kind
which fight with the serpents, but of those which most crowd round men's
feet (for there are two several kinds of ibises) the head is bare and
also the whole of the throat, and it is white in feathering except the
head and neck and the extremities of the wings and the rump (in all
these parts of which I have spoken it is a deep black), while in legs
and in the form of the head it resembles the other. As for the serpent
its form is like that of the watersnake; and it has wings not feathered
but most nearly resembling the wings of the bat. Let so much suffice as
has been said now concerning sacred animals.

77. Of the Egyptians themselves, those who dwell in the part of Egypt
which is sown for crops 67 practise memory more than any other men and
are the most learned in history by far of all those of whom I have had
experience: and their manner of life is as follows:--For three successive
days in each month they purge, hunting after health with emetics and
clysters, and they think that all the diseases which exist are produced
in men by the food on which they live; for the Egyptians are from other
causes also the most healthy of all men next after the Libyans (in my
opinion on account of the seasons, because the seasons do not change,
for by the changes of things generally, and especially of the seasons,
diseases are most apt to be produced in men), and as to their diet, it
is as follows:--they eat bread, making loaves of maize, which they call
kyllestis, and they use habitually a wine made out of barley, for vines
they have not in their land. Of their fish some they dry in the sun and
then eat them without cooking, others they eat cured in brine. Of birds
they eat quails and ducks and small birds without cooking, after first
curing them; and everything else which they have belonging to the
class of birds or fishes, except such as have been set apart by them as
sacred, they eat roasted or boiled.

78. In the entertainments of the rich among them, when they have
finished eating, a man bears round a wooden figure of a dead body in a
coffin, made as like the reality as may be both by painting and carving,
and measuring about a cubit or two cubits each way; 68 and this he shows
to each of those who are drinking together, saying: "When thou lookest
upon this, drink and be merry, for thou shalt be such as this when thou
art dead." Thus they do at their carousals.

79. The customs which they practise are derived from their