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Manners and Customs of the Egyptians: Sais

LXII. When the latter are assembled to make sacrifices in the city of Sais, during a certain night, they all light, in in the open air around their houses, a great number of lamps filled with salt and oil, the wick floating on the surface. The wick burns all night, and this celebration is called the "festival of the lamps." Such Egyptians as have not come to the assemblage equally celebrate the night of the sacrifice; all light their lamps as well, so that it is not the city of Sais alone that is illuminated, but all Egypt. For what reason has this night its share of illuminations and honors ? That is told in a sacred legend.

LXIII. At Heliopolis, at Buto, the celebrants restrict themselves to the immolation of victims. At Papremis, the same sacrifices are offered up and the same ceremonies are observed as in the other cities; Moreover, when the sun begins to wane, some of the priests are busied around the statue; others in much greater number, armed with staves, take their stations at the entrance of the temple; the people, that is to say many thousand persons, fulfilling their vows and similarly armed, are assembled on the opposite side. Now, on the previous evening, the statue, enclosed in a small chapel of painted wood, had been carried from the temple to another station; the priests that had been placed around the statue go to work and draw a four-wheeled chariot to convey the wooden chapel and the statue that it contains back to the large temple; but those who are in the portico refuse to admit them. The crowd of devotees, rushing to the rescue of the god, strike them; they defend APPENDIX. themselves; a violent conflict with sticks and staves ensues, and many a head is broken; however, the Egyptians declare that no one has ever been killed.

LXV. But the Egyptians observe with extreme attention all the prescribed forms of religion, and particularly those that I am about to describe. Although coterminous with Libya, their country is not infested with wild beasts. The animals that they know are all reputed sacred, those that do and those that do not live with men, alike. Were I to tell why they hold them sacred, I should, in my narrative, penetrate to things divine of which I am seeking to avoid saying a word, for if I have chanced to touch upon them, I have not done so without being forced to it by necessity. There exists, on the subject of animals, a custom which I am about to set forth; keepers of the two sexes are appointed to feed each kind separately; the son succeeds the father in this honorific office. The inhabitants of the towns fulfill their vows through the medium of these keepers; when they have made a vow to the divinity to which one of these animals belongs, they shave either the whole head, or half of it, or the third part of the head of their sons; they then put in the scales of a balance, on one side the hair, and on the other its weight in silver; and, whatever that weight may be, they give it to the keeper of the animal. The latter in return cuts up some fish in pieces and throws them to his animals for fodder: such is the food offered to them. Should any person kill one of these animals wilfully, he is put to death; should he kill unintentionally, he is punished with a fine fixed by the priests. Any one killing an ibis or a sparrow-hawk voluntarily or involuntarily would infallibly be immolated.

LXVI. Whatever may be the number of the animals fed along with the men, it would be still more considerable if, in the cat species, for instance, the males did not destroy a great many of the young by savage instinct, or if frequent fires did not kill a vast number of these creatures. When such accidents occur, profound grief takes possession of the APPENDIX.

Egyptians. When, in any dwelling, a cat dies naturally, the inhabitants shave off their eyebrows only; but if it be a dog that dies they shave their bodies and their heads.

LXVII. Dead cats are taken to consecrated buildings; then, after having been embalmed, they are buried at Bubastis. Dogs are buried, each one in its own town, in consecrated chambers, and ichneumons the same. The shrew-m.ce and the sparrowhawks are taken to Buto, the ibis to Hermopolis. Bears, which are very rarely met with, and wolves (jackals rather) whose size does not exceed that of foxes, are interred on the spot where they are found lying dead.

LXVIII. The crocodile during the four coldest months eats nothing; although a quadruped, it lives both on land and water; it lays its eggs on land and hatches them there. It passes the greater part of the day on the banks and the whole night in the river because the water is warmer than the open air and the dew. Of all the perishable creatures that we know this one reaches the largest from the smallest bulk; its eggs are no bigger than those of a goose; the young one is born only the length of the egg and grows to seventeen cubits, - sometimes more. It has eyes like a pig, large teeth, and jutting scales all along the dorsal column. It is the only animal that has no tongue. Its lower jaw is immovable, and it closes the upper jaw upon it, in this too being peculiar among all living creatures. It has strong claws, and on its back scales which cannot be cut. Blind in the water, on land its sight is piercing; and, as it passes the most of the time in the river, its mouth is full of insects that suck its blood. Animals and birds flee from it, but the trochylus lives in amity with it because that bird renders it good service. In fact when the crocodile comes out of the water and reaches dry land, its first need is to inhale the breath of the zephyr; it emerges, therefore, with its jaws wide open; then, the trochylus has access to them and can relieve it of the insects which it swallows. The crocodile receives this relief with joy, and never harms the trochylus. APPENDIX.

