Book 1. Of the Hieroglyphics.

Muses. They say Apollo taught them, for which reason he is named Musician. At this time, they report that the Nile, around the rising of Sirius the Dog Star (for then it is accustomed to grow the most), flooded the greater part of Egypt, and especially that which Prometheus ruled. For when almost all the inhabitants of that region were consumed, Prometheus, moved by grief, wished to kill himself. But the river, because of the speed and depth of its waters, was then called the Eagle. They want Hercules, both by the magnitude of his counsel and by his virtue, to have immediately suppressed the rush of the waters and turned it to its former course. But truly Osiris, when he was in the mountains of Ethiopia, surrounded both banks of the Nile with a dike, so that the flood would not exceed its measure, but going out as if through certain gates, would be gentle and profitable to the fields. Then, making a journey through Arabia along the Red Sea, he arrived at the furthest Indians, where he founded many cities, of which he named one Nysa, in memory of it, in which he was reared, where he planted the ivy, which alone is nurtured in that place, and in the Nysa of Egypt. He also left many other monuments of himself among the Indians. Moreover, he established columns in many places as witnesses of his expedition. He also traveled through the other nations of Asia. Passing through the Hellespont into Europe, he killed Lycurgus, the king of the barbarians in Thrace, who was resisting him. He placed old Maron over that province; he established his son Macedon as king of Macedonia; he placed Triptolemus over the cultivation of the Attic fields. Finally, when he had almost circled the globe, he returned to Egypt and brought with him gifts given by various peoples. Then, when he was translated from human to the gods, both honors and sacred rites were instituted for him, as for the greatest of the gods, by Isis and Mercury, and many things were added to the worship by mystical power, by which they might make the power of that God more ample. Let it suffice to have brought forward briefly about Osiris's expedition into India from Diodorus. That all these narrations are Mystical. hieroglyphic or allegorical, and most opposed to truth if they are accepted otherwise than here, is evident both from the individual absurdities and falsities to the letter, and from the planting of the vine, the crop of wheat and barley, and the fruit of cattle,