XLIX. How They Denote Impurity

Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, tr. Alexander Turner Cory, [1840], at sacred-texts.com

XLIX. HOW THEY DENOTE IMPURITY.

 ¹

To denote impurity, they delineate an ORYX ² (a species of wild goat), because when

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the moon rises, this animal looks intently towards the goddess and raises an outcry, and that, neither to praise nor welcome her; and of this the proof is most evident, for it scrapes up the earth with its fore legs, and fixes its eyes in the earth, as if indignant and unwilling to behold the rising of the goddess. And it acts in the same manner at the rising of (the divine star) the sun. Wherefore the ancient kings, when the Horoscopus apprised them of the rising of the moon, placed themselves near this animal, and by observing the middle of its operations, ascertained, as by a kind of gnomon, the exact time of the rising. And hence the priests, of all other cattle, eat this alone without being previously marked with the seal, inasmuch as it appears to entertain a kind of aversion to the

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goddess: and in the desert wherever it finds a watering place, after having drunk, it stirs it up with its lips, and mingles the mud with the water, and throws dust into it with its feet, that it may be fit for no other animal to drink; so malicious and odious has the nature of the Oryx been considered. Nor does it act thus unmeaningly, because it is this same goddess who germinates and causes all things whatsoever to increase that are useful in the world.

Footnotes

69:1

I. The Oryx is found upon the monuments, but not explained.

II. A conical seal frequently appears in the hands of persons making oblations. Several with inscriptions on the base, as represented above, are in Dr. Lee's Museum.

69:2 Moe. Pur A. B. Mer. Causs. ὄρτυγα, a quail.