whether speaking truly or falsely I know not. He said that being
on a voyage to Punt (for so the Egyptians call that part of
Arabia), he was driven by a north wind for many days, and at last
landed in the mouth of a certain river where were many sea-fowl and
water-birds. And thereby is a rock, no common one, but fashioned
into the likeness of the head of an Ethiopian. There he said that
the people of that country found him, namely the Amagardoi, and
carried him to their village. They have this peculiar to
themselves, and unlike all other peoples whom we know, that the
woman asks the man in marriage. They then, when they have kissed
each other, are man and wife wedded. And they derive their names
from the mother; wherein they agree with the Lycians, whether being
a colony of the Lycians, or the Lycians a colony of theirs, Phanes
could not give me to understand. But, whereas they are black and
the Lycians are white, I rather believe that one of them has
learned this custom from the other; for anything might happen in
the past of time.

The Amagardoi have also this custom, such as we know of none other
people; that they slay strangers by crowning them with amphorae,
having made them red-hot. Now, having taken Phanes, they were
about to crown him on this wise, when there appeared among them a
veiled woman, very tall and goodly, whom they conceive to be a
goddess and worship. By her was Phanes delivered out of their
hands; and "she kept him in her hollow caves having a desire that
he should be her lover," as Homer says in the Odyssey, if the
Odyssey be Homer's. And Phanes reports of her that she is the most
beautiful woman in the world, but of her coming thither, whence she
came or when, she would tell him nothing. But he swore to me, by
him who is buried at Thebes (and whose name in such a matter as