16
Garmathone, queen of Egypt, having lost her son Chrysochoas while he was yet very young, with all her servants and friends most bitterly bemoaned her loss. At what time Isis appearing to her, she surceased her sorrow for a while, and putting on the countenance of a feigned gratitude, kindly entertained the goddess. She, willing to make a suitable return to the queen for the piety which she expressed in her reception, persuaded Osiris to bring back her son from the subterranean regions. When Osiris undertook to do this, at the importunity of his wife, Cerberus —whom some call the Terrible—barked so loud, that Nilus, Garmathone’s husband, struck with a sudden frenzy, threw himself into the river Aegyptus, which from thence was afterwards called Nilus.
16
In this river grows a stone, not unlike to a bean, which so soon as any dog happens to see, he ceases to bark. It also expels the evil spirit out of those that are possessed, if held to the nostrils of the party afflicted.
16
There are other stones which are found in this river, called kollotes, which the swallows picking up against the time that Nilus overflows, build up the wall which is called the Chelidonian wall, which restrains the inundation of the water and will not suffer the country to be injured by the fury of the flood;—as Thrasyllus tells us in his Relation of Egypt.
16
Upon this river lies the mountain Argyllus, so called for this reason.
