The Most Secret Secrets

Hieroglyphics, Book I.

The Muses: These, they say, Apollo taught, for which reason he was named the Musician. At this time, it is said that the Nile, around the rising of the Dog Star The star Sirius, whose appearance in the sky heralded the annual flooding of the Nile. (for it usually increases most at that time), flooded the greater part of Egypt, and especially that part over which Prometheus ruled. Indeed, with almost all the inhabitants of that region being consumed, Prometheus, moved by grief, is said to have wished to kill himself. However, the river was called the Eagle at that time because of the speed of its current and the depth of its waters. They say that Hercules, through the greatness of his counsel and his valor, immediately suppressed the onslaught of the waters and turned them back to their former course.

But Osiris, when he was in the mountains of Ethiopia, surrounded both banks of the Nile with a dam so that the flood would not exceed its bounds, but rather, exiting as if through certain gates, it would be gentle and beneficial to the fields. Then, making his way through Arabia along the Red Sea, he reached the furthest parts of India, where he founded many cities, one of which he named Nysa in memory of the place where he was raised original: "Nysa Aegypti"; Nysa was a legendary location in Greek and Egyptian mythology where Dionysus/Osiris was supposedly raised., and where he planted ivy—the only plant that grows in that location and in Nysa of Egypt. He also left many other monuments of himself among the Indians; moreover, he set up columns in many places as witnesses to his expedition. He also traveled through the rest of the nations of Asia; crossing into Europe via the Hellespont, he slew Lycurgus, the king of the barbarians in Thrace, who opposed him. Over that province, he placed the elder Maro; he appointed his son Macedon as king of Macedonia, and placed Triptolemus in charge of cultivating the fields of Attica The region surrounding Athens.. Finally, when he had traveled around almost the entire world, he returned to Egypt, bringing with him gifts given by various nations. Then, when he had been translated from humanity to the gods, honors

Mystical matters.

and sacred rites were established for him by Isis and Mercury as the greatest of the gods, and many things were added to his worship with mystical power, by which they might make the power of that god even more grand. Let it suffice to have briefly recounted these things about the expedition of Osiris into India from Diodorus Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian whose work preserved many Egyptian myths..

Note.

One should note that all these hieroglyphic or allegorical narratives are utterly contrary to the truth if they are understood in any way other than here; this is clear both from individual details that are literally absurd and false, and from the planting of wine, the sowing of wheat and barley, and of cattle—