HISTORICAL DISCOURSE IN HERODOTUS: THE CONSTRUCTION

OF GREEK IDENTITY IN BOOK II OF THE HISTORIES

by

JASON L. BANTA, B.A.

A THESIS

IN

CLASSICAL HUMANITIES

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

Accepted

May, 1999

/ ^ ?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Time and space prevent me from acknowledging all the people whom without this

thesis could not have been written. I would like to of course thank my parents, James

and Maureen, for their efforts and support during these past 6 years. I also extend thanks

to Dr. Nancy Reed, for all of her time she has contributed and the introduction she has

given me into the worlds of Art History and Archaeology, making my goals a reality.

The single person to whom I owe the most, and without whom this thesis would not have

been possible, is Dr. David H. J. Larmour. A friend, a scholar, and a mentor, it is because

of his attentive efforts that I am the student and scholar I am today, and to him I owe a

debt that can never be repaid. Finally, I thank the person who once told me she was

proud of me, at a time when I needed such encouragement, and how much that meant,

and means to me.

u

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION 1

n. SELECTED COMMENTARY 14

m. CONCLUSIONS 54

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 63

111

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Many of the difficulties in dealing with Herodotus lie in his importance for

our perception of a volatile and dynamic period in Greek history. Without Herodotus

we would be lacking in a great deal of knowledge concerning events previous to, and

contemporary with, the conflict between the Persian Empire and the assembled Greek

poleis. This has led many scholars to attempt to fit Herodoms into neat categories,

which facilitate our understanding as a modem audience.

Common conceptions of Herodotus have resulted in many polemic conflicts.

The labels normally associated with Herodotus and his work have only clouded the

water frirther. As the "Father of History" Herodotus is worshipped and deified, his

methods and conclusions taken as canonical. While this view validates to a certain

extent the contribution Herodotus has made to the conception the Westem world

holds of its past and heritage, it does it in an uncritical manner that ignores the

ideological paradigms at work within the text. The opposing camp, which designates

Herodotus as the "Father of Lies," while a less naive approach, fails to recognize the

cultural significance of the Histories as a document.' They cite fallacies and

discrepancies within the text and dwell upon its failure as an attempt at history.

Emphasis is placed upon the faults alone in Herodotus' argument, which reveal the

supposedly "unscientific" manner of his work.

' See, for example, Plutarch, De Malignitate Herodoti. ^ See Charles Fomara, Herodotus: An Interpretive Essav (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1971), 3-7, 14-18.

1

Neither of these approaches has satisfactorily answered or can ever answer the

basic problems posed by this text. While any scholarly approach is going to carry a

set of biases with it, these two in particular do not only carry specific, even stated,

biases with them, but they are indeed defined by presentist preconceptions. This is

perhaps why Herodotean scholarship has moved away from these approaches in

recent years. Donald Lateiner in particular has worked to dislodge many of the masks

that Herodotus has been forced to wear over the years, and instead is turning back to

an investigation of the text as an organic whole, that, in his words, has "a conscious

method, purpose and literary constmction."^

Herodotus' work therefore cannot be looked at as a simple account of factual

events. First there is the obvious problem: anyone who has read Herodotus

understands that there seems to be very little linear motion within the narrative itself

Numerous scholars have, in a good philological manner, worked to categorize the

seemingly jumbled array of stories in the Histories. Termed either |iu6oi or, less

patronizingly, Xoyoi, these "stories" are seen as satellites orbiting around the main

theme of the Histories, whether that theme be explicit or implicit. They are presented

as an amalgamation, sometimes immediately relevant to whatever argument

Herodotus is currently making, at other times as digressions or forced transitions

between topics. Do these |ju6oi give any coherent stmcture to the overall work?

^ Donald Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989). I had the opportunity of participating in an electronic mail exchange on the debate raised by Black Athena in 1995 in which Dr. Lateiner also participated, and from which the outline of this thesis took shape.

^ See for example Felix Jacoby, RE Suppl. 2, cf FGrH 76. F64. Also, for a general survey of the scholarship see John L. Myres, Herodotus, the Father of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953).

