Histories

As for the cow, it is covered with a purple robe, only the head and neck exposed, encrusted with a very thick layer of gold. Between the horns is the golden figure of the sun's orb.

It does not stand, but kneels; it is as big as a live cow of great size. This image is carried out of the chamber once every year, whenever the Egyptians mourn the god whose name I omit in speaking of these matters:

then the cow is brought out into the light; for they say that before she died she asked her father, Mycerinus, that she see the sun once a year[*](The cow-worship is no doubt the cult of Isis, honored at Saïs under the name Nit.).

After what happened to his daughter, the following happened next to this king: an oracle came to him from the city of +Kawm al-Farain [30.733,31.2] (deserted settlement), Kafr ash-Shaykh, Lower Egypt, Egypt, Africa Buto, announcing that he had just six years to live and was to die in the seventh.

The king took this badly, and sent back to the oracle a message of reproach, blaming the god that his father and his uncle, though they had shut up the temples, and disregarded the gods, and destroyed men, had lived for a long time, but that he who was pious was going to die so soon.

But a second oracle came announcing that for this very reason his life was hastening to a close: he had done what was contrary to fate; Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt should have been afflicted for a hundred and fifty years, and the two kings before him knew this, but not he.