Did Herodotus Ever Go to Egypt Author(s): O.

Kimball Armayor Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 59-73 Published by: American Research Center in Egypt Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000131 . Accessed: 18/04/2012 12:35
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Did

Herodotus

Ever

Go

to

Egypt*

ARMAYOR O. KlMBALL

Introduction.

Perhaps we scarcely need to be reminded of the Egyptologist's reliance on Herodotus. For the Old Kingdom we are obliged to account for much of his evidence on the pyramids, and we like to notice that he almost gets the names right.1For the Middle Kingdom we must deal with his evidence on an Egyptian Labyrinth.2For the 26th Dynasty, we read him into the very sherds and ditches of Naucratis,3 and there are Psammetichus and the men of bronze from out the sea to contend with. For the 27th Dynasty (Persian) we have not only Herodotus' portrait of Cambyses but also his own impressions of Egypt and the Egyptians. Breasted came to rely on Herodotus as a substitute for the lost monuments of the Delta,4 as did Gardiner.5 Russell Meiggs gauged the extent of the fifth-century Greek and Phoenician wine trade with Egypt in accord with Herodotus' story of Egyptian demarchs who collected all the empty wine-jarsfrom their respective cities and brought them to Memphis, whence they were destined to bear water for the deserts of Syria (iii.6.1).6 Why? Because we make allowances for Herodotus. We tend to accept his authority, because it purports to rest on his own experience of Egypt. Yet we have nothing more than Herodotus' own word for his travels, in Egypt and elsewhere, and we can only assess them in the light of inadequate archaeological control.
59

In view of the stakes, therefore, perhaps we should press this matter of Herodotus' authority and assess Herodotus' claims in the light of our control over them. At the turn of the century, the face value of Herodotus' travel in Egypt was much in doubt. If Aelius Aristides (2nd. cent, a.d.) believed that Herodotus never reached Elephantine,7 Gardner Wilkinson had the same kind of doubts in the 19th century.8 A. H. Sayce believed that Herodotus never got as far as Upper Egypt, and he came to doubt that Herodotus went to Egypt at all.9 By the end of the century F. LI. Griffithhad cut the knot and decided that it did not matter where he went. Of Herodotus' Egypt Griffithwrote, in 1899, that "If occasionally his descriptions are truthful, they present so marked a contrast to the general standard of his history that one is disposed to credit them to other vision than his."10 For about half a century, therefore, there was a wave of critical attention to Herodotus' story of Egypt in the light of modern travel and archaeology. Some of it was good, some bad, yet virtually all of it was swept away in the reaction to Sayce in the early years of this century. There were polemics by Sir RichardJebb, D. D. Heath, Alfred Croiset, and Amedee Hauvette, among others.11W. W. How and Joseph Wells, who believed that Hecataeus was an Alexandrian forgery, finished the job by displacing Sayce's commentary on Herodotus' first three books. Their own commentary has never been superseded.

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We have insisted on treating Herodotus as a simple-minded modern traveller who went astray in spite of himself and used his predecessor Hecataeus merely as a guide to be emulated. Herodotus was "a careful observer, who honestly tried to describe what he saw, even though he did not understand it ...." (HW i.414) But there have always been doubts. They began with Thucydides, who did not believe that Herodotus merely fell short of the truth, but rather that he never tried to tell the truth in the first place. Herodotus was one among many who had more of story and song about them than truth, a storyteller whose main object was to entertain and profit therefrom.12Antiquity held to Thucydides' view and the 19th-century orientalists tried to confirm it by means of archaeology; dissenters in this century hearkened back to it. Prof. Diels opened the modern question of Herodotus' debt to Hecataeus at the end of the 19th century.13 pupil,W.A.Heidel, His renewed Diels' emphasis on Hecataeus in the matter of Herodotus' Egyptian priests.14 Friedrich Oertel re-opened the question of Herodotus' credibility, which has never really been closed, only to decide that there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other in the case of Egypt, and in dubio pro reo.15 Detlev Fehling merely dismissed the face value of Herodotus' Egyptian sources.16 The doubts on Herodotus remain, and nowhere more so than in the case of Egypt.
Herodotusand the blacksof Egypt

Did Herodotus ever really know what the Egyptians looked like? Herodotus' Egyptian king Sesostris left part of his armyin Colchis by the river Phasis (ii.103). Herodotus goes on as follows (ii.104). For the Colchians appear to be Egyptian, and I myself perceived as much before I heard it from others. When I began to think about it, I asked both peoples, and

the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more than the Egyptians the Colchians. The Egyptians said that they considered the Colchians to be part of Sesostris' army. And I myself guessed it, partly because they are black-skinnedand woolly-haired.17That comes to nothing, because there are other such people, but there is something more important, that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians alone, of all men, have circumcised from the beginning. The Phoenicians and Syrians in Palestine themselves admit that they learned it from the Egyptians, and the Syrians around the Thermodon and Parthenius river and the Macrones who are neighbours of theirs say that they learned it lately from the Colchians. For these are the only nations of men who circumcise, and these appear to do the same thing as the Egyptians.18 What, then, of the context? Herodotus asked the Egyptians about the Colchians and the Colchians about the Egyptians, and the Colchians turned out to be descended from King Sesostris' Egyptian army. Can we really believe that story? Or is not Herodotus merely telling us what he heard, or read, rather than what he himself did? The latter impression seems confirmed in the matter of the circumcision that Herodotus adds to the story. As in the case of Hecataeus' account of Egypt as the gift of the river (ii.5 = FGH 1 F 301), Herodotus saw begins on the defensive. He himself that the Colchians were Egyptians even before he heard it from "others", because they were black-skinned, woolly-haired, and circumcised. The black skin and woolly hair were not decisive, as "others" may have suggested. The conclusive link was circumcision, and here as in the case of his threeday addition to the priests' gift of the river, Herodotus implies that only he took note of it. Only the Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians have always circumcised. But how did he take note of it? Herodotus tells

DID HERODOTUS EVER GO TO EGYPT?

61

us what the Phoenicians and Macrones and two kinds of Syrians had to say. If others had already told of Egyptian black skin and woolly hair among the Colchians,Herodotus himself proved the connection by questioning the Phoenicians and Palestinian Syrians and the Syrians of the Thermodon and Parthenius and even the Macrones on their circumcision. He went his predecessors one better. But did he? Did Herodotus really question Egyptians and Colchians about Sesostris? Thermodon Or the Phoenicians, Palestinians, and Parthenius Syrians,and Macrones about circumcision? Or is not Herodotus merely building on what his predecessors have already told him in their own written works in such a way as to claim a personal contribution to the subject of Sesostris' colonization? In sum, is not Herodotus merely telling a good story here, just as his logographer predecessors must have done in the previous century? Whatever the context, what does Herodotus tell us about the looks of the Egyptians? First, Herodotus does not merely believe that the Egyptians are swarthy by implied contrast with the Greeks.19 Elsewhere Herodotus says that the people of Dodona called Egyptian priestesses doves because of their strange language, and black because they were Egyptian (ii.57). Liddell and Scott "blacktranslate Herodotus' melagchroes and skinned, swarthy"20 likewise J.E.Powell translates "swarthy" in 1937 and "blackskinned" in 1949,21but Herodotus seems to take it for granted that just as the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians all had circumcision in common, so also did they have black skin in common. Howblack does not really matter. The combination of black skin and woolly hair makes them blacks no matter what their precise shade. Nor does Herodotus merely assume that the Egyptians must have woolly hair because of the color of their skin; his eastern Ethiopians

