yet can be dragged by the side from the land, and they are conveyed down stream this way: there is a raft made of tamarisk, lashed on to a boat with a mat of reeds, and a pierced stone pretty nearly two talents in weight; one of them, the raft, tied by a rope before the boat, lets it go to be borne down and the stone, tied by another rope, is behind; the raft, then, as the stream rushes in, moves quickly and drags the barge --for indeed that is those boats’ name --and the stone, dragged behind in back and being at the bottom, keeps the sailing straight. And those boats of theirs are many in multitude and some carry many thousands of talents.

Whenever the Nile goes over the country, the cities alone manifestly project, somewhat pretty nearly the islands in the Aegean sea. For all the other parts of Egypt become open sea, but the cities alone project. Accordingly, men ferry round, whenever the above happens, no longer down the streams, but through the middle of the plain. For one sailing up to Memphis from Naucratis the sailing is then done along the pyramids themselves (yet it is not that usually, but rather along the Delta’s point and along the city of Cercasorus) and to Naucratis as you sail from the sea and Canobus through the plain, you will come by way of the city of Anthylla and that called Archandrus’.

Of those Anthylla, being a city to speak of, for shoes is given as a special honor to the king of Egypt’s wife. And that has been done for as long as Egypt has been under the Persians. The other city seems to me to have its name after Danaus’ son-in-law, Archandrus, the son of Phthius, the son of Achaeus, since indeed it is called Archandrus’ city. But he could be some other Archandrus; the name, however, is not Egyptian.




Until the foregoing my observation, judgement and inquiry has been giving the accounts there, but from here on I am going to say accounts, according as I heard, while something also of my observation will be added to them. Min who was the first to be king of Egypt, the priests said, in the first place banked off Memphis, in that the river in its entirety flowed to the sandy mountain toward Libya and Min, farther upstream, approximately a hundred stades from Memphis, after forming by a dam the bend toward the South, dried up the original channel and conducted the river by canal flow through the middle of the mountains --still even now by the Persians that bend of the Nile, that it may flow enclosed, is kept under great guards, since it is fenced every year, because, if the river will break forth and go over there, a danger exists for all Memphis to be washed over --and, when for that Min who was the first to become king, what was enclosed had become dry, on the one hand in it he founded that city which now is called Memphis --for in fact Memphis is in the narrow part of Egypt --and outside of it dug round a lake from the river toward the north and toward the west, since the Nile itself skirts the part toward the east, and on the other hand set up Hephaestus’ shrine in it, which is large and most worth relating.

After him the priests recounted from a roll three hundred thirty other kings’ names. And in so many generations of human beings eighteen were Ethiopians, one a native woman and all the rest Egyptian men. The woman’s name was the very that was the aforementioned Babylonian woman’s, Nitocris. She, they said, in revenge for her brother, whom the Egyptians had killed when he was their king and whose kingdom, after killing him thus, they had given over to her, in revenge for him destroyed many of the Egyptians with treachery; in that she, having had made a very tall underground building, handselled it in her speech, but in mind contrived other things; after calling those of the Egyptians who she knew were most jointly cause of the murder, she feasted these many and on them, as they banquetted, sent the river through along hidden conduit. About her they said only so much, except that she herself, after that had been worked out, threw them into a building full of ash, that she might go unavenged,

But since of all the other kings they spoke of no showing forth of actions, like any that is of brilliance, except that of the last of them, Moiris, and he showed forth as memorials Hephaestus’ foregates that are turned to the north wind’s direction, dug a lake, whose circumference is of as many stades as I will make clear later, and built pyramids on it, about whose size, together with the lake itself’s, I will make mention --he showed forth so much, but none of all the rest anything --passing by them, then, that man who became king after them, whose name was Sesostris, I will mention.

He, the priests said, first, setting off with long boats from the Arabian gulf, subjected those who had their settlements by the Red sea, until he, in sailing farther, came to a sea no longer navigable because of shallows. And when he had come back thence to Egypt, according to the priests’ report, he took hold of a large host and drove through the mainland and subjected every nation in his way. Now, with whomever of them he met that were valorous and strove terribly for freedom, for those he set up pillars in their countries that said in letters his own name, his fatherland’s and that by his own power he had subjected them, but whosever cities he took over without a fight and easily, for those he wrote on the pillars after the same fashion as for those of the nations who had proven manly and, what’s more, besides drew on a woman’s pudenda, because he wanted to make clear that they were invalorous.

Doing that, then, he went through the mainland, until, having crossed from Asia to Europe, he subjected the Scythians and the Thracians. And to them the Egyptian army seems to me to have come at its farthest. For in their country pillars manifestly are set up, but farther that they no longer. Thence, then, he turned round and went back and, when he had come to be by the Phasis river, I am not able to say exactly thereafter whether the king himself, Sesostris, divided off a part of his host of such and such a size and left them behind there as settlers of the country or some of the soldiers, vexed by his wandering, stayed behind round the Phasis river.

For the Colchians manifestly are Egyptians and I speak having myself perceived it before I heard it from others. And, when it had come to my attention, I asked both groups and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more than the Egyptians the Colchians. But the Egyptians asserted they considered the Colchians to be descended from Sesostris’ host. I myself guessed it not only because of this, that they are black-skinned and woolly-haired (that alone in fact amounts to nothing, because there are also others like that), but even more because of this fact, that the Colchians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians are the only ones of all human beings to have circumcised themselves their pudenda from the beginning. The Phoenicians and the Syrians in Palaestina themselves agree they have learned that from the Egyptians, while the Syrians round the Thermodon river and the Parthenius and the Macronians who are their neighbors assert they have learned it recently from the Colchians; the above are the only ones of human beings to circumcise themselves and they manifestly do after the same fashion as the Egyptians. But among the Egyptians themselves and the Ethiopians I am not able to say which learned the practice thoroughly from the other, since indeed it manifestly is something ancient. Yet that men learned it thoroughly through their intercourse with Egypt, the following in fact comes to be a great proof for me: however many of the Phoenicians have had intercourse with Greece, no longer imitate the Egyptians, but rather do not circumcise the pudenda of those born later.

Come now and let me make another statement about the Colchians, concerning how they are like the Egyptians; they and the Egyptians are the only ones to produce linen cloth in the same fashion and their whole way of life and tongue are resembling one another’s. Yet the Colchian linen is called Sardonian by the Greeks, whereas that which comes from Egypt is called Egyptian.

As to the pillars that the king of Egypt, Sesostris set up throughout the countries, the greater number no longer manifestly survive, but in Syrian Palaestina I myself saw they existed and the stated letters were on them as well as a woman’s pudenda. And there are also round Ionia two figures engraved in rocks of that man just spoken of, where men come from Ephesia to Phocia and where they do from Sardis to Smyrna. In each of the two places, then, a man is carved four cubits and a span in size, with a spear in his right hand and a bow and arrow in his left, and with all his other equipment likewise; for in fact he has that of Egypt and Ethiopia. Moreover, from his one shoulder to his other shoulder across his chest Egyptian hieratic letters extend that say this, “I acquired this land with my shoulders”, while who and whence he is, there is not clear, but elsewhere has been made clear. It’s that which several of those who beheld it guess is Memnon’s likeness and they have fallen far short of the truth.

Installment 12              
 Concerning that very Egyptian, Sesostris, as he was coming back and bringing back many human beings of the nations whose countries he had subjected, the priests said that, when he came to be, in his being conveyed back, in Pelousian Daphnae, that brother of his, to whom Sesostris had entrusted Egypt, called him to a friendly meal and in addition to him his sons and made a heap outside round his home with wood and, having made the heap, set it on fire and that, when he had learned of it, he at once took counsel with his wife, as in fact he had taken together with him his wife as well, and she advised him that he should have two of his sons who were six stretch over the pyre and bridge what was burning and they by walking on them should be brought to safety; that Sesostris did that and so two of his sons were consumed by fire in a manner like that and the remaining got brought away to safety together with their father.

Then Sesostris, having returned to Egypt and punished his brother, of that crowd that he had brought with him, whose countries he had subjected, made this use: the stones that had been conveyed for him in the time of his being king to Hephaestus’ shrine, which were very long in size, they were those who had dragged and all the trenches that now exist in Egypt they, compelled, dug; in short, unwillingly they made Egypt, which had been previously entirely suitable for horse and traversed by wagons, in need of those things. For from that time Egypt, which had been level, has become entirely horseless and wagonless and the trenches have become the cause of that, since they are many and have all kinds of turns. But the king cut up the country because of this: all those of the Egyptians who possessed their cities not on the river, but inland, whenever the river departed back, lacking water made use of drinks that were more brackish, as they made use of those from wells. Because of that, then, Egypt was cut up.

Then they said that king had distributed the country to all Egyptians by giving an equal square lot to each and from that he got his revenues by commanding them to pay a tax annually. But if the river took away any of anyone’s lot, he came to the king himself and indicated what had happened and he sent those who would inspect and measure out how much smaller the place had become, that in the future he might pay proportionally to the imposed tax. So geometry seems to me thence to have been discovered and have gone over into Greece. For the Greeks learned of the sundial, its pointer and the twelve parts of the day from the Babylonians.

