Levit. xi. 17. Ibis. Strabo, l. 17.IBIS, an unclean Bird, very common in Egypt. Strabo says it is like a Stork, and that some are black, and others white. The Egyptians worship these birds, because they devour the Serpents, which otherwise would over-run the country. The Hebrew word Janeschoph, which is translated Ibis, may come from Nescheph, which signifies darkness; for which reason Junius and Bochart, instead of the Ibis, understand by it an Owl. The Syriac renders it Swan, and the Arabic, Nisus, which is a Sea-Eagle.
It is agreed, that the Ibis is of the species of Storks. The white Ibis is a real Stork; the black, which is properly the Ibis, is a bird peculiar to Egypt; it never goes out of it, and some say that it cannot even live out of it. At a distance it seems to be all black, but if you look near it, it is of the colour of a Lapwing or a Wood-raven, the feathers whereof seem to be mixed with green, and a colour bordering upon blue, blended something with purple. The belly of it and sides under the wings are white, its beak is large, strong, and of a scarlet colour, as well as its legs and feet. Its beak is about eighteen inches long, its neck a foot or fourteen inches, its body and breast are as large as the back of a goose. When its head is under its wings, it has the form of a heart.
Polyæn. l. 7. Stratagem.The white Ibis is to be seen in all parts of Egypt, but the black is not commonly to be met with any where but about Damietta. The Egyptians had so much veneration for it, that it was a capital crime among them to have killed so much as one, tho’ through inadvertency . Cambyses King of Persia, who was not unacquainted with their superstition in this respect, had some of these birds placed before his army while he besieged Damietta. The Egyptians not daring to shoot against them, nor consequently against their enemies, suffered the town to be taken, which was as it were the key of all Egypt. The Ibis not only eats the flying Serpents, or Saraphs, but kills them after it is sated with them. It eats likewise the Eggs of Serpents, and carries them to its young ones, which are very greedy of them. After the death of the Ibis, the Egyptians were used to embalm it, in order to preserve it, made a kind of funeral for it, and paid great honours to it.
Salmas. in Solin. p. 418. Solin. c. 34.It is very remarkable in this bird, that altho’ it be a water-fowl, and lives principally about the Nile, yet it never enters the water, and does not know how to swim. The use of glysters is said to have been learned from the Ibis, and not from the Stork. It generally builds its nest upon Palm-trees, to avoid the cats. The Ancients asserted in their writings, that it conceived at its beak, and even laid its eggs that way; but these are both equally mistakes. Aldrovandus relates, that the flesh of the Ibis is red, like a Salmon’s, that it is sweet, that its skin is very hard, and smells like wildfowl.