The Twitter Herodotus

2.41 Cows are sacred to Isis and cannot be sacrificed. An Egyptian won't even kiss a Greek on the mouth because Greeks eat cows.

2.42 Some Egyptians won't sacrifice sheep, others goats: the Egyptians don't all worship the same gods (except all worship Isis and Osiris).

2.43 The Greeks, I believe, got the name of their Hera-cles from the Egyptians. One of the Egyptians’ Twelve Gods is named Heracles.

2.44 I visited temples of Heracles in both Tyre and Thasos, and these pre-dated by a lot the birth of the Greeks' Heracles.

2.45 The Greeks have a story that the Egyptians were going to sacrifice their Heracles when he up and killed them all. But this is nonsense.

2.46 They worship goats in the province of Mendes. In my day something awful went on there: a he-goat mounted a woman in a public display.

2.47 The Egyptians consider pigs unclean and will only sacrifice them to the Moon and Dionysus. Swineherds have to keep to themselves.

2.48 They sacrifice pigs for the festival of Dionysus. They also carry around marionettes with huge penises that move up and down.

2.49 I think the Greeks adopted these Dionysiac rites from Egypt, which explains why the Greek and Egyptian practices are so similar.

2.50 The names of almost all of the Greeks' gods came from the Egyptians. One exception is Poseidon, who came from the Libyans.