Now the above mentioned was the only Egyptian king to rule Ethiopia and he left as memorials before the temple of Hephaestus stone statues, two of thirty cubits, of himself and his wife, and of his sons, who were four, each of twenty cubits. It was before them where the priests of Hephaestus a long time thereafter did not allow Darius the Persian to set up a statue and asserted no actions had been performed by him like the very that had by Sesostris the Egyptian, in that Sesostris had subjected no fewer other nations than he and, in particular, the Scythians, whereas Darius was not capable of taking the Scythians; accordingly it was not just for him to set anything up before that man’s offerings, as he had not excelled him in his actions. Now, Darius, they say, thereupon, gave a pardon.




When Sesostris had met with his end, they said his son, Pherus, succeeded to the kingdom, who showed forth no expedition, while it happened to him to become blind on account of a matter like this: when the river had gone down quite the most then, over eighteen cubits, after it had overflowed the fields, a breeze rushing in, the river became billowy. Then they say that king, with presumption, got hold of a spear and threw it into the midst of the river’s eddies and at once afterward he became sick and blind in his eyes, that ten years, then, he was blind and the eleventh year a prophecy came for him from the city of Bouto that the time of his punishment had run out and he would regain his sight by washing his eyes in the urine of any woman who had gone into her own husband alone and was without experience of other men, that he made trial first of his own wife and afterward, when he was not regaining his sight, made trial of all women consecutively and that, after regaining his sight, he brought together the women that he had made trial of, except her in whose urine he had washed and regained sight, into one city, which is now called Red Clod, and, having gathered them together into that city, set fire to all the women together with the city itself. So, having washed in that woman’s urine, he regained his sight and got himself her as a wife. As to offerings, because he had escaped the suffering of his eyes, he dedicated others to speak of throughout all the shrines and, what is most worth giving an account of, he dedicated works worth beholding in the Sun’s shrine, two stone obelisks, each being of one stone, each one hundred cubits in length and eight cubits in breadth.



To that man’s kingdom succeeded, they said, a man of Memphis, whose name in the Greek’s tongue was Proteus. His now is the precinct in Memphis, very beautiful and well adorned, situated in the direction of the south wind in relation to the temple of Hephaestus. Tyrian Phoenicians are settled round that precinct and the whole of that place is called The Tyrians’ Camp. And there is in the precinct of Proteus a shrine that is called foreign Aphrodite’s and I have concluded that shrine is Helen the daughter of Tyndareus’, both since I have heard the account how Helen dwelt in Proteus’ court and, especially, because it is named after foreign Aphrodite; for all the other shrines that are Aphrodite’s are in no way called after the foreign.

Moreover, the priests said to me, when I inquired about what concerned Helen that it happened this way: that Alexander, having seized Helen from Sparta, sailed off to his own land. Him then, after he had come to be in the Aegaean, driving winds tossed astray into the Egyptian sea and thence, since the breezes would not let up, he came to Egypt and in Egypt to the mouth of the Nile that is now called Canobian and to Taricheiae. And there was on the shore Heracles’ shrine, which exists even now, at which, if a household slave of any among human beings whatsoever takes refuge and impresses on himself sacred brands, while he gives himself to the god, it is not permitted to touch him. That law has continued to exist similarly up to my time from the beginning. So then from Alexander his servants rebelled, after learning by inquiry the law that pertained to the shrine, and, sitting as suppliants of the god, accused Alexander, because they wanted to harm him, by describing the whole account, how it was concerning Helen and the injustice committed against Menelaus; they made those accusations to the priests and the guard of that mouth, whose name was Thonis.

Then, having heard that, Thonis sent the quickest way into Memphis to Proteus a message that said this: “A foreigner has come, a Teucrian by race and one who has worked out an unholy action; for, having utterly deceived his own foreign friend’s wife, with that woman herself and very much property he has come, since he has been carried by winds to your land. Are we then to let him sail away unhurt or take away that with which he went?” Proteus thereupon sent a reply and said this: “That man, whosoever is the one who worked out unholy deeds against his own foreign friend, arrest and bring away to me, that I may know whatever he will actually say.”

Then, having heard that, Thonis arrested Alexander and detained his ships and afterward brought that man himself up to Memphis as well as Helen and the property and besides the suppliants too. Everything having been conveyed up, Proteus asked Alexander who he was and whence he sailed. And he both recounted to him his descent and spoke the name of his fatherland and, what’s more, related his sailing, whence he sailed. Afterward Proteus asked him whence he had gotten hold of Helen and, when Alexander wandered in his account and refused to speak the truth, they who had become suppliants refuted him by describing the whole account of the injustice. Indeed finally Proteus brought to light for them the following speech and said, “If I for my part were not believing worth much to kill none among all the foreigners that have by now been taken off by winds and come to my country, I would have punished you on the Greek’s behalf, you who, o worst of men, although you had obtained gifts of friendship, worked a most unholy action: to your own foreign friend’s wife you went in. And also that was not sufficient for you, but you gave wings to and were gone with her. And not even that alone was sufficient for you, but you also plundered the house of your foreign friend and have come. Therefore now, since I am of the belief not killing foreigners is worth much, although I will not give up that woman there and the property to you to bring away with yourself, but will guard them for the Greek stranger, until he himself should wish to come and bring them away with himself, yet you yourself and your fellow-sailors I proclaim within three days should change your anchorage from my land to some other and, if you do not, I will treat you as if you are enemies.”

Concerning Helen that, the priests said, proved her coming to Proteus and Homer too seems to me to have learned by inquiry that account, but, since it was not similarly becoming for composing epic as the very other that he used, he laid it aside, after making clear that he knew that account as well. For it’s clear, according as he added an episode in the Iliad --and no place else backed himself off --of the wandering of Alexander, how he was driven out of his course as he was bringing away Helen and that he wandered quite everywhere else and came to Sidon in Phoenicia. He has mentioned it in the passage on Diomedes’ excellence and gives his account in epic verse this way:

There were richly embroidered robes, works of women
Of Sidon, that godlike Alexander himself
Had brought from Sidon, by sailing on the broad sea,
A journey on which he’d brought back well-sired Helen.

And also has mentioned it in the Odyssey in these epic verses:

Of this kind the daughter of Zeus had cunning drugs
Good ones, that Thon’s wife Polydamna’d given her,
She of Egypt, where spelt-giving fields brings forth most
Drugs, many mixed for a good, many for a bane.

And Menelaus gives the following other account to Telemachus:

In Egypt me, eager to come hither, gods still
Held, since I offered them no perfect hecatombs.

In those epic verses it is clear that he knew of the wandering of Alexander to Egypt; for Syria borders Egypt and the Phoenicians, whose Sidon is, are settled in Syria.

Moreover, in accordance with those epic verses and this passage, not least but most, it is clear that the Cyprian epics are not Homer’s, but someone else’s, because in the Cyprian it is said that on the third day Alexander came from Sparta to Ilium in his bringing away Helen and experienced a fair-blowing breeze and a smooth sea, but in the Iliad it says that he wandered in bringing her away. Now, let Homer and the Cyprian epics go their way.

When I had asked the priests whether the Greeks in a foolish account said the affairs concerning Ilium happened not, they asserted thereupon the following and asserted they knew it by inquiries from Menelaus himself: that there went after Helen’s seizure to the Teucrian land a large host of Greeks that came to Menelaus’ rescue and, after going out onto land and being encamped, the host sent messengers to Ilium and with them went also Menelaus himself and that they, after they had entered the wall, demanded back Helen and the property that Alexander had stolen from him and was gone with, and demanded justice for the injustices, while the Teucrian gave the same account then and thereafter, both with oaths and without oaths, that they had not Helen nor the property that was imputed to them, but all that was in Egypt and they themselves would undergo punishments not justly in respect to what Proteus the Egyptian had. The Greeks, however, thinking they were being derided by them, just then made a siege, until they removed them, and when to them, after taking the wall, Helen did not appear, but they learned by inquiry the same account as the first, just then the Greeks put their faith in the first account and dispatched Menelaus himself to Proteus.

And Menelaus, on coming to Egypt and sailing up to Memphis, once he had spoken the truth about his affairs, both received numerous gifts of friendship and took back Helen without her having experienced evils and all his property besides. However, having obtained that, Menelaus proved an unjust man to the Egyptians; for contrary winds restrained him, as he was minded to sail off, and when it had been like that for a long time, he devised no holy matter, in that he took hold of two young children of native men and had them cut in pieces and afterward, once he had been detected in having performed that action, hated and pursued, he went fleeing with his ships straight to Libya. Thereafter where he still turned his steps, the Egyptians could not say, but they asserted something of that they knew by inquiries, while the other deeds, those that had been done among them, they knew and spoke of exactly.

