For, As I Said, They Beat Themselves In
Mourning After The Sacrifice, All Of Them Both Men And Women, Very
Many Myriads Of People; But For Whom They Beat Themselves It Is Not
Permitted To Me By Religion To Say:
And so many as there are of the
Carians dwelling in Egypt do this even more than the Egyptians
themselves, inasmuch as they cut their foreheads also with knives; and
by this it is manifested that they are strangers and not Egyptians.
At
the times when they gather together at the city of Sais for their
sacrifices, on a certain night they all kindle lamps many in number in
the open air round about the houses; now the lamps are saucers full of
salt and oil mixed, and the wick floats by itself on the surface, and
this burns during the whole night; and to the festival is given the
name /Lychnocaia/ (the lighting of lamps). Moreover those of the
Egyptians who have not come to this solemn assembly observe the night
of the festival and themselves also light lamps all of them, and thus
not in Sais alone are they lighted, but over all Egypt: and as to the
reason why light and honour are allotted to this night, about this
there is a sacred story told. To Heliopolis and Buto they go year by
year and do sacrifice only: but at Papremis they do sacrifice and
worship as elsewhere, and besides that, when the sun begins to go down
while some few of the priests are occupied with the image of the god,
the greater number of them stand in the entrance of the temple with
wooden clubs, and other persons to the number of more than a thousand
men with purpose to perform a vow, these also having all of them
staves of wood, stand in a body opposite to those:
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