have straight hair while those of the west have the woolliest hair of all (vii.70). Herodotus may not be right about circumcision. Here and elsewhere he seems to assume that all the Egyptians, or the Egyptians in general, at least, were circumcised,22 and both Diodorus23and Strabo24 follow him. But Josephus says that it was and only the priests,25 some modernscholars him.26Whether or not qrnt tend to support means foreskin in the Karnak and Athribis stelae,27 Egyptian circumcision may have been essentially religious and confined to a caste of initiated from the start.28It may have been spread throughout the populace in the Old Kingdom only to become progressively neglected till only the priests retained it in Josephus' day.29The extent of it may have varied considerably according The fact is that we lack to time and place.30 the literary,31pictorial,32or mummy33evidence to decide the matter, and especially not for the time of Herodotus. According to J. R. Harris, at least, "it must be admitted that the rite was not widespread and that its nature and purpose are far from clear , . ,."34 Jean Yoyotte points out that the custom was not universal and that in the New Kingdom the pharaoh himself was not compulsorily circumcised.35 But circumcision is hardly the most important factor. How could Herodotus believe the Egyptians and Colchians were blacks if he really went to Egypt and Colchis? Aeschylus believed that the Egyptians had black limbs (melagchimois guioisi)36

and Pindar believed that the Colchians

were black-faced (kelainopessi but Kolchoisiri)31

they do not claim to have seen for themselves. Likewise the blacks who appear more frequently in the Greek art of this period may have been meant to be Egyptian,38and late antiquity also seems full of black Egyptians.39 But here again what we have to contend with is literary and artistic tradition and not autopsy. We can account for such tradition in

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terms of Ionian geography. The Nile and the Phasis are the ends of the earth (iv.45; Pindar, Isthmian ii.41f.), where the sun burns its way through the heaven (ii.26). Where the sun comes up and the dawn is at home; the people of the Phasis are burned black. But alone of all rivers the Nile is always exposed to the sun (ii.25), and men of the Nile are also black from the heat (ii.22). Perhaps we can also account for the blacks of the Nile in terms of the Egyptians' name for their country, "the Black Land",Kerne.40 To the early Greek soldiers and traders they seemed perhaps to call themselves Black-ites if not Blacks, which could only mean woolly-haired blacks to the early "ethnologists" of Miletus. Which Greek soldiers and traders?The Greek mercenaries of king Psammetichus IPs Ethiopian expedition, who carved their graffiti on the legs of the colossal rock-cut statues of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel near the second cataract, seem likely candidates. They probably campaigned with and against Egyptianized blacks of the upper Nile.41 As for Herodotus' Egyptian colonists in Colchis, Hecataeus of Miletus brought the Argonauts from the river Phasis through the Ocean into the Nile and down-river into "our sea" (FGH 1 F 18a). Herodotus' king Sesostris reached the Phasis by land with his own rebellious black argonauts (ii.lO2ff.). And Diodorus Siculus also believed "the Egyptians'" account of their colonization of Colchis, whether or not the story derived ultimately from Hecataeus of Miletus.42 Clearly the Ionians linked the ends of the earth in their ethnology even as they did by way of Ocean in their geography. Pindar's black-faced Colchians and those of Herodotus derive from their tradition. Perhaps the ultimate apologetic variation on Herodotus' autopsy was that of P. T. English in 1959, who argued that a small black settlement in the modern Caucasus was a surviving remnant of Sesostris' army. Yet nothing but the urge

to make Herodotus right could argue the theory of a Middle Kingdom black folkwandering from Cush to the Caucasus to account for Herodotus' black colonists on the Phasis.43Hippocrates or his students believed that the dwellers along the Phasis were a sluggish swamp people with Mongoloid coloring- -tall, fat, lazy, deep-voiced, and yellow, as if they suffered from jaundice believed that the Black Sea peoples had 782b). They may have been right. Hippocrates' yellow may be the color of Mongol nomads. There is no evidence worthy of the name for Herodotus' and Pindar's Colchian blacks. The few blacks of the Caucasus near Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhaziya, are probably the descendants of African slaves who withstood the rigors of subtropical agriculture better than the Circassians and could therefore learn how to grow the best tobacco in what is now the Soviet Union, which is what their own local tradition seems to indicate. Nor is there evidence of Herodotus' and Aeschylus' Egyptian blacks. Black blood in the nobles, even Kings, of the Middle Kingdom, and the possible facial traces of it in seem neither here nor there Egyptian art,44 in the matter of Herodotus' woolly-haired blacks of the fifth century. How could Herodotus ever have gone to Egypt and come away believing that the Egyptians were black? For all the apologetics on this passage, we have not yet faced the problem. If Pierre Larcher tried to confirm Herodotus' black Egyptians with a mummy still coated with black pitch in 1786,45William Cooley did the same thing by way of lower-class Egypand so didC.R.Lepsius tian blacks in 1844,46 in the late 19th century by way of dusky Ethiopian princesses who founded the Ammonian oracle.47Early in this century How and Wells reverted to Cooley's train
Animaliumv.3.30, straight hair [De Generatione [Airs, Waters,and Places xv.20ff.). Aristotle

DID HERODOTUS EVERGO TO EGYPT?

63

of thought by way of black slaves in the streets of Memphis, and it remains orthodox to the present day.48 But surely the easiest is that Herodotus merely borexplanation rowed the Ionian geography and ethnology and logography of Hecataeus' tradition and tried to go him one better. Just as he put Hecataeus' account of Egypt as the gift of the river into the priests' mouths and added three days' worth of gift from his own observation (ii.5 = FGH 1 F 301), Herodotus merely borrowed his Colchian blacks from Hecataeus and proved they were Egyptian from his own observation because they were circumcised. Rationalising Milesian logographers turned the Colchian blacks of Ionian ethnology into overland Egyptian argonauts who colonized the river Phasis. Herodotus claimed the proof of their nationality with his own brand of logography on Egyptian circumcision and who else learned it. To nail down a storyteller's point, Herodotus told more stories, stories about all the questions he asked the Egyptians, Colchians, Phoenicians, Palestinians, and Macrones- stories that he Syrians, meant to be taken in the same vein as those of any other storyteller who had not yet developed a modern historian's taste for the literal truth or encountered the modern expectation of it. Clearly Herodotus' Egyptian and Black Sea blacks are merely another version of Aeschylus' black-limbedsailors and Pindar's black-faced Colchians. The trouble here is not in Herodotus' account of the Egyptians and Colchians but rather in his experience of them. Either Herodotus did go to Egypt and Colchis and remained content to tell of traditionalblacks that he and his audience wanted to find there or he never went to Egypt and Colchis at all. In any event we shall have to revise our estimate of Herodotus' historical authority on fifth-century Egypt and Colchis.

Herodotusand thePriests.