The priests of the Egyptians said that and I myself assent to the account given about Helen, when I think on this, that if Helen had been in Ilium, she would have been given back to the Greeks whether Alexander was willing or unwilling. For indeed Priam was not of such damaged understanding nor all his other relatives that they wanted to endanger their own bodies, their offspring and their city, that Alexander might cohabit with Helen. And, let me tell you, if even in the early period of time they had decided that issue, when many of all the other Trojans, whenever they had joined battle with the Greeks, had been killed and for Priam himself there had been no point when two or three or even still more of his sons, while a battle had been waged, had not died, if we must make some use of the epic poets and speak, then, all that having turned out like the above described, I on my part suppose that even if Priam himself had cohabited with Helen, he would have given her back to the Achaeans, since then at least he would have likely been set free from the evils that were at hand. And further the kingdom would not devolve to Alexander so as, Priam being aged, for affairs to be in his power, but Hector, since he was older and more a man than he, was, at Priam’s death, to inherit it, for whom it was not fitting to permit his brother to keep committing injustice, and that when great evils occurred on account of him, privately for himself and for all the other Trojans. But in fact they could not give back Helen nor, although they spoke the truth, would the Greeks put their faith in them, because, as I on my part declare for my judgement, the divine arranged that, by perishing in utter ruin, they should make it evident for human beings that of great injustices great are also the revenges from the gods. And the preceding account has been said as it seems to me.




To Proteus’ kingdom Rhampsinitus succeeded, they said, who left as memorials the foregates turned to the west of the temple of Hephaestus and set up two statues opposite the foregates, being in their height twenty five cubits, of which the one standing toward the north the Egyptians call summer and the one toward the south winter. And that one that they call summer, they bow down to and treat well, while the one called winter they do the contrary of that. They said that great wealth of silver accrued to that king, whom none of the kings who were brought up later was able to surpass or come near and that he, wanting to store the riches in safety, built himself a stone building, one of whose walls extended to the outer side of his house, but his worker plotted and contrived the following: he prepared one of the stones to be removable from the wall easily either by two men or one. When the building had been brought to completion, the king stored his riches in it and, time going round, the builder, who was at the end of his life, called for his sons --for two were his --and related to those that in providing for them, that they might have unbegrudged livelihood, he had used art in building the king’s treasury, and when he had expounded everything to them distinctly about the removal of the stone, he gave its precise location and said that, by guarding it carefully, they would be paymasters of the king’s riches. Then they said that he came to the end of his life and his sons after no long space set to work and, on coming to the palace at night and finding out the stone in the structure, easily took it in hand and carried out for themselves much of the riches. Then when in fact the king had opened the building, he marvelled at seeing the vessels were wanting in their riches and knew not whom he should blame, as the seals were sound and the building shut. And, when for him, after he had opened it not only twice, but thrice, his riches manifestly were less on each and every occasion, because the thieves would not leave off plundering, he did this: he gave a command to work up snares and set them round the vessels in which his riches were. Then, the robbers came, just as in the time before, and one of them slipped inside and, when he had approached the jar, immediately was held in the snare and, after he had realized in what sort of evil he was, immediately called his brother, made clear to him what was at hand and bade him the quickest way slip inside and cut off his head, that he himself, seen and recognized for who he was, might not destroy besides him also. And the one seemed to the other to speak well and so the latter, persuaded, performed the above and, having fitted the stone in place, went off toward home with the head of his brother. When day had come, the king, on entering the building, was astonished at seeing the robber’s body was in the snare without its head, while the building was unharmed and had neither any place of entrance nor exit. Being at a loss, he did this: the robber’s corpse he hanged down from the wall and established guards over it and enjoined them that, whomever they saw weeping aloud or uttering lamentations, they should arrest and bring to him. Now, when the corpse was hanged up, the mother bore it terribly and, speaking to her surviving son, commanded him, in whatever manner he was able, to contrive that he would loose down and convey the body of his brother and, if he would have no care for that, she threatened that she would go to the king and disclose he had the riches. So, when the mother abused her surviving son harshly and, although he said many words to her, he could not persuade her, he devised something like this: having equipped asses and filled skins with wine, he put them on top of the asses and thereafter drove them and, when he was by those who guarded the hanging corpse, after drawing to himself two or three legs of the skins that were tied up, he loosened them and, as the wine was flowing, he struck himself on the head and let out loud shouts, as if he knew not to which of the asses he should turn first. Then the guards, when they had seen the wine was flowing in large quantities, ran together into the way with vessels and carried together what had poured out, as they thought it profit. But he abused them all furiously in a feigning of anger and, the guards consoling him, in time he feigned to grow mild and abated his anger and finally he drove his asses out of the way and equipped them. When more words arose and someone even had joked with him and brought him on to laughter, he gave them in addition one of the skins and they there, just as they were, having reclined back, intended to drink and took him along and bade him stay and drink with them. And when they were greeting him kindly on the occasion of their drinking, he gave them in addition another of the skins too and the guards, having imbibed lavishly, got very drunk and, overcome by sleep, went to bed on that very spot where they drank. Then he, when it was far into the night, loosed down his brother’s body and shaved all the guards’ right cheeks for an insult and, having put the corpse on top of the asses, drove toward home with the bringing to completion for his mother of what had been commanded. But the king, when the robber’s stealing away the corpse had been announced back to him, took it terribly and, wanting at all events to be found whoever he was who contrived that, they say he did the following, although it’s not credible to me: he had his own daughter sit in a brothel and enjoined her to welcome all men alike and, before she had intercourse, to make it necessary for each to tell her just what was the wisest action and the unholiest action that had been performed by him in his life and to arrest and not let go out him whoever related what had happened in the robber’s case. But, while the child was carrying out what had been commanded by her father, the robber, having learned by inquiry for what purpose those deeds were done, wanted to prove superior to the king by cunning and did this: he cut off the arm of a fresh dead body at the shoulder and he went with it under his cloak; on coming to the king’s daughter and being asked the same questions as all the others, he related that he had performed his unholiest action when he had cut off his brother’s head, after he had been caught by a snare in the king’s treasury, and his wisest where he had gotten the guards drunk and loosed down his brother’s corpse, when it was hanging; so, after she had heard, she laid hands on him, and the robber in the darkness stretched forth the corpse’s arm to her and she caught hold of and held it in the belief she grasped the arm of that man himself; then the robber surrendered it to her and was gone in flight through the doors. And when that news had been brought to the king, he was astonished at the cleverness and daring of the human being and finally sent round men to all his cities and had announced an offer of amnesty and a promise of great things for him, if he came into his sight. So the robber put his faith in and went to him and Rhampsinitus marvelled greatly and gave him that daughter to cohabit with, on the ground that he knew the most of human beings, in that the Egyptians had been judged to be first among all the others and he among the Egyptians.

After that they said that king went down alive, down to him who the Greeks usually say is Hades, and there played dice with Demeter; sometimes he prevailed over her and sometimes he was worsted by her; then he came back up with a gold cloth for wiping the hands as a gift from her. And following Rhampsinitus’ going down, when he had come back, then, they asserted, the Egyptians began to celebrate a festival, which I know they have been bringing to completion even to my time; yet whether they observe the festival on account of the foregoing I cannot say. The same day the priests completely weave a mantle and then bind up the eyes of one of them round with a turban; having brought him with the mantle on to a way that leads to Demeter’s, they themselves depart back and that priest, who is bound up round the eyes, they say, is led by two wolves to Demeter’s shrine, twenty stades distant from the city, and from the shrine the wolves lead him back again to the same place.

Now, let anyone make use of the accounts given by the Egyptians for whom their like are persuasive; for me, however, in every account it is laid down as a principle that I write on hearsay the accounts given by each group. The chief leaders of those below, the Egyptians say, are Demeter and Dionysus. Moreover, the Egyptians also are the first who said this account, that a human being’s soul is immortal and, when the body wastes away, it slips into another living being that is being born on each and every occasion; then, whenever it goes the round of all that’s on dry land, that’s in the sea and that has wings, it slips back into a human being’s body that is being born and it goes its round in three thousand years. Of that account there are those of the Greeks who made use, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own private, whose names I know and refuse to write.




Now, until King Rhampsinitus all good laws were in Egypt, they said, and Egypt flourished greatly, but after him Cheops became their king and drove them to all kinds of wickedness; for he first shut down all the shrines and kept them from sacrificings and afterward bade all Egyptians work for him; to some, indeed, it was shown forth that from the stone-quarries in the Arabian mountain, from those places, they should drag stones up to the Nile and, when the stones had been ferried across the river by boats, he appointed others to receive them and to the so-called Libyan mountain, to that place, to drag them --they worked in a group of ten myriads of human beings on each and every occasion, each party three months --and time passed for the population who were being worn down, ten years on the way along which they dragged the stones, which they had built and is a work not a great deal smaller than the pyramid, so far as it seems to me --its length is five stades, its breadth ten fathoms, its height, where it itself is its highest, eight fathoms and its stone is hewn and with carved on figures; both on that very road the ten years went by and on what’s on the crest on which the pyramids stand, the buildings underground, that he had built as burial-places for himself on an island by introducing a channel from the Nile, while, in the pyramid itself’s case, twenty years’ time went by in the making of it, whose each side in every direction is eight plethra, it being quadrangular, and equal in height and which is of stone hewn and fitted together in the highest degree. None of its stones are less than thirty feet.

