On Isis and Osiris

...the true cause is one for all: for (as Plato says) it is not permitted for the impure to touch the pure. No residue of food or waste is holy or clean; and from waste, wool, and down, and hair, and nails grow and sprout. 4 It would be ridiculous, therefore, to lay aside their own hair in purifications by shaving the whole body evenly, while wrapping themselves in and wearing that of animals. For one must also think that Hesiod, by saying,

Nor from a five-branched hand at the feast of the gods
Should one cut the dry from the green with gleaming iron,

is teaching that one must become pure from such things to celebrate, not that one should use them in the sacred rites themselves...

“...why the priests lay aside their hair, and wear linen garments: while others are, etc.”
Ibid. Read and punctuate: phorein. hoi men oun (or gar) oud’ holōs, etc. Markland.

3 hē phēsin ho Platōn as Plato says] These are the words of Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, where it should be noted that ephaptesthai to touch is read for haptesthai to touch: and this passage is cited thus by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book 5, page 647 (Oxford edition). Concerning the thing itself, it is sufficiently certain that the Egyptians were most studious of cleanliness; for besides that shaving of the whole body of which we spoke above, they wash twice every day in cold water, and twice every night, and perform other myriad sacred rites: these are the words of Herodotus, book 2, chapter 37. For they did not think it right to serve the pure and entirely harmless and undefiled with bodies or souls that were festering and diseased. See below, page 383 B (Frankfurt edition).

4 geloion oun ēn it would be ridiculous] Would it not be better to read geloion an ēn? The verses that follow are from Hesiod, Works and Days, 741.

5 to de linon phuetai and the flax grows, etc.] Pliny, Natural History, book 19, chapter 2. “The upper part of Egypt towards Arabia produces a shrub, which some call Gossypion, more call Xylon, and therefore the linens made from it, Xylina. It is small, and bears a fruit similar to a bearded nut, [the fruit grows on the tree very similar to a nut, etc. (Julius Pollux, book 7, chapter 17)], from the inner cotton of which it is made woolly. And there is nothing to be preferred to them for whiteness or softness. Garments made from it are most pleasing to the priests of Egypt.”