We come, therefore, to Herodotus' Egyptian priests. Apart from his own experience, Herodotus claims that most of his knowledge of Egypt came from them. But could Herodotus ever really have been admitted to extensive converse withlearned Egyptian priests of Memphis, Thebes, Heliopolis, and Sais (ii.2f., 28)? Perhaps we should first remember the Egyptian reputation for xenophobia. Herodotus himself says that no Egyptian, man or woman, will kiss a Greek or use the knife or spits or cauldron of a Greek, or taste the flesh even of a clean bull that has been cut with a Greek knife (ii.41.3). That is the Egypt we know from Genesis, where the Egyptians would not eat with the Jews (xliii.32), the Egypt that seems to have brought Amasis to power as a nationalist reacting to the foreign and largely Greek troops of his predecessor Apries.49That is probably what the Greek trader and mercenary found himself up against, Egyptians who would not even eat with him. The Greeks have been called the best-hated people in Egypt.50The Egyptians did not even like their pottery.51 Yet Herodotus tells us that the priests counseled and tutored him on Egyptian mores and history, and even on Egyptian religion. If so, how could he possibly tell of the Egyptian abhorrence toward Greeks without stopping to qualify and specify? Perhaps we should also remember the matter of interpreters. Herodotus did not talk to native Egyptian priests without them, and yet he does not mention either interpreters themselves in this connection, or the lack of a need for them. And Herodotus seems at pains to deal with them elsewhere.52 Nor should we forget the matter of writing. Herodotus knows something of "sacred" and demotic Egyptian (ii.28, 36), and he is very much aware of the Persians

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in charge of Egypt (ii.30, 98f., 149.5, iii.91.3). After meeting with the priests, one of them a grammatistes, all, should after not Herodotus also know something of the Aramaic then in use among the governing Persians of the country, as Meyer,53 Spiegeland Kolta,55 example, lead us to for berg,54 believe? Finally, we should not forget rank and social status. On the one hand we have no good reason to believe that the Egyptians would have dealt with Herodotus ' as anything other than a tourist. And on the other, we have no good reason to believe that real, native Egyptian priests, learned in the history, geography, geology, chronology, and religion of the country as Herodotus says they were, would have acted anything other than lofty and sequestered. How could Herodotus ever have met them in the first place? As Maspero once put it, that was about as likely as that a modern tourist would be shown round Notre Dame by the There was an element Archbishop of Paris.56 of wishful thinking in Hecataeus' and Herodotus' friendly converse with the priests of Egypt. It was akin, perhaps, to that of the Greek tradition that made Amasis a Philhellene even though he restricted Greek trade and could not make love to a Greek woman whom he had married only for her political connections in the first place (ii.l78ff.). To judge from the Egyptian record, there were not any real Egyptian Philhellenes before the Macedonian conquest and precious few of them after it. Which brings us to the modern orthodoxy on the problem. Most scholarshave assumed that Herodotus did not in fact talk to the lofty and learned professionals that he tells about, but rather some lesser kind of temple underlings, or even guides and interpreters, who merely told him what he wanted to hear.57 If John Kenrick emphasised the "various orders of priests" in 184 1,58 Serge^ Sauneron did the same thing in 1962,59as didJohn Wilson in 1970.60

But did not Herodotus know the difference between real priests in our usual sense of the word and low-grade sextons and temple orderlies? Herodotus purports to have been tutored by the same Theban noblemen who talked to Hecataeus, priests who traced their heritage statue after statue through 345 generations in the great inner megaron of their temple (ii.143). And Herodotus purports to know the personal habits of his priests. He tells us how they shave their bodies to avoid lice, what kind of garments and sandals they wear, how they wash, what kind of food they eat and wine they drink, their attitude toward beans, among other things, and something of their religious practice and means of succeeding one another (ii.37ff.). Herodotus himself mentions at least one kind of lesser priest, the grammatistes the sacred treasures of of Athena in Sais (!), even if a Greek counterpart might not have been all that priestly.61 No one will claim that Herodotus was not interested in class distinctions. What evidence have we that he could have been fooled by guides masquerading as priests? What evidence have we that guides did masquerade as priests? Likewise it seems out of the question that Herodotus mistook interpreters for priests, as Lepsius and his followers believed.62 Herodotus himself purports to know the history of Greekspeaking Egyptian interpreters; he assigns them one full professional class, and he tells us that an interpreter read him the grammataon Cheops' pyramid (ii.154, 164, 125). He could not have known that much about them unless he knew how to recognise them. And he did recognise one of them at Cheops' pyramid, or so he says. Why not elsewhere? A smaller group of scholars, from von Gutschmid in 1855 to A. B. Lloyd in 1975, took Herodotus at his word.63 their view In the priests werelofty, if not sequestered, and Herodotus met them anyway. They vaunted themselves and Egypt but they

DID HERODOTUS EVER GO TO EGYPT?

65

also told Greek stories. They told Herodotus nothing but what he wanted to hear in the first place and nodded assent to all his leading questions. They told Egyptian stories Greek-style and Herodotusvarnished them with more Greek style. They suffered in translation at the hands of guides and interpreters.64 But we have no Egyptian evidence that a pre-Ptolemaic priest of any description ever met a Greek. And how could Herodotus ever have been fooled by these omni^ present bamboozlingguides andinterpreters if he really knew Egypt as he says he did, from the sea to Elephantine? But in any event, what Egyptian priest will have told Herodotus that king Psammetichus ran an experiment to determine which was the oldest nation on earth only to find that it was the Phrygians and not the Egyptians (ii.2)? Or that the hungry newborn children in the wilds of this Ionianexperimentproved their nationality by blurting out the Phrywhich is good Greek poetry gian word bekos, for "bread" (Hipponax 125)?What Egyptian priest told Herodotus about Proteus, who was an Egyptian daimonand servant of Poseidon empowered to take all manner of shapes according to Homer [Od. iv.385ff., presumably even that of an Egyptian king!)? Or about Menelaos and Helen and Paris and the Trojan War (ii.H2ff.)? Or about Pythagorean transmigration of the soul (ii.123.2ff.)? Or about Greek oracles of Apollo's mother Leto in Egyptian Buto (ii.133, 152; cf. Hecataeus, FGH 1 F 305)? Lloyd spends twenty-odd pages on this difficulty65where he refers in passing to Greek ideas "implanted in Egypt by Greeks", Greek material "intermingled" with the priests' own folk-lore, the "fresh Greek varnishing" of Herodotus' questioning and composition, and the "conclusive proof of Herodotus' Greek-influenced high priests in the person of the high priest Manetho with all his Herodotean Greek traditions.66 But we have no Egyptian evidence of Greek ideas implanted in pre-

Ptolemaic Egypt, nor a single pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian document to prove that Egyptian literary tradition was ever affected by the Greeks before the Macedonian conquest. And whoever Manetho was, by Lloyd's own admission "he wrote 150 years after Herodotus at a time when Greek influence had had a greater opportunity to work itself into the grain of Egyptian life andthought".67 Even then the extent to which it actually did so is open to question. Any such Greek-influenced priests of fifth-century Egypt are nothing but apologetic speculation on the face-value of Herodotus' narrative. Lloyd reveals the nature of his argument when he admits that "from the historical point of view some things in Herodotus' account are profoundly disturbing".68 Why so? Only because Lloyd naively accepts Herodotus' Egyptian high priests with ^se Greek stories at face value and worries about Heidel's charge, as Lloyd assumes, that "Herodotus is a barefaced liar!"69 Lloyd does not begin with an Egyptologist's analysis of Herodotus' narrative in the light of Egyptian controls any more than his predecessors did. He begins with the assumption that he must defend Herodotus' honor as reposed by himself in the face value of the Egyptian priests. But clearly Herodotus' priestly traditions are not Egyptian stories about Greeks but rather Greek stories about Egypt. In the absence of evidence to the contrary we must presume that Greek stories were written by Greeks. We must presume that they belong to Greek literary tradition and not that of Egypt just because we can make Herodotus say so. In the light of Hecataeus' droll but wise Egyptian priests before Herodotus (ii.l43ff., FGH 1 F 300) and Plato's droll but wise Egyptian priests after Herodotus (Timaeus21 Eff.), Herodotus' own Egyptian priests are likely to be nothing but a Greek storyteller's literary convention inherited from Hecataeus just as Diel's pupil Heidel always thought they were.70

