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63.
When the people go to Heliopolis and Buto, they offer sacrifice only. At Papremis sacrifice is offered and rites performed just as elsewhere; but when the sun is setting, a few of the priests hover about the image, while most of them go and stand in the entrance to the temple with clubs of wood in their hands; others, more than a thousand men fulfilling vows, who also carry wooden clubs, stand in a mass opposite.
[2]
The image of the god, in a little gilded wooden shrine, they carry away on the day before this to another sacred building. The few who are left with the image draw a four-wheeled wagon conveying the shrine and the image that is in the shrine; the others stand in the space before the doors and do not let them enter, while the vow-keepers, taking the side of the god, strike them, who defend themselves.
[3]
A fierce fight with clubs breaks out there, and they are hit on their heads, and many, I expect, even die from their wounds; although the Egyptians said that nobody dies.
[4]
The natives say that they made this assembly a custom from the following incident: the mother of Ares lived in this temple; Ares had been raised apart from her and came, when he grew up, wishing to visit his mother; but as her attendants kept him out and would not let him pass, never having seen him before, Ares brought men from another town, manhandled the attendants, and went in to his mother. From this, they say, this hitting for Ares became a custom in the festival1.
1 It is uncertain what Egyptian deity Herodotus identifies with Ares. In a Greek papyrus, “Ares” is the equivalent for the Egyptian Anhur, a god, apparently, not clearly differentiated from “Shu” or “Heracles.”
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (30 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(3):
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), THENSAE
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), BUTOS or BUTO
- Basil L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, Forms of the verbal predicate
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(27):
- LSJ, ἀλέξω
- LSJ, ἀπότροφ-ος
- LSJ, ἀποθνήσκω
- LSJ, ξύλον
- LSJ, ἐξανδρόομαι
- LSJ, ἐπιτελ-έω
- LSJ, εὐχωλ-ή
- LSJ, εὐχωλ-ι^μαῖος
- LSJ, φημί
- LSJ, ἱερός
- LSJ, καταφερ-ής
- LSJ, καταχρυ_σ-όω
- LSJ, να_ός
- LSJ, νομ-ίζω
- LSJ, περιορ-άω
- LSJ, πληγ-ή
- LSJ, πον-έω
- LSJ, πρόπολος
- LSJ, πρόσπολος
- LSJ, προεκ-κομίζω
- LSJ, προπύλ-αιος
- LSJ, θυ^σί-α
- LSJ, συμμείγνυ_μι
- LSJ, συνα^ράσσω
- LSJ, τετρά-κυκλος
- LSJ, τι_μωρ-έω
- LSJ, τραῦμα
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