An Account of Egypt | Page 5

priests of that Hephaistos who dwells at Memphis; but the
Hellenes relate, besides many other idle tales, that Psammetichos cut
out the tongues of certain women and then caused the children to live
with these women.
With regard then to the rearing of the children they related so much as I
have said: and I heard also other things at Memphis when I had speech
with the priests of Hephaistos. Moreover I visited both Thebes and
Heliopolis for this very cause, namely because I wished to know
whether the priests at these places would agree in their accounts with
those at Memphis; for the men of Heliopolis are said to be the most
learned in records of the Egyptians. Those of their narrations which I
heard with regard to the gods I am not earnest to relate in full, but I
shall name them only because I consider that all men are equally
ignorant of these matters: and whatever things of them I may record I
shall record only because I am compelled by the course of the story.
But as to those matters which concern men, the priests agreed with one
another in saying that the Egyptians were the first of all men on earth to
find out the course of the year, having divided the seasons into twelve
parts to make up the whole; and this they said they found out from the
stars: and they reckon to this extent more wisely than the Hellenes, as it
seems to me, inasmuch as the Hellenes throw in an intercalated month
every other year, to make the seasons right, whereas the Egyptians,
reckoning the twelve months at thirty days each, bring in also every
year five days beyond number, and thus the circle of their season is
completed and comes round to the same point whence it set out. They
said moreover that the Egyptians were the first who brought into use
appellations for the twelve gods and the Hellenes took up the use from
them; and that they were the first who assigned altars and images and
temples to the gods, and who engraved figures on stones; and with
regard to the greater number of these things they showed me by actual
facts that they had happened so. They said also that the first man who

became king of Egypt was Min; and that in his time all Egypt except
the district of Thebes was a swamp, and none of the regions were then
above water which now lie below the lake of Moiris, to which lake it is
a voyage of seven days up the river from the sea: and I thought that
they said well about the land; for it is manifest in truth even to a person
who has not heard it beforehand but has only seen, at least if he have
understanding, that the Egypt to which the Hellenes come in ships is a
land which has been won by the Egyptians as an addition, and that it is
a gift of the river: moreover the regions which lie above this lake also
for a distance of three days' sail, about which they did not go on to say
anything of this kind, are nevertheless another instance of the same
thing: for the nature of the land of Egypt is as follows:--First when you
are still approaching it in a ship and are distant a day's run from the
land, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud and you
will find yourself in eleven fathoms. This then so far shows that there is
a silting forward of the land. Then secondly, as to Egypt itself, the
extent of it along the sea is sixty /schoines/, according to our definition
of Egypt as extending from the Gulf of Plinthine to the Serbonian lake,
along which stretches Mount Casion; from this lake then the sixty
/schoines/ are reckoned: for those of men who are poor in land have
their country measured by fathoms, those who are less poor by furlongs,
those who have much land by parasangs, and those who have land in
very great abundance by /schoines/: now the parasang is equal to thirty
furlongs, and each /schoine/, which is an Egyptian measure, is equal to
sixty furlongs. So there would be an extent of three thousand six
hundred furlongs for the coast-land of Egypt. From thence and as far as
Heliopolis inland Egypt is broad, and the land is all flat and without
springs of water and formed of mud: and the road as one goes inland
from the sea to Heliopolis is about the same in length as that which
leads from the altar of the twelve gods at Athens to Pisa and the temple
of Olympian Zeus: reckoning up you