Again, opinions vary. Some see these stories as forming a tapestry, maybe an

unconscious one, but a system nonetheless that creates an effect of overall unity.

The other approach is to label these nuOoi as "digressions" from the main argument,

only vaguely relevant to Herodotus' discussion. This presupposes that we can

somehow show, through scholarship, that Herodotus' intended work is much different

from the actual work, that the Histories are some imperfect product, fraught with

infelicities. One can see the inherent danger in this argument: ultimately it has no

chance of resolution in a non-theoretical arena. The discussion can continue

indefinitely as to whether or not the surviving text is somehow an inferior product of

a greater vision, but it is a moot discussion, for the very reason that the current form

is the form of the text that has been transmitted to us, and is the only valid tool to use

for our examination of Herodotus. Once the discussion leaves the text behind, it

enters into a world of scholarly instability, and threatens to do great injustice to the

text itself

What is Herodotus first and foremost? Is he a historian, and what exactly does

that term mean to him, and how have we translated the Greek? He declares himself

to be embarking on a new type of writing, one that:

COS nr|TE Td yEvojieva E^ avSpcoTTcbv TCOI xpovcoi E ITTIXQ y£vr|Tai, uri

TE ipya MsydXa TE KQ'I 6coMaaTd,Td JJEV "EXXriai, TCX BE Pappdpoioi

^ Jacoby, 283-336.

diToBExQevTa, dKXEd yEvrixai, Td TE dXXa KQI 5i' fiv aiTiriv ETTOXEMTIO

av dXXriXoioi

The subject of what exactly a historian is, and what it would have meant to the

Greeks, as well as what it means to us, is an issue of great contention. According to

Kurt von Fritz, Herodotus went through a number of transitions, and certain Xoyoi

within the Histories demonstrate immaturity. He claims that Herodotus passed

through stages of being a geographer or ethnographer before he finally achieved the

status of historian. Von Fritz further asserts that "historical criticism is the single

quality that makes a historian a historian."^ He cites the fact that Herodotus is using

less "objective" sources in his information gathering, i.e., common oral traditions.

Yet, this, in Herodotus' mind, and in the overall scheme he is working under, would

not weaken his case but strengthen it, because he is drawing from the oral tradition,

which would definitely be present in the more common of his sources. Therefore,

rather than using such terms as "historical criticism" that carry decidedly modem

assumptions and values, we should try to look at Herodotus and his text in their own

context.

In addition to Herodotus' account of the Persian conflict, the Histories is also

the first extant piece of "historical" research. This means that Herodotus made a

conscious effort to separate actual events from myth by means of personal

^ Herodotus, 1.1 ^ Kurt von Fritz, Die Griechische Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin: de Gmyter,

1967). In particular, von Fritz asserts (158ff) that when he composed Book H, Herodotus was working not as a fully mature historian, but as someone interested mostly in geography and ethnicity.

observation and reported accounts. We can then say Herodotus makes a claim of a

"self determined objectivity." In using the term self-determined objectivity, I mean

that he claims that he is attempting to construct a factual account of the events he is

describing, removing them from the world of myth and folkloric tradition. In this

self determined objectivity he creates a paradigm of historical narrative that has

influenced all future attempts to study or record history in the Westem world.

The term ioTopia for Herodotus encapsulates the process of discovering.

Discovering what? Not the transcendental tmth, as we in the modem world conceive

of it, but the past. This may be seen as Herodotus' representation of what is "tme."

The Greek paradigm of history and tmth is centered on remembering past events.

The term normally translated as tmth is dXr|6Eia literally a state of "not forgetting."

