They
Wear Garments Of Linen Always Newly Washed, And This They Make A
Special Point Of Practice:
They circumcise themselves for the sake of
cleanliness, preferring to be clean rather than comely.
The priests
shave themselves all over their body every other day, so that no lice
or any other foul thing may come to be upon them when they minister to
the gods; and the priests wear garments of linen only and sandals of
papyrus, and any other garment they may not take nor other sandals;
these wash themselves in cold water twice in a day and twice again in
the night; and other religious services they perform (one may almost
say) of infinite number. They enjoy also good things not a few, for
they do not consume or spend anything of their own substance, but
there is sacred bread baked for them and they have each great quantity
of flesh of oxen and geese coming in to them each day, and also wine
of grapes is given to them; but it is not permitted to them to taste
of fish: beans moreover the Egyptians do not at all sow in their land,
and those which they grow they neither eat raw nor boil for food; nay
the priests do not endure even to look upon them, thinking this to be
an unclean kind of pulse: and there is not one priest only for each of
the gods but many, and of them one is chief-priest, and whenever a
priest dies his son is appointed to his place.
The males of the ox kind they consider to belong to Epaphos, and on
account of him they test them in the following manner: - If the priest
sees one single black hair upon the beast he counts it not clean for
sacrifice; and one of the priests who is appointed for the purpose
makes investigation of these matters, both when the beast is standing
upright and when it is lying on its back, drawing out its tongue
moreover, to see if it is clean in respect of the appointed signs,
which I shall tell of in another part of the history: he looks also at
the hairs of the tail to see if it has them growing in a natural
manner; and if it be clean in respect of all these things, he marks it
with a piece of papyrus, rolling this round the horns, and then when
he has plastered sealing-earth over it he sets upon it the seal of his
signet-ring, and after that they take the animal away. But for one who
sacrifices a beast not sealed the penalty appointed is death. In this
way then the beast is tested; and their appointed manner of sacrifice
is as follows: - they lead the sealed beast to the altar where they
happen to be sacrificing, and then kindle a fire: after that, having
poured libations of wine over the altar so that it runs down upon the
victim and having called upon the god, they cut its throat, and having
cut its throat they sever the head from the body. The body then of the
beast they flay, but upon the head they make many imprecations first,
and then they who have a market and Hellenes sojourning among them for
trade, these carry it to the market-place and sell it, while they who
have no Hellenes among them cast it away into the river: and this is
the form of imprecations which they utter upon the heads, praying that
if any evil be about to befall either themselves who are offering
sacrifice or the land of Egypt in general, it may come rather upon
this head. Now as regards the heads of the beasts which are sacrificed
and the pouring over them of the wine, all the Egyptians have the same
customs equally for all their sacrifices; and by reason of this custom
none of the Egyptians eat of the head either of this or of any other
kind of animal: but the manner of disembowelling the victims and of
burning them is appointed among them differently for different
sacrifices; I shall speak however of the sacrifices to that goddess
whom they regard as the greatest of all, and to whom they celebrate
the greatest feast. - When they have flayed the bullock and made
imprecation, they take out the whole of its lower entrails but leave
in the body the upper entrails and the fat; and they sever from it the
legs and the end of the loin and the shoulders and the neck: and this
done, they fill the rest of the body of the animal with consecrated
loaves and honey and raisins and figs and frankincense and myrrh and
every other kind of spices, and having filled it with these they offer
it, pouring over it great abundance of oil. They make their sacrifice
after fasting, and while the offerings are being burnt, they all beat
themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating
themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburnt of
the sacrifice. The clean males then of the ox kind, both full-grown
animals and calves, are sacrificed by all the Egyptians; the females
however they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to Isis; for the
figure of Isis is in the form of a woman with cow's horns, just as the
Hellenes present Io in pictures, and all the Egyptians without
distinction reverence cows far more than any other kind of cattle; for
which reason neither man nor woman of the Egyptian race would kiss a
man who is a Hellene on the mouth, nor will they use a knife or
roasting-spits or a caldron belonging to a Hellene, nor taste the
flesh even of a clean animal if it has been cut with the knife of a
Hellene. And the cattle of this kind which die they bury in the
following manner:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 9 of 37
Words from 8219 to 9218
of 37770