That pyramid was made this way: like stairs, which several name “courses” and some “steps”; when they had first made it like that, they raised the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of wood; they raised a stone from the ground onto the first row of the stairs and, whenever the stone went up onto that row, it was put into another machine that stood on the first row and from that was dragged onto the second row on another machine, in that just as many as were the stairs’ rows, so many were the machines too, or maybe they changed the same machine’s place, since it was one and easy to move, to each row, that they might remove the stone; let it have been said in both ways by us, just as it is said. Anyhow, the uppermost parts of that pyramid were completed first and afterward they were completing the parts next to those and last they completed its parts on the ground and the lowest. There is indicated in Egyptian letters on the pyramid how much was used up for purgative, onions and garlic for the workers and, if I remember well what the interpreter, when he read, asserted to me, one thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent. If that, then, is what it was, how much else is it reasonable was consumed for the iron with which they worked and for the food and clothing of the workers, inasmuch as they built during the stated time, and the other time, as I think, in which they cut and carried the stones and worked on the excavation under the ground, was not short.

They also said that Cheops went to that degree of wickedness so that, when he needed money, he had his own daughter sit in a brothel and ordered her to exact such and such an amount of silver (for indeed they could not give an account of that), and she exacted what had been appointed by her father and also alone by herself intended to leave behind a memorial and so of each that went in to her she asked that he present to her one stone. And from those stones, they asserted, the pyramid was built that stands in the middle of the three, before the great pyramid, each front of which is one and a half plethra.

That Cheops was king, the Egyptians said, fifty years and, when he had met with his end, his brother, Chephren, succeeded to the kingdom; then he too constantly used the same manner as the other in all the other respects and in making a pyramid, although it attained not to the dimensions of that man’s; for we in fact measured that of Chephren and neither buildings are under its ground nor does a channel come from the Nile to it by flowing, just as to the other, whereas through a built conduit on the inside one flows round the island, on which they say Cheops himself is buried. Having built beneath the first course of many-colored Ethiopian stone, Chephren had his pyramid descend forty feet below the like size of the other and built it next to the great one. Both stand on the same crest that’s approximately one hundred feet high. Chephren was king, they said, fifty six years.

Those they count the one hundred six years, in which for the Egyptians there were all kinds of wickedness, and the shrines so long a time were shut down and not opened. Those men because of hatred the Egyptians do not very much wish to name, but even their pyramids they call the shepherd Philitis’, who during that time pastured flocks all over those places.




After that last-named Mycerinus became king of Egypt, they said, Cheops’ son, to whom the actions of his father were displeasing and who opened the shrines and let the population that was worn out to the extreme of misfortune go to work and sacrificing as well as decided their lawsuits the most justly of all kings. Now, because of that action of all who by then became kings of the Egyptians they praise him most; for in all the other respects he decided well and, in particular, to him who found fault in consequence of his sentence he offered from himself another and satisfied his desire. They further said for Mycerinus, who was mild to his fellow-citizens and pursued the above the first beginning of evils was the death of his daughter, who was the only offspring in his house. He, then, very pained at the thing that he had fallen on and wanting to bury his daughter somewhat more extravagantly than all the others, had a hollow wooden cow built and thereafter gilded it and buried that very daughter who had died in it inside.

Then that cow was not covered with earth; rather, it was visible still even in my time, where it was in the city of Sais, placed in the palace in an artfully wrought chamber; they burn incense of all kinds by it daily and during each night, all night, a lamp is lit nearby. Near that cow in another chamber the concubines of Mycerinus’ likeness stand, as the priests in the city of Sais said; for wooden colossuses stand there that are somewhere pretty near twenty in number and made naked; however, who they are, I am not able to say except what was said.

Yet some others say about that cow and the colossuses this account, that Mycerinus fell in love with his own daughter and thereafter had intercourse with her against her will; afterward they say that the child hanged herself because of distress, he buried her in that cow, and her mother cut off the arms of handmaids who had given over the daughter to her father, and that now the likenesses of those women have suffered the same as they had suffered alive. That they say and they blather, as I think, in respect to all the other things and, especially, those concerning the colossuses’ arms, because in respect to that then we in fact saw that through time’s agency they had lost their arms, which manifestly were at their feet still even in my time.

The cow everywhere else is covered over with red cloth, but shows its neck and its head made golden with an overlay of very thick gold, and between its horns a representation of the sun’s disc in gold is attached. The cow is not upright but lying on its knees and in size just as big as a large live cow. It is carried out from its chamber annually, whenever the Egyptians beat themselves for the god that is not named by me in the case of a matter like that preceding. At that time, then, they in fact carry out the cow to daylight, since indeed, they assert, she asked of her father, Mycerinus, when she was dying, that once in the year she should observe the sun.

 
 Installment 13            
 After his daughter’s suffering, next to that king happened the following: a prophesy went to him from the city of Bouto, that he was six years only to live and the seventh to meet with his end. Then he, thinking it terrible, sent to the seat of prophecy a reproach and in reply found fault that his father and father’s brother, although they had shut down the shrines and not only were not remembering gods, but were also destroying human beings, lived for a long time, while he himself, although he was pious, was so quickly to meet with his end. And from the oracle to him went a second message that said because of those actions of his he actually shortened his very life, since he did not do what he should do, in that Egypt had to be treated badly for one hundred fifty years and those two who had become kings before him learned that, but he did not. Having heard that, Mycerinus, on the ground that sentence was by then pronounced against him, had many lamps made and, whenever night came, having kindled them, he drank and enjoyed himself, without letting up either day or night, as he wandered to the marshes and the groves and wherever he learned by inquiry were the most suitable places of amusement. And he contrived that, that, because he wished to demonstrate the prophecy was lying, for him twelve years might pass instead of six years, the nights being made days.

He too left behind a pyramid, far smaller than his father’s, each front twenty feet short of three plethra, since it is quadrangular, and half made of Ethiopian stone, and it’s that which several of the Greeks assert is Rhodopis the courtesan’s, although they speak incorrectly; they accordingly appear to me to speak without even knowing who Rhodopis was, in that they would not have attributed to her the building of a pyramid like that, on which countless thousands of talents, to exaggerate in speech, are used, and, besides, that in the time when Amasis was king, Rhodopis was at her prime, but not in that man’s time; for very many years later than those kings who left behind those pyramids Rhodopis existed, who was by birth from Thrace, a slave of Iadmon the son of Hephaestopolis, a Samian man and a fellow-slave of Aesop the composer of tales. For in fact he became Iadmon’s, as is plain not least in the following: when, the Delphians making proclamation often on the basis of a divine utterance for one who wanted to accept blood-money for the life of Aesop, no one else appeared, but a son of Iadmon’s son, another Iadmon, accepted it, thus indeed Aesop proved Iadmon’s.

Now, Rhodopis came to Egypt at Xanthes the Samian’s conveying her and, on coming for business, was purchased to go free for much money by a Mytilenian man, Charaxus, the son of Scamandronymus and brother of Sappho the lyric poetess. So thus Rhodopis was freed and she stayed behind in Egypt and, having become very charming, acquired much money, considering she was Rhodopis, but not so as, at any rate, to be enough for a pyramid like that. For to her, the tithe of whose money it is possible to see still even at this time for everyone who wants, one must not at all attribute that much money, as Rhodopis conceived a desire to leave behind a memorial of herself in Greece, to have made that work that was in fact not found out and dedicated in a shrine by another and dedicate it at Delphi as her monument and accordingly, with the tithe of her money she had made many iron spits to pierce oxen, in so far as her tithe allowed, and to Delphi sent them away, which still even now are piled together behind the altar that the Chians dedicated and opposite the temple itself. So, courtesans in Naucratis love, it seems, to make themselves charming; for on the one hand, she, about whom the present account is given, became somewhat so very renowned that all the Greeks learned well Rhodopis’ name and, on the other, after her, whose name was Archidice, became celebrated in song, but less talked of all around than that other. When Charaxus had purchased Rhodopis’ freedom and returned home to Mytilene, Sappho mocked him often in a lyric poem. Now, about Rhodopis I am done speaking.




After Mycerinus the priests said that Asychis became king of Egypt, who had had made the foregates for Hephaestus at the sun’s rising that are far the most beautiful and far the largest, in that, although all the foregates have carved on figures and other numberless sights in their structures, yet those have much the most. In the time when he was king they said that, there being a lack of money circulation, a law was made for the Egyptians that one should point to the corpse of one’s father as security and then receive one’s loan, and further added to that law was this, that the offerer of the loan should also have power over the whole tomb of the recipient and upon the pledger of that security should be the following penalty, if he wanted to not give back the loan, that neither should it be permitted to him himself, when he meets with his end, to obtain burial, neither in that burial-place of his fathers nor in any other, nor to bury any other departed of his own. Moreover, that king, wanting to excel those that had become kings of Egypt before him, left a pyramid as a monument that he had had made of bricks, on which are letters engraved in stone that say this: “Despise me not compared with the stone pyramids, because I surpass them so much as Zeus all the other gods. For by pushing down with a pole into a lake and collecting out of the mud that whichever stuck to the pole, they drew bricks and in a manner like that completed me.” That man showed forth so much.




