The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus · Herodotus
CHAPTER II.
RELIGION, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, DRESS, AND ANIMALS OF THE EGYPTIANS. Egypt possesses more wonders than any other country, and exhibits works greater than can be described, in comparison with all other regions; therefore more must be said about it. The Egyptians besides having a peculiar climate and a river differing in its nature from all other rivers, have adopted customs and usages in almost every respect different from the rest of mankind. Amongst them the women attend markets and traffic, but the men stay at home and weave. Other nations, in weaving, throw the wool upward; the Egyptians, downward. The men carry burdens on their heads; the women, on their shoulders. No woman can serve the office for any god or goddess; but men are employed for both offices. Sons are not compelled to support their parents unless they choose, but daughters are compelled to do so, whether they choose or not. In other countries the priests of the gods wear long hair; in Egypt they have it shaved. With other men it is customary in mourning for the nearest relations to have their heads shorn; the Egyptians, on occasions of death, let the hair grow both on the head and face, though till then shaven. Other men feed on wheat and barley, but it is a very great disgrace for an Egyptian to make food of them; but they make bread from spelt, which some call zea. They knead the dough with their feet; but mix clay with their hands. Every man wears two garments; the women, but one. Other men fasten the rings and sheets of their sails outside; but the Egyptians, inside. The Greeks write and cipher, moving the hand from left to right; but the Egyptians, from right to left: and doing so, they say they do it right-ways, and the Greeks left-ways. They have two sorts of letters, one of which is called sacred, the other common.
They are of all men the most excessively attentive to the worship of the gods, and observe the following ceremonies: They drink from cups of bronze, which they scour every day. They wear linen garments, constantly fresh-washed, thinking it better to be clean than handsome. The priests shave their whole body every third day, that no impurity may be found upon them when engaged in the service of the gods. The priests wear linen only, and shoes of byblus, and are not permitted to wear any other garments, or other shoes. They wash themselves in cold water twice every day and twice every night, and use a great number of ceremonies. On the other hand, they enjoy no slight advantages, for they do not consume or expend any of their private property; but sacred food is cooked for them, and a great quantity of beef and geese is allowed each of them every day, with wine from the grape; but they must not taste of fish. Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country, nor do they eat those that happen to grow there. The priests abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it impure.
The service of each god is performed, not by one, but by many priests, of whom one is chief; and, when one of them dies, his son is put in his place. The male kine they deem sacred to Epaphus, and to that end prove them in the following manner: If the examiner finds one black hair upon him, he adjudges him to be unclean; one of the priests appointed for this purpose makes this examination, both when the animal is standing up and lying down; and he draws out the tongue, to see if it is pure as to the prescribed marks, which I shall mention in another part of my history. He also looks at the hairs of his tail, to see whether they grow naturally. If the beast is found pure in all these respects, he marks it by rolling a piece of byblus round the horns, and then having put on it some sealing earth, he impresses it with his signet; and so they drive him away. Any one who sacrifices one that is unmarked is punished with death. The established mode of sacrifice is this: they lead the victim, properly marked, to the altar where they intend to sacrifice, and kindle a fire; then having poured wine upon the altar, near the victim, they invoke the god, and kill it; then cut off the head, and flay the body of the animal. Having pronounced many imprecations on the head, they who have a market and Greek merchants dwelling amongst them, carry it there and sell it; but those who have no Greeks amongst them throw it into the river; and they pronounce the following imprecations on the head: "If any evil is about to befall either those that now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head." But a different mode of disembowelling and burning the victims prevails in different sacrifices.
The practice with regard to the goddess whom they consider the greatest, and in whose honor they celebrate the most magnificent festival, is this: When they have flayed the bullocks, having first offered up prayers, they take out all the intestines, and leave the vitals with the fat in the carcass: they then cut off the legs and the extremity of the hip, with the shoulders and neck, and fill the body of the bullock with fine bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other perfumes, and burn it, pouring on it a great quantity of oil. They sacrifice after they have fasted; and while the sacred things are being burnt, they all beat themselves; after which they spread a banquet of what remains of the victims.