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the source, the date of his mixed marriages seems even more so. In any event they We could only accept Herodotus' Egyp- may well be nothing more than embroidery tian priests at face value if they were Graeco- on Herodotus' report that Amasis moved Egyptian hybrids from a thoroughly syn- his Ionian and Carian mercenaries from cretised world of Graeco-Egyptians, such Stratopeda to Memphis.78 that Herodotus could call them Egyptian The family scene in the tomb of Si-Amun rather than Greek in good conscience. at the Siwa oasis is even more difficult. Which is what the great Sourdille argued Si-Amun is untitled, with a common Egypat length.71 In that case we could accept tian name. His father is named Periytu, his much of Herodotus' priestly narrative as mother Neferhert, his wife Rec-t. Si-Amun both Greek andEgyptian and likewiseaccept himself has thick black curly hair and a most of its distortions andmisunderstandings beard, and a fair complexion. His wife is as nothing but the alienation of an ethnic reddish brown. His older son is fair-skinned, minority. Thus Friedrich Oertel, for exam- the younger brown like his mother and ple, called syncretism the Hauptargumentdressed like a Greek boy of his age.79 But when? Lloyd refers with confidence zugunstenHerodot.12 But here the argument merely fails for to a date between the XXVIth and XXXth want of evidence, as Oertel himself dis- Dynasties, but according to Fakhry the covered.73 Even in Naucratis, where we tomb dates from the third century B.C.80 tend to assume from the work of vonBissing, Surely it belongs to the Ptolemaic period for example, and John Boardman, that of Greek additions to the Temple of the Greeks and Egyptians lived side by side, Oracle in the wake of Alexander's visit there is very little evidence of intermarri- rather than in the fifth century. It was no age, much less syncretism, before the earlier than the middle of that century, Ptolemaic period, as Carl Roebuck points after all, that Herodotus thought of the out.74The Abu Simbel inscriptions and the Ammonians as semi-fabulous, the object of Abydos graffiti seem neither here nor there. Cambyses' mad ambition, and located them Some few of the names seem Egyptianized ten days from Thebes rather than Membut certainly no more than we might expect phis.81Whatever the date and meaning of of Greek mercenaries in Egypt- whose the tomb, it can only tell us about the home cities and patronymics are eloquent Ammonians and perhaps Cyrene, as Fakhry testimony to what they were. At Abu assumes, and nothing at all of Herodotus' Simbel Psammetichus the son of Theocles Egypt. There is not a fifth-century Graeco-Egypis no more likely to have been a half-breed than Psammetichus son of Gorgos, the tian Egypt outside the pages of Herodotus. nephew of Periander and tyrant of Corinth.75 Within them the evidence is still against it. At Abydos only two Greeks from the In brief, Herodotus knows colorful stories archaic period or fifth century called Egyp- of Greek trade (e.g. ii.39, 179; iii.6, 139; tian cities home, one Memphite and one iv. 152), but as we have already seen, he Daphnaite, and we do not know that they also knows how unpopularthe Greeks were were half-caste.76 Memphis, in the Hel- (ii.41). And Herodotus does not know of a At lenikon and Karikon, there lived Hellenomem- Graeco-Egyptiantrader. Herodotus does not know of a Graecophitai and Karomemphitaiwho had made with the Memphites according to Egyptian soldier. The Greek mercenaries epigamiai Stephanus of Byzantion's version of Arista- that he does know seem to have been congoras.77But if so, when? However dubious fined, to Pelousian Stratopeda by Psamin fifth century. syncretism the Graeco-Egyptian

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sailed to Greece. The Chemmitai told Herodotus that when Perseus came back to Egypt (for the same reason that even the Greeks allege: to bring the Gorgon's head from Libya), he also came back to Chemmis, and when he did he recognised all his kin. He already knew the name of Chemmis, because he learned it from his mother. Perseus ordered up his own games once he got back (ii.91). Is Herodotus really talking about GraecoEgyptian syncretism as many have assumed?82 Herodotus himself says that the Chemmitai are Egyptian while their institutions are Greek. That, indeed, is what makes Chemmis so remarkable to Herodotus, because all the other Egyptians shun the use of foreign customs altogether and the Chemmitai are different from all other Egyptians. There is not room for GraecoEgyptian syncretism in the face value of this narrative. And what kind of Egyptian is Herodotus' Chemmite Perseus? In the 19th century Brugsch and Sayce thought that he was really Horus.83 Lepsius and Wiedemann Chemmis believed that he was Chem, or Min.84 Stein Herodotus tells of a city that has been suggested that he was Horus and Min cominterpreted as Graeco-Egyptian.Herodotus' bined.85 In this century Legrand, Waingreat city of Chemmis is in the Thebaic wright, Sauneron, and Morenz all identified nome, near Neapolis, where the normally him with Min again, while A. B. Lloyd xenophobic Egyptians keep a temple-enclo- returns to Brugsch' and Sayce' identification sure of Perseus, and a shrine with an image with Horus and Sourdille's insistence on a of Perseus in it. The Chemmitai said that Graeco-Egyptian syncretism and a mixed Perseus often appeared to them and left race of celebrants.86 But it was the Greeks, them his sandal, which was two cubits long and not the Egyptians, who told colorful and made all Egypt to prosper. They cele- stories of Perseus and his sandals from the brated Greek games in the nude to honor time of Hesiod {Shield 220). Herodotus himhim, with animals and cloaks and skins as self puts a story of Heracles' two-cubit footprizes. When Herodotus asked them why print (all too reminiscent of Perseus' twoPerseus appeared to them alone and why cubit sandal)in the mouths of the Scythians they were different from all other Egyptians (iv.82). And if the Chemmitai trace Perseus' in celebrating such games, they told him genealogy back to Egyptians (ii.91), Herothat Perseus' ancestors came from Chem- dotus' Persians make him an Assyrian mis and recited his genealogy beginning (vi.54), and Herodotus himself makes with Danaus and Lynceus, who were origi- Perseus' son Perses the eponymousancestor nally from Chemmis even if they later of the Persians (vii.61). Clearly Herodotus'

metichus (ii.154), to Sais by Apries (ii.163), to Memphis by Amasis (ii.154), just as Amasis seems to have confined the other Greeks in Egypt to Naucratis (ii.178). Mercenaries may have served elsewhere, in the time of Herodotus' king Psammenitos, for example, but only in the line of duty(iii.4, 10f.). Herodotus does know of Greek-speaking Egyptian interpreters (ii.125, 154), but they are nothing but a kind of Egyptian professional (ii.164) and Herodotus tells us nothing to the effect that they married Greek wives. Herodotus knows of only one GraecoEgyptian marriage, and the Egyptian was recalcitrant. King Amasis married his Cyrenean wife for political reasons and could not bring himself to make love to her. Finally he threatened to kill her. Aphrodite of Cyrene contrived a happy ending. But there do not seem to have been children. In any event Cambyses sent her back to Cyrene once he took over the country (ii.181).