After him, a blind man from the city of Anysis became king, whose name was Anysis. In the time when he was king there drove against Egypt with a large band the Ethiopians’ king. That blind man, then, went fleeing to the marshes and the Ethiopian was king of Egypt for fifty years, in which he showed forth this: whenever any of the Egyptians committed any offense, he wished to kill none of them, but he judged each in proportion to his injustice’s magnitude and commanded them to heap mounds nearby their own city, whence each of those who acted unjustly were. And thus the cities became higher still. For first they were heaped up by those who dug the channels in the time of King Sesostris and next in the time of the Ethiopian, and they became very high. Although other cities in Egypt also became high, the city in Boubastis, as I think, was mounded up most, in which is a shrine of Boubastis most worth relating too, in that, although other larger and much more expensive shrines exist, yet it’s a pleasure to see none more than that.

Now, Boubastis in the Greek tongue is Artemis and her shrine is as follows: except for the entrance all the rest of it is island, since from the Nile channels lead without joining together, but each one leads as far as the shrine’s entrance and one flows here and one there, each being in breadth a hundred feet and shaded over with trees. Its foregates are ten fathoms in height and adorned with figures of six cubits worth speaking of. Being in the middle of the city, the shrine is observed from all sides by one who goes round, because, seeing that the city is mounded up on high and the shrine has not experienced change in the way that it originally was made, it is overlooked. Round it runs a fencing wall carved on with figures and within is a grove of very large trees planted round a large temple and it’s in that the image is. The shrine’s breadth and length is every way a stade. At the entrance, then, is a paved way of stone somewhere pretty nearly three stades long that leads through the public square to what’s in the east’s direction and in breadth is about four plethra --here and there on the way trees are grown high as the sky --and it leads to Hermes’ shrine. That shrine, then, is thus.

The end of the Ethiopian’s departure, they said, happened this way: having seen a vision like this following, he went fleeing: it seemed to him that a man hovered over and advised him to collect the priests in Egypt and cut them all through the middle. For, on seeing that vision, he said that it seemed to him that the gods showed it before his eyes as a pretext, that he might commit impiety against the sacred and so receive some evil from gods or from human beings; since however, he would not do that, indeed then for him all the time had run out whichever it had been given in an oracle he would rule Egypt and then go out. For, when he was in Ethiopia, the seats of prophecy that the Ethiopians use answered him that he had to be king of Egypt fifty years. Therefore, as that time was running out and the vision of his dream in addition was disturbing him, Sabacus willingly departed from Egypt.

When lo! the Ethiopian was gone from Egypt, the blind one ruled again on coming from the marshes, where fifty years, after mounding up an island with dust and earth, he was settled; for, whenever those of the Egyptians resorted to him with food in the way that had been commanded to each unknown to the Ethiopian, he bade them also to convey dust for a present. That island no one before Amyrtaeus could find out, but for more than seven hundred years those who became kings before Amyrtaeus were not able to discover it. That island’s name is Elbo and in size it is every way ten stades.




After him Hephaestus’ priest, whose name was Sethus, became king, who held of no account and abused the Egyptian warriors, as if he would not at all need them; indeed he did other dishonors to them and robbed them of their fields, to whom in the time of the earlier kings twelve choice fields each had been given. Afterward against Egypt Sanacharibus, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, drove a large army; since indeed however the warriors of the Egyptians refused to come to the rescue, then the priest, brought to straits, entered into the hall and bitterly lamented before the image the kind of misfortune that he was in danger of suffering. While he was wailing, lo! sleep fell over him and it seemed to him in his vision the god hovered over and encouraged him that he would suffer nothing unagreeable in meeting the Arabian’s army, because he himself would send him helpers. Trusting in that very dream, he took up whoever of the Egyptians wanted to follow him and encamped in Pelousium (for there are the approaches), and none of the men who were warriors followed him, but retailers, masters of handicrafts and human beings whose business is in the public square. Thereupon over the enemy, on there coming, streamed at night field mice and ate their quivers up and their bows up and besides their shields’ handles, so as the next day, as they fled unarmed, for many to fall. And now that king stands in the shrine of Hephaestus in stone, with a mouse in his hand, and says through letters this: “Let someone look at me and be pious.”




To so advanced a point in the account the Egyptians and their priests spoke and thereby demonstrated that from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus who had been king last three hundred forty one generations of men had passed and in them so many men of the parties of both high priests and kings had lived. Now, three hundred generations of men are equal to ten thousand years; for three generations of men are one hundred years. And hence in the forty one still remaining generations that were additional to the three hundred are a thousand and three hundred forty years. Thus in ten thousand years and besides a thousand three hundred forty they said no god in human form came to be and moreover neither before nor later among those left that became kings of Egypt did they speak of anything like that. Then in that time on four occasions they said that the sun rose up out of its customary dwelling; that where now it sinks down, thence twice it rose up rather and from where now it rises up, there twice it sank down, and nothing of what’s all over Egypt in those days became another in kind, neither what was produced for them from the earth nor what from the river, neither illnesses and their effects nor matters concerning death.

Previously for Hecataeus the composer of tales who had genealogized himself and traced his descent by his father’s side from a god in the sixteenth generation the priests of Zeus had done something like they did for me too who had not genealogized myself; they brought me within the hall that was large and counted up as they showed the same number of wooden colossuses as I have spoken of; for each high-priest in that place sets in his own lifetime a likeness of himself. So then, while they counted and showed them, the priests showed forth to me that each of them was the son of a father, and they went from the most recently dead’s likeness through all until they showed forth them all. For Hecataeus, moreover, who had genealogized himself and traced his descent to a god in the sixteenth generation they genealogized in answer on top of their counting in that they refused to accept from him that a human being had been born from a god, and genealogized in answer this way: they asserted each of the colossuses was a “piromis” born from a “piromis”, until they showed forth three hundred forty five colossuses and traced them back neither to a god nor to a hero. “Piromis” in the Greek tongue is “a beautiful and good man”.

Well now, they whose the likenesses were, they showed forth, were all like that and far removed from gods, but earlier than those men the rulers in Egypt were gods settled with human beings and one of them on each and every occasion was the lord, and Orus, the son of Osiris, was the last to be king there, whom the Greeks name Apollo; he put down Typhon and was the last god to be king of Egypt. Osiris is Dionysus in the Greek tongue.

Now, among the Greeks Heracles, Dionysus and Pan are considered to be the youngest of the gods, while in the Egyptians’ land Pan is considered the most ancient in fact of the eight said to be the first gods, Heracles one of those said to be the second ones, the twelve, and Dionysus one of the third ones who came into being after the twelve. Since Heracles, then, all the years that the Egyptians themselves assert have passed to King Amasis’ time have been made clear by me formerly, while since Pan still more than those are said to have passed and since Dionysus the fewest, fewer than those above mentioned and since him fifteen thousand they compute have passed to King Amasis’ time. The Egyptians assert they know that exactly, because they have computed on each and every occasion and have written down on each and every occasion the years. Now, since the Dionysus who is said to have been born of Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, pretty nearly about a thousand years have passed to my time, since the Heracles born of Alcmene about nine hundred and since the Pan born of Penelope (for Pan is said by the Greeks to have been born of her and Hermes) fewer years have passed than those since the events at Troy, pretty nearly about eight hundred to my time.

Accordingly, of both the above accounts it is possible to use that which, when it is given, one will be more persuaded by, but by me, anyhow, my judgement about them has been shown forth. For if those gods had become visible and grown old in Greece, just as the Heracles born of Amphitryon and, particularly, the Dionysus born of Semele and the Pan of Penelope, someone would have said that these others were born men and had the names of those gods born before them, but, as it is, concerning Dionysus the Greeks say that, as soon as he had been born, Zeus sewed him up in his thigh and carried him to Nysa that is in Ethiopia inland of Egypt, and further about Pan they are not able to say whither he turned his steps after he had been born. Hence it has become clear to me that the Greeks learned by inquiry their names later than those of all the other gods. So from that time since they learned them by inquiry, they have genealogized their birth.




Now, the Egyptians by themselves say the above and hereafter I will point out all those things that all the other human beings and the Egyptians in agreement with all the others say happened throughout that country, while something also of my observation will be added to them. When the Egyptians had become free after Hephaestus’ priest’s reign, as they were able to live without a king no time, they set twelve kings over themselves, once they had divided all Egypt into twelve parts. They intermarried and reigned with the observation of the following laws: neither they should put down each other nor one seek to have any advantage over another; in short, they should be friends in the highest degree. They made and firmly maintained those laws for this reason: an oracle had been given them in the beginning, as soon as they had been set up in their tyrannies, that he among them who poured libations from a bronze bowl in Hephaestus’ shrine would be king of all Egypt; for indeed they had collected at all shrines.

