All of Book 2, H’s giant excursus on Egypt, is structurally a pendant designed to give the background that introduces and explains the importance of Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt, narrated in Book 3. Cambyses, Cyrus’ son, will reign only for eight years (530–522 BCE), and conquering Egypt will be his great achievement. Paradoxically, Cambyses’ success in Egypt will also create the conditions for his own growing instability and death. By devoting Book 2 to Egypt itself—the multiple astounding facts about its land, river, peoples, monuments, flora and fauna, and history—H shows rather than tells how important Egypt was in the growth of Persian power. Book 2 may well have been a separate treatise, originally written to stand alone and only integrated later into H’s massive study of the growth of the Persian empire and Persia’s defeat in Greece. Its tone is often paradoxical, argumentative, and even critical—here H is more willing than in the rest of the Histories to display the secrets of his workshop, the nature of his judgement, and the kinds of critical thinking encompassed by historiē. In the notes to this book I have relied heavily upon the commentary by A. Lloyd.
2.1 Notice some formal similarities between 2.1, 1.26, the beginning of Croesus’ reign, and 7.2–5, the beginning of Xerxes’ reign; all three accession logoi include the topic of military aggression against Greeks. Ch. 2.1 does not resemble the beginning of the Cyrus story because the conquest of Lydia rather than the transmission of power from his father brings Cyrus to our notice (1.46; some formal elements of an accession moment occur in 1.130). The narrative of Persian conquest resumes in 3.1.
2.2 The narrative of Egypt begins with Egyptian investigations of their own distant past undertaken by Psammetichus I (664–610 BCE), the king who first introduced Greeks into Egypt (2.152). This account sets a tone that will prevail throughout the book; Egyptians are learned themselves, and understanding Egypt will require real learning from others in turn; H will be on his mettle. The story about the children is Ionian, but it is one that Egyptian priests in Memphis could have heard by H’s time. The story surely hinges on the bleating sound made by the goats (that is why the Greek version about the woman without a tongue seems so stupid to H). Thus it is comparable to the abduction stories that begin Book 1, in that it is a thematic introduction to a research-driven narrative, but it also contains a warning about the limitations of scientific research, since the data produced lead to a faulty conclusion. On what grounds does Psammetichus decide at the end that the Egyptians are the second oldest people in the world? For the Phrygians, cf. the end of n. 1.14.
Memphis was built by the first human king of Egypt, Min or Menes (2.99). It was the site of the temple of Ptah, and the seat of royal power for much of the Old Kingdom. The priests of Ptah (H’s Hephaestus) at Memphis were H’s most important sources of Egyptian information, especially for the Egyptian kings: cf. 2.99, 110f., 121, 136, 141–2. The word ‘Egypt’ itself is perhaps derived from one of the Egyptian names for Memphis, Hwt-Ka-Ptah, ‘House of the Spirit of Ptah’. The ruins of Memphis were used for building modern Cairo near by.
2.3 H gives two other main sources for his information on Egypt: Thebes and priests at Heliopolis. Thebes was the capital of Egypt during the most powerful Eighteenth Dynasty (the Mycenaean period in Greece), but it was sacked by the Assyrians in the seventh century and in H’s time held provincial status. The priests of Amon-Re were his informants there (2.54). Heliopolis was not an important political centre, but was the major cult centre of Re, the sun-god, located close to Memphis and connected to the Nile by a canal. See Lloyd, i. 89–116 on H’s Egyptian informants.
Here H makes a general statement to which he will adhere throughout the Histories: he will tell about the gods only when he has to because they are part of the account of human affairs; see further, 2.53. This presents a particular challenge in a land so theocentric as Egypt (2.37), and results in a picture of Egypt which would have seemed very foreign to the Egyptians themselves (Lloyd, i. 96).
2.4 H emphasizes the Egyptians’ claims to cultural priority over other ancient civilizations. Lloyd comments (ii. 20, 30) that the Sumerians were probably literate before the Egyptians were, and there were Mesopotamian altars as early as c.4200 BCE. The Egyptians did face ‘the problem of the incommensurate nature of the solar year and lunar month’ and created a solar year of 365 days. As H himself knows (2.50), Egypt did not give their names to all twelve of the Greek Olympians; here the priests are probably talking of the nine main Heliopolitan gods, whose only identifiable Greek equivalents are Helios, Heracles, Dionysus, Demeter, and Typhon. For the Olympian gods of the Greeks, see n. 6.108.
2.5–34 The geography of Egypt: formation by sedimentation (5, 10–14), measurement (6–7, 9), physical layout (7, 8), boundaries and definitions (15–18), the Nile (17, 19–34); this whole section owes a great deal to Ionian science.
2.5 H is not correct about the sounding; even today, eleven fathoms is much nearer than H thinks, about fifteen miles (24 km.) from the coast. H here calls the land ‘a gift from the river’, using the same expression as his Ionian predecessor Hecataeus (n. 5.36); for a detailed discussion of Hecataean borrowings in Book 2, see Lloyd, i. 127–39. H is right about the alluvial nature of the Nile valley, even far south of the Delta. (Lloyd, ii. 90: ‘The commonest name for Egypt is Kmt “The Black Land” i.e. the land made up of black alluvial silt as distinct from Dsrt “The Red Land” i.e. Desert.’)
2.6–7 The actual length of an Egyptian schoenus is uncertain; it was a practical measure and seems to have varied from 30 to 120 stades. H always calculates it as 60 stades (6.62 miles or 10.66 km.); this plus the fact that he measures by calculating the number of days taken to pass between two points (a long day by sea is 700 stades or about 77 miles or 124 km. (4.86); the standard is 500 stades) means that his measurements are not exact by modern standards. This particular measurement is quite a bit too long; the actual length of the Egyptian coastline is 297 miles (478 km.), not 396 (637 km.). Lateiner (p. 33) comments, ‘The difficulties of getting any numbers right in his circumstances should not be underestimated.’ For H’s measurements in general, see App. 2.
2.7 Pisa is a district near Olympia, conquered c.570 BCE by Elis. H is approximately correct to compare the distance between Pisa and Athens (c.150 miles or 241 km.) with that between the Egyptian coast and Heliopolis (c.165 miles or 266km.). (Cf. 1.98, 192, 4.99 for H’s interest in interpreting foreign measurements for Greek readers; see n. 6.108 for the Altar of the Twelve Gods in Athens.)
2.8–9 H’s observations on distance here have given rise to much discussion (Lloyd, ii. 47–59). Two months for crossing the mountains westward to the Red Sea is much too long; it is not clear what feature made H think that Egypt narrows in the middle and widens suddenly again to the south; the distance between the Arabian range and the Libyan plateau is considerably shorter than H says (12 miles or 19.2 km. as opposed to his approximately 22 miles or 35 km.). (H generally thinks of our Red Sea as a gulf branching off the larger body of water he calls the Red Sea, cf. the end of n. 1.1 and n. 2.11–12.)
Both the time and the distance in 2.9 are incorrect. The actual distance between Thebes and Heliopolis is about 450 miles (720km.); H seems to make it about 535 miles (861 km.), and also to think it can be travelled in less time than would actually be required. Cf. n. 4.85–6. (The stade used in App. 2 is 177.6m.; Lloyd calculates it at 198 m. but cautions that all modern equivalents of ancient measurements are necessarily approximate.)
2.10 H is correct about the alluvial nature of the west coast of Asia Minor; he lists the relevant sites from north to south. The silting of the Cayster has left the ancient city of Ephesus 6 miles (9.6 km.) inland.
2.11–12 The ‘gulf which is an extension’ is our Red Sea. At its widest its width is c.220 miles (354 km.), which would take well over three days to sail. H’s basic point is that Egypt was once a gulf like the Red Sea, and that if the Nile could be diverted into the Red Sea, it would soon be filled up too. In 2.12 he goes on to give as evidence the marine fossils found in Egypt (though Lloyd thinks most of these go back to the earlier Eocene period when the whole plateau was submerged; the sea came about as far south as modern Cairo in the Pliocene).
2.13–14 Still arguing the alluvial nature of Egypt, H moves on to the evidence of what others have told him. He argues that since the time of Moeris (probably Amenemhet III, 1842–1797 BCE (cf. 2.101)) the land has risen considerably, since it now takes fifteen cubits to flood what eight cubits used to flood. In fact, H is probably using two contemporary measurements of flooding, both good but taken at different parts of the river; the length of time between Moeris and his own day (actually about 1,400 years) was not sufficient to explain the rise in height he posits.
Rain does fall in Egypt, although on average 0.4 in (1 cm.) a year. Lloyd (ii. 74) notes that H ‘failed to recognize the backbreaking toil required by the irrigation system’ of ancient Egypt.
2.15–18 Here H argues with the older Ionian view (perhaps that of Hecataeus) that Egypt is only the Delta. He argues that the people who now inhabit the Delta must have come from the Thebaïd, which originally constituted Egypt, before the water built up the rest of the country. (H does not know that the name Egypt was originally given only to a part of Memphis, n. 2.2.) In ch. 16 he takes on a problem of definition in Ionian geography; if the Nile is the dividing line between Asia and Libya, the Egyptian Delta must be a separate continent!
2.19–34 The Nile: the causes of its flooding (19–27); its source (28–34).
2.19–27 H is right, the Nile floods in summer, and he wants to know why. H’s approach is scientific, in the spirit of the Hippocratic corpus: he states the problem, discusses other theories and gives reasons for not accepting them, and offers his own theory with a clear statement of its difficulties. Chs. 24–6 give H’s theory: he thinks it has to do with solar powers of evaporation and the apparent seasonal movement of the sun.
As Lloyd (ii. 104–5) notes, both H’s own ideas and his refutations of other theories are based on the false conviction of contemporary geography that the earth was a disc ‘over which the heavens extended in a hemisphere to meet the disk at the edge. The sun and other heavenly bodies passed across this dome and … could be affected by storms in rather the same way as clouds are blown about.’ In reality two groups of winds of different temperatures collide over the Ethiopian highlands and cause torrential downpours (pace H & W, melting snow has nothing to do with it). Given the scientific knowledge of his day, H’s arguments here are very intelligently marshalled.
H also wants to know why the Nile does not give off breezes from its surface (19); he answers this (27) with the idea that the Nile flows through such hot lands that the water becomes warm.
2.28–34 The source of the Nile. The actual sources of the Nile are complex ‘since the R. Nile draws water from several quarters—the Atbara, Blue Nile and White Nile—each of which, in turn, has several sources’ (Lloyd, ii. 110).
2.28 Saïs was until the reign of Amasis the capital of the kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and, being close to Naucratis (2.178–9), was well known to the Greeks. H’s informant was probably the ‘scribe of the treasury of Neith’. Crophi and Mophi are probably rocks in the Cataracts south of Elephantine rather than between Syene (Aswan) and Elephantine; before the damming of the Nile there was a violent southward-running counter-current above Aswan more than fifty miles (80 km.) long (Lloyd, ii. 112–14). Psammetichus is again testing hypotheses (2.2); although there are Twenty-sixth-Dynasty inscriptions in the Cataract area, the story probably arose because of Psammetichus’ mystique.
2.29 Those who doubt H’s integrity especially doubt that he came south all the way to Elephantine since he does not make it clear that it lies on an island, and does not describe the spectacular buildings at Thebes, which he must have passed; Lloyd does not give these objections much weight (ii. 116). Elephantine translates the Egyptian name, since the city was the end-point of the ivory road from the Sudan. Tachompso was almost certainly Djerar, now inundated by the waters of the Aswan Dam. H’s Meroë is either Napata, below the Fourth Cataract, or Meroë, below the Sixth Cataract; Lloyd thinks it is the latter. Amun and Osiris (Zeus and Dionysus) were certainly worshipped in Ethiopia, but they were not the only gods worshipped there.
2.30–1 Lloyd says the distance (56 days, about 1,120 miles or 1,790km.) is not far from the truth, and that ‘the evidence points very strongly to the Blue Nile and Gezirah as the Land of the Deserters, but that in this case the fifty-six days is from Elephantine, not from Meroe’. Asmakh seems etymologically related either to the Egyptian ‘left’ (as opposed to right) or to ‘forget’. In the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, troops were certainly needed at Elephantine to guard against the Meroitic kingdom to the south. Pelusium was the most dangerous post (guarding against the Assyrians), and the one to which Psammetichus assigned his Greek and Carian mercenaries (2.154, 3.11). In ch. 31 the river is seen as turning west on analogy with its mirror image, the Ister (the Danube, 2.33). According to H’s geography, the desert forms the outermost zone of the disc that is the world, and just inside it live the peoples of fable, like Arimaspians and Hyperboreans; inside these dwell the four peoples on the edges: Celts in the west, Scythians in the north, Indians in the east, and Ethiopians of Libya in the south.
2.32–4 For Cyrene, a Greek city in North Africa, see 4.151 ff. The oracle at Ammon was in the oasis of Siwa; Zeus Ammon was the major god at Cyrene in H’s time. For the geography of the young Nasamonians’ journey, see Lloyd, ii. 137 ff. The Niger might be involved, or the Bodele Depression.
It ‘makes sense’ to H that the river they reached was the Nile (although it is much to the west of the Nile’s course), both because it contained crocodiles and because H was still susceptible to the arguments from symmetry advanced by the Ionian thinkers Anaximander and Hecataeus. With the Mediterranean as the east-west axis, it ‘makes sense’ that just as the Ister (Danube) flows east across Europe and bends on a right angle south towards its mouth, so the Nile flows west across Africa and bends north towards its mouth. (In fact, H’s placement of the source of the Danube in the far west shows only how little fifth-century Greeks knew of the geography of northern Europe.)
2.35–98 The customs of Egypt. This is some of the most valuable material in Book 2, since H relies extensively on his own considerable powers of observation.
2.35–6 This is one of the most famous passages in the Histories; in it H claims that Egyptian customs and practices (perhaps following the behaviour of their river?) are the opposite of those in other countries. (Sophocles in the Oedipus at Colonus 337 ff. makes the same point.) Men almost certainly bought and sold goods as well as women and both sexes carried loads on their heads, but H is probably correct about the weaving, about men squatting to urinate (it is less clear that women stood), about indoor facilities (for Egyptian toilets, see Lloyd, ii. 150), and about male priesthoods. It seems also to have been true that women were bound to support their fathers, while men were exempt from this duty if the parents were irresponsible (Lloyd, ii. 151–2). The practices of ch. 36 seem to be accurately reported as well, although Lloyd comments that Egyptian medical papyri contain a number of recipes for making hair grow, so baldness may not have been universally admired.
H’s problem is one of over-schematization; both bread and clay for brickmaking, for instance, seem to have been kneaded both with the feet and with the hands. Dung was probably necessary in Egypt for fuel, while in Greece it was used only for fertilizer. Circumcision was certainly practised; the other peoples who use it are listed in 2.104, though H’s notion of cultural diffusionism (with its emphasis on one originator) was certainly wrong (see Lloyd, i. 149–53). While H is correct about the direction of Greek and Egyptian writing, he omits a third Egyptian script, hieratic.
2.37–64 Egyptian religion: priests (37), sacrifices, victims, and festivals (38–49), Greek and Egyptian gods (50–3), divination (54–7), festivals (58–64).
2.37 H is correct that cleanliness was crucial to the Egyptians as a matter of ritual purity. Their daily rations consisted of bread, beer, and meat; Lloyd (ii. 315) states that in hieroglyphic texts the notion of impurity is generally signified by a fish. Beans were certainly known in Egypt but Lloyd thinks (ii. 169) that (like the priests of the Eleusinian mysteries and the Pythagoreans and Orphics) Egyptians avoided beans, probably because demons were connected with flatulence, and beans ‘were considered unusually efficient demon-carriers’. See Lloyd, ii. 169 f. for Egyptian grades of priest.
2.38–41 The sacrifice of cattle. Epaphus was the Greek name of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis; in Greek myth it was assimilated to the offspring of Io (e.g. in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound 850–1). The stress here on the Apis bull becomes relevant to the main narrative later (3.28–30), in that it emphasizes the extent of Cambyses’ impiety in killing the bull. The living Apis had his own dwelling-place in Memphis (2.153), and was chosen because of sacred markings (cf. 3.28); the priests checked before sacrificing a bull to make sure it was not an Apis bull. For details of the sacrifice, see Lloyd, ii. 172–83: ‘The seal bore the representation of a man on his knees with hands bound behind his back and a sword at his throat’ (p. 173). Isis is the goddess mentioned in 2.40.
2.42–6 Ram- and goat-cults; the problem of Heracles. Goats (and cattle and antelope) were sacrificed in Thebes but not sheep, because of the worship of Amun the ram-god. Heracles was probably identified as Chonsu, son of Amon-Re, and in 43 as Shu, one of the nine Heliopolitan gods. (Chonsu was frequently assimilated to Shu.) H then digresses to discuss Heracles, displaying in the process his own investigatory processes. The problem is that the Egyptian Heracles seems to be a full-fledged divinity, not a hero, and to have been around much earlier than the Greek Heracles, son of Amphitryon.
As Lloyd (ii. 201) notes, of H’s proofs that the name and divinity of the Greek Heracles came from Egypt four are a matter of evidence and one of reasoning. For evidence, H cites the fact that the Greek Heracles’ parents had Egyptian ancestors (since they were descendants of Perseus, 2.91); the Egyptian god is very ancient indeed; Tyrian priests (of the Phoenician sea god Melqart) speak of the foundation of a temple of Heracles c.2750 BCE; and the temple of Heracles in Thasos was built by Phoenicians five generations before the birth of the (human) Greek Heracles. For reasoning, H comments that if the Egyptians had borrowed Greek gods, they would have borrowed gods of the sea, Poseidon and the Dioscuri. The ‘silly story’ about Heracles that H criticizes in 2.45 appears to have been treated by Pherecydes and Panyassis, H’s older relative and an Ionian epic poet (Lloyd, ii. 212 and CAH iii/3. 53). In 46 Pan is Mendes, who was depicted both as a ram and as a goat; the connection between bestiality and the Mendesian nome (district) was well known to the Greeks. Lloyd (ii. 216) comments that near Mendes a mould has been found which represents bestiality between a woman and a goat.
2.47–9 The pig in Egypt was connected with Seth, the arch-enemy of Osiris, and both Isis and Osiris are connected with the moon. Representations of ithyphallic Osiris are common in Egypt (Dionysus, the Greek equivalent, himself is never depicted as ithyphallic, though he is surrounded by ithyphallic satyrs and sileni). As in Greece, he is honoured in Egypt by song (though not, apparently, by choral dancing); for Melampus, see 9.34. H is reticent about a story in which Osiris’ phallus was the only part of his body not recovered after Seth had dismembered it. When Isis reconstituted the body she used a model phallus to replace the original, and this is why it was carried in ritual procession. On Cadmus of Tyre and his Theban and Phoenician connections, see nn. 1.56–7, 4.147, 5.57–61, and Lloyd, ii. 226–31.
2.50–3 An aside on Greek gods. H (incorrectly) sums up the sources of the Greek gods as Pelasgian (the Dioscuri, Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Graces, and the Nereids), Libyan (Poseidon), and Egyptian (all others known to the Greeks), Lloyd, ii. 232–51. For Pelasgians see n. 1.56–7; H seems to use the term generally to mean pre-Greek peoples. Note particularly H’s false etymology of the gods (theoi) in 52, from a form of the verb tithenai, ‘to set, place’ and his comment in ch. 53 that Homer and Hesiod gave the Greeks their gods. Dodona was the oracular shrine par excellencein Homer (Iliad 16.233) and was associated with Zeus Pelasgicus, i.e. reflecting a pre-Greek population stratum. Homer is conventionally dated c.750, Hesiod c.700; H was writing c.440. For the Cabiri, see n. 3.37.
2.54–7 H’s discussion of the origins of the oracles at Dodona and the oasis of Siwa, from the abduction of two priestesses from Egyptian Thebes. The connections between the two oracles were known before H’s time at Dodona; see Lloyd, ii. 253–4 for the various ways in which the story might originally have been concocted. (Other female founders of religious practices occur in 2.171, 182, 4.33; other women who are abducted but have a strong influence on the country to which they are brought occur in 1.1–3, 146, 4.110f., 6.138.)
2.58–64 For the principle of cultural diffusionism, see Lloyd, i. 147–9. H thinks that since Egyptian festivals, religious processions, and parades were earlier than those of Greece, the Greeks must have learned from the Egyptians. The Egyptians did keep many religious festivals, including calendar festivals, royal festivals, and festivals of the dead. In ch. 61 it is Osiris whose death they lament. H’s account of various festivals is important because it gives detailed descriptions of Lower Egypt where the Egyptian evidence favours Upper Egypt; moreover, H’s interests were in the behaviour of worshippers rather than in the liturgy and processions emphasized by the Egyptian tradition. The verb used of Ares’ intentions in 2.63 may mean ‘communicate with’ as well as ‘have sexual intercourse with’, and H’s use here is ambiguous.
2.65–76 Animal worship and the zoology of Egypt. Lloyd is right (ii. 291; cf. i. 141–7) to introduce this section by referring to H’s interest in thōmata, wonders. (This is part of his larger interest in the remarkable: see especially the account of India and Arabia, 3.98–116, but also nn. 1.14, 1.23, 1.93, 1.194, 1.214, 2.147–57, 5.16, and the bottom of n. 8.97–107.) The animals H emphasizes here are all strange to Greece: cats, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, other aquatic animals, the phoenix, horned snakes, flying serpents, and ibises. H begins his discussion of animals by commenting that the Egyptians regard animals as sacred (65); because he does not want to discuss the gods (2.3), he is going to pass over this topic, even though it has enormous significance for the Egyptians themselves. Animals worshipped in cult throughout the country include the cow (Hathor), the jackal (Anubis), and the ibis and hawk (Thoth and Horus).
General points of some interest include the fact that the cat did not arrive in Europe until the first century CE; it did not become common until the twelfth century, as a result of the spread of rats from southern Russia and Asia. ‘Dogs’ seem in Egypt to include wild dogs, foxes, and jackals (67). The passage on how to hunt the crocodile (70) is partly derived from Hecataeus (FGH 1, fr. 324); the crocodile’s maximum length is only about twenty feet (6m.). The whole of the peculiar description of the hippopotamus (71) also derives from Hecataeus, and probably means that H did not see one at very close range; it is the most inaccurate piece of zoology in Book 2. (On the other hand, ch. 66 may contain genuine observation: in late March of 1996 a cat named Scarlet in Brooklyn, New York, became a media heroine because she had repeatedly re-entered a burning building to save her kittens.) Both the crocodile and the hippopotamus were worshipped in some regions. They were execrated in others, particularly if they were connected with Seth, the enemy of Osiris (Lloyd, ii. 308–9).
H makes it clear that he did not see the mythical bird, the phoenix (73), but only its pictures. Its Egyptian pictures seem to represent the purple heron or grey heron; most of the marvels H recounts are a Greek reworking of Egyptian mythology (Lloyd, ii. 320). The winged snakes (75) are something of a mystery; they recur in 3.107. H claims to have seen skeletons and to have talked to Arabians, the inhabitants of the Isthmus of Suez where the snakes tried to enter Egypt. Perhaps they were locusts, or draco volans, a flying lizard now living in south-east Asia (Lloyd, ii. 326–7); cf. the ‘flying serpent’ of Isaiah 30: 6. Because of the disappearance of the papyrus no species of ibis now breeds in Egypt.
2.77–91 Customs of Egyptians who live in the arable part of the country. These are the Egyptians H calls logiōtatoi, ‘the most learned people I have ever come across’. Lloyd (ii. 330) comments that ‘Annals such as the Palermo Stone and King Lists like the Abydos, Saqqara and Karnak Lists and the Turin Canon provided a chronological perspective stretching back to the beginnings of Egyptian History and beyond to the Dynasties of the Gods millennia before Gk. traditions began. …’
H discusses their personal regimes, customs, clothing, practices of prediction and divination, medicine, burial practices (including embalming), and their reluctance to use Greek customs but also their celebration of the Greek hero Perseus. The ‘ale made out of barley’ (77) was very similar to beer; some vineyards existed but wine was a drink of the upper classes. There are no independent Egyptian sources for the practice of carrying around a wooden corpse at parties (78), though small carved figures similar to those H describes have been found (Lloyd, ii. 336). The ‘Linus’ song (79) was a song of lamentation sung in Greece and the Near East (perhaps from a Semitic phrase like the Hebrew oi lanu, ‘woe to us’). For extensive discussion of Egyptian burial and mummification practices, see Lloyd, ii. 351–65. Chemmis (91) was very close to the Greek trading settlement at Neapolis and presumably held Greek games because of intermarriage and a population that was partly Greek in consequence. It is probable that Perseus was identified by H or his predecessors with an Egyptian deity, probably Horus (cf. the footprint of Heracles in Scythia in 4.82, of the same length as Perseus’ here). H is interested in Perseus, like Cadmus, as an ancient alleged founder of a variety of peoples (cf. nn. 6.52–4, middle of 7.60–83, 7.148–52).
2.92–8 Customs of the marshy parts of the Delta. The marshes were a refuge for those expelled from Egypt (2.137, 140, 151). H emphasizes the food, animals, plants, and insects that are different from those in/the rest of Egypt, and discusses the boats and boat-culture of the region. H has observed the fish of the Delta but has not completely understood what he saw (Lloyd, ii. 377–9): ‘Pools and mud holes become filled with fish so quickly because the fish come along the canals which bring the first waters of the inundation.’ Egyptian seine nets had a mesh sufficiently small that, when folded several times, they might well have kept out most mosquitoes; certainly much of the population of the Delta were fishermen and there were lots of mosquitoes. H’s description of how the boats are made to move (96) is well documented in Egyptian sources. On the appearance of Egypt in times of flood (97), Lloyd (ii. 391) quotes the Arab writer Massoudi: ‘It is like a white pearl… when, submerged by the river, it forms a vast sheet of whitish water above which the farms situated on the mounds and hillocks shine like stars.’
2.99–182 Ch. 99 is important as a window into how H thought of his investigations, at least in the writing of Book 2. It also begins the section on the history of Egypt. This divides into two parts: (a) the pre-Greek period of the rulers from Min to Sethos (99–142); (b) the period of the twelve kings to Amasis (147–82), during which Greeks were in the country. Lloyd (iii. 1–4) discusses the various factors that affect the reliability of H’s account, especially in the first part: his dependence on oral traditions, contamination of these by Greek traditions, the absence of a clear and fixed chronology, over-schematization, imaginary analogies between Greece and Egypt, and H’s own historiographic and moral assumptions. He concludes: ‘In view of these obstacles it was quite impossible for H to produce a history of Egypt acceptable to the modern Egyptologist. To his credit he was aware of some of his difficulties and does his best to cope with them. … The main value of II, 99–142 is as a record of the historical traditions on the distant past which were generally current in Egypt during the 5th Century B.C. [II, 147–182] is still the most important extant source on Saite history.’
2.99–142 (c.3100–700 BCE) Lloyd (iii. 5) comments: ‘The major source is Egyptian oral tradition, probably channelled through the priests of Memphis … compounded of ingredients of widely differing origins and character: historical reminiscence … the Egyptian ideal of king-ship which tends to assimilate historical figures … folklore elements … confusion between rulers of different periods … nationalist propaganda …’ Egypt had no historiography of its own at this time.
2.99 Min (Menes) probably embodies elements from the reigns of a number of the First-Dynasty kings (c.3100–2890 BCE), perhaps especially Narmer.
2.100 Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic period, believed that there were 323 kings between Min and Sethos (probably Shabataka of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty), so H may be reflecting an Egyptian tradition here. Nitocris was a common Egyptian woman’s name (cf. n. 1.184–7) but it is difficult to identify a specific queen (Manetho thought she was from the Sixth Dynasty (c.2300 BCE); see Lloyd, iii. 13–14). H refers back here to 1.185, evidence that at least in its final redaction H envisioned Book 2 as an integral part of his long work.
2.101 H seems to think of Moeris as Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty (1842–1797 BCE). In 2.13, however, he says that Moeris lived less than nine hundred years before his own time, placing him five hundred years too late. He has also left the pyramid builders (c.2686–2181) out of their proper place in the chronology (Lloyd, i. 188–9, iii. 60).
2.102–10 The reign of Sesostris, with an excursus on Colchians (104–6). Sesostris was used by the Egyptians for capping foreign achievement, in particular the achievements of the Persians. His accomplishments blend memories of Senwosret I and Senwosret III of the Twelfth Dynasty (c.1800 BCE) and Ramesses II of the Nineteenth Dynasty (c.1300); according to CAH iv. 264, some of Darius’ accomplishments in Egypt may have been added in as well. See Lloyd, iii. 20–1, 26–8 for the foreign pillars and statues in Ionia and ‘Syrian Palestine’ (102, 106); these were Hittite rather than Egyptian. If the statues involved are correctly identified, H’s description of them is somewhat imprecise. Cf. n. 5.57–61 for H’s use of inscriptions in general. On the Colchians (104), Lloyd thinks a dark skinned Khazar people might well have lived east of the Caucasus, practised circumcision, and been close enough in appearance for H to have drawn the conclusion that they were Egyptian in origin. For the very loose use of ‘Syrian’ in ch. 104, see Lloyd, iii. 24. H is correct in ch. 108 that Egyptian conquerors used their subjects for massive building projects; the Twelfth Dynasty was particularly interested in land-reclamation schemes, and digging canals was one of the duties of the ideal king. Some Greek notions enter H’s description of Egyptian land allocation (109); Egyptian procedures emphasized precision and justice, not equality (Lloyd, iii. 33). Ch. 109 is the first Greek reference to the sundial and hours (‘the twelve divisions of the day’).
2.111 ‘Pheros’ is merely the word pharaoh; the story is folk-tale.
2.112–20 The name Proteus comes from Homer (Odyssey 4.383 ff.). H’s interest in Proteus’ reign has to do with its involvement in the Helen-Menelaus story. See Lloyd, iii. 46–52 for a detailed consideration of this alternative version of the legend of Helen. H is tapping post-Homeric Greek traditions; cf. also Euripides’ Helen. A stele bearing a Phoenician dedication to Astarte (the foreign Aphrodite) has been found south of the temple of Ptah in Memphis. The quotation in ch. 116 is from Iliad 6.289–92 (omitted as interpolations are Odyssey 4.227–30 and 351–2, found after the lines from the Iliad in some manuscripts of H). There is no reason to doubt that by the time H talked to the priests of Memphis they knew quite a bit about Helen and Menelaus; Greeks had been in Egypt at least since the 660s.
2.121–3 Rhampsinitus and his treasury, his voyage to the underworld, and Egyptian beliefs about death. Rhampsinitus is a composite based on the Ramesses-Pharaohs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (c.1320–1069 BCE), transmuted into a figure of legend. Its style suggests that the long story of the thief is probably Egyptian in origin, as are the tale of the descent and the ritual connected to it. H warns us in ch. 123 that his own approach to such stories (and much else that he heard) was sceptical.
The game in ch. 122 was an Egyptian board-game called snt, connected to the mortuary-cult, played like chess but with the moves determined by the cast of the dice. See Lloyd, iii. 58–60 for the ritual of ch. 122 and the theology of ch. 123. Transmigration was apparently not an Egyptian belief; in H’s time it was associated with Pythagoras, Empedocles, and the Orphics, some of whom may be alluded to at the end of ch. 123.
2.124–35 The pyramid builders: Cheops and Chephren (124–8), Mycerinus (129–34), Rhodopis (134–5).
The classic age of pyramid-building occurred in the Third to the Sixth Dynasties (2686–2181 BCE); H makes the building of the pyramids take place much later, only a few generations before Psammetichus I (664–610 BCE; Lloyd, i. 188). See Lloyd, iii. 60ff. for a detailed discussion of the pyramids themselves. Cheops ruled c.2596–2573 BCE; the hostility of the account may contain some historical memory of an actual brutal corvée or forced labour, but the figure of 100,000 (124) probably refers only to the total work-force during the inundation season, with a much smaller permanent crew in place for the rest of the year (Lloyd, iii. 64). The account in hieroglyphs of how much was spent on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workers (125) seems improbable (for one thing, the implicit notion of money is anachronistic); Lloyd (iii. 71) comments that H’s translator was ‘either an extremely bad philologist or a bare-faced liar, probably the latter’. The story of Cheops’ daughter (126) recalls similar stories in 1.93 and 2.121, and again contains an anachronistic reference to money; the small pyramid referred to was actually built for one of Cheops’ queens. Chephren was actually Cheops’ son (129). For the measurements of the first three pyramids, especially the measurement of the base, H acquits himself rather well; he is less good on height (unless the loss of the ancient casings accounts for the difference), and he makes the base of Mycerinus’ pyramid considerably too short (134). For the notion that his misfortune was inevitable, see n. 1.8. Cf. 2.161.
Lloyd (iii. 76) does not think the mention of Philitis (128) contains any reference to the Hyksos invaders that ended the Middle Kingdom (c.1650). For the problems of the relationship between Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus and the possible reasons for Mycerinus’s favourable press, see Lloyd, iii. 78. In popular folklore he evidently became the model of the Solomon-like just king. The story of the cow is likely to be highly heterogeneous in its sources, and the cow itself is perhaps a Saite ritual object connected with an annual Osiris festival. The story that follows, about Mycerinus’ indignation at the gods and his systematic drunkenness, Lloyd thinks typically Egyptian in its elements (iii. 82).
It is not clear why the Greek courtesan Rhodopis (135) became connected with the building of a pyramid, Lloyd, iii. 84–7. Two of Sappho’s (c.612–550 BCE) fragments (Sappho, frs. 5, 15 West) reproach her brother, and fr. 15 names the woman he was smitten with as Doricha; Rhodopis was perhaps an earlier courtesan (CAH iii/3. 43) or Doricha’s nickname.
2.136 Asychis was Sheshonk I of the Twenty-second Dynasty (c.945–924 BCE). He was a lawgiver, reunified the country, and had an extensive building programme at Memphis and elsewhere; Josephus (Jewish Wars 6.10) says that Asychis conquered and sacked Jerusalem, a feat of Sheshonk I, c.930 (i Kings 14:25–6; cf. 2 Chronicles 12:1–9).
2.137–40 Anysis seems to represent the kings of the Twenty-third Dynasty (c.818–715 BCE). Sabacos is the Nubian pharaoh Shabaka of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. He invaded Egypt c.716 BCE and ruled until 702. The Ethiopian kings were models of the pharaonic ideal: they built temples, they were scrupulous in religious observance, they respected the traditions of the past, and they staved off the Assyrians, whom the Egyptians dreaded. In Greek myth also from the eighth century Ethiopians were a semi-fabulous and just people with whom the gods partied (Iliad 1.423–4, 23.206–7; Odyssey 1.22–3, 5.282). See Lloyd, iii. 94–5 for the temple and grounds of Bastet/Hathor at Bubastis (cf. 2.60). We may note that Sabacos is the one ruler in the Histories who, faced with a choice between the extension of his power and dikē, justice, simply gives up power. This is not a concept that occurs to other rulers except perhaps Demaratus, and he does it less gracefully (6.67–70, 7.235). Cf. the story of Gillus in 3.138.
Amyrtaeus (140; cf. Thucydides 1.110) was an anti-Persian rebel of the northern marshes of the Delta in H’s own day (c.450 BCE). Anysis the blind king is placed more than four centuries too early in ch. 140, and the Assyrians’ role in eventually expelling the Ethiopians is ignored; see Lloyd, iii. 98.
2.141 Sethos was actually the Ethiopian Shabataka (702–690 BCE); the events described here took place in 701. Lloyd speculates that H’s informants wanted to make an Egyptian, not an Ethiopian, responsible for expelling the Assyrian. For other sources for the campaign, see Lloyd, iii. 102–5. The Assyrians were apparently weakened by disease; cf. Isaiah 37:36. See Lloyd, iii. 104–5 for Horus’ part in the Egyptian victory; the statue was in the temple of Ptah.
2.142–6 Before going on to the Egyptian history for which there are Greek sources, H makes a chronological excursus that stresses the extreme antiquity of Egyptian history and the precision of Egyptian accountability and record-keeping over vast stretches of time. For the problem of the four reversals of the sun’s course and the 341 statues H saw as opposed to the 345 that Hecataeus saw, see Lloyd, iii. 106–8. H counted only the statues to the time of Sethos; Hecataeus was counting up until his own day. For Hecataeus’ appearance as a historical actor in the Histories, see n. 5.36; here H seems to find amusing Hecataeus’ genealogical pretensions, cf. n. 1.146. Horus was the last of the Egyptian divine kings (144); the pharaohs after him ruled as his incarnations on earth. Typhon was the Greek figure who most closely resembled Seth, the enemy of Osiris. In chs. 145–6 H defends the position that Heracles, Dionysus, and Pan are Egyptian gods who have been imported into Greece. Cf. 2.43–6.
2.147–82 The Twenty-sixth or Saite Dynasty from Psammetichus I down to the end of the reign of Amasis (664–526 BCE). For this part of his Egyptian history H is an important source. His reign lengths are more accurate and the connection with historical reality much greater than in his narrative of previous reigns (although the labyrinth (148) was built more than 1,100 years earlier than H says it was). The account remains dependent on oral tradition with a large infusion of Greek interpretation and emphasis on issues of interest to Greeks. This is surely true for other books of the Histories as well, but we can see it clearly here.
2.147–57 The twelve kings and Psammetichus I (664–610 BCE). H’s twelve kings symbolize the internal political fragmentation of the Ethiopian and Assyrian periods, in which the authority of the central government was often nominal. The labyrinth of ch. 148 was actually built by Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty; both the labyrinth and the lake near it are described at length because they are thōmata, wonders (n. 2.65–76). For their accurate description, see Lloyd, iii. 121–7. The lake (149) was a natural formation, watered by the Nile, and considerably smaller than H says, with a circumference of c.170 miles (272 km.), not the c.400 miles (640 km.) that would make it equal the coastline of Egypt in H’s reckoning (cf. n. 2.6). Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BCE by a Median/Babylonian combined force (150; cf. n. 1.178); H here is relating a confused tradition with folk-tale elements in it. Psammetichus was, like his father, pro-Assyrian and began his reign as an Assyrian vassal (Lloyd, iii. 132). Gyges of Lydia may have helped Psammetichus win independence from Assyria by sending him Carian and Greek mercenary troops; Psammetichus controlled all of Egypt by 656 BCE. On the Apis cult (153), see 2.38. The description of the shrine at Buto (155) is added as a thōma, ‘wonder’, to the end of Psammetichus’ reign because Psammetichus had consulted it (152). For the description of the shrine and the lake near it, see Lloyd, iii. 140–5, and 146–9 for the historicity of the siege of Azotus (Ashdod, 2.157). Control of Ashdod meant control of the route to Syria-Palestine; it was a rich prize commercially.
2.158–9 Necho II reigned from 610 to 595 BCE. See Lloyd, iii. 150–8 for the canal and its military and commercial benefits to Egypt. The chauvinism expressed at the end of 2.158 is entirely Egyptian (Lloyd, iii. 157–8). Lloyd concludes that Egyptian power and prestige were drastically curtailed between 605 and 595 BCE, but that ‘Necho must at least get the credit for preventing the Chaldaean occupation of his country—and that, we have every reason to believe, was the ultimate aim of his policy’ (iii. 159).
2.160–1 Psammis was Psammetichus II (595–589 BCE). He did invade Ethiopia, but the account of the Olympic games contains unhistorical elements, since the Eleans did not gain control of the games until about 570 BCE. Diodorus of Sicily (1.95) places the anecdote in the time of Amasis. For the notion that an evil fate was sometimes inescapable, see n. 1.8.
2.161–71 The account of Apries’ reign (589–570 BCE) contains two episodes from his campaigns, the expedition against Cyrene, and his deposition by Amasis. The rest is a series of pendants: the warriors and other classes (164–8), the royal tombs at Saïs (169), and the Sanctuary of Athena at Saïs and rituals connected to it (2.170–1). His operations against Tyre and Sidon (161) probably are to be dated late in his reign; H thinks that the military revolted because of resentment at the defeat of the Cyrene campaign in c.571 BCE (cf. 4.159), but on a deeper level Lloyd connects it with resentment at the favoured status given Greek mercenary troops. See Lloyd, iii. 178–9 for. discussion of the Amasis stele and the modifications of H’s account of the end of Apries’ reign it suggests; Apries at the head of Asiatic troops attacked Amasis and was killed in battle, perhaps three years after the end of his reign. It is true that Amasis changed the capital to Memphis (Lloyd, iii. 181); early in his reign he was not yet the famous philhellene he later became (2.178, 3.39).
See Lloyd, iii. 182–96 for the excursus on Egyptian class structure, its concentration on the military class, and the geographical assignment of the nomes (2.164 ff.). The priests and the warriors are the only two classes about whom there is wide agreement; they were the only two that controlled land and were also the most likely to impinge upon the attention of foreign observers. H’s notions of the makhimoi, or warriors, are almost certainly affected by Greek assumptions about warriors and Spartans in particular (167); warriors in Egypt seem originally to have been mainly Libyans. In ch. 170 H is reluctant to mention the tomb of Osiris at Saïs; the sacred lake was a standard feature of Egyptian temples. In ch. 171 H again expresses his (mistaken) belief that most Greek religious institutions derived from Egypt (cf. 2.43–64 passim). The Thesmophoria was a three-day festival celebrated by Greek women before the autumn sowing of crops; its details were kept secret.
2.172–82 The reign of Amasis (570–526 BCE). Three stories of his reign are given in 2.172–5. In ch. 172 he educates the Egyptians to honour him as king despite his low birth; Lloyd (iii. 212–13) thinks it likely that in the Persian period the legitimacy of his family line as well as his rule was denied. The other two stories (173–4) are more likely to contain Egyptian motifs retold by Greeks.
In chs. 175–6 Amasis’ building activities in Saïs and Memphis are described, and in chs. 177–82. his reign’s stability and prosperity. Lloyd thinks his status as a lawgiver has to do with the reorganization of the country after the civil war with Apries. In chs. 177–82. his connections with the Greeks are emphasized; Amasis was a famous philhellene, but his reign was too late for him to have inspired Solon’s laws (c.594 BCE). For Naucratis (178), see Lloyd, iii. 222–30 and CAH iv. 455–6. Most of the Greeks in Egypt, except for the mercenaries employed by the pharoah, lived there, but cf. 2.39, 41 and Lloyd, i. 13–38. For more on the reconstruction of the temple at Delphi c.548 BCE (180), see n. 5.62–3, and App. 2 for monetary values. For the relations between Amasis and Cyrene, see Lloyd, iii. 234–5. Amasis’ whole energy in foreign policy would have gone into defending against the growing threat of Persia, and this shaped his relations with Cyrene, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Samos. For his relations with Polycrates of Samos, see further 3.39–43. We do not know which of the two actually ended the alliance, but it seems more probable that Polycrates did; see n. 3.44 below.