PRELIMINARY REMARKS

TO THE CANDID READER

GREETINGS.

IZAAK VOSSIUS.

Behold, Reader, you now have in your hands that most highly praised little book of Pherecydes a 6th-century BCE Greek philosopher concerning Leros and Chios islands in the Aegean: I call it most highly praised because the Author is mentioned in this book more often than in any other of his works, however excellent and filled with all manner of erudition they may be. For whether you consider Mythology the study of myths and the Fables of the Ancients, which are of truly marvelous composition and prodigious explanation, or whether you wish to examine them according to the credibility of ancient History, to test them by the standard of Philosophy the love of wisdom, and finally to relate Genethliaca poems or texts concerning a person's birth to the established customs of Religion—this MUSA muse or poetic inspiration of Pherecydes is the book, or nowhere else will you find it. Or, if you are a student of History the study of past events, and are entirely occupied with investigating, composing, and organizing the Migrations, Customs, Laws, Kings, and Dynasties successions of rulers of the most ancient Nations—you may read Herodotus the ancient Greek historian and weigh the words of Diodorus a Sicilian Greek historian to your heart's content, yet you will not have performed your duty sufficiently unless you have read through this Treatise of Vossius a 17th-century scholar with a diligent and curious eye. To say it in a word, the Relics of the Egyptian pertaining to Egypt Religion are stored here.