And so it was decided by them to leave behind memorials jointly and, it being decided by them, they made a labyrinth a little inland of Moiris’ lake, situated somewhere pretty nearly in a line with the so-called City of Crocodiles, which I have seen by now is greater of account. For if anyone should add together the walls from the Greeks and what’s shown forth of their works, they would manifestly be the product of less labor and cost than that labyrinth. And yet both the temple in Ephesus and that in Samos are worthy of account. Now, even as the pyramids were greater of account and each of them equivalent to many great Greek works, the labyrinth indeed excelled the pyramids too. For its are twelve roofed courts with gates opposite each other, six turned toward the north, six toward the south, and they’re contiguous; the same wall on the outside encloses them. Rooms with two stories are in them, one set of stories underground and one above ground on top of it, three thousand rooms in number, each set of stories composed of fifteen hundred rooms. Now, those of the rooms above ground we ourselves saw when we went through and ourselves, having beheld them, speak of them, but those of them underground we have learned of through spoken inquiries. For those of the Egyptians who were in charge refused in any way to show them and asserted that in those stories were the burial-places of the kings that had built that labyrinth at the beginning and of the sacred crocodiles. Thus we speak having taken over reports about the rooms below on hearsay, but we ourselves saw those above were larger than human works; for the exits through the chambers and the windings through the courts, being most intricate, furnish infinite marvels for those going through from a court to the rooms and from the rooms to colonnades, into other chambers from the colonnades and into other courts from the rooms. The roof of all those structures is stone just as the walls, the walls are full of carved on images and each court is surrounded by pillars of white stone fitted together in the highest degree. Next to the corner of the labyrinth, where it ends, is a pyramid forty fathoms high, on which large figures have been carved; a way to it under the ground has been made.

Than that labyrinth, although it is like the above, the so-called lake of Moiris furnishes a still greater marvel, alongside which that labyrinth is built, the perimeter of whose circumference is three thousand six hundred stades, its ropes being sixty, equal in length to the part of Egypt itself alongside the sea. The lake is situated lengthwise toward the north and south and is in depth, where it itself is its deepest, fifty fathoms and that it is made by hand and dug, it itself makes clear. For in somewhere pretty near the lake’s middle stand two pyramids that project fifty fathoms above the water and their other part beneath the water is built so high, and on both is a stone colossus sitting on a throne. Thus the pyramids are a hundred fathoms and the hundred fathoms are exactly a stade, which measures six plethra, the fathom measuring six feet or four cubits, as the feet are four hands’ breadth and the cubit six hands’ breadth. The water in the lake is not original to the place, as indeed the land there is terribly waterless, but from the Nile along a channel is brought in, and six months it flows inward into the lake and six months outward into the Nile again. And whenever it flows forth outward, the lake then the six months pays to the royal treasury in the course of each day a talent of silver from the fish and, whenever the water goes into it, twenty minae.

The natives said also that that lake, turned to what’s toward the west inland alongside the mountain over Memphis, disembogues into Syrtis in Libya under the ground. But since I could not see that the pile of earth of that excavation was anywhere, because indeed it was a care to me, I asked those settled nearest the lake where the pile of earth that had been dug out was and they pointed out to me where it had been carried away and persuaded me easily; for I knew by speech that also in Ninus, the Assyrians’ city, something else like that had been done: thieves had in mind to carry away the wealth of Sardanapallus, Ninus’ king which was great and guarded in underground treasuries. Accordingly, beginning from their own house, the thieves made an estimate and dug under the ground to the royal palace and the pile of earth that was carried away from the excavation, whenever night came, they carried away to the Tigris river that flows by Ninus until they worked out whatever they wanted. Something else like that I heard also happened concerning the excavation of the lake in Egypt, except that it was done not by night but in the day, in that the Egyptians dug and carried the pile of earth to the Nile and it took up and was to disperse the pile. Now, that lake is said to be so dug.

As to the twelve kings who observed justice, in time when they had sacrificed in Hephaestus’ shrine, at the last part of the festival, as they were to pour libations, the high-priest brought them out gold bowls, the very with which they were wont to pour libations, and making a mistake in their number, brought eleven, although they were twelve. Then since the one of them who stood last, Psammetichus, had no bowl, after taking off his helmet that was bronze, he held it out and poured libations. As all the other kings both wore and in fact then had helmets, Psammetichus now with no deceitful intent held out his helmet, but the others, after grasping with their understanding what had been done by Psammetichus and the oracle that had been given them, that he among them who poured libations with a bronze bowl would alone be king of Egypt, mindful of the oracular response, thought it just not to kill Psammetichus, when they found out by putting him to the touchstone he had acted with no forethought, but it seemed best to them for them to banish him to the marshes and strip him of most of his power and for him to have his dwelling in the marshes and have no intercourse with the rest of Egypt.

That Psammetichus previously went into exile from the Ethiopian, Sabacus, who had killed his father, Necus --he went into exile then to Syria --and when the Ethiopian had departed in consequence of the vision of his dream, those of the Egyptians who are from the district of Sais brought him back; then afterward, when he was king, a second time at the hands of the eleven kings it befell him on account of the helmet to go into exile to the marshes. Therefore, knowing that he had been treated very insolently at their hands, he had in mind to punish his banishers. So to him, after he had sent to the city of Bouto, right where is the Egyptians’ most undeceitful seat of prophecy, came an oracular response that vengeance would be at hand from the sea when bronze men made an appearance. And although in him indeed a great disbelief was secretly spread that bronze men would be at hand for him as allies, yet, when not much time had passed, necessity overtook Ionian and Carian men, after they had sailed out for booty, to be carried away to Egypt, and when they had stepped out onto land and were armed with bronze, one of the Egyptians announced, on coming in to the marshes to Psammetichus, on the ground that he had not previously seen men armed with bronze, that bronze men had come from the sea and despoiled the plain. He then, having learned the oracle was being brought to completion, was friendly to the Ionians and Carians and, by promising them great things, tried to persuade them to come together with him and, when he had persuaded them, thus with the Egyptians who wanted to and the allies he put down the kings.

Having gained mastery of all Egypt, Psammetichus had the foregates made for Hephaestus in Memphis that are turned to the south wind and had a court for Apis built, in which Apis is kept whenever he appears, in front of the foregates, that is entirely surrounded by a colonnade and full of figures; moreover, instead of pillars, colossuses twelve cubits high are placed under the court. Apis in the Greeks’ tongue is Epaphus.

And to the Ionians and the Carians who had collaborated with him, Psammetichus gave places to be settled in opposite each other, the Nile occupying the space between, to which was given the name of Camps. Those places indeed he gave them and paid all the other things that he had promised. And in particular he deposited with them Egyptian children to be taught the Greek tongue and from them who learned the tongue thoroughly the present interpreters in Egypt have originated. So the Ionians and the Carians were settled in those places for much time and those places are toward the sea a little below the city of Boubastis by the so-called Pelousian mouth of the Nile. King Amasis a time later expelled them indeed from there and settled them down in Memphis and so made a guard for himself against the Egyptians. With those settled in Egypt, we the Greeks then, after having intercourse with them, knew exactly all that happened in Egypt at the beginning from King Psammetichus and what later; for those were the first of another tongue to be settled down in Egypt. And in those very places from which they had been expelled the slipways of their ships and the ruins of their buildings were in existence up to my time. Now, Psammetichus got hold of Egypt thus.




I have mentioned the oracle in Egypt many times by now and so I will give an account about it on the ground that it is worthy. That oracle is sacred to Leto and set up in a large city by the so-called Sebennytian mouth of the Nile for one sailing upstream, up from the sea. And Bouto’s the name of that city where the oracle is, as it has been named by me before too. There is a shrine in that Bouto of Apollo and Artemis and the temple of Leto, the very in which the oracle is, itself is in fact large and has foregates of ten fathoms in height. What among the visible was furnishing me the greatest marvel I will point out. In that precinct is Leto’s temple, made out of one stone in height and in length and each wall’s equal in those respects; of forty cubits is each of those dimensions. And as the covering down on the roof another stone lies on top with its eaves of four cubits.

Now, thus the temple of the things visible to me in that shrine is most marvellous and of the second rank things the island that is called Chemmis. It is situated in a deep and broad lake by the shrine in Bouto and that island is said by the Egyptians to be floating. I myself for my part saw it neither floating nor moving and marvel on hearing that it is truly a floating island. Anyhow, on that is a large shrine of Apollo and three altars are erected, while there grow on it numerous palms and many other trees, both fruit-bearing and barren. And, by saying an account as follows in explanation, the Egyptians assert it is floating, that on that island that was not previously floating Leto, who was of the eight gods who were the first to come into being and was settled in the city of Bouto, right where that oracle of hers is, after she had received Apollo as a deposit from Isis, brought him through to safety by concealing him in the island that is now spoken of as floating, when Typhon searched and went over everything, since he wished to seek out Osiris' child. Apollo and Artemis, they say, are Dionysus and Isis' children and Leto became their nurse and savior. In Egyptian Apollo's Orus, Demeter Isis and Artemis Boubastis. So, from that account and no other, Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion, seized what I will point out, quite alone of those born earlier; for he made Artemis be Demeter's daughter. The island, then, on account of that came to be floating. That account thus they give.




Psammetichus was king of Egypt fifty-four years, of which the thirty but one Azotus in Syria, a large city, he sat down against and besieged, until he removed it, and that Azotus of all cities for the longest time, while it was being besieged, held out, of those that we know of.

