Key to Easy Latin Stories for beginners/Part I/XIV
XIV.EGYPTIAN NOTES.
Doctors.
70.Among the Egyptians the art of medicine is distributed as follows. There is one doctor for every disease, nor does one and the same (doctor) cure several kinds of diseases. There are also among them some doctors for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teetl, others for hidden diseases.
Mourning for the Dead.
71.Lamentations and burials are ordained as follows. When a man of any house dies, all the women of that house smear their head, or even their very faces, with mud, and then, having left the corpse at home, they run themselves through the city groaning, and with them all their relations. The men groan in another place. These things having been done, they carry out the corpse for embalming.
Mummies.
72.Now certain men practise the art of embalming. When the corpse is brought, they first extract the brain through the nostrils with an iron. Then, after extracting the entrails, they wash the body with wine, and again cleanse it with pounded perfumes. Then they fill the body with myrrh, cassia, and other perfumes, with the exception of frankincense. These things having been thus done, they pickle the body for seventy days, for it is not lawful (to do so) longer. When the seventy days have been completed, they wash the corpse and cover it with clothes. Then the relations make a box in the shape of a man; they put the corpse into this box, and leave it in a tomb, placing it against the wall.
The victims of the Nile.
73.But men, whether Egyptians or foreigners, (who have been) carried off by a crocodile, or killed by the river itself, are treated with great honour. For the inhabitants of that place bury the corpse (when) cast up, with the greatest care: nor is it lawful for any one else, either relation or friend, to touch a corpse of this land, but the priests of the Kile alone bury it.
Mosquitoes.
74.Against the mosquitoes they do this. They build very lofty towers; they ascend these (when) about to sleep, for the mosquitoes are prevented by the wind (from approaching). But men who live around the marshes protect themselves in this way instead of towers. Each man has a net: with this during the day he catches fish, but by night makes use of it in the house: he places a net on the bed, then slipping himseK in, he sleeps under it. Eor the mosquitoes can bite through clothes, but they do not even attempt (to do so) through the net.
A visit to the infernal regions.
75.Rhampsinitus, king of the Egyptians, is said to have descended (while) alive beneath the earth, and to have played hazard with Ceres in the infernal regions, and to have come off partly victorious, and partly to have been defeated by her: at last, having again returned thence, to have brought back as a gift from the same (goddess), a golden cloak. On account of this journey of Ehampsinitus to the infernal regions, the Egyptians keep a feast. One of the priests puts on a cloak, made by them on the same day: the others cover his eyes with a cap, and then conduct him to the road leading to the temple of Ceres: then they themselves return. Then the priest & said to be conducted by two wolves to the temple of Ceres, and back again to the same place.
The transmigration of souls.
76.To the Egyptians first of all, the soul of man has seemed to be immortal. Now this is what they say of the soul: When the body is dying it enters into another animal. Having finished a circuit through all land and sea and winged creatures, it again returns into the body of a human being. Kow this circuit is completed in three thousand years. Moreover some of the philosophers of the Greeks have held (used) this opinion since.