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far-ranging Chemmite Perseus with the aberrant sandal is Greek and not Egyptian, part of a Greek literary tradition. On the other hand there is not a Greek Perseus up the Nile in the fifth century B.C.,or any other kind of Greek religion for that matter, on the basis of archaeological evidence now in hand. Where, then, is Herodotus' great city of Chemmis? We have identified it with Ptolemaic Panopolis since Diodorus Siculus (i. 18.2) and the modern Akhmim at least from the time of Dr. Pococke in the mid18th century.87We have traditionally and probably rightly identified Herodotus' Neapolis with Ptolemy's Koinepolls and the modern Qena, which is ninety miles up the Nile from Akhmim.88How can Herodotus say that Chemmis is near Neapolis? How can he call Chemmis a great city? How can Herodotus locate Chemmis with reference only to "Neapolis", without ever mentioning Abydos, which was the chief focus of Greek and Egyptian attention on the way to Thebes? We have tried to assume that the problem is geographical and subject therefore to geographical solution. Heath moved Chemmis to Coptos, which is nearerQena.89 Wiedemann turned Neapolis into a suburb of Chemmis itself so the two could be nearer yet.90 Sourdille and his followers, including How and Wells, Waddell,Legrand, and Lloyd, moved Neapolis to Ptolemais the Hermeiou, modern El Manshah,about six miles above Akhmim.91But all these reidentifications merely build on Herodotus' assumption that Chemmis is "near" Neapolis. There is not any archaeological confirmation, or indeed an epigraphic identification of either city. In fact there is not a single Greek settlement, much less Graeco-Egyptian "great city", anywhere up the Nile in the fifth not century B.C., even at Abydos, where the Greeks might have practiced somekind of religion in the archaic period and fifth century. No wonder Pierre Montet could

move Herodotus' Chemmis southward from Akhmim in the Ninth Nome of Upper Egypt to the Fifth Nome, nearer Qena-Neapolis and Thebes, without even identifying a site for it.92 Herodotus' Thebaic nome really ought to mean somewhere near Thebes even if he does not know what a nome is, and there is no archaeological evidence of the fifth-century Greeks to contend with no matter where we put Chemmis. In the absence of such evidence we shall never be able to press Egyptian religion hard enough to squeeze Herodotus' Chemmite Perseus out of it. The real question here is whether we can believe Herodotus' Chemmis at all. These xenophobic Egyptians who worshipped Perseus may well be Ionian humor based on the Egyptian name for Egypt. If Perseus came from Egypt (vi.53ff.) he already came from Kerne among the early Ionian soldiers and traders in the Delta. By the time of the great Ionian logographers of the sixth century, they may well have believed that a Chemmite Perseus came to get the Gorgon's head and found his relatives living in a great Egyptian city up the Nile, relatives whom he ordered to celebrate him with Greek games and whom he visited with a two-cubit sandal every now and again. We need not doubt that some of this story belongs to Herodotus' own elaboration. But surely Herodotus heard or read an earlier version of it aboutEgyptians rather than from them, at home rather than traversing the streets of a great upper-Egyptian city of Chemmis, as F. LI. Griffith indeed guessed at the turn of the century.93 When was it, after all, that Egypt really opened to the Greeks? Herodotus tells of a burst of Greek trade and touristry with the coming of Cambyses (iii.139. 1f.). We used to believe that whereas the Greeks had been confined to the Delta under the rule of native Egyptian kings, they now penetrated Middle and even Upper Egypt (HW i.298). But now Herodotus' authority is

DID HERODOTUS EVER GO TO EGYPT?

69

hardly conclusive and the archaeological record is both poor and subject to interpretation. Russell Meiggs, for example,believes that the Peace of Callias in the middle of the century is more likely to have opened Egypt to the Greeks than the Persian conquest. Before that peace the Phoenicians will have made Greek trade on the Nile on But any kind of scale far too dangerous.94 the same is true of Greek settlement. surely Likely or unlikely, it may well have been dangerous before the Peace of Callias. Which does not leave room for it before Herodotus' day. But where does that leave Herodotus' Egyptian priests?We can only believe them if they are Graeco-Egyptian. But there is not any fifth-century evidence of GraecoEgyptians. There may not have been such Graeco-Egyptian syncretism even in Ptolemaic times. Milne argued in 1928 that the Greeks found even Ptolemaic Egypt difficult to penetrate, and especially beyond the banks of the Nile. His conclusions are valid today. And if the Egyptians were still xenophobic, the Greeks were nationalistic. Claire Preaux points out that they did not want to admit the Egyptians to the privAs ileges of citizenship.95 for pre-Ptolemaic to Milne, "Herodotus Egypt, according reported nothing but external appearance and superficial talk: while there is no trace on the Egyptian side that any native knew or cared about Greek ideas."96 Yet the face value of Herodotus' narrativerequires fifthpriestsso thoroughly century Graeco-Egyptian that Herodotus could call them syncretised Egyptian without explaining himself, so convincing that Herodotus could listen to their Greek stories without questioning their native origin, so homogeneous that Herodotus could go to Memphis, Thebes, Heliopolis, and Sais, and find that the priests in all four cities agreed with one another as Herodotus tells us (ii.3f.). That priestly agreement alone was enough to spark intense controversy in the 1920's and 30's

when Gardiner and Linforthbuilt a national Egyptian mythology on it and Sourdille and his followers rightly unfolded the difficulties.97
Conclusions

What conclusions shall we draw? Herodotus may indeed have gone to Egypt, but his narrative bears little or no relation to whatever his travels may have been on the basis of archaeological evidence now in hand. As Griffith put it in 1899, it is the frequent absence of even superficial knowledge that tries our belief in the veracity of Herodotus.98 Herodotus' priests and Egyptian blacks are representative difficulties, but we can hardly afford to forget his general view of Egypt. Herodotus purports to have talked to Egyptian priests extensively and all over the country; yet he retained the belief that in Egypt everything is backwards, just as Sophocles said it was.99The women buy and sell while the men stay at home and weave. The men carry loads on their heads while the women carry them on their shoulders. The women make water standing up and the men sitting down. Egyptians relieve themselves in their houses and eat in the streets. There are no priestesses at all but there are priests of both gods and godesses (ii.35ff.). We can find reasons for all these stories among the Greeks at home, regaled as they were with the legend of soldiers and traders. But how could Herodotus travel the length and breadth of Egypt and talk to the most learned men all over the country and still go on talking like this without explaining himself?Griffithsaw the difficulty and chided Wiedemann for not dealing with it.100 Regardless of whether borrowed from Herodotus, or Sophocles Herodotus from Sophocles, or both Herodotus and Sophocles from Hecataeus,101 and no matter how widespread the belief that everything in Egypt was backward,here as