Of Psammetichus was born a son, Necos, and he became king of Egypt, he who was the first to set his hand to the trench that leads to the Red sea, which Darius the Persian dug through a second time. In its length it's a sailing of four days and in breadth it was dug so as for two triremes to sail together as they are being rowed. Its water is led from the Nile to it and is led a little upstream of the city of Boubastis alongside Patoumus, the Arabian city, and it extends to the Red sea. There was dug first the parts of the Egyptian plain that extend to Arabia and next to them upstream of the plain is the mountain that stretches by Memphis, in which the stone-quarries are. It is alongside that mountain's foothills, indeed, that the trench is led from the west lengthwise to the east and thereafter stretches into chasms, as it leads from the mountain to the south and the south wind into the Arabian gulf. And where is the the smallest and shortest way from the north sea to cross over to the south and that same that is called the Red, from Mount Casium that forms the border between Egypt and Syria, from there are exactly a thousand stades to the Arabian gulf. That is the shortest way, but the trench is as much longer as it is more twisted, by the digging of which in King Necos' time twelve myriads of Egyptians perished. Now, Necos ceased from digging in the middle, when a prophecy like the following had come to be in his way, that he was working for the barbarian. The Egyptians call all of a tongue not similar to theirs barbarians.
 
Then, after he had ceased from the trench, Necos turned to expeditions and triremes were made, some by the north sea, some in the Arabian gulf by the Red sea, whose slipways are still visible. And those he used in time of his need and the Syrians on foot Necos encountered in Magdolus and prevailed over and after the battle he took Cadytis, a city in Syria that was large. And the clothing, in which he in fact had worked that out, he dedicated to Apollo by sending it to the Branchidae of the Milesians. Then afterward, when he had ruled sixteen years in all, he met with his end and to his son Psammis he handed down the rule.




To that Psammis, who was king of Egypt, came the Eleans’ messengers, because they were boasting that most justly and beautifully they held the contest in Olympia of all human beings and thought that in addition to that not even the wisest of human beings, the Egyptians, could find out besides anything. But when, on having come to Egypt, the Eleans said for what they had come, thereupon that king called together of the Egyptians those said to be wisest. And, after the Egyptians had gone together, they inquired of the Eleans who said quite all that it was fitting for them to do concerning the contest and they, on having related all, asserted they had come to learn subsequently whether the Egyptians were able to find out besides anything more just than that. Then they took counsel and asked the Eleans whether among them their fellow-citizens competed and they asserted both of themselves and all the rest of the Greeks alike to whoever wants it is permitted to compete. So the Egyptians asserted they, if they held it thus, had missed entirely what was just, because there was no way to contrive how they would not favor their townsman, if he competed, and so they acted unjustly to the foreigner, but if indeed they wanted to hold it justly and for that they had come to Egypt, for foreign contestants they bade hold the contest and to none of the Eleans it be allowed to compete. That the Egyptians suggested to the Eleans.




When Psammis six years only had been king of Egypt and advanced with an army against Ethiopia and straightway had met with his end, Apries, the son of Psammis, succeeded, who, after Psammetichus his forefather, proved happiest of the earlier kings, since he had ruled for twenty five years, in which he had driven an army against Sidon and fought with ships the Tyrian. But when for him it had to turn out badly, it turned out from a cause that I will relate at greater length in the Lybian accounts and moderately in the present; for, after Apries had sent off a large expedition against the Cyrenians, he stumbled greatly and the Egyptians, finding fault with that, revolted from him, since they thought Apries with forethought had sent them off to manifest evil, just that their destruction might come about and he himself might rule the remaining Egyptians more safely. So thinking that terrible, those who had returned back home and the friends of those that had perished revolted openly. And, when Apries had learned that by inquiry, he sent against them Amasis to prevent them with speeches. Then after he, on coming, began to restrain the Egyptians from doing that, as he was speaking, one of the Egyptians stood behind and put a helmet on him and, while he was putting it on, asserted with a view to kingdom he put it on. And what was being done came about not in any way unwished for by him, as the event was showing plainly. For, when the revolted had set themselves him as king of the Egyptians, he prepared himself with the intenton that he would drive against Apries. But, after Apries had learned that by inquiry, he sent to Amasis an esteemed man of the Egyptians round himself, whose name was Patarbemis, and enjoined on him to bring Amasis alive to himself. When, on coming, Patarbemis called Amasis, Amasis, since he was in fact sitting down on a horse, rising on it, broke wind and bade him bring that back for Apries. Nonetheless Patarbemis thought right he, at the king’s summoning, should go to him, but he replied to him that he had long been preparing to do that and Apries would not find fault with him, because both he himself would be present and he would bring others. Then Patarbemis on the basis of what was said could not fail to know the thought and, as he was preparing, with haste he went away, since he wanted the quickest way to make clear to the king what was being done. And, when he had come to Apries without bringing Amasis, he granted no speech to him, but was very angry and gave the order to cut off his ears and nose. After the remaining of the Egyptians, who still were well minded toward his affairs, had seen the man most esteemed among them so shamefully treated with indignity, with a pause of quite no time they revolted to the others and gave themselves to Amasis. So, when Apries had learned by inquiry that too, he armed his auxiliaries and drove against the Egyptians, and he had round himself thirty thousand Carian and Ionian men as auxiliaries. Moreover, his royal palace was in the city of Sais, which was large and worth beholding. Then those round Apries went against the Egyptians and those round Amasis against the foreigners. Thus in the city of Momemphis both parties came to be and were to make trial of each other.

There are seven kinds of Egyptians and of them one group priests and another warriors is called and another cowherds, another swineherds, another retailers, another interpreters and another pilots. So many are the kinds of Egyptians and names have been assigned to them after their arts. The warriors among them are called Calasiries and Hermotybies and are from the following districts, as indeed by districts all Egypt is divided up. These are the districts of the Hermotybies: the Bousirisian, the Saisian, the Chemmisian, the Papremisian, the island called Prosopitis, half of Nathos. From those districts the Hermotybies are, who amounted, whenever they amounted to the most, to sixteen myriads, and of them no one has learned anything of handicraft, but they are devoted to what is fit for battle. And of the Calasiries are the following other districts: the Theban, the Boubastisian, the Aphthisian, the Tanisian, the Mendesian, the Sebennysian, the Athribisian, the Pharbaithisian, the Thmouisian, the Onouphisian, the Anysian, the Myekphorisian (that district is settled on an island, opposite the city of Boubastis). Those districts then are the Calasiries’, who amounted, whenever they amounted to the most, to twenty five myriads of men. To those too it is not permitted to practise any art, but they practise what is regarding war alone, son inheriting from father. Now, whether the Greeks have learned that too from the Egyptians, I am not able to judge exactly, because I see the Thacians, the Scythians, the Persians, the Lydians and almost all the barbarians of the opinion those who learn the arts and their descendants are further from honor than all the other fellow citizens and those removed from masteries of handicrafts are considered to be noble and especially those devoted to war. Anyhow, all the Greeks have learned that and especially the Lacedaemonians, while the Corinthians least despise the artisans of handicrafts. And the following honors were selected out for those groups alone of the Egyptians besides the priests, twelve selected out fields free of tax for each. The field is a hundred Egyptian cubits every way and the Egyptian cubit is in fact equal to the Samian. That indeed was selected out for all of them, but the following fruits they enjoyed in rotation and in no way the same men: a thousand of the Calasiries and another of the Hermotybies were the lance-bearers each year for the king; to those then besides the fields the following other gifts were given each day, a measure of baked grain, five minae for each, two minae of cow’s meat, four cups of wine. Those gifts were given to those who were lance-bearers on any occasion.

Then, when they, in going together, Apries leading the auxiliaries and Amasis all Egyptians, had come to the city of Momemphis, they engaged in an encounter and the foreigners, although they had fought well, yet, since they were far fewer in multitude, because of that were worsted. And of Apries the following is said to be the thought, that not even any god could make him cease from the kingdom; so safely did it seem to him to be set up. And so then, after he had engaged in an encounter, he was worsted and, captured alive, was brought away to the city of Sais, to what was previously his house, but by then at that time Amasis’ royal palace. Thereupon for a while he was maintained in the royal palace and Amasis treated him well, but finally, as the Egyptians were finding fault in that he did not just acts by maintaining the greatest enemy of them and himself, just then he handed over Apries to the Egyptians. They then strangled and thereafter buried him in his fathers’ burial-places. These are in the shrine of Athena, nearest the hall, for one who goes in on the left side. The Saisians bury all the kings descended from the district there inside, in the shrine. For in fact Amasis’ tomb, although it is farther from the hall than that of Apries’ and his forefathers’, yet that’s also in the court of the shrine, a large stone colonnade and adorned with pillars made in imitation of phoenixes, the trees, and with every other expense. And inside, in the colonnade, two doorways stand and in the doorways is the vault. Moreover, there are also burial-places of him, of whom I think not holy in a matter like the foregoing to tell out the name, in Sais in the shrine of Athena behind the temple, which are next to the whole wall of Athena, and in the precinct stand large stone obelisks and a lake is next to it, ornamented with a stone rim and well worked in a circle, and in size, as it seemed to me, precisely as large as the one in Delos called the wheel-like. And on that lake the shows of his sufferings at night they perform, which the Egyptians call mysteries. Now, about those acts by me, although I know over a greater extent how each of them is, let hushed words be laid. Also about the rite of Demeter, which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, also about that, by me let hushed words be laid, except in so far as of it it is holy to speak. The daughters of Danaus were those who brought away that rite from Egypt and taught the Pelasgian women and afterward, when the whole Peloponnesus had been expelled by the Dorians, the rite utterly perished and those Arcadians who were left behind of the Peloponnesians and were not expelled brought it through to safety alone.



