ke the painting, he is of this size and nature, that is to
say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and in
outline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle. This bird
they say (but I cannot believe the story) contrives as follows:--setting
forth from Arabia he conveys his father, they say, to the temple of the
Sun (Helios) plastered up in myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the
Sun; and he conveys him thus:--he forms first an egg of myrrh as large as
he is able to carry, and then he makes trial of carrying it, and when he
has made trial sufficiently, then he hollows out the egg and places his
father within it and plasters over with other myrrh that part of the egg
where he hollowed it out to put his father in, and when his father is
laid in it, it proves (they say) to be of the same weight as it was;
and after he has plastered it up, he conveys the whole to Egypt to the
temple of the Sun. Thus they say that this bird does.

74. 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.

75. 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 of 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.

76. 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