Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

146 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
supported in mid air.' And I went thither with
certain men who desired to go, and there was
water of the sea {i. e., salt water) there which was
Bitter wa-[p. 81] more bitter than wormwood—now the
people were sages and magicians, and astrologers,
and they had with them [the writings] of Aaron
the sage, and they had in their hands the book
which the mighty man Karon ^ had written con-
' What is meant here is that the houses were built, not
upon the ground, but upon the reeds which were said to
be four cubits in circumference (irrixujv 5' TtepiiueTpov hfov-
Tes); the Syriac version says that the reeds were thirty cubits
high, and that their thickness was equal to the garland which
a man puts on his head.
- Either Aaron the brother of Moses, or Aaron the Thau-
maturge O0'i\il^(^ : who flourished about the middle of the
XlVth century. He was bom at Gambaya 79"'flJP
: where he
lived for some time; he next went to Amhara h9°ihii' ' and
Mount G61 ft-flii 5 "JA ' where he became steward of the
convent and archdeacon; he was consecrated as priest by
the 'al)u!ia Jacob; and he finally settled at Mount Daret, where
he received the daughter of king Sayafa Ar'ad. See Wright,
Catalogue Ethiopic MSS., p. 179.
3 A famous alchemist; his work is mentioned by Mas'udi
(ed. B. de Meynard) tom. VIII, p. 177. In Kitdb al Fihrist
(ed. Flugel, pp.
alchemy was Hermes, the Sage, who came to Egypt from
roi, ror) it is said that the first writer on
Babylon after the dispersion of peoples. Others say that
alchemy was revealed by God to Moses and Aaron, and
that he who wrought in their name was Karun ^^f-^ Jlj'^
^^=l^Ls UjLjJ SS> ^Xy-^.. cJ^ ^S"^^ o'^- The Arabs have iden-
tified Karun with Korah (see Numbers, chap. XVI) and say
that he was the son of Izhar, the uncle of Moses; he was