Histories

The priest, in this quandary, went into the temple shrine and there before the god's image bitterly lamented over what he expected to suffer. Sleep came on him while he was lamenting, and it seemed to him the god stood over him and told him to take heart, that he would come to no harm encountering the power of Arabian Peninsula [45,25] (region (general)), AsiaArabia: “I shall send you champions,” said the god.

So he trusted the vision, and together with those Egyptians who would follow him camped at +Pelusium (deserted settlement), Shamal Sina', Desert, Egypt, Africa Pelusium, where the road comes into Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt; and none of the warriors would go with him, but only merchants and craftsmen and traders.

Their enemies came there, too, and during the night were overrun by a horde of field mice[*](This is Hdt.'s version of the Jewish story of the pestilence which destroyed the Assyrian army before +Jerusalem [35.233,31.766] (inhabited place), Jerusalem, Israel, Asia Jerusalem. Mice are a Greek symbol of pestilence; it is Apollo Smintheus (the mouse god) who sends and then ends the plague in Hom. Il. 1. It has long been known that rats are carriers of the plague.) that gnawed quivers and bows and the handles of shields, with the result that many were killed fleeing unarmed the next day.

And to this day a stone statue of the Egyptian king stands in Hephaestus' temple, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect: “Look at me, and believe.”

Thus far went the record given by the Egyptians and their priests; and they showed me that the time from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus, who was the last, covered three hundred and forty-one generations, and that in this time this also had been the number of their kings, and of their high priests.