Taste not, touch not

Assmann again, on “the fantastic but probably not totally inaccurate statements made by Herodotus about the purity commandments observed by the Egyptians in their contact with the Greeks and probably with all foreigners.”

Herodotus reports, “No Egyptian would touch a knife or cooking utensil that had been used by a Greek, nor eat the mean of an animal slaughtered with a Greek knife.  Nor could any Egyptian ever bring himself to kiss a Greek on the mouth.”  Assmann qualifies this by saying that many purity regulations applied only to Egyptian priests, who had “to preserve the sacred rites from profanation, not necessarily by foreigners but by the uninitiated.”

The relevant passage is from Book 2 of The History :

“The male kine, therefore, if clean, and the male calves, are used for sacrifice by the Egyptians universally; but the females they are not allowed to sacrifice, since they are sacred to Isis. The statue of this goddess has the form of a woman but with horns like a cow, resembling thus the Greek representations of Io; and the Egyptians, one and all, venerate cows much more highly than any other animal. This is the reason why no native of Egypt, whether man or woman, will give a Greek a kiss, or use the knife of a Greek, or his spit, or his cauldron, or taste the flesh of an ox, known to be pure, if it has been cut with a Greek knife. When kine die, the following is the manner of their sepulture:- The females are thrown into the river; the males are buried in the suburbs of the towns, with one or both of their horns appearing above the surface of the ground to mark the place. When the bodies are decayed, a boat comes, at an appointed time, from the island called Prosopitis,- which is a portion of the Delta, nine schoenes in circumference,- and calls at the several cities in turn to collect the bones of the oxen. Prosopitis is a district containing several cities; the name of that from which the boats come is Atarbechis. Venus has a temple there of much sanctity. Great numbers of men go forth from this city and proceed to the other towns, where they dig up the bones, which they take away with them and bury together in one place. The same practice prevails with respect to the interment of all other cattle- the law so determining; they do not slaughter any of them.”