In fact, one of his main goals is to remove the past from a mythical context, and by

legitimizing his accounts through first hand, "objective" reporting, he grounds the

past no longer in myth, but in reality. He emphasizes the fact that his material is

gathered from oral sources which preserve memories of the past, such as local

legends and folklore, and even goes to great lengths to point this out. Even when it

is obvious that a passage has been built upon a written source,'° he still uses the verb

XsyEiv rather than ypd9Eiv, and when he does use ypd9Eiv, it is only for a specific

purpose, to point out that he was forced to joumey outside the realm of oral

^ Ibid., 178. ^Lateiner. 17-26 '° For an examination of Herodotus' use of Hecataeus and other previously

existing sources, see Lateiner 91-110.

memory.'' Yet in his act of collecting these oral traditions and setting them down,

many for the first time, as far as we know, he transforms them from divergent

elements in a chaotic background into an ordered universe. We may not fully

understand this order he has created, but it is nonetheless there, and any denial on a

modem reader's part of this order is due to an inability to grasp the existence of a

stmcture as opposed to the lack of one.

For a long time, one of the most heavily debated digressions or X)7Di has been

Book II. Called by Lloyd Herodotus' ATyuiTTous Xoyos, it previously had been

dismissed by the field as either garbled recollections of half remembered traditions or

fanciful creations by Herodotus to liven up a travel tale. The only major treatment

before recent times of the episode was by Wiedemann in 1890.'^ Recently however

many scholars both in and out of the field of Classics have opened an argument over

the validity and meaning of Book n. The search for the origins of Greek culture has

become more important in our modem society, as the search for history is ultimately

the search for identity and the search for identity has become paramount in an

intemationally expanding world; whether in tmth or hopeful fantasy, Westem society

still largely claims Greece as its progenitor, despite the fact that most institutions that

are attributed to Greek origins resemble them only on the surface.

This argument has flared up with the advent of a type of scholarship that

attempts to question traditional views of Westem academic beliefs. With the

" H. R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1966), 4-7, Introd."^

' Alan B. Lloyd, Herodotus Book E (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), ix. A Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch mit sachlichen Erlautemngen

(Leipzig: Teubner, 1890)

introduction of new methodology and the opening of the field to a wider array of

participants, the so-called Classical canon is being re-examined. That Westem

scholarship has frequently been an exercise in bigotry and ethnocentrism is a self-

evident fact. It has long been used, under the veil of some sort of scientific

methodology, to substantiate the status quo of social conditions. What better way

then to debase this type of scholarship than to attack it at its source: the previously

unassailable position of Greece as the autochthonic foremnner of Westem

civilization.

Herodotus' claims in Book n, to the effect that the most important aspects of

Greek culture were transmitted in some manner from Egypt have provided the

opponents of traditional Classical scholarship with the means to use its own weapons

against it. In a literal reading of the episode, Greece can indeed be seen as springing

from Egypt, an ancient and colorful culture in its own right, and more importantly for

the argument against Classical scholarship ~ traditionally dominated by white

European males ~ an African one.''* It then follows that if Greece sprang from

Africa, and if Westem civilization from Greece, the logical conclusion, using the

linear methodology of the Westem scholarship that substantiates its claim on Greece

as an ancestor, is that Westem civilization sprang from Africa. This debate has

exploded into the center of an ideologically loaded stmggle over the very nature of

'' For a detailed analysis of evidence conceming the racial origins of the Egyptians, see Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991). Also, the section on race in Mary Leflcowitz and Guy Rogers, ed.. Black Athena Revisited (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 103-129 for a current treatment and substantial bibliography conceming the issue.

Classical scholarship in particular, and of academic study in general, throwing

Herodotus back into the center of a wide ranging discussion of identity.'^

How have we, as scholars, arrived at this point in the examination of

Herodotus' work? Presentism and presentist attitudes are vimlent and rampant

diseases in the discussion of Herodotus. As stated above, it is inevitable that one

approaches any subject with his or her own political, temporal, national, gender, and

emotional presuppositions. This is especially tme when dealing with the Classics,

since it is one of the most ideologically precious areas for the traditional conception

of Westem culture and its heritage. For example, organizations such as the Society

for the Preservation of Greek Heritage sometimes appear to act as if scholarship that

threatens the paradigm of Greece as the autochthonic progenitor of Westem culture

somehow diminishes the worth of the Greek "Heritage," whatever that may be.

