There are also about Thebes sacred serpents, not at all harmful to
men, which are small in size and have two horns growing from the top
of the head:
These they bury when they die in the temple of Zeus, for
to this god they say that they are sacred. There is a region moreover
in Arabia, situated nearly over against the city of Buto, to which
place I came to inquire about the winged serpents: and when I came
thither I saw bones of serpents and spines in quantity so great that
it is impossible to make report of the number, and there were heaps of
spines, some heaps large and others less large and others smaller
still than these, and these heaps were many in number. This region in
which the spines are scattered upon the ground is of the nature of an
entrance from a narrow mountain pass to a great plain, which plain
adjoins the plain in Egypt; and the story goes that at the beginning
of spring winged serpents from Arabia fly towards Egypt, and the birds
called ibises meet them at the entrance to this country and do not
suffer the serpents to go by but kill them. On account of this deed it
is (say the Arabians) that the ibis has come to be greatly honoured by
the Egyptians, and the Egyptians also agree that it is for this reason
that they honour these birds. The outward form of the ibis is this: -
it is a deep black all over, and has legs like those of a crane and a
very curved beak, and in size it is about equal to a rail: this is the
appearance of the black kind which fight with the serpents, but of
those which most crowd round men's feet (for there are two several
kinds of ibises) the head is bare and also the whole of the throat,
and it is white in feathering except the head and neck and the
extremities of the wings and the rump (in all these parts of which I
have spoken it is a deep black), while in legs and in the form of the
head it resembles the other. As for the serpent its form is like that
of the watersnake; and it has wings not feathered but most nearly
resembling the wings of the bat. Let so much suffice as has been said
now concerning sacred animals.
Of the Egyptians themselves, those who dwell in the part of Egypt
which is sown for crops practise memory more than any other men and
are the most learned in history by far of all those of whom I have had
experience: and their manner of life is as follows: - For three
successive days in each month they purge, hunting after health with
emetics and clysters, and they think that all the diseases which exist
are produced in men by the food on which they live:
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