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in the case of Herodotus' circumcised black Egyptians and Greek-mannered, Greekworshipping Egyptian Chemmitai, it seems difficult to believe that Herodotus would adopt the tone of these chapters had he actually gone to Egypt to see for himself, even if he does feel compelled "to tell what is told but not necessarily to believe it" (vii.152.3; cf. ii. 123.1) and no matter what he expected to find ahead of time. Herodotus says nothing of the monuments of Thebes, nothing of Abydos, nothing of the Sphinx, even though it was probably visible, according to GardinerandBlackman among others,102 nothing of Egyptian pyramids other than those of Gizeh, nothing of the changes of color in the Nile, nothing of Naucratis' relation to the Nile or the sea or the canals (ii.97, 178f.), nothing of the looks of a single Egyptian temple. Herodotus believes that it never rained anywhere in Egypt (iii.10.3; ii.7.1, 14.1, 25.3-5), that the seasons never changed in Egypt (ii.77.2-3), that there were no breezes on the Nile (ii.19.3, 27),. that there was not any native Egyptian wine nor any kind of wine-jars in Egypt (ii.77.4, iii.6), that all the Egyptians drank from brazen cups and never grew beans or the vine (ii.37.lf., 77.4), that all the dead cattle of Egypt were buried in Prosopitis (ii.4 1.4-6), that Egyptian canals were for drinking water rather than navigation even though he is interested in navigation-canals elsewhere (ii.108.2ff., i. 193.2). Herodotus purports to have clambered up and down the stony slopes of the pyramids to measure one or more of them, but he does not know that the pyramid of Chephren looks taller than that of Cheops (ii.127). Herodotus purports to have gone to Elephantine, but he does not know that it was an island and he believes that the Nile gushed both north and south from between two peaked mountains between Elephantine and Syene, where there is nothing but a channel of the river about 150 yards wide (ii.28). And even after travelling the whole

length of upper Egypt he remains convinced that Egypt was shaped like a double-axe (ii.8). Herodotus purports to have seen a vast, symmetrical Labyrinth of two storeys and twelve courts and 3,000 chambers and a 40-fathom pyramid at the corner, a Labyrinth greater than the pyramids,with buried kings and sacred crocodiles and priestly warders, and he claims that he himself toured the 1,500-chamber upper storey of it. Herodotus purports to have found this Labyrinthon the shores of a great and deep, man-made, north-south, Memphis-Thebes lake in a desert country seven days up the Nile from the sea, with a perimeter of 3,600 stades that is equal to the whole Egyptian seaboard, and with two hundred-fathom pyramids in the middle and colossi on top of them, connected with the Libyan Syrtis through an underground extension to the west according to the natives, and flowing to and from the Nile six months at a time through a tax-collector's dream of a fishcanal. Herodotus could not find the earth taken from the digging of this lake, however much he looked for it (ii.148- 150). And he tells almost nothing of contemporary fifthcentury Egypt.103 Like other good story-tellers before him, Herodotus claims to have seen and done in Egypt that which he did not. The face value of all this and much that we have not even touched on is simply out of the question. But if we cannot take Herodotus' experience of Egypt at face value, we can only remain agnostic on the extent of it, and on such of Herodotus' historical authority as attaches to it. For once we retreat from the face value of Herodotus' narrative, how do we know where to stop? If we cannotbelieve that he saw the Egypt and Egyptians that he talks about, than how do we know that he went to Egypt at all? Herodotus' evidence and authority on Egypt need re-thinking. Herodotus was not a simple traveller, looking for himself and

EVERGO TO EGYPT? DID HERODOTUS

71

appeared 82 in Studies Classical Harvard Philology (1978), 45-62. 19 and in The University of Alabama Egypt, Against W. G. Browne, Travels Africa, the Year 1792 to 1798 (London, 1799; Syriafrom French trans. Paris, 1800), I, 242; G. Rawlinson, BookII (London, ad loc; W. G. Waddell, Herodotus alios. 179, inter 1939), * This is an 20 1094b. LS expanded version of a paper given 21 E. to before the American Research Center in Egypt at Powell, A Lexicon Herodotus (Cambridge, J. November 14, 1975. 1938; reprint, Hildesheim, 1960), 218; idem,HeroJohns Hopkins University, The following abbreviations may be unfamiliar dotus ad loc. 22 (Oxford, 1949), 104. 2ff. to some readers: Bull. = Bulletin; CP= Classical PhiloCf. ii.36.3, 37.2, 23 Diodorusi.28. 3, 55.5. logy;ET = English translation;FGH = F. Jacoby, Die 24 Strabo xvii.2.5 (C 824). der griechischen Historiker Fragmente (Leiden, 1957ff); ii. HW = W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Apionem, 13. Flaviusjosephus, Contra Cf. e.g. A. W. Lawrence, TheHistory Herodotus Herodotus(Oxford, 1912, corrected ed., 1928); of Studies; Ph. = Journal Philo- (Nonesuch Press, 1935), 163, 201. JHS = Journal Hellenic J. of of 21 AREIII, 587 f. and 601. new ed. Lexicon, logy;LS = Liddell and Scott, Greek = Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopddie 28 Cf. e.g. R. Reitzenstein, Zwei religions and suppl.; RE geschichtTexten Strassder nachungedruckten der classischen REG = Revuedes liche griechischen Fragen Altertumswissenschaft; EtudesGrecques; UCPCP = University of California burgerBibliothek(Strassburg: Teubner, 1901) and F. Jonckheere's comments in "La circoncision des Publications in Classical Philology. 1A. H. I anciens Egyptiens," Centaurus(1951), 212-34, esp. the Pharaohs(Oxford, Gardiner, Egypt of 23 Iff. 1961), 4. 29 2W. M. F. Cf. e.g. P. Wendland, "Die hellenistischen Petrie, Hawara,Biahmu, and Arsinoe cf. also idem,TheLabyrinth, Gerzeh, Zeugnisse iiber die agyptische Beschneidung," (London, 1889); IV Arch,fur Papyrusforschung (1903), 2.22-31, with A. B. Lloyd, "The and Mazghuneh (London, 1912), cit. ./ft* 56 (1970), 81-100. Jonckheere, loc. Egyptian Labyrinth," 30 3Cf. n. 74 below. Cf. cit, op. esp. 233. 31 Jonckheere, SiculusBook I H. Breasted, A Historyof Egypt (New York, Ibid.-,cf. Anne Burton, Diodorus 4J. (Leiden, 1972), 121,215. 1905), e.g., p. 579. 32 Cf. Lawrence, loc. cit, cit, with Jonckheere, op. 'Gardiner, op. 352 ff. cit, 6R. 2 12 ff . The 7. Athenian Empire Meiggs, (Oxford, 1972), 7Aelius Aristides xxxvi. 41-52. "Jonckheere, op.cit, 222ff.

