Histories

But around Elephantine they are not held sacred, and are even eaten. The Egyptians do not call them crocodiles, but khampsae. The Ionians named them crocodiles, from their resemblance to the lizards which they have in their walls[*](kroko/deilos is Ionic for a lizard; the commoner word is sau/ra or sau=ros. xa/mya is the Egyptian “em-suh,” a name which survives in the Arabic “timsah,” i.e. em-suh with the feminine article prefixed.).