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 of 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 45 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.

42. 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: for not all the Egyptians equally reverence the same gods,
except only Isis and Osiris (who they say is Dionysos), these they all
reverence alike: but they who have a temple of Mendes or belong to the
Mendesian district, these abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep. Now
the men of Thebes and those who after their example abstain from sheep,
say that this custom was established among them for the cause which
follows:--Heracles (they say) had an earnest desire to see Zeus, and Zeus
did not desire to be seen of him; and at last when Heracles was urgent
in entreaty Zeus contrived this device, that is to say, he flayed a ram
and held in front of him the head of the ram which he had cut off, and
he put on over him the fleece and then showed himself to him. Hence
the Egyptians make the image of Zeus into the face of a ram; and the
Ammonians do so also after their example, being settlers both from
the Egyptians and from the Ethiopians, and using a language which is a
medley of b