The Symbolic Wisdom of the Egyptians

common, we learn from Pherecydes of Syros An early Greek thinker (c. 6th century BC) often credited with writing one of the first prose books on cosmogony and mythology., who tells us that when Darius Darius the Great, King of Persia (r. 522–486 BC). had crossed the Danube, Idanthura, King of the Scythians A nomadic people of Central Asia and Eastern Europe known for their horsemanship and fierce resistance to the Persians., threatened him with war; and instead of a written declaration of war, he sent him a mouse, a frog, a bird, a javelin, and a plow. The Persians now immediately understood the meaning of these symbols; however, the application was still doubtful, like an oracle. For the military commander Orontopagas explained it thus: as if the Scythians wanted to surrender themselves and their entire land, and interpreted the mouse as their dwellings, the frog as their waters, the bird as their climate, the spear as their weapons, and the plow generally as the land and the people. Xiphodres, however, explained the thing quite differently and said: "If we do not fly away like birds, or crawl away like mice and frogs, their arrows will destroy us." Anacharsis A famous Scythian philosopher who traveled to Athens in the 6th century BC and became a symbol of the "noble savage" to the Greeks. also describes the Scythians to us as a very symbolic people, in that, as he says, a Scythian, even when he sleeps, by covering the genitals with the left hand and the mouth with the right, makes the symbol known that one must indeed keep both in check, but more so the tongue than lust.