Herodotus's Account of Egypt is the second book of the Histories, which contains descriptions of the marvels of the south: the size of the land, the wonders of the Nile, the religious ceremonies which will be as fascinating to the modern reader as it was to the ancient. From the priests at Memphis, Heliopolis, and the Egyptian Thebes he learned what he reports of the size of the country, the wonders of the Nile, the ceremonies of Egyptian religion, their sacred animals, the Crocodile and the Phoenix, their funerals and embalming, lotus and papyrus eating, the great kings and queens, and of the pyramids. Keep in mind that to Herodotus and the ancient Greeks, Egypt essentially was Africa - primitive maps show an ocean on all sides of the mysterious land to the south; so to understand this place was to know much of the world.