All the Egyptians sacrifice the pure male kine and calves, but they are not allowed to sacrifice the females, for they are sacred to Isis; the image of Isis is made in the form of a woman with the horns of a cow, as the Greeks represent Io; and all Egyptians alike pay a far greater reverence to cows than to any other cattle. No Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Greek on the mouth; or use the knife, spit, or cauldron of a Greek, or taste of the flesh of a pure ox that has been divided by a Greek knife. They bury the kine that die in the following manner: The females they throw into the river, and the males they inter in the suburbs, with one horn, or both, appearing above the ground, for a mark. When it is putrified, and the appointed time arrives, a raft comes to each city from the island called Prosopitis, in the Delta, which is nine schœni in circumference. Now in this island Prosopitis there are several cities; but that from which the rafts come to take away the bones of the oxen, is called Atarbechis; in it a temple of Venus has been erected.
From this city then many persons go about to other towns; and having dug up the bones, carry them away, and bury them in one place; and they bury all other cattle that die in the same way that they do the oxen; for they do not kill any of them. All those who have a temple erected to Theban Jupiter, or belong to the Theban district, abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats only. For the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods in the same manner, except Isis and Osiris, who, they say, is Bacchus. On the other hand, those who frequent the temple of Mendes, and belong to the Mendesian district, abstain from goats, and sacrifice sheep. The Thebans say that this custom was established among them in the following way: that Hercules was very desirous of seeing Jupiter, but Jupiter was unwilling to be seen by him; at last, however, as Hercules persisted, Jupiter flayed a ram, cut off the head, and held it before himself, and then having put on the fleece, showed himself to Hercules. From this circumstance the Egyptians make the image of Jupiter with a ram's face; and the Ammonians, who are a colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians, and who speak a language between both, have adopted the same practice; and, as I conjecture, the Ammonians thus derived their name, for the Egyptians call Jupiter, Ammon. The Thebans then do not sacrifice rams, being for this reason accounted sacred by them; on one day in the year, however, at the festival of Jupiter, they kill and flay one ram, put it on this image of Jupiter, and bring an image of Hercules to it; then all who are in the temple beat themselves in mourning for the ram, and bury him in a sacred vault.
Of this Hercules I have heard that he is one of the twelve gods; but of the other Hercules, who is known to the Greeks, I could never hear in any part of Egypt. That the Egyptians did not derive the name of Hercules from the Greeks, but rather the Greeks from the Egyptians, I have many proofs to show. The parents of this Hercules, Amphitryon and Alcmene, were both of Egyptian descent, and the Egyptians say they do not know the names of Neptune and the Dioscuri, yet if they had derived the name of any deity from the Greeks, they would certainly have mentioned these above all others, since even at that time they made voyages, and some of the Greeks were sailors. But Hercules is one of the ancient gods of the Egyptians; and they say themselves it was seventeen thousand years before the reign of Amasis, when the number of their gods was increased from eight to twelve, of whom Hercules was accounted one.
Being desirous of obtaining certain information from whatever source I could, I sailed to Tyre in Phœnicia, having heard that there was there a temple dedicated to Hercules; and I saw it richly adorned with a great variety of offerings, and in it were two pillars, one of fine gold, the other of emerald stone, both shining exceedingly at night. Conversing with the priests of this god, I inquired how long this temple had been built, and I found that they did not agree with the Greeks. For they said that the temple was built at the time when Tyre was founded, and that two thousand three hundred years had elapsed since the foundation of Tyre. In this city I also saw another temple dedicated to Hercules by the name of Thasian; I went therefore to Thasos, and found there a temple of Hercules built by the Phœnicians, who founded Thasos, when they sailed in search of Europa, and this occurred five generations before Hercules the son of Amphitryon appeared in Greece. The researches then that I have made evidently prove that Hercules is a god of great antiquity, and therefore those Greeks appear to me to have acted most correctly, who have built two kinds of temples sacred to Hercules, and who sacrifice to one as an immortal, under the name of Olympian, and paid honor to the other as a hero. The Mendesians pay reverence to all goats; at the death of a he-goat public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district.
The Egyptians consider the pig to be an impure beast, and therefore if a man in passing by a pig should touch him only with his garments, he forthwith goes to the river and plunges in; and in the next place, swineherds, although native Egyptians, are the only men who are not allowed to enter any of their temples; neither will any man give his daughter in marriage to one of them, nor take a wife from among them; but the swineherds intermarry among themselves. The Egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice swine to any deities but the moon and Bacchus. In this sacrifice of pigs to the moon, when the sacrificer has slain the victim, he puts together the tip of the tail, with the spleen and the caul, covers them with the fat found about the belly of the animal, and consumes them with fire: the rest of the flesh they eat during the full moon in which they offer the sacrifices; but on no other day would any one even taste it. The poor amongst them, through want of means, form pigs of dough, and having baked them, offer them in sacrifice. Whence each of the gods sprung, whether they existed always, and of what form they were, was, so to speak, unknown till yesterday. For I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms.
