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“But concerning Egypt, I am going to speak at length, because it has the most wonders, and everywhere presents works beyond description; therefore, I shall say the more concerning Egypt.”
HERODOTUS, HISTORIES; BOOK 2.35; A. D. GODLEY TRANSLATION
Introduction
Book Two of the Histories focuses almost exclusively on Egypt. How did this come about? Basically like this:
Herodotus: After Cyrus dies, his son Cambyses takes over as king of Persia.
Reader: Okay.
Herodotus: And Cyrus, before he died, told his son to launch a campaign against Egypt.
Reader: Interesting.
Herodotus: Oh, speaking of Egypt. It’s incredible! The Egyptians are a really old people, even older than the Greeks, with tons of interesting customs and religious practices—
Reader: Fascinating, but what about that campaign?
Herodotus: —and one of their kings did this experiment once to find out who was actually the oldest people group in the world—
Reader: I see. But, what about that new Persian king—
Herodotus: —and Egypt has this really amazing river called the Nile which is different than any other river in existence—
Reader: Right. But, what about Persia?
Herodotus: Egypt!
Reader: But—
Herodotus: EGYPT!!
Herodotus appears to have a great respect and fascination toward the Egyptians. Unlike other people groups that he’s talked about so far, Herodotus hardly has anything critical to say about the Egyptians.
Unlike previous entries where I just focused on 10 or 20 sections of the Histories, wherever there appeared to be natural breaks, I will be glossing over the first 98 sections of Book Two because it’s all about Egyptian customs, religious rites, geography, zoology, and more. For most of it, there’s not much to comment on. The content speaks for itself. Other sections are just not interesting unless you’re interested in particular subjects (I don’t care much about geography, for example).
Having said all of that, there won’t be a Summary section for this post. This introduction has pretty much done that. Instead, I will be drawing out what I thought were the highlights:
An Egyptian king runs a human experiment
The Egyptians revere Heracles
Herodotus’ hilarious description of the hippopotamus
And more!
If you really want to learn more about Egypt from an outsider who traveled around it almost 2500 years ago, the entire Book Two of the Histories is well worth the read.
All quotations are taken from the A. D. Godley translation of the Histories, which is in the public domain.
Psammetichus’ Lab Experiment
In the beginning of Book Two, Herodotus tells this fascinating, but horrifying, story where the Egyptian king Psammetichus performs an experiment to find out who were the oldest people in the world. Before this experiment, everyone, including the Egyptians, thought the Egyptians were the oldest. Here is Herodotus describing the experiment:
Psammetichus, being nowise able to discover by inquiry what men had first come into being, devised a plan whereby he took two newborn children of common men and gave them to a shepherd to bring up among his flocks. He gave charge that none should speak any word in their hearing; they were to lie by themselves in a lonely hut, and in due season the shepherd was to bring goats and give the children their milk and do all else needful. Psammetichus did this, and gave this charge, because he desired to hear what speech would first break from the children, when they were past the age of indistinct babbling.
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.2; A. D. Godley translation
Yeah. Psammetichus just decides to take two newborn children, from among the commoners of course, and had them raised in near isolation to see what word they would speak first.
The answer to their burning question? Apparently, the Phrygian.1 The first word the children uttered was interpreted to be the Phrygian word for bread.
The whole experiment is very scientific—right down to the ignoring of morals and social conventions to “get at the truth.” Psammetichus had a theory (the Egyptians were the oldest), a controlled experiment (raising newborns in near isolation to see what word they would speak first), and a revised theory after the experiment produced results (the Phrygians were actually the oldest).
I wonder if the people who eventually came up with the scientific method were at all inspired by this story?
The Nile Really was a Gift
Yes, I’m getting the phrase wrong. I’m okay with that.
“At present, of course, there are no people, either in the rest of Egypt or in the whole world, who live from the soil with so little labor; they do not have to break the land up with the plough, or hoe, or do any other work that other men do to get a crop; the river rises of itself, waters the fields, and then sinks back again; then each man sows his field and sends swine into to tread down the seed, and waits for the harvest; then he has the swine thresh his grain, and so garners it.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.14; A. D. Godley translation
Herodotus spends a great deal of time talking about the Nile River.2 He reveals that no one really knows where the source of the Nile River (although he tells a story about some people who found a possible source in Libya3; see 2.28-34). He also presents all the theories he’s heard for why the Nile River acts so differently from other rivers and then provides his own theory (2.20-26).
However, the most important aspect of the Nile is how it was crucial for Egyptian survival and how much it had made their lives easier (as mentioned in the quote above). A people who do not need to toil all day, every day, for their subsistence have more time for other pursuits. It’s no wonder, then, that Egyptian society was so rich in tradition, customs, religious practices, and learning.4
And yet, strangely, the Egyptians were very conservative, valued their past, refused to change their society very much, and even shunned foreign customs (see 2.77-79, 91). I’m thinking there’s a lesson to be learned there.
Heracles to the Egyptians
“Therefore, what I have discovered by inquiry plainly shows that Heracles is an ancient god. And furthermore, those Greeks, I think, are most in the right, who have established and practise two worships of Heracles, sacrificing to one Heracles as to an immortal, and calling him the Olympian, but to the other bringing offerings as to a dead hero.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.44; A. D. Godley translation
Interestingly, this was the view presented in the Odyssey. Recall in Book Eleven when Odysseus visits the underworld to consult the blind prophet Tiresias about how to get back home to Ithaca. Before Tiresias shows up, Odysseus sees many other ghosts and even converses with a few of them. One of them was Heracles. However, this is what Odysseus said about Heracles:
"After him I saw mighty Hercules, but it was his phantom only, for he is feasting ever with the immortal gods, and has lovely Hebe to wife, who is daughter of Jove and Juno.”
