head they make many imprecations first, and then they who have a market
and Hellenes sojourning among them for trade, these carry it to the
market-place and sell it, while they who have no Hellenes among them
cast it away into the river: and this is the form of imprecations which
they utter upon the heads, praying that if any evil be about to befall
either themselves who are offering sacrifice or the land of Egypt in
general, it may come rather upon this head. Now as regards the heads of
the beasts which are sacrificed and the pouring over them of the
wine, all the Egyptians have the same customs equally for all their
sacrifices; and by reason of this custom none of the Egyptians eat of
the head either of this or of any other kind of animal: but the manner
of disembowelling the victims and of burning them is appointed among
them differently for different sacrifices; I shall speak however of the
sacrifices to that goddess whom they regard as the greatest of all, and
to whom they celebrate the greatest feast.--When they have flayed the
bullock and made imprecation, they take out the whole of its lower
entrails but leave in the body the upper entrails and the fat; and they
sever from it the legs and the end of the loin and the shoulders and the
neck: and this done, they fill the rest of the body of the animal with
consecrated loaves and honey and raisins and figs and frankincense and
myrrh and every other kind of spices, and having filled it with these
they offer it, pouring over it great abundance of oil. They make their
sacrifice after fasting, and while the offerings are being burnt, they
all beat themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating
themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburnt of the
sacrifice. The clean males then of the ox kind, both full-grown animals
and calves, are sacrificed by all the Egyptians; the females however
they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to Isis; for the figure of
Isis is in the form of a woman with cow's horns, just as the Hellenes
present Io in pictures, and all the Egyptians without distinction