The Egyptians were also the first who introduced public festivals, processions, and solemn supplications; and the Greeks learned these from them. The Egyptians hold public festivals several times in a year; that which is best and most rigidly observed is in the city of Bubastis, in honor of Diana; the second, in the city of Busiris, is in honor of Isis; the largest temple of Isis is in this city, in the middle of the Egyptian Delta. Isis is in the Grecian language called Demeter. The third festival is held at Sais, in honor of Minerva; the fourth, at Heliopolis, in honor of the sun; the fifth, at the city of Buto, in honor of Latona; the sixth, at the city of Papremis, in honor of Mars. When they are assembled at the sacrifice, in the city of Sais, they all on a certain night kindle a great number of lamps in the open air, around their houses; the lamps are flat vessels filled with salt and oil, the wick floats on the surface and burns all night; hence the festival is named "the lighting of lamps." The Egyptians who do not come to this public assembly observe the rite of sacrifice, and all kindle lamps, not only in Sais, but throughout all Egypt.
Egypt, though bordering on Libya, does not abound in wild beasts; but all that they have are accounted sacred. Superintendents, consisting both of men and women, are appointed to feed every kind separately; and the son succeeds the father in this office. All the inhabitants of the cities perform their vows to the superintendents. Having made a vow to the god to whom the animal belongs, they shave either the whole heads of their children, or a half, or a third part of the head, and then weigh the hair in a scale against silver, and whatever the weight may be, they give to the superintendent of the animals; she in return cuts up some fish, and gives it as food to the animals; such is the usual mode of feeding them. Should any one kill one of these beasts, if wilfully, death is the punishment; if by accident, he pays such fine as the priests choose to impose. But whoever kills an ibis or a hawk, whether wilfully or by accident, must necessarily be put to death. When a conflagration takes place, a supernatural impulse seizes on the cats. The Egyptians, standing at a distance, take care of the cats, and neglect to put out the fire; but the cats often make their escape, leap over the men, and throw themselves into the fire; when this happens great lamentations are made among the Egyptians. In whatever house a cat dies of a natural death, all the family shave their eyebrows; but if a dog die, they shave the whole body and the head. All cats that die are carried to certain sacred houses, where they are first embalmed, and then buried in the city of Bubastis. All persons bury their dogs in sacred vaults within their own city; and ichneumons are buried in the same manner as the dogs; but field-mice and hawks they carry to the city of Buto; the ibis to Hermopolis; the bears, which are few in number, and the wolves, which are not much larger than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying.
This is the nature of the crocodile:—During the four coldest months it eats nothing, and though it has four feet, it is amphibious. It lays its eggs on land, and there hatches them. It spends the greater part of the day on the dry ground, but the whole night in the river; for the water is then warmer than the air and dew. Of all living things with which we are acquainted, this, from the least beginning, grows to be the largest. For it lays eggs little larger than those of a goose, and the young is at first in proportion to the egg; but when grown up it reaches to the length of seventeen cubits (25½ feet), and even more. It has the eyes of a pig, large teeth, and projecting tusks: it is the only animal that has no tongue: it does not move the lower jaw, but is the only animal that brings down its upper jaw to the under one. It has strong claws, and a skin covered with scales, that cannot be broken on the back. It is blind in the water, but very quick-sighted on land; and because it lives for the most part in the water, its mouth is filled with leeches.
All other birds and beasts avoid him, but he is at peace with the trochilus, because he receives benefit from that bird. For when the crocodile gets out of the water on land, and then opens its jaws, which it does most commonly toward the west, the trochilus enters its mouth and swallows the leeches: the crocodile is so well pleased with this service that it never hurts the trochilus. With some of the Egyptians crocodiles are sacred; with others not, but they treat them as enemies. Those who dwell about Thebes, and Lake Mœris consider them to be very sacred; and they each of them train up a crocodile, which is taught to be quite tame; and put crystal and gold ear-rings into their ears, and bracelets on their fore paws; they give them appointed and sacred food, and treat them as well as possible while alive, and when dead they embalm them, and bury them in sacred vaults. But the people who dwell about the city of Elephantine eat them, not considering them sacred. They are not called crocodiles by the Egyptians, but "champsæ"; the Ionians gave them the name of crocodiles, because they thought they resembled lizards, which are also so called, and which are found in the hedges of their country.
