218 - THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP, XIV. 



Such was the veneration felt by the Egyptians 

 for the Ibis, that to have killed one of them, even 

 involuntarily, subjected the offender to the pain of 

 death* ; and "never," says Cicero t, " was such a 

 thing heard of as . . . an Ibis killed by an Egyptian." 

 So pure did they consider it, that "those priests 

 who were most scrupulous in the performance of the 

 sacred rites, fetched the water they used in their 

 purifications from some place, where the Ibis had 

 been seen to drink ; it being observed of that bird 

 that it never goes near any unwholesome and cor- 

 rupted water." t The particular respect paid to 

 it was supposed to be owing to its destroying ve- 

 nomous reptiles, which, as Cicero says, its height, 

 its hard legs, and long horny beak enable it to do 

 with great ease and safety ; thus averting pestilence 

 from Egypt, when the winged serpents are brought 

 by the westerly winds from the deserts of Libya. § 

 Pausaniasll, Cicero, and others^, think the existence 

 of these serpents not impossible ; and Herodotus 

 says he only saw their bones and wings. But we 

 may readily pardon their credulity, when we find it 

 asserted by a modern traveller that they still exist 

 in Egypt. 



Theaccount of Herodotus is this** : — "In Arabia 

 (the eastern or Arabian side of the Nile), very near 



* ITerodot. ii. 05. ; iind Diodor. i. 8.'J. 

 f (Ik: de Nat. Deor.'lih. i. 29. Vide supra, p. 9G. 

 i Pint, de Is, s. 75. ^:iian, vii.45. 



§ ('iccro, Nat. Deor. lib. i. " Ex quo fit, ut illae nee morsu vivae no. 

 ceant, nee odore niortua'." Herodotus says they came from Arabia, 

 (I l^iusan. X. 21. 



t TElian, Nat. An. ii. liH. Amni. Mareellin. xxii. 15, p. 3;J8. 

 ** Herodot. ii. 75. 