Herodotus' examination explores the tales of the origin of Westem civilization, and

he has therefore become a focal point for a number of vehement discussions on the

origins of the Classical Greek world, and by extension the hitherto dominant

conception that Westem culture has about its history and historical identity. While the

current argument raging between the radicals of Afrocentric studies and the

reactionaries of Classics has highlighted Book H, unfortunately their debate is

ultimately damaging to our understanding of it. They are removing Book n from its

context, twisting it and abusing for their own agendas. Book n of Herodotus is

' For an elaboration of this heated debate, see Martin Bemal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vols. 1 and 2 (New Bmnswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987/1992). Bemal constmcts an elaborate and colorful, but ultimately a faulty argument for Egypt as a source of Greek culture. Also, see Mary Leflcowitz, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach

important not only for what facts or fantasy it contains, but also, and, I would argue,

more importantly, as an ideological record of stmctures Greek identity following the

Persian conflict.

This is where my inspection of Book U comes in. I propose rather than

approaching the Histories with any particular cultural agenda, to dwell on it for what

it is: a development of a new kind of a discourse, one of historical narrative. Rather

than working from traditional views of the Histories, however, I want to dissect the

discursive stmctures inherent in the Egyptian description. By examining the text, I

hope to uncover the ideological agenda and stmctures behind Herodotus' choices in

his account of Egypt.

Using the modem critical idiom, however, a new method of examining

Herodotus' work emerges. We can speak of Herodotus presenting a new discourse.

When I use the word discourse, I am not using the definition used by Mabel Lang in

reference to Herodotean speech, merely the exchange of information directly or

indirectly between two or more parties.'^ This definition confines itself to the verbal

exchanges within the text, and neglects a broader system of exchanges among text,

author and audience. Hence I am generally speaking, when using the term discourse,

of any system that involves an active exchange of ideologically loaded statements

Mvth as History (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1996). Leflcowitz in her attempt to refute Bemal's argument also does considerable injustice to the material.

' In Herodotean Discourse and Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1984), Mabel Lang deals with the more general problems of analyzing the sometimes problematic discursive stmctures of Herodotus and how these stmctures ftinction as motivating factors within the text as a whole. However, I take a different approach than her; rather than applying predetermined stmctures to Herodotus' text in order to clarify his processes, I instead hope to reveal these stmctures inherent within the text by examining it in a critical manner consistent with modem literary methods.

through language systems both within and existing outside a text, i.e., a pattern of

linguistic exchange and the process of its interaction with an intended or unintended

1 T

audience. Viewed through the stmctures of the text, the methodology of Herodotus

reveals as much about his environment as his reports do. Yet the process of recording

events supercedes any sense of objectivity: the very act of translating the event to

narrative embroils the author's ideology in the material. It is this ideology that needs

to be scmtinized so that we may begin to understand the Histories better as a

document.

In beginning this investigation, I am positing that Herodotus did indeed

consciously compose every aspect of Book U with a preconceived ideological and

cultural agenda. Rather than assuming that it is a barely coherent gathering of

disparate oral traditions, by examining the order and contents of the events and

customs he has described, I hope to prove that there is an underlying unity that does

indeed tie the Egyptian book to the rest of the Histories in a deeper and more

emphatic way than has previously been assumed. Instead of being merely an

interesting digression, and perhaps an amalgamation of some traditions of Greek

origins, it is a calculated attempt to give cultural legitimacy to a fledgling Greek

identity. That is to say, Herodotus is attempting to ground Greek society in the oldest

and greatest culture known to him, Egypt. Whether this assertion on the part of

Herodotus is based in any way on "facts" is of limited importance at this stage of the

investigation. The question is not whether evidence and "history" support Herodotus'

' This definition of discourse is developed by Sara Mills, Discourse (London and New York: Routledge, 1997) and is based largely on the work of Michel Foucault.

10

claims, but why he goes to such extraordinary lengths to establish Egyptian origins as

the basis for all significant aspects of Greek culture.

Charles Fomara has attempted to approach the difficulties of connecting the

Histories as a whole to Book n from an authorial perspective, i.e., who or what was

Herodotus at the time he wrote Book n and how does that affect its composition?

