acrifice. The clean males then of the ox kind, both full-grown animals
and calves, are sacrificed by all the Egyptians; the females however
they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to Isis; for the figure of
Isis is in the form of a woman with cow's horns, just as the Hellenes
present Io in pictures, and all the Egyptians without distinction
reverence cows far more than any other kind of cattle; for which reason
neither man nor woman of the Egyptian race would kiss 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 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 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.

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; a