and of 8J. G. Wilkinson, Manners Customs theAncient recording what he saw and heard. Ionian II Egyptians2, (London, 1878), 353; G. Rawlinson, tradition rather than Herodotus' own expe- The 4th Historyof Herodotus, ed. (London, 1880), ad rience was decisive in shaping his story of ii. 28. 9A. H. the everything-backwards,double-axe land I Books -III {London, 1883), Sayce, Herodotus blacks. e.g. Introduction;/. Ph. xiv (1885), 257-86. of learned priests and circumcised 10 G. and Archaeology D. Hogarth, ed., Authority Even if Herodotus did go to Egypt, we canand Sacred Profane (London, 1899), 187ff. not go on indefinitely trying to account for nJebb, EdinburghReview clix (1884), 524-60; what he found there on the basis of a simple- Heath, /. Ph. xv (1886), 215-40; Croiset, REG I minded and confused autopsy. It is difficult (1888), 154-62; Hauvette, Herodote (Paris, 1894), to imagine a literary genius of wide and e.g. 16ff. and passim. varied Greek learning confused enough to 12Thucydides1.21.1, 22.4; ii.4 1.4. 13H.Diels,i^rm^xxii(1887), 411-44. set down in full earnest the impressions of 14 A. Heidel, Memoirs theAmerican W. Academy of of Egypt that we find here. And if he was not ArtsandSciences XVIII, 2(1935), 53-134. 15 in earnest, we cannot go on treating his Oertel, Herodots Logos und die GlaubAgyptischer stories as serious evidence of fifth-century wiirdigkeit Herodots (Bonn, 1970), esp. p. 38. 16 bei Herodotus drew heavily on previous Fehling, Die Quellenangaben Herodot(Berlin, Egypt. Greek traditions of the country when he 1971), esp. pp. 54-56. 17xai on eioi lieAocyXpoec xai ouAoTpixeQ. came to build his narrative, and we must 18 While the present article was in press, my "Did look to those traditions to account for it. in Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?"

JARCEXV (1978) 34 R. 54 W. Spiegelberg, Die Glaubwiirdigkeit Herodots von Harris, ed., TheLegacyof Egypt1 J. (Oxford, 127. Bericht iiberAgypten Lichtederdgyptischen im 1971), Denkmdler, 35 G. Posener, ed., A Dictionary Egyptian undAntike (Heidelberg, 1926; ET and nn. by 3 Civilization Orient of (London, 1962), 45f. For a more positive review of AylwardM. Blackman, Oxford, 1927), 17. 55 S. the evidence, cf. C. de Wit, ZAS99 (1973), 41-48. K. und Kolta, Die Gleichsetzung dgyptischer grie36 7 19; cf. also Pr. 808 and 851. chischer Gb'tter Herodot, bei Diss. Tubingen, 1968, p. viii. Aeschylus, Supp. 37 56 HW I, 413; cf. also Camille Sourdille, La Duree Pindar,Pyth.iv.2 12. 38 Cf. e.g. J. Boardman, TheGreeks Overseas du d'Herodote Egypte en (London, et VEtendue Voyage (Paris, 1910), 1964), 169. The second edition was not available 179; REGXXXVIII (1925), 302f., n. 2. 57 to me. e.g. J. Kenrick, TheEgyptof Herodotus (London, 39 Cf. Aristotle, Physiognomies vi.812 a 13; Lucian 1841), lviii; C. R. Lepsius (mere interpreters!), Die der Ship or Wishes,2; Achilles Tatius iii.9; Ammianus Chronologie Agypter (Berlin, 1849), I, 245 ff.; Marcellinus xxii. 16.23; cf. also Apollodorus ii. 1.4, H. Stein, Herodotos5 (Berlin, 1902), II, 109f., 141; with Hdt. ii.49 and Eustathius xxxvii.23. G. Grote, History Greece4, (London, 1872), 132, III of Aristotle's "black" clearly admits of degrees, but n. 2; H. G. Woods, Herodotus II (London, 1867), Book he seems to think that the Egyptians are very black, 195; G. Maspero, Ann. desEtudes grecques (1878), III, and he probably accepts the tradition of Herodotus, 333 ff.; G. Rawlinson, with J. G. Wilkinson, The II Aeschylus and Pindar, whether or not it derives Historyof Herodotus", (London, 1880), 182f., 193, from Hecataeus of Miletus. Lucian, at least, seems BooksI-II 203, 220, 278; A. H. Sayce, Herodotos to tell of both black skin and negroid lips, but it is (London, 1883), xxxif.; idemj. Ph. xiv(1885), 274ff.; difficult to identify his Egyptians' slender legs; likeD. D. Heath,/. Ph. xv(1886), 235f.; A. Croiset, op.cit, wise the slender, or perhaps tender, feet of Achilles 154; A. Wiedemann, op.cit,29ff., 46; C. Wachsmuth, Tatius' tradition. Clearly we cannot really tell exactly Einleitung dasStadium in derAlten Geschichte (Leipzig,1895), what Achilles Tatius meant, and much the same can 327 ff.; J. H. Breasted, A History Egypt (New York, of be said of Ammianus Marcellinus. Perhaps in the 1909), 578; F. Jacoby, RE, Suppl. ii. 397 (Tempelpresent context it does not matter. Later antiquity, dienern); W. Spiegelberg, op.cit, 17ff.; M. Pohlenz, like Herodotus, seems interested only in the looks Herodot (Leipzig, 1937; repr. Stuttgart, 1961), 191; of the Egyptians in its literary tradition. As for W. G. Waddell, op.cit, 120; T. Save-Soderbergh, "Zu XLIV Melampodes, Apollodorus' and Eustathius' 'black- den aethiopischenEpisodenbei Herodot,"Eranos feet' could have been nothing more than peasant (1946), 73ff.; J. L. Myres, Herodotus Father History of traders in the black silt of the Nile. (Oxford, 1953), 153; A. H. Gardiner, op.cit, 3; Ph. 40 Gardiner, op.cit, 27. Legrand,Herodote (Paris, 1963; first ed. 1930), II, 30; 41Cf. Hdt. ii.161 and K. S. Kolta, op.cit,viii. e.g. Boardman,op.cit, 132f.; 58 F. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass., J. Kenrick, op.cit,lviii. 59 122. G. Posener, op.cit, 233ff.; idem,Les Pretres de 1970), 104, 42Diodorus i.28.2f., 55.4f.; cf. Hdt. ii.lO4f.; see l'ancienne Egypte (Bourges, 1957), passim. 60 n. 18 above. in John Wilson, Herodotus Egypt(Leiden, 1970), 43 P. T. English,JNESxviii (1959), 51. 2,9. Against 44 61 H. R. Hall, CAH I, 295. Cf. vi. Hdt. ii.28; Aristotle, Politics 5.11, 1322 b 24 ff. 45 e.g. Henri 62 R. Pierre C. Lepsius, loc.cit(in n. 57 above). Larcher, Histoired'Herodote (Paris, 63 Cf. e.g. von Gutschmid, PhilologusIX (1855), 1786; second ed. 1802, third ed. 1855), adii.104. 46 H. P. Larcher, new ed. by W. D. Cooley, Histori- 645, 649; Ivan Linforth, UCPCP VII, 9 (1924), 269, cal and Critical Comments theHistory Hdt. (London, 274, 278, 287f.; Joseph Vogt, Herodot Aegypten on in of 1844), I, 331. (Stuttgart, 1929), 15f.; A. W. Lawrence, TheHistory Zweites Buch ofHerodotus Cf. e.g. Alfred Wiedemann, Herodots (Nonesuch, 1935), 197; John Wilson, The mitSachlichen Erlduterungen (Leipzig, 1890, repr. Milan, Culture Ancient Egypt(first published as TheBurden of of in 1971), 248f. Egypt,Chicago, 1951), pp. 306f.; Herodotus Egypt 48 49 HW I, 218. Hdt. ii.161 ff., 169. Book (Leiden, 1970), 2 and 9; A. B. Lloyd, Herodotus II, 50 Cf. e.g. John Boardman, op.cit, 156. Introduction 89ff. (Leiden, 1975), 51 64 Cf. e.g. M. M. Austin, Greece Egypt in the and The longest and most transparent portrait is Archaic Age (Supp. to the Proceedings of the Cam- that of Lloyd, op.cit I have only the first volume of his work. bridge Philological Society, 1970), 8. 52 65 Hdt. ii.125, 154, 164. Lloyd, op.cit,pp. 89-113. 66 "Hdt. ii.28, 36 on writing; ii.30, 98f., 149.5, Lloyd, op.cit, pp. 92, 94, 109f. 67 iii.9 1.3 on the Persians. Cf. e.g. Ed. Meyer, Der Lloyd, op.cit,p. 110. 68 von cit, Papyrusfund Elephantine (Leipzig, 1912), 17, n. 1. Lloyd, op. p. 94.

