Egyptians

These same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say

(for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men), and as does the prophetess of the god at Patara in Lycia, whenever she is appointed;

The dead are embalmed in honey for burial, and their dirges are like the dirges of Egypt.

The Egyptians again first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, and forbade intercourse with women in the temples, and laid it down by law that men should not enter the temples after being with a woman without bathing;

The Brahmans all, and the Odrysae and the Getae and the race of the Egyptians, treated their own matters as theology with exactness;

In the time of Semiramis, king of the Egyptians, they relate that linen garments were found.

Thus between the Egyptians and the Princes inhabiting the borders of the Red Sea, it was agreed, in ancient times, that the former should not enter that sea with any ship of war, nor with more than one merchant ship.

Thus Joseph is said to have sworn by the life of Pharaoh, according to the received custom of the Egyptians.

” So too we find in Diodorus siculus, that an oath was regarded among the Egyptians as the surest pledge of sincerity that men could give.

for they know that it is a drug of pleasure for the hearing.

but nonetheless no one would say the Byzantines were happy on account of the fish, unless the gulls too, nor the Egyptians on account of the Nile, nor the Babylonians on account of the wall.

But for myself, O Fortune—for it is to you, perhaps, that the speech might justly be addressed—if someone were to raise me on high and carry me aloft upon the back of some Pegasus, or upon the winged chariot of Pelops, spreading out beneath me the whole earth and its cities, I would not choose the luxury of the Lydians, nor the frugality of Attica, nor the poverty of Laconia, nor Croton—for they a …

as Thales water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato heaven and earth, Zeno air and aether, Plato the stars (which kind of gods he calls fiery) — when, considering of the world its greatness and force and power and honour and beauty, the resource, the constancy, the law of the several elements, which conspire to the begetting, nourishing, completing, and re …

the same and no other in Egyptians and in Syrians and in the people of Pontus.

The Egyptians demand back of the Hebrews their vessels of gold and silver.

They reported also that many Thracian swordsmen had already been hired and that Egyptians were under sail to join them, and they gave the number as one hundred and twenty thousand men armed with shields that came to their feet, with huge spears, such as they carry even to this day, and with sabres.

and Abradatas was assigned by lot to the place for which he had volunteered, and took his place over against the Egyptians.

The infantry that you will fight against, you have fought before—all but the Egyptians;

What, then, do you think — does not Apis, that sacred bull of the Egyptians, seem a god to the Egyptians?

Even the Egyptians, who are mocked, consecrated no beast save for some usefulness which they got from it;

But not so the Egyptians, nor the Syrians, nor almost any of the barbarians;

Or if they are counted among the superstitions of the Romans, since indeed Rome solicited even the gods of Greece — where at least are the Egyptians, themselves, so far as I know, of a private and curious religion?

To what lengths this liberty of adopting gods has advanced, the superstitions of the Egyptians teach, who worship even private beasts, cats, crocodiles, and their own serpent.

Most of the Egyptians believe in four gods:

The Egyptians embalm their dead and keep them at home;

Whose minds, steeped in the errors of depravity, would sooner undergo any torture than violate an ibis, or an asp, or a cat, or a dog, or a crocodile;

And how much better are the Egyptians, who, village by village and city by city, honour the irrational animals, than the Greeks who worship such gods?

But you, who are altogether better than the Egyptians — I shrink from saying worse — who never cease laughing at the Egyptians day by day, what sort of people are you concerning the irrational animals?

statues of gods they have not supposed to be wood and stones, like the Greeks, nor ibises and ichneumons, like the Egyptians, but fire and water, like philosophers.

"But the men in their insolence [ hubris] disobeyed my orders, took to their own devices, and ravaged the land of the Egyptians, killing the men, and taking their wives and children captive.

"But the men insolently disobeyed [ hubris] my orders, took to their own devices, and ravaged the land of the Egyptians, killing the men, and taking their wives and children captives.