This falls into the trap that has plagued Classical studies since its creation, the

problem of using a single work to recreate an authorial presence. In Herodotus' case,

we are "blessed" with a number of biographical works by other authors, yet these too

were stmggling for the most part under the same burden of reconstmcting Herodotus

from the Histories. Reading in a simplistic manner and ignoring the stmctures that are

embedded within Book n, Fomara claims that Herodotus is in fact just "an author of a

lively book about Egypt, its geography, the people, their customs, religion, and

history."' Fomara strives to demonstrate the roughness of Book n by comparing it

to what he calls the more "refined" Book I.' Claiming that the technical and

organizational stmctures are inferior to those of Book I, he then goes on to say that

the Egyptian episode is a work that is earlier, and ultimately independent of

Herodotus' ultimate goal in the composition of the Histories. He also claims that

Book n lacks the moral and philosophical exploration that is present in Book I. ' I

will argue later that not only is there an element of philosophical inquiry present in

'^Fomara, 16. ' Ibid., 17. ° Ibid., 17. In particular Fomara cites the "simple" stmcture and progression

of Book n as proof that it is an "imperfect" product as compared to the rest of the Histories.

' Ibid., 18.

11

Book n, but that this inquiry, into no less an important subject than cultural identity,

binds the X)7O0) together and also connects it with the rest of the Histories.

In order to produce a work based almost wholly on the text itself my main

source will be Herodotus. I will examine key passages in Book II, transitional

phrases, and specific accounts and descriptions of Egypt and Egyptian culture. I will

then discuss a number of common themes expressed by these key sentences or

passages. Among these themes, I will look specifically at how Herodotus uses time

as a tool with which to establish the supremacy of Egyptian culture over the rest of

the world. Prehistoric time becomes an actuality in Egypt, and there is a national

memory stretching back beyond the mists of recorded Greek time. Also, I will look

at how the physical setting is described and used in Book II and how it relates to

Herodotus' agenda. How and what Herodotus describes reveals a purposeful hand

moving towards an ultimate goal. In particular, I will look at how Herodotus uses his

precise, if not literally accurate, measurements and his attempts at cartography to bind

Egypt into the physical world, again attempting to establish the legitimacy of Egypt's

presence in Greek Identity. Herodotus, in a manner similar to his attempt to separate

the past from the realm of folklore, wants to remove Egypt from the mythological

world and recreate it within a Greek reality.

I will also explore the human actions and events existing in the chronotope

Herodotus establishes in his narrative. Along with apparently banal comparisons of

the culinary, weaving, and urinary pracfices of Greece and Egypt, I will especially

examine the most important and controversial of his cultural comparisons, namely

that of the religions of Greece and Egypt. Along with demonstrating how he attributes

12

even the most tenuous thread of relationship as proof of an Egyptian origin for the

parallel Greek custom, I will look at the incongmities between the two religious belief

systems (insofar as we may safely create such headings as "Greek" religion and

"Egyptian" religion from the numerous traditions of the respective cultures), and how

this reveals the purpose and stmcture of a great part of Book H. The cmx of many of

Herodotus' arguments in Book U, is the belief that antiquity equals authority, and that

if two cultures share a parallel custom, then the older is the originator.

In conclusion, I will use the findings of the investigation of these key parts of

the Egyptian description to form a picture of the narrative stmcture and ideological

agenda of Book H. I will suggest altemative ways of speaking about Herodotus as an

author and his so-called <t)iXop ppapoco attitudes. Ultimately this investigation

cannot answer all the questions about Book H, much less the Histories as a whole.

What I hope to do, however, is to open up a new line of inquiry into the text, not as

fact or fantasy, but as an ideological document preserving precious evidence of what

the Greeks thought of themselves and wished to think of themselves, transmitted

through Herodotus' attempt to constmct a "national" Greek identity in the face of its

immersion into an intemational conflict with unforeseen results.

13

CHAPTER n

SELECTED COMMENTARY

n.2. Oi SE AiyuTTToi TTpiv \i£v f\ TanuriTixov a9£cov PaaiXsOaai

EVOUl OV ECOUTOUS TTpcOTOUS yEV£a8ai TTdVTCOV dvepcoTTcov.

