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 th