Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

6 THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
And by doing these and such like things he reigned
for many days, and he destroyed many [armies] by
the power of his magic.
The end of And' it Came to pass that when the days of
draws nigh, his rule over Egypt were coming to an end, one of
the scouts of his army came to him, and said,
"O great king, help us to deliver thy kingdom,
"and sit thou not silent in respect of the enemy.
of people in wax and for having caused paralysis to come
upon them by these means. Whatever was done to the figure
of a man^ or whatever injury was inflicted upon it would^
it was believed^ also come upon the actual man^ provided
that the doing of the act was accompanied by the recitation
of the names of certain fiends and demons and of certain for-
mulae. From the earliest times in Egypt during funereal
ceremonies certain religious acts were performed upon the
statue of a man whereby the dead was believed to benefit,
but the necessary formulae had to be recited by the priests
before they were efficacious. The dead man enjoyed the
offerings made to his statue provided all the words proper
for the occasion were said, and all the accompanying cere-
monies were duly performed. The eyes of the dead enjoyed
relief when the eyes of his statue were smeared with stibium,
and his mouth was opened and he gained the power of speech
when the priest had touched the mouth of the statue with
the instrument for "opening the mouth". From doing good
to the dead to working evil upon the living by means of
things done to figures of individuals was but a step, and in
the last days of the Egyptian Empire under the Greeks and
Romans the working of sorcery by means of figures became
exceedingly common.
' .See Miiller, Pseiido- Callisiheiics, Bk. i . chap. 2, and Meusel,
Pseudo- Callisthenes, p. 706.