f 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.

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. 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 in 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. 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 kind which
fight with the serpents, but