When Apries had been put down, Amasis became king, who was of the district of Sais, and as for the city from which he was, its name is Siouph. Indeed at the first the Egyptians utterly despised and held Amasis in no great estimation, precisely seeing that he was previously a commoner and of a house of no distinction, but afterwards with wisdom Amasis brought them over to himself, not with senselessness. His were countless other goods and moreover a golden footpan, in which Amasis himself and all his banqueters on each occasion washed themselves off; then, after he had chopped that up, he had an image of a divinity made of it and set it up in the city wherever was most suitable and the Egyptians, going frequently to the image, reverenced it greatly. So, when Amasis had learned what was being done by his townsmen, he called together the Egyptians and made a disclosure by asserting from the footpan the image had been made, into which previously the Egyptians spit, made water and washed off their feet, and then they reverenced it greatly. Hence by then he asserted in speech he himself had fared similarly to the footpan, since previously he was a commoner, but in the present was their king, and to honor and respect himself he bade. In a manner like that he brought the Egyptians over to himself so as to think just to be slaves and he made use of a constitution of affairs like this: in the morning until the filling of the public square eagerly he did the deeds that were brought to him, but from then on he drank and made fun of his symposiasts and was foolish and sportive. Then, vexed by that, his friends warned him with words like this: “O king, not correctly are you chief of yourself in leading yourself on to what’s very much of little moment; for you should sit august on an august throne and through the day do the deeds, and thus the Egyptians would know that by a great man they are ruled and you would be heard of better, but, as it is, you are in no way performing the acts of a king.” And he replied with this to them: “The bows’ possessors, whenever they need to use them, stretch their strings tight and, whenever they complete their use, relax them. For, if indeed all the time they should be strung taut, they would get broken so that at the opportune time they would not be able to use them. Thus indeed also a human being’s constitution; if one should wish to be in a serious state on each and every occasion and not to let oneself go to sport in part, unawares one would either go mad or at least become paralysed. Since I know that, I dispense a part to each.” That reply he gave his friends. And it is said concerning Amasis, even when he was a private person, that he was a lover of drinking and a lover of jesting and in no way a man in a serious state and, whenever the necessities failed him through drinking and enjoying himself, he went round and stole. Then those who asserted he had their money, when he made a denial, led him to a seat of prophecy, wherever each group’s was. Both many times indeed he was convicted by the seats of prophecy and many times acquitted. So, when in fact he had become king, he acted like this: concerning all the gods that acquitted him of being a robber, those shrines of theirs he would neither have a care for nor offer anything for repair of, and he would not resort and sacrifice to them, on the ground that they were worth nothing and possessed deceitful seats of prophecy, but for all those that convicted him of being a robber, on the ground that they were truly gods and furnished undeceitful seats of prophecy, he cared the most. Then on the one hand in Sais for Athena he made to completion foregates of a marvellous kind and far excelled all men with their height and their size, in that they are of such large stones in their size and of what kinds, while on the other hand he dedicated large colossuses and very tall man-sphinxes and conveyed other stones for repair, extraordinary in their size. And he brought back for himself of those some from the stone-quarries that were by Memphis and some, the oversized, from the city of Elephantine that was even twenty days’ sailing distant from Sais. What then not least of them, but most, I marvel at, is this: a building of one stone he conveyed from the city of Elephantine and that he was conveying for three years and two thousand men were assigned to it as transporters and those were all pilots. That chamber’s length on the outside is twenty one cubits, its breadth fourteen and its height eight. Those are the dimensions on the outside of the chamber, but on the inside is the length of eighteen cubits and a pygon, the breadth of twelve cubits and the height of five cubits. It is situated alongside the shrine’s entrance. For they assert they did not drag it inside, into the shrine, for this reason: the master-builder of it, as the chamber was being dragged, let out a groan, seeing that much time had gone by and he was vexed, and Amasis took it to heart and refused to allow him any longer to drag it. And by now some say that a human being was destroyed under it, one of those who moved it by levers, and after that it was not dragged. Further, Amasis dedicated not only in all the other shrines held in account works in their size worth beholding, but moreover also in Memphis the colossus that lies on its back before the temple of Hephaestus, of which seventy five feet are its length, and on the base itself stand two colossuses that are of Ethiopian stone, each being in its size of twenty feet, the one on one side of and the other on the other side of the large. Also there is another stone one of that large a size in Sais too and it is situated according to the same manner as that in Memphis. In short, Amasis was he who built to completion for Isis the shrine in Memphis that is large and most worth beholding.

In King Amasis’ time Egypt is said quite most then to have been happy, both in respect to what originated from the river for the country and what from the country for the human beings, and the cities in it amounted to in their entirety then two thousand that were settled. And Amasis is the establisher of this law for the Egyptians, that every one of the Egyptians should show forth each year to the district-ruler from what one had one’s livelihood and, if one would not do that and not bring forth to light a just way of living, one should be visited straightly with death. So Solon the Athenian took from Egypt that law and framed it for the Athenians, which they use in each and every occasion, since it is a blameless law. Then, because he had become a philhellene, Amasis showed forth other acts to several of the Greeks and in particular to those who came to Egypt gave the city of Naucratis to settle in and to those of them who wanted not to settle in it and voyaged thither gave places to set up altars and precincts for the gods in. Now, regarding the precinct that is the largest and most named and most useful of them and is called the Greek, these are the cities that set it up jointly: of the Ionians, Chios, Teos, Phocaea and Clazomenae, of the Dorians, Rhodes, Cnidos, Halicarnassus and Phaselis and of the Aeolians, that of the Mytilenians alone. Of those is that precinct and of the chiefs of the mart those cities are the furnishers and all the other cities that pretend to it, although there is no share to them, pretend to it. Separately then the Aeginetans by themselves set up a precinct for Zeus and another the Samians for Hera and the Milesians for Apollo. But anciently Naucratis alone was a mart and no other was in Egypt and, if anyone came to any other of the mouths of the Nile, one had to swear one came unwillingly and, after one had made a denial on oath, with one’s ship and all to sail to the Canobic, or, if at any rate it was impossible to sail against contrary winds, one needed to carry one’s wares in barges round the delta, until one should come to Naucratis. Thus indeed Naucratis was in a position of honor. And when the Amphictyonians had hired themselves to work to completion the temple that is now in Delphi for three hundred talents, since the one that was previously there in that very place accidentally had burned down, to the Delphians indeed it fell to furnish the fourth part of their hire. So the Delphians wandered round the cities and collected gifts and in doing that got not the least portion from Egypt. For Amasis gave them a thousand talents of alum and those Greeks settled in Egypt twenty minae.

With the Cyrenians Amasis made a treaty of friendship and alliance and thought just also to marry from that very place, either because he had conceived a desire for a Greek woman or else maybe for the sake of the Cyrenians’ friendship. So he married then, some say Battus the son of Arcesilaus’ daughter, some say Critobulus an esteemed man among the townsmen’s, whose name was Ladice. Whenever Amasis lay with her, he was unable to have intercourse, but he used all his other wives. And when that became prevalent, Amasis said to her who was called Ladice, “O woman, you drugged me utterly and there is no way to contrive not to perish in the worst way of all women.” Then Ladice, when to her, although she was making denials, Amasis became in no way gentler, vowed in her mind to Aphrodite that, if Amasis had intercourse with her during that night, since that was a remedy for her ill, she would send off an image for her to Cyrene. So after the vow immediately Amasis had intercourse with her. And by then thereafter, whenever he came to her, he had intercourse and loved her very much after that. So Ladice discharged her vow to the goddess; for she had made and sent off an image to Cyrene that was still perserved even to my time, set up outside the Cyrenians’ town. That Ladice, after Cambyses had gained mastery over Egypt and inquired of her who she was, he sent off unharmed to Cyrene.

Amasis dedicated offerings also in Greece, in the first place in Cyrene a gilt image of Athena and a likeness of himself made like by painting, in the second for Athena in Lindos two stone images and a linen breastplate worth beholding and in the third in Samos for Hera two wood likenesses of himself, which were set up in the large temple still even up to my time behind the leaves of the door. Now, in Samos he made a dedication because of the foreign friendship between himself and Polycrates, the son of Aeaces, while in Lindos for no foreign friendship, but because the shrine of Athena in Lindos, it is said, the daughters of Danaus set up, after they had touched there, when they fled from the children of Aegyptus. Those offerings Amasis dedicated and he was the first of human beings to take Cyprus and subject it to tribute payment.

end of Book 2