tied 7 there, are carried to Syria to be added to that which has come
before. It was the Persians who thus prepared this approach to Egypt,
furnishing it with water in the manner which has been said, from the
time when they first took possession of Egypt: but at the time of which
I speak, seeing that water was not yet provided, Cambyses, in accordance
with what he was told by his Halicarnassian guest, sent envoys to the
Arabian king and from him asked and obtained the safe passage, having
given him pledges of friendship and received them from him in return.

8. Now the Arabians have respect for pledges of friendship as much as
those men in all the world who regard them most; and they give them in
the following manner:--A man different from those who desire to give the
pledges to one another, standing in the midst between the two, cuts
with a sharp stone the inner parts of the hands, along by the thumbs,
of those who are giving the pledges to one another, and then he takes a
thread from the cloak of each one and smears with the blood seven
stones laid in the midst between them; and as he does this he calls upon
Dionysos and Urania. When the man has completed these ceremonies, he who
has given the pledges commends to the care of his friends the stranger
(or the fellow-tribesman, if he is giving the pledges to one who is
a member of his tribe), and the friends think it right that they also
should have regard for the pledges given. Of gods they believe in
Dionysos and Urania alone: moreover they say that the cutting of their
hair is done after the same fashion as that of Dionysos himself; and
they cut their hair in a circle round, shaving away the hair of the
temples. Now they call Dionysos Orotalt 8 and Urania they call Alilat.

9. So then when the Arabian king had given the pledge of friendship to
the men who had come to him from Cambyses, he contrived as follows:--he
took skins of camels and filled them with water and loaded them upon the
backs of all the living camels that he had; and having so done he drove
them to the waterless region and there awaited the army of Cambyses.
This which has been related is the more credible of the accounts given,
but the less credible must also be related, since it is a current
account. There is a great river in Arabia called Corys, and this runs
out into the Sea which is called Erythraian. From this river then it is
said that the king of the Arabians, having got a conduit pipe made by