Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
5 aKiffKiptva, — probably a word-play on SA.OJ (salts).
6 Muller, ii. 99. Aristagoras was a Greek writer on Egypt, who flourished about the last quarter of the 4th century B.C.
7 Namely the Nile, as Osiris, or the Great Deep.
8 Mystically the " Leviathan " (e.g. of the " Ophites ") who lived in the Great Deep. Cf. also Ps. civ. 26, where, speaking of the Great Sea (25), it is written : " There go the ships [the barides, boats, or vehicles of souls], and there is that Leviathan [LXX. Dragon] whom thou hast fashioned to take his pastime [LXX. sport or mock] therein."
but that the water of Nile's superfluity1 on being drunk seems to make fat, nay, rather to make much too much of flesh.
4. And [so] they do not wish the Apis to be so nor yet themselves, but [wish] to wear their bodies on their souls compact and light, and neither to corn-press nor op-press them by the mortal part prevailing and its weighing down of the divine.
ON THE DKINKING OF WINE
VI. 1. And as for wine, the servants of the God in Sun-city 2 do not at all bring it into the sacred place, as 'tis not right [for them] to drink by day while He, their Lord and King, looks on.
2. The rest [of them 3] use it indeed, but sparingly.
They have, however, many times of abstinence at
which they drink no wine, but spend them in the search for wisdom, learning and teaching the [truth] about the Gods.
3. The kings used to drink it, though in certain measure according to the sacred writings, as Hecatseus has narrated,4 for they were priests [as well].
4 They began to drink it, however, only from the time of Psammetichus ; 5 but before that they used not to drink wine.
Nor did they make libation of it as a thing dear to the Gods, but as the blood of those who fought against the Gods,6 — from whom, when they fell and mingled with the earth, they think the vines came, and that because of this wine-drenching makes men to be out of their minds and struck aside,1 in that, forsooth, they are full-filled with the forefathers of its 2 blood.3
1 rb Wti\tfov SSup — T& NeiAipa was the Feast of the Overflowing of the Nile.
2 Heliopolis— the God being the " Sun."
3 Sc. the priests.
4 Miiller, ii. 389. H. flourished last quarter of 6th and first 5th century B.C.
6 Reigned 671-617 B.C.
6 Sc. the Titans or Daimones as opposed to the Gods.
5. These things, at any rate Eudoxus says, in Book II. of his Circuit* are thus stated by the priests.
ON FISH TABOOS
VII. 1. As to sea-fish, all [Egyptians] abstain generally (not from all [fish] but) from some; — as, for example, those of the Oxyrhynchus nome from those caught with a hook, for as they venerate the sharpsnouted fish,5 they fear that the hook6 is not pure when "sharp-snout" is caught by it ; 7 while those of the Syene nome [abstain from] the " devourer," 8 for that it seems that it appears together with the rising of the Nile, and that it shows their 9 growth to those in joy, seen as a self-sent messenger.
1 Or "de-ranged" — irapav\rjyas. Paraplex is the first of the daimonian rulers in The Books of the Saviour (Pistis Sophia, 367).
2 Sc. the vine's.
3 Or " with the blood of its forefathers."
4 Or Orbit. Eudoxus flourished about the middle of the 4th century B.C. ; he was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and a great astronomer, obtaining his knowledge of the art from the priests of Isis.
5 -rbv o^vpvyx»" — perhaps the pike.
6 AyKurrpov — dim. of Hyicos, meaning a "bend" of any kind. Perhaps it may be intended as a play on the ankh tie or " noose of life," the well-known Egyptian symbol, generally called the crux ansata.
7 If we read etur$ for avrif it would suggest a mystic meaning, namely, " falls into his own snare."
8 (paypov — Vulg., sea-bream ; but Hesychius spells it tpdyupos, connecting it with <po.yi~iv, to devour.
9 Or " his " (the Nile's) ; but the " self - sent messenger "
(avT&yyi\o s) seems to demand " their," and so suggests a mystical
sense.
2. Their priests, upon the other hand, abstain from all ; and [even] on the ninth of the first month,1 when every one of the rest of the Egyptians eats a broiled fish before his front door,2 the priests do not taste it, but burn their fishes to ashes before the doors [of the Temple].3