- 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: - the females they cast into the river, but the males
they bury, each people in the suburb of their town, with one of the
horns, or sometimes both, protruding to mark the place; and when the
bodies have rotted away and the appointed time comes on, then to each
city comes a boat from that which is called the island of Prosopitis
(this is in the Delta, and the extent of its circuit is nine
/schoines/). In this island of Prosopitis is situated, besides many
other cities, that one from which the boats come to take up the bones
of the oxen, and the name of the city is Atarbechis, and in it there
is set up a holy temple of Aphrodite. From this city many go abroad in
various directions, some to one city and others to another, and when
they have dug up the bones of the oxen they carry them off, and coming
together they bury them in one single place. In the same manner as
they bury the oxen they bury also their other cattle when they die;
for about them also they have the same law laid down, and these also
they abstain from killing.
Now all who have a temple set up to the Theban Zeus or who are of the
district of Thebes, these, I say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from
sheep:
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