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DID HERODOTUS EVER GO TO EGYPT? 69 n. 26. Lloyd, 70W. A. ibid., Heidel, Hecataeusand the EgyptianPriests in

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(Leipzig, 1830), ad loc; J. W. Blakesley, Herodotus (London, 1854), ad loc, George Rawlinson, op.cit, Herodotus BookII, American Academy of Arts and ad loc; Heinrich Stein, op.cit, ad loc, A. H. Sayce, I-III Herodotus (London, 1883) p. 172; Alfred WiedeSciences Memoirs XVIII. 2 (1935), 53-134. 71Camille du Sourdille, La Duree et VEtendue Voyage mann, op.cit, 366; HW I, 211; C. Sourdille, Voyage, dHerodote Egypte(Paris, 1910), 189f. and n. 1, en 151ff.; Sethe, RE III, 2293f.; Baedeker's Egypt 7929 et 203 ff., and 243-46; cf. Herodote La Religionde (London, 1929 [ET; repr. London, 1974]), 230; VEgypte (Paris, 1910), xvf. and passim, and REG A. W. Lawrence, op.cit, 193; W. G. Waddell, op.cit, XXXVIII (1925), 299f. 291; Ph. Legrand, Herodote (Paris, 1963 [first ed. 72 FriedrichOertel, op.cit, 14. 1930]), II, 123; Anne Burton, op.cit, 84. 88 73 Cf. e.g. M. d'Anville, op.cit, 160; Conrad ManOertel, op.cit, 17. 74 W. von F. Bissing, Naukratis,Bull. Alexandrie nert, Geographieder Griechen und Ro'mer(Niirnberg, XXXIX (1951), 35, 49; Boardman, op.cil, 149; Carl 1788-1792) X, 1.371; J. Schweighaeuser, Herodotus CPXLV (1950), 242f., 246f., n. 62; CP (London, 1824), I, cclxxiv; I. C. F. Baehr, op.cit, I, Roebuck, XLVI (1951), 216b. 683f. (doubtfully);George Rawlinson, op.cit, adloc, 75L. H. The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece A. H. Sayce, op.cit, 172; H. Stein1"4, op.cit, adloc, Jeffery, IV (Oxford, 1961), 355 with refs.; against Lloyd, op.cit, Henri Gauthier, BIFAO (1905), 87; Pierre Montet, de Ancienne(Paris, 1961), II, 81. 20f.; on Periander's nephew, see Nicholaos of Geographie L 'Egypte 89 Cf. Mannert, op.cit, X, 1.374; D. D. Heath,/ Ph. Damascus,FGH90 F 59. 76 XV (1886), 229f. MissJeffery, op.cit, 355. 11 Cf. e.g. Kenrick, op.cit, 116; Wiedemann, op.cit, FGH60S 9. 78Hdt. ii.154; against M. M. Austin, op.cit., 18f., 368; Stein5,op.cit.,98. 91 and A. B. Lloyd, op.cit, 20. Sourdille, Voyage, 159f.; HW I, 211; W.G. Wad79Ahmed dell, op.cit, 283; Ph. Legrand, op.cit, II, 123; A. B. Fakhry, The Oases of Egypt, Vol. I, Siwa Oasis(Cairo, 1973), 190ff.. Lloyd,JHS LXXXIX (1969), 80. 80 Pierre Montet, op.cit, 81. The unknown site in 118; Fakhry,op.cit, 192. Lloyd, op.cit, 81Hdt. ii.32, in. 17 and 26, iv.181; cf. Fakhry, U.E. V that he tries to accommodate is known only from the Hm Mnw of Urk.ii.55.12. op.cit, 145ff., 153 ff .; on Alexander's visit, see e.g. 93 LI. F. and Arrian Hi. Iff., Diodorus xvii.49.2ff., Plutarch's 3. Griffith, D. G. Hogarth (ed.), Authority Archaeology SacredandProfane(London, 1899), 188. Alexander f., Curtiusiv.7. 5ff., Justin xi.l 1. 26 82 Cf. e.g. Sourdille, Voyage, 156f., 159; Religion, 94Meiggs,op.cit, 268. 95 R. Harris 375-90, 396-401; REG XXXVIII (1925), 302ff. J. (ed.), TheLegacyof Egypt (Oxford, 324. with nn.; A. B. Lloyd,JHS LXXXIX (1969), 86. 1971), 96 83 H. A. Milne, "Egyptian Nationalism under Greek and Sayce, op.cit, 172, n. 5. aus und C. R. Lepsius, Denkmdler Aegypten Aethiopien Roman Rule,"JEA XIV (1928), 226ff. 97 Gardiner, EncyclopaediaBrittanica, 11th edition, (Berlin, 1849-1858) IV, 9.42 b; Wiedemann, op.cit, s.v. "Egypt, Ancient Religion;" Ivan Linforth, op.cit, 368f.. 85 Stein5, op.cit, 99; cf. Plutarch, De hide et Osiride 287f.; Sourdille, Religion,33-54, 57-62, 375-379; REGXXXVIII (1925), 297 f. 56, 374 B. 98 LI. 86 F. LXXXIX (1969), 82f., 85f.; cf. Sourdille, Griffith, op.cit, 188. JHS 99 at 151-61. Oedipus Colonus3 3 7 ff . . Religion, esp. xvf., 207 ff.; Voyage 100 LI. 87 F. Richard Pococke, Descriptions theEast (London, Griffith, op.cit, 192. of 101 Felix Jacoby, # vii.2680, Supp. ii.235f. Cf. 1743-1745) I, 77 f.; cf. e.g. J. B. B. d'Anville, A Com102 e.g. Gardiner, Egyptof thePharaohs, 3; W. Spiegelp. pendium of Ancient Geography (Paris, 1768 [Fr. ed.], ET London, 1791), 1810, ii.158; P. H. Larcher, op.cit, berg, op.cit.(ET and nn. by Aylward M. Blackman, adloc. (Cooley's ed. i.314); J. F. Champollion, Lettres Oxford, 1927), 22, n. 1. 103 Cf. e.g. Wiedemann, op.cit, 19f.. et ecrites dEgypte deNubieen 1828 et 7829 (Paris, 1833), 88; J. F. Kenrick, op.cit, 116; I. C. F. Baehr, Herodotus