Samuel Butler translation
So, there was Heracles’ ghost whom Odysseus conversed with, but there was also Heracles who became immortal, married the goddess Hebe, and feasts with the other gods in Olympus. This is probably why there were Greeks who honored Heracles the hero and Heracles the god.
From a theological perspective, this is quite interesting. Heracles was both a man who was dead and a man who was made into a god. Two different natures. To me, that should be the logical conclusion to someone who was half-mortal and half-god: their mortal part dies and goes to the land of the dead while the immortal part lives on. I wonder if the other offspring of gods were given the same treatment in ancient Greek beliefs?
Herodotus also spends some time in his account to mention that a lot of the names of the Greek gods were derived from the Egyptian gods. Also, having a main pantheon of twelve gods also came from Egypt. Heracles and Perseus, another Greek hero, also have their origins in Egypt. And, the god Dionysus was introduced to the Greeks from someone who learned about him from Egypt.
Behold: The Hippo!
While Herodotus is describing the different animals in Egypt (yes, Herodotus is that obsessed with Egypt), he gives his description of the hippopotamus. I will simply leave it below without further comment and see if you can spot the reason why I wanted to highlight it so badly:
“Hippopotamuses are sacred in the district of Papremis, but not elsewhere in Egypt. They present the following appearance: four-footed, with cloven hooves like cattle; blunt-nosed; with a horse’s mane, visible tusks, a horse’s tail and voice; big as the biggest bull. Their hide is so thick that, when it is dried, spearshafts are made of it.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.71; A. D. Godley translation
Miscellaneous Comments From Herodotus
“For I suppose Hesiod and Homer flourished not more than four hundred years earlier than I; and these are the ones who taught the Greeks the descent of the gods, and gave the gods their names, and determined their spheres and functions, and described their outward forms.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.53; A. D. Godley translation
This is an interesting comment from Herodotus. I have covered by Homer and Hesiod’s main works on my blog (though my posts on Hesiod’s works are behind the paywall). Herodotus gives Homer and Hesiod a lot of credit for helping establish the ancient Greeks’ religious beliefs and views on the gods.
“I expect that these women were called “doves” by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.57; A. D. Godley translation
The context of this passage is Herodotus relating the story of how the oracle of Dodona, the oldest Greek oracle, came about. The story he heard was that two black doves flew out from Thebes, in Egypt. One went to Libya and the other to Dodona. These doves spoke human language and declared that oracles for their head gods must be established there (Libya → Ammon; Dodona → Zeus).
Herodotus, however, has a hard time believing this story and thinks what happened was that two Egyptian priestess were captured and sold—one to Libya, the other to Dodona. Eventually, they established shrines to their respective head gods, and once they learned the native languages, began teaching others divination.
Here we see, once again, Herodotus trying to provide more “down to earth” explanations for historical events rather than deferring to their mythological accounts. This is what makes Herodotus the “father of history”—he sought or theorized alternate explanations that didn’t require believing in fantastic stories.
“Nearly all other peoples are less careful in this matter than are Egyptians and Greeks, and consider a man to be like any other animal; for beasts and birds (they say) are seen to mate both in the temples and in the sacred precincts; now were this displeasing to the god, the beasts would not do so. This is the reason given by others for practices which I, for my part, dislike…”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.64; A. D. Godley translation
This comment was interesting to me because the belief that men were no more than animals goes back thousands of years rather than being a product of modern scientific thought. It’s also interesting because this belief that men were no than animals was used to justify certain behaviors. It’s not much different than the “it’s biology, bro” arguments that are made today to excuse behaviors like promiscuity, hypergamy, and polygyny.
“… those Greeks occupied with poetry exploit this. More portents have been discovered by them than by all other peoples; when a portent occurs, they take note of the outcome and write it down; and if something of a like kind happens again, they think it will have a like result.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 2.82; A. D. Godley translation
Herodotus started off by talking about how the Egyptians believed that each month and day belonged to one of the gods and that what day someone is born will determine how their life will go. Herodotus’ comment that the Greek poets picked this up and exploited it is probably a reference, at the very least, to Hesiod’s Works and Days. In it, Hesiod mentions the best and worst days out of the year to have children—like specific days have these supernatural components to them.
It’s also interesting to point out that these individuals also took a bit of a scientific approach to it. They looked at omens, saw what happened, recorded it, then saw if events would repeat if the same omen was observed. Over time, you get a lot of data and start to see patterns. I imagine this was also done with other practices from extispicy (reading entrails), to exorcisms, to dream interpretations. Today, I imagine this is put in practice when it comes to the more pseudo-scientific and fantastical like alien abductions, cryptozoology, witchcraft, and astral projection.
That's all for the Histories, Book 2.1-98.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
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Thumbnail: A picture of ancient Egypt. Taken from: https://www.storynory.com/herodotus-the-river-nile/
1A people group who lived in Anatolia (modern day Turkey). Fun fact: the Phrygians were allies of the Trojans according to the Iliad: “Phorcys, again, and noble Ascanius led the Phrygians from the far country of Ascania, and both were eager for the fray” (Book 2).
2Herodotus often just calls it “the river” as you see in the quote for this section.
3Libya = Africa. According to Herodotus, the Greeks divided the known world into Europe, Asia, and Libya (2.16).
4According to Herodotus, the Egyptians were first to: divide the year into twelve, 30 day months, adding five extra days a year to keep it aligned with the seasons; assign gods altars, images, and temples; carve figures on stone; and, establish solemn assemblies, processions, and practices (2.4, 58). Also, they were the healthiest of all peoples next to the Libyans (2.77).