A marvelous apparition.

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A Personage worthy of credit, that had travelled in diverse parts of Asia and Egypt, affirmed to many, that he had seen more then once in a certain place near unto Cairo (whether a number of people resort on a certain day in the month of March, for to be spectators of the resurrection of the flesh, as they say) of bodies deceased, showing and thrusting themselves as it were little by little out of the ground: not that they see them altogether, but now the hand, then the feet, some∣times half the body: which done, they in like manner hide themselves little by little again in the ground.

The rest not giving credit to such a marvel, and I for my part desiring to understand the truth of it, enquired of a kinsman and singular friend of mine, a Gentle∣man as thoroughly accomplished in all virtues as may be: one that had been brought up in great honours, and that is almost ignorant of nothing. He having travelled in the aforesaid countries with another Gentle∣man, a great and familiar friend also of mine, named the Lord Alexander of Schullembourg, told me he had heard of many, that this apparition was most certain, and that in Cairo and other places of Egypt, there was no question made of it. And the more to assure me, he showed me an Italian book, Imprinted at Venice, containing diverse descriptions of voyages, made by the ambassadors of Venice into many parts of Asia and Africa among the which one is entitled, Viaggio de Messer Aluigi di Giouanni di Alessandria nelle Indie.
Towards the end where I have extracted certain lines Translated out of Italian into Latin (and now into English) as hereafter follows.

On the 25. of March, in the year 1540. Diverse Christians, accompanied with certain Janissaries, went from Cairo to a little barren mountain, some half a mile off, designed in times past for burial of the dead: in the which place every year there usually assembles an incredible multitude of people, for to see the dead bodies there interred, as it were issuing out of their graves and sepulchers. This begins on Thursday, and continues till Saturday, when they vanish all away. Then may you see bodies wound in their sheets, after the ancient manner, but they are not seen standing upright, nor going, but only the arms or thighs, or some other part of the body, which you may touch. If you go a little way off, and come by again, you shall find that those arms, or other members, appear farther out of the ground. And the more you change place, the more do those motions appear diverse and greater. At that time there are a number of pavilions pitched about the mountain, for both sick and whole, which repair thither in great troupes firmly believe that whosoever wash himself on the Thursday night, with a certain water that runs in a marsh hard by, it is a sure remedy to recover and maintain health. But I have not seen that miracle. It is the report of the Venetian. Besides the which we have a Jacobin of Ulmes, named Felix, who hath travelled in those parts of the Levant, and hath published a book in Dutch touching all that he hath seen in Palestine and Egypt. He makes the very same recital. As I have not undertaken to maintained this apparition to be miraculous, for to confound these superstitious idolaters of Egypt, and to shew them that there is a resurrection and life to come: neither will I refute it, nor maintain it to be a Satanical illusion, as many think, but will also leave it to the judgement of the reader, for to determine thereof as he shall think good. 
PH. CAMERARIVS, Councellor of the Common-wealth of Nuremberg, in the 73. Chap. of his Historicall Meditations.
I will adde somewhat hereunto, for the content of the Reader: STEVEN DVPLAIS a cunning Goldsmith, and a man of an honest and pleasing conversation, being now some 45. years old, or thereabout, having travelled diverse Countries of Turkey and Egypt, made me an ample discourse of the apparition before mentioned, some fifteen years since, affirming he had been spectator of it with Claude Rocard, an Apothecary of Chablis in Champagne, and twelve other Christians, having for their trunk man and guide a gold-smith of Otranto in Apulia, called Alexander Maniotti.
He told me moreover, that he (as the rest) had touched divers members of those [ress•…stitants]. And as he was taking hold on the hair of a child’s head, a man of Cairo cried out:
Kali, Kali, antè matarasdè: that is to say; let it alone, let it alone, thou know not what thou doest: Now for as much as I could not well persuade myself that there was any such matter as he told me of, though in divers other reports, conferred with that which is to be read in our modern authors, I had always found him simple and true, we continued a long time in this opposition of my ears to his eyes, until the year 1591. that having showed him the above said observations of Doctor Camerarius: Now you may see (said he) that I have told you no fables. And many times since, we have talked of it with wonder and reverence of the divine wisdom. Furthermore he told me thereupon that a Christian dwelling in Egypt, had diverse times recounted unto him, upon talk of this apparition or resurrection, that he had learned of his grand-father and Father, which their ancestors had reported, having received it from hand to hand time out of mind, that certain hundredth years ago, divers Christians, men women, and children, being assembled in that mountain, for to do some exercise of their religion, were surrounded and compassed about by a great number of their enemies, the little mountains being but of a small circuit who cut them all in pieces: and having covered their bodies with earth, returned to Cairo. Ever since the which, this resurrection hath appeared the space of certain days before and after that of the massacre. Behold a summary of Steven Duplais discourse…, by him confirmed and renewed in the end of April 1600. when I wrote this History, whereunto that can be nothing prejudicial which is recited by Martin Baumgarten in his voyage to Egypt, made the year 1507. published by his successors, and imprinted at Nuremberg, in the year 1594. For in the 18. Chapter of the first Booke, he saith, that these apparitions are made in a Mosque of the Turks hard by Cairo. There is a fault in the copy: and it should say Hillock or little mountains, not on the banks of the Nile, as Baumgarten writes, but half a mile of, as we have declared.