LXIX. To some Egyptians, the crocodile is sacred; to others it is not: the latter treat it as an enemy. Around Thebes and Lake Mæris, the inhabitanis consider it sacred. Each one of them rears a crocodile, which is tamed by training; and they hang pendants and buckles of crystal and gold in its ears; they encircle its fore-paws with bracelets and give it choice viands from the sacrifices. In fine, while it is alive they tend it the best they can; when it is dead they embalm it and bury it in consecrated ground. On the contrary, the inhabitants of the territory of Elephantine eat crocodiles, not regarding them as sacred in any wise. The Egyp- 1ian name of this animal is not crocodile, but champse. The Ionians have called it crocodile, finding it resemble in shape the lizards (krokodeilos) which breed in stone walls. LXXVII. The Egyptians who inhabit the cultivated part of the country, taking pleasure in adorning their remembrance, are the most refined of all the men whom I approached and studied. Their regimen is as follows: very careful in the preservation of their health they purge themselves with emetics and clysters every month for three days in succession, since they think that all the diseases of man come from his food and drink. Aside from these precautions the Egyptians are, next to the Libyans, the healthiest of mortals, in my opinion owing to the steadiness of their seasons; in fact, sickness comes upon us, in consequence of the changes of all things, especially of the seasons. They feed on bread made from dourrah; they drink a wine made from barley, in those districts where there are no vines. They eat fish, some of it dried in the sun, other kinds cured in drying-houses, close by the sea. Among birds, they prefer quails and ducks, and besides these, some small birds dried raw. All other birds and fish that they have in their country, apart from those which they consider sacred, form part of their food, roasted or boiled, LXVIII. At the banquets of the wealthy, when the eating is over, a man brings in a coffin, the wooden effigy of a dead body perfectly imitated by the sculptor and the painter, and APPENDIX. one or two cubits in length. This the man shows to each of the guests, and, as he does so, he says: "Look upon this; then drink and be merry, for such as thou seest it wilt thou be, after thy death."

LXXX. With the Lacedemonians only do the Egyptians agree in this other custom: young men when they meet their elders, yield the path and pass aside to make way for them; at their approach they rise from their seats. But in what follows, they do not resemble any Hellenic nation. Instead of saluting with the voice on the street, they de so by letting their hand fall to the knee.

LXXXI. They dress in linen tunics with fringes around their legs; they call these fringes calisiris, and over the tunics they wear mantles of white wool. However, they do not enter the temples with the woolen garment on; nor are these left on corpses to be buried with them that would be an act of impiety. In this respect, they chime in with the Orphic, or, as they are likewise called, the Bacchic traditions, which are equally observed by the Egyptians and by the Pythagoreans, since among the latter it is an impious act to bury in woolen tissues any one who has been initiated in the mysteries. A religious motive is ascribed to this custom. LXXXIV. In Egypt, the practice of medicine is divided into specialities, each physician devoting himself to one branch of disease, and not to several. Physicians swarm everywhere, some for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teeth, others for the stomach, and still others for internal disorders. LXXXV. Their acts of mourning and their funeral ceremonies are after this fashion : when they lose a relative whom they greatly esteemed, all the women of the family, after having bedaubed their heads and faces with mire, leave the dead body in the house and wander hither and thither through the town, beating their uncovered breasts and naked bosoms, in company with all those who hold relations of friendship with them. On the other hand, the men with APPENDIX. uncovered breasts beat themselves in the same manner; this done, they bear the body away to embalm it.

LXXXVI. There are persons entrusted with this business. It forms their profession. When the corpse has been brought to them, the embalmers show the friends of the deceased wooden models of corpses, imitated in painting, and they point out those that they consider the most worthy of attention, the name* of which I do not deem it proper to give in this place; they then exhibit the second, which costs less, and finally the third, which is the cheapest of all. After this, they ask how they are desired to operate upon the corpse, and so soon as they agree upon the style and the terms the relatives depart. The operators thus left to themselves proceed in the following manner to embalm in the best style. First, with a bent iron, they extract the brain through the nostrils, at least the greater part of it, and afterward the rest by the application of dissolvent injections. Then, with a sharpened Ethiopian stone, they cut open the sides of the corpse, take out all the intestines from the abdomen, wash the latter with palm wine, besprinkle it with powdered per.. fumes, and at last sew it up, after having filled it with bruised myrrh of pure quality, cinnamon and other perfumes, from among which incense alone is excluded. These operations completed, they dry the body in carbonate of soda and leave it plunged in that for seventy days, but no longer; they are not permitted to do so. At the expiration of these seventy days, they wash the corpse and wrap it up completely in bandages of the finest linen saturated with gum, of which the Egyptians make great use instead of glue. The relatives then again take possession of the corpse, enclose it in a wooden case shaped like a human body, and place it standing against the wall in the burial chamber. This is the costliest style of embalming.

LXXXVII. For those who prefer the middle method of embalming, and desire to avoid heavy expense, the embalmers * Asiri.