The modes of taking the crocodile are many and various, but I shall only describe that which seems to me most worthy of relation. When the fisherman has baited a hook with the chine of a pig, he lets it down into the middle of the river, and holding a young live pig on the brink of the river, beats it; the crocodile, hearing the noise, goes in its direction, and meeting with the chine, swallows it, and the men draw it to land; when it is drawn out on shore, the sportsman first of all plasters its eyes with mud, after which he manages it very easily; but until he has done this, he has a great deal of trouble. The hippopotamus is esteemed sacred in the district of Papremis, but not so by the rest of the Egyptians. It is a quadruped, cloven-footed, with the hoofs of an ox, snub-nosed, has the mane of a horse, projecting tusks, and the tail and neigh of a horse. In size he is equal to a very large ox: his hide is so thick that spear-handles are made of it when dry. Otters are also met with in the river, which are deemed sacred; and amongst fish, they consider that which is called the lepidotus, and the eel, sacred; these they say are sacred to the Nile; and among birds, the vulpanser.
There is also another sacred bird, called the phœnix, which I have never seen except in a picture; for it makes its appearance amongst them only once in five hundred years, as the Heliopolitans affirm: they say that it comes on the death of its sire. If he is like the picture, he is of the following size and description: the plumage of his wings is partly golden-colored, and partly red; in outline and size he is like an eagle. They tell this incredible story about him:—They say that he comes from Arabia, and brings the body of his father, enclosed in myrrh, to the temple of the sun, and there buries him in the temple. He brings him in this manner: first he moulds an egg of myrrh as large as he thinks himself able to carry; then he tries to carry it, and when he has made the experiment, he hollows out the egg, puts his parent into it, and stops up with some more myrrh the hole through which he introduced the body, so when his father is put inside, the weight is the same as before; then he carries him to the temple of the sun in Egypt.
In the neighborhood of Thebes there are sacred serpents not at all hurtful to men: they are diminutive in size, and carry two horns that grow on the top of the head. When these serpents die they bury them in the temple of Jupiter, for they say they are sacred to that God. There is a place in Arabia, situated very near the city of Buto, to which I went, on hearing of some winged serpents; there I saw bones and spines of serpents in such quantities as it would be impossible to describe: there were heaps upon heaps, some large, some smaller, scattered in a narrow pass between two mountains, which leads into a spacious plain, contiguous to the plain of Egypt: it is reported that at the beginning of spring, winged serpents fly from Arabia toward Egypt; but that ibises, a sort of bird, meet them at the pass, and do not allow the serpents to go by, but kill them: for this service the Arabians say that the ibis is highly reverenced by the Egyptians; and the Egyptians acknowledge it. The ibis is all over a deep black; it has the legs of a crane, its beak is much curved, and it is about the size of the crex. Such is the form of the black ones, that fight with the serpents. But those that are best known, for there are two species, are bare on the head and the whole neck, have white plumage, except on the head, the throat, and the tips of the wings and extremity of the tail; in all these parts they are of a deep black; in their legs and beak they are like the other kind. The form of the serpent is like that of the water-snake; but he has wings without feathers, and as like as possible to the wings of a bat. This must suffice for the description of sacred animals.
Of the Egyptians, those who inhabit that part of Egypt which is sown with corn, cultivate the memory of past events more than any other people, and are the best-informed men I ever met. Their manner of life is this: They purge themselves every month for three days successively, seeking to preserve health by emetics and clysters, for they suppose that all diseases to which men are subject proceed from the food they use. And indeed in other respects the Egyptians, next to the Libyans, are the most healthy people in the world, as I think, on account of the seasons, because they are not liable to change; for men are most subject to disease at periods of change, and above all others at the change of the seasons. They feed on bread made into loaves of spelt, which they call cyllestis; and they use wine made of barley, for they have no vines in that country. Some fish they dry in the sun and eat raw, others salted with brine; and of birds they eat quail, ducks, and smaller birds raw, salting them first. All other things, whether birds or fishes, that they have, except such as are accounted sacred, they eat either roasted or boiled. At their convivial banquets, among the wealthy classes, when they have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, made as perfect a counterfeit as possible in color and workmanship, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length; and showing this to each of the company, he says: "Look upon this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this."
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.