For example, he saw to it that from the revenues of the sacrifices the priests should acquire affluence, but self-control through the purifications prescribed by the laws, and leisure by exemption from the hazards of fighting and from all work.

some he appointed to priestly services, others he turned to the arts and crafts, and others he forced to practise the arts of war.

And the priests, because they enjoyed such conditions of life, discovered for the body the aid which the medical art affords, not that which uses dangerous drugs, but drugs of such a nature that they are as harmless as daily food, yet in their effects are so beneficial that all men agree the Egyptians are the healthiest and most long of life among men;

and when they had been enslaved to the Egyptian nation and to a certain tyrant Pharaoh, he led them out from thence with signs and dreadful and extraordinary wonders through Moses and Aaron, holy men glorified with the grace of prophecy — through whom he both chastised the Egyptians worthily of their wickedness, and led the Israelites (for so that people, the descendants of Abraham, was called) th …

But the Egyptians, being more stupid and senseless than these, went astray worse than all the nations.

Into great error, then, went astray both the Egyptians and the Chaldeans and the Greeks, introducing such gods, and making images of them, and deifying the dumb and senseless idols.

nor yet about the base of the brain, as Herophilus holds, nor in the little membranes, as Strato and Erasistratus, nor in the middle space of the eyebrows, as Strato the Natural Philosopher, nor in the whole breastplate of the chest, as Epicurus — but where both the Egyptians reported it, and those who were held to be commentators on divine things, as in that verse of Orpheus or Empedocles:

Bodies, in short, the dragons of the magical wands seemed to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

next to them were troops with wicker shields and, farther on, hoplites with wooden shields which reached to their feet, these latter being Egyptians, people said;

As for the Egyptians, with whom I learn that you are especially angry, I do not see what force you could better employ to aid you in chastising them than the force which I now have.

he might want to employ them for various purposes, perhaps for a campaign against Egypt, which they should be glad to assist him in subduing.

It is said, then, that even that great Moses, whose name for wisdom is greatest among all men, first trained his mind in the learning of the Egyptians, and so came to the contemplation of Him Who Is.

For the lawgiver seems not to include every kind of sin, but to forbid specifically the practices of the Egyptians, from whom Israel had departed, and those of the Canaanites, to whom they were being removed.

But now, if anyone could—in that chariot of Pacuvius, 'borne by winged serpents'—look down upon and survey with his eyes many and varied peoples and cities, he would see, first among that most uncorrupted people of the Egyptians, who keep in writing the memory of very many ages and events, that a certain ox is held a god, whom the Egyptians call Apis, and many other portents among them, and beasts …

For although I believe that many Greeks would consent to serve in his pay against the Egyptians and Orontes and other barbarians, not so much to enable him to subdue any of those enemies as to win for themselves wealth and relief from their present poverty, yet I do not think that any Greek would attack Greece.

Some of them, the cube, the tetrahedron (which is nothing but a pyramid), and the octahedron (which is only a double pyramid with a square base), cannot but have been known to the Egyptians.

and it is not enough that it worship an idol in the shape of that animal — the condition is that it hold the species of this animal sacred and refrain from harming it, as the Egyptians held the cat or the scarab sacred.

And to that end, even to the Egyptians was permitted the power of so vain a superstition, of consecrating birds and beasts and condemning to death any who killed a god of that kind.

The Babylonians had reigned before the Pontiffs, and the Medes before the Quindecimviri, and the Egyptians before the Salii, and the Assyrians before the Luperci, and the Amazons before the Vestal virgins.

For a little before He had also pronounced His flesh to be the heavenly bread too, urging everywhere through allegory the memory of the necessary foods of the fathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of the Egyptians to the divine calling.

Come now, take from your own store what the Egyptians relate, and Alexander sets in order, and his mother reads, concerning the time of Osiris, when Ammon comes to him out of Libya, rich in sheep.