At the beginning of the second chapter of Book E, Herodotus introduces the

topic of antiquity, particularly that of the Egyptians, into his narrative. For

Herodotus, and the Greek world in general, Egypt's past extended frirther back into

Greek prehistory than any other civilization the Greek worid knew of in the 5^ and 4'''

centuries. Herodotus used the antiquity of Egypt, through the citation of the King

Lists, not only to trace its history, but also, by associating Greek cultural and

mythological events with these dates, to establish a legitimacy in the temporal sphere

for Greek culture.

TauMTlTixov-

In Book n, Herodotus is always referring to Psammetichus I (664-610 BCE).'

The selection of Psammetichus, a monarch who had mled in living memory, to

undertake this experiment to determine which civilization was the oldest by

Herodotus, holds significant connotations for the Greek ideological perception of

Egypt's antiquity. The basic nature of the experiment is that Psammetichus wished to

discover which civilization was in tmth the oldest, and in order to discover that, he

had two newbom children (vEoyvd) isolated completely from any cultural

' Lloyd, 2.4. The name is also used in Book VE, but refers to a different individual.

14

contamination in order to see what language they would naturally speak in, thereby

proving that the speakers of that language were the oldest. By using irpiv Herodotus

indicates that previous to Psammetichus, i.e., before recent and documented history,

the Egyptians had assumed that they were the oldest. It was only in relatively recent

times in the Egyptian scheme that any examination was felt to be necessary. Why is

this important, and why would Herodotus point out that until the reign of

Psammetichus, the Egyptians had never questioned their authority? The reign of

Psammetichus in chronological terms lies closer to the emergence of Greek identity

than it does to the high point of the Egyptian Empire. In the period comprising the

height of Egyptian power i.e. 7Tp\v HEV fi H^a^^r|Tlxov . . . PaaiXEOoai there was

presumably or at least according to Herodotus, no attempt to examine this claim of

primacy. Therefore, despite the widely accepted belief in the antiquity of the

Egyptians in the historical scheme of the Greek perception of the world, this

assertion, rather than simply being assumed, must be proved for it to function in

Herodotus' narrative plan.

yauMTiTixos 5E COS eSuvaTO..

Here we have the failure of simple vocal inquiry to discover some fact or

"tmth." Therefore Psammetichus tums to experimental inquiry as a way to prove the

point. Despite the Egyptian setting, this is a uniquely 5^ century Greek way of

solving a problem. The experiment follows a linear model of logic, which appears to

15

be developed from the theories of certain Pre-Socratic philosophers. One of the most

prominent aspects of Pre-Socratic thought is Dualism, i.e., the separation of the worid

into antithetical, balancing pairs; one of the most pervasive of these is the One and the

Many. This conflict of the One and the Many leads not only to other theories of

Pluralism and Atomism, but also to a linear perception of creation and, in tum, of

history. E originally there is One, then it follows that there are Many that come after

this One, and then that their existence is in fact the result from the One. Here is the

basis for the legitimacy of Psammetichus' experiment. E everything in the world

originated from a single source and if one removes a person from all resultant cultural

contamination then whatever remains is entirely derived from the original form. Here

is the cmx of the Herodotean post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, and it is based,

despite its fascination with Egyptian culture, solidly in Greek philosophical soil.

Ultimately the experiment tums against the Egyptians, and it is "proven" that

the Phrygians are in fact more ancient than they are. At first this seems to undermine

the assumption that Herodotus chose Egypt as his great giant of antiquity. Egypt's

position is justified by philosophically and experimentally sound methods in the mind

of Herodotus and of his audience. Hence, despite the fact of Egypt's displacement as

the most ancient culture in the world, it still retains its cultural superiority based not

only on the span of time the culture lasted,'* but on the methodology they used to

ascertain the extent of their antiquity.

^ See John Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophv (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968), especially pages 87-107. In particular Heraclitus' examinations into the opposites of which the universe is comprised provide a conceptual background with which Herodotus would have been familiar.

^ See Hