Histories

In Book 2, Herodotus discusses the geography, zoology, customs, and history of ancient Egypt. This excursus on the country’s natural and man-made marvels sets the scene for his account of Egypt’s invasion in 525 BCE by the Persian king Cambyses, Cyrus’ son, in the following Book. The first part of Book 2 focuses on the geography of Egypt and the mysteries of the Nile; the second part is an ethnography of the country, describing the religious practices of its inhabitants and theorizing about the relationship of Egyptian and Greek oracles and gods; and the concluding section is a sketch of Egyptian history, focusing on the builders of the pyramids and other great monuments. Herodotus’ information is drawn from extensive research that included visits he made to interview the priests at the Egyptian sanctuaries of Memphis, Heliopolis, and Thebes.

The immense antiquity and wealth of Egyptian culture fascinated the ancient Greeks. Until the reign of the pharaoh Psammetichus (664-610 BCE), Herodotus claims, the Egyptians believed they were the oldest nation in the world. Hoping to determine the original race of mankind, Psammetichus had two newborns removed from their family and raised in a cottage in the absence of language. Psammetichus wished to see which language they would speak spontaneously, unexposed to external linguistic influence. One day, both children ran to their caregiver with outstretched hands, saying the word “becos,” the Phrygian word for “bread,” and ever since then the Egyptians have acknowledged the Phrygians as the oldest branch of humanity, themselves the second-most ancient.

The priests at Thebes told Herodotus that 347 generations separate the first king of Egypt, Min (Menes) from Psammenitus, the ruler who was defeated by Cyrus’ successor, Cambyses. According to Herodotus’ reckoning, this amounts to roughly 11,500 years, during which, the Egyptians claim, no god ever appeared on earth in mortal form. By contrast, the Ionian historian and geographer Hecataeus, Herodotus’ predecessor, told the Theban priests that he could trace his family’s genealogy 16 generations back to a god, a claim the Egyptian priests found ridiculous. Herodotus stresses the immense antiquity of Egyptian culture and history and emphasizes the Egyptian influence on the origins of Hellenic cultural practices and beliefs. Among Egyptian innovations was the division of the calendar into 12 months of 30 days each, intercalating five additional days a year, a superior method of reckoning the year to the Greek system.

Egypt is the gift of the Nile, Herodotus says, arguing that the river’s rich alluvial deposits created the fertile Egyptian delta in recent times. Based on his own observations, he suggests that Egypt was originally an arm of the Indian Ocean that rose above sea level with the silt carried by the Nile. The reasons for the Nile’s annual flood, and why it was the only river not to cause breezes, particularly puzzled him. Herodotus cites three Greek explanations for the Nile flood: The summer winds check the flow of the river’s current toward the sea; the Nile behaves oddly because it flows from the ocean encircling the world; and the flood originates from annually melting snow near the river’s source. Citing contrary evidence, Herodotus rejects each of these explanations as fanciful, offering instead his own theory that the sun mitigates the Nile’s volume of water in the winter, thus making it flood during the summer.

The source of the Nile was a mystery in Herodotus’ time. He suggests, arguing from analogy, that the river must be as long as the Danube in Europe. Herodotus claims he traveled as far south as Elephantine, located at the Nile’s first cataract near the border with Ethiopia. He reports a story, heard at fourth-hand, about Nasamonian youths who ventured further into Libya than anyone had done before. They crossed the Saharan desert to an oasis, where they were captured by pygmies and taken to a village on the banks of a great river infested with crocodiles. Herodotus assumes the river to have been the Nile (more likely it was the Niger). The course of the Nile, he suggests, is known as far as a four months’ journey beyond Elephantine; after that point no one knows with certainty because the land is uninhabited due to the heat.

The oddities of Egyptian geography are matched by the idiosyncratic customs of its inhabitants: “Not only is the Egyptian climate peculiar to that country, and the Nile different in its behavior from other rivers elsewhere, but the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seemed to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind” (98). Herodotus notes that Egyptian women go to market while the men stay at home and weave; women urinate standing up while men do so sitting down; only men serve as priests, unlike the Greek custom, and Egyptian priests shave their heads while in other nations they wear their hair long.

Egyptians practice circumcision, live with their animals, eat bread made from spelt, rather than wheat or barley, and write from right to left, unlike the Greeks, who write from left to right. The Egyptians keep to their native customs and never adopt those from abroad, he asserts. In addition to their many unusual practices, Egyptians are extremely religious and fastidious about cleanliness, bathing four times a day. A rigorous decorum applies to their animal sacrifices: Bulls selected for sacrifice must be spotless; the animal is decapitated, and the head loaded with curses and either sold to Greeks in the market or cast into the river.

The Greeks, Herodotus maintains, owe many of their gods and religious observances to the Egyptians and Libyans. Semi-divine heroes are not part of the Egyptian religion, yet the Greeks have adopted the names of Heracles and Dionysus, as well as most of their gods, from the Egyptians. The Greek oracles have an Egyptian origin, Herodotus suggests, citing the priests of Zeus at the Egyptian city of Thebes who claim that two priestesses were abducted from the sanctuary and sold into Libya and Greece respectively. These women became the founders of important oracles in those countries. The priestesses of Dodona, an oracle of Zeus in northwest Greece, claim that two black doves flew from Thebes to Libya and Greece and proclaimed with human voices that oracles should be established where they landed. Herodotus interprets the anecdote to mean that a dark foreign woman was called a “dove” by the Dodonaians because her incomprehensible speech sounded to them like a bird, until she learned Greek.

The most popular Egyptian festivals take place at Bubastis, in honor of Artemis/Bastet, at Busiris, in honor of Isis/Osiris, and at Sais, in honor of Athena. Herodotus credits the Egyptians with the invention of public religious festivals and processions, and with the prohibition of sexual intercourse in religious sanctuaries. The Egyptians invented the idea of the immortality of the soul and the belief in the transmigration of souls after death. Herodotus considers the Egyptians the healthiest people in the world, after the Libyans, describing their diet and monthly habit of purging themselves. The Egyptians invented the art of telling horoscopes based on birthdates. Mummification is an art among them; differing methods are used depending upon the social status of the deceased. Medicine in Egypt is a specialized science; each doctor treats only one type of disease.

Egyptian animals are uniformly considered sacred by the natives. Domestic cats are embalmed after death and buried at Bubastis; ibises are buried at the sacred city of Heliopolis. When domestic animals die, the occupants of the house mourn by shaving their own eyebrows or the entire body. Herodotus describes the crocodile and hippopotamus, as well as the phoenix and flying snake, failing to distinguish between real and mythical animals. Herodotus concludes his ethnography of the country with a description of Egyptian boatmanship during the annual flood of the Nile.

Herodotus then turns to a historical summary of the country, relying on what the Egyptians have told him, as well as on what he has seen firsthand. Min (Menes; ruled circa 3,000 BCE), the first king of Egypt, built the dam which created Memphis where he erected the great sanctuary of Hephaestus (Ptah). Min was followed by a succession of 330 monarchs who left behind no remarkable monuments. Sesostris, the next great pharaoh, subdued the coastal tribes along the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean; entering Europe, he defeated the Scythians and Thracians. When Sesostris was returning to Egypt, his brother invited him to a banquet and then set the house on fire, hoping to murder the king and usurp the throne. Sesostris’ wife advised her husband to lay two of his six children down to form a bridge for the others to escape the flames. Safely back in Egypt, Sesostris punished his brother and divided the land with numerous canals. He distributed land to all Egyptians, levying an annual tax that funded a public treasury.

Sesostris was succeeded by his son Pheros, who was blinded when he arrogantly cast a spear into the eddies of the flooded Nile. The oracle said he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who was faithful to her husband. Pheros tried first with his own wife, to no avail. He then attempted the same thing with all the other women of the city. When he finally regained his sight, he had all the women—except the one whose urine restored his vision—gathered together and set on fire and married the faithful one.

Pheros was succeeded by Proteus, who, according to the priests, hosted Paris and Helen when the Trojan prince abducted Helen from Sparta, resulting in the Trojan War. Found guilty of kidnapping and theft by Proteus, Paris was forced to leave Egypt while Helen was entertained by the pharaoh until the Spartan king Menelaus arrived to claim her. Herodotus agrees with the Egyptian account of the story and assumes that while Homer knew of this variant as well, he did not find it as dramatically appropriate as the version he included in the Iliad, in which Helen is taken to Troy by Paris.

Rhampsinitos (a composite of Ramesses I and II) succeeded to the throne after Proteus. He amassed a great treasure and created a monumental gateway and statues at the sanctuary of Hephaestus in Memphis. He secured his wealth in a vault with a secret passage cunningly concealed by the treasury’s builder. On his deathbed, the builder described the entrance to his two sons, who plundered the pharaoh’s silver without detection until one was finally caught in a trap laid by the king. He implored his brother to cut off his head and escape, to prevent their identities from being discovered. The brother complied, and the king thereupon had the headless corpse of the captured brother publicly displayed to ferret out his identity. The surviving brother plied the soldiers guarding the body with wine and when they were unconscious, retrieved the corpse of his brother.

Outraged, Rhampsinitos ordered his daughter to enter a brothel and receive all comers, but to compel each customer to divulge the most clever and wicked thing he had ever done before receiving her favors. The thief, discovering the pharaoh’s plan, admitted his crime to the girl and escaped, leaving her clutching the severed arm of another corpse he had used for the ruse. The pharaoh, astonished and impressed by this trick, sought out the thief and gave him his daughter in marriage, proclaiming he was the most intelligent and cunning of all Egyptians.

Rhampsinitos was succeeded by Cheops (Khufu) and his brother Chephren (Khafre), builders of the great pyramids at Giza. Oppressive rulers, these pharaohs closed the temples and forced their subjects to construct their monumental stone mausoleums. The Great Pyramid of Cheops took 20 years to build; the pharaoh forced his daughter into prostitution to obtain additional money for the project. After reigning for 50 years, Cheops was succeeded by his brother Chephren, who ruled for an additional 56 years and erected the second-largest pyramid at Giza. Herodotus says the Egyptians can barely bring themselves to mention the names of these reviled pharaohs out of their hatred of their despotic tyranny. Mycerinus (Menkaura), the son of Cheops, succeeded Chephren, and reopened the temples. Noted for his generosity and mildness, Mycerinus compensated aggrieved parties in lawsuits from his own property, winning great favor among the Egyptians. In response to an oracle that foretold he had only six years to live, Mycerinus spent his remaining time in pleasant pursuits throughout day and night, so to cheat the oracle and live 12 years in the allotted six. He built the smallest of the great pyramids at Giza.

Mycerinus was succeeded by Asychis, who in turn was followed by the blind king Anysis on the throne. During Anysis’ reign, the Ethiopian king Sabacos invaded Egypt and ruled for 50 years, forcing Anysis into exile in the marshlands of the Nile delta. Frightened by a premonitory dream, Sabacos abandoned Egypt, returned to Ethiopia, and Anysis regained the throne. Anysis was succeeded by Sethos, the High Priest of Hephaestus. Sethos neglected the warrior class and treated them with contempt; as a result, they abandoned him when the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded Egypt. Sethos appealed to the god and was supported by an army of merchants and laborers who camped at Pelusium, on the Mediterranean coast, to meet the invader. During the night, an infestation of mice swept through the Assyrian camp, chewing through their bowstrings, quivers, and shield-handles, depriving them of their weapons and leaving them defenseless before the Egyptians.

Following Sethos’ reign, the Egyptians divided their country into 12 districts with 12 kings appointed to rule over them. The Dodecarchs, or 12 kings, reigned from 780-664 BCE and agreed not to depose each other, after an oracle declared that whoever among them poured a libation out of a bronze cup in the sanctuary of Hephaestus would become king of all Egypt. They built a collective memorial in Krokodilopolis, south of Lake Moeris. Herodotus declares that this labyrinth is greater and more splendid than all the architectural monuments in Greece combined and more marvelous than the great pyramids themselves.

Psammetichus, one of the 12 kings, was banished by the rest when he inadvertently poured a libation from his bronze helmet during a festival of the rulers in Memphis. Enraged at his ostracism, he sought the aid of sea-raiders from Ionia and Caria and with their help defeated and deposed the other 11 kings. Psammetichus granted land to these Greeks, who established themselves in Egypt and became the first foreigners to live in the country.

After 54 years on the throne, Psammetichus was succeeded by his son, Necos, who began the construction of a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea that was eventually completed by Darius, the Persian king. Herodotus reports that 120,000 Egyptians died working on the project. Necos suspended construction of the canal in deference to a negative oracle, and turned his attention to warfare, defeating the Syrians in several battles. After 16 years, he died, and his son Psammis succeeded to the throne for six years. Psammis was followed by his son Apries, who was deposed in a revolt led by Amasis after Apries ordered a disastrous expedition against the Greek city of Cyrene in Libya. Sent by Apries to quell the Egyptian army’s insurrection, Amasis was crowned king by the rebels and secured the support of most of the Egyptians against Apries. Apries met the Egyptian forces with an army of 30,000 Greek mercenaries (the Ionian and Carian settlers) but was severely outnumbered and defeated. He was treated well by Amasis, but eventually the latter was forced to surrender Apries to the Egyptian mob, which strangled him.

Amasis ruled a united Egypt from 570-526 BCE. Herodotus records that from dawn until late morning he occupied himself with governmental business; in the afternoon he devoted himself to drinking and pleasure. When his advisors reproached him for his lax behavior, he replied that “a bow always kept strung would break, and so be useless when needed. It is the same with a man […] it is because I know this that I divide my time between duty and pleasure” (150).

Amasis built a monumental gateway for the temple of Athena at Sais and an enormous room, hollowed out from a single block of stone, among other architectural accomplishments. Herodotus notes that he adorned several Egyptian temples with colossal statutes and that his reign was a time of unparalleled material prosperity in the country. Amasis gave the town of Naucratis to the Greeks as a commercial headquarters for trading and donated other properties to them for the building of temples and sanctuaries. Favoring the Hellenes, he took a Greek wife from Cyrene and sent many gifts to Greek temples in Asia Minor. He was the first foreigner to capture Cyprus and force the Cyprians to pay tribute.