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Manners and Customs of the Egyptians

[Extracts from Herodotus.] XXXV. The Egyptians live beneath a sky peculiar to themselves; their country is watered by a river different from all other rivers: and then they have established laws and customs which are, for the most part, the opposite of those of the rest of human beings. With them the women go to market and trade; the men stay at home and weave. Everywhere else the weavers pass the woof above, the Egyptians pass it below. The men carry burthens on their heads, the women carry them on their shoulders. No woman has the office of priesthood for gods of either sex; the men only can be priests. The young men are never constrained to support their parents, if such be not their own wish; but the girls are compelled to do so even against their will.

XXXVI. Elsewhere the priests of the gods wear long hair: in Egypt they shave; among other men, the custom is to cut the hair when mourning commences for any near relative; the Egyptians, to show respect for the dead, let APPENDIX. the hair and the beard which previously they shaved off, grow on their heads and under their chins. Other men live separate from their animals; the Egyptians live pell mell with them. Elsewhere, wheat and barley are staples of food, but the Egyptians consider it a disgrace to live upon that diet; they use duurah. They knead dough with their feet and clay with ther hands, and they lift manure with both hands. Every man wears two garments; the woman has only one. Other people fasten the rings and the cables of their sails inside; the Egyptians fasten them outside. The Greeks write and count from left to right; the Egyptians go from right to left, and, in doing so, claim that they go to the right, and the Greeks to the left. They have two kinds of letters-the sacred and the vulgate characters. * ...

XXXVII. As they are observers of ceremonies more than other men they practise the following customs: they drink from a brazen cup which they cleanse every day; and this not some only but all of them do. They wear linen garments, and are very careful to have them always fresh and clean. They deem it better to be neat than to be handsome. Every three days, the priests shave their whole bodies, so that no vermin may defile them while they are serving the gods. They wear nothing but linen garments and shoes of papyrus bark, and they are not permitted to use others. They wash themselves with fresh water twice each day and twice each night. They accomplish other rites innumerable one might say, but they enjoy uncommon advantages. They neither wear out nor spend what belongs to them; sacred viands are cooked for them; every day plenty of beef and geese are sent to them; grape wine is distributed to them; but, at the same time, they cannot eat fish. No beans are planted throughout all Egypt, and if any come up they are not eaten, either raw or cooked. The priests cannot bear the sight of * The hieroglyphics and demotic characters.

APPENDIX. them, since they look upon the vegetable as impure. Each god is served not by one priest only, but by several, one of whom is the high priest, and when he dies his son succeeds him.

XLVII. The Egyptians regard the hog as an impure animal. Consequently, should one of them, in passing near a pig, be touched by him, he is made to go down into the river without undressing, and they bathe him in his clothing; on the other hand, the Egyptian swineherds only, among all the population, cannot enter any temple in the country. No one gives them his daughters in marriage and no one marries their daughters, nor can they intermarry excepting among themselves. The Egyptians do not think it proper to sacrifice a pig to any other deities than the Moon and Bacchus ;* to them only they sacrifice that animal, at the same moment, during the full Moon, and eat the flesh of the victim. The manner of making this sacrifice of swine is as follows: when the victim has been slaughtered, they fasten together the extremity of the tail, the spleen and the kidneys. These are then wrapped in all the fat found in the stomach, and are burned upon the altar. The remainder of the flesh is eaten during the same day at the close of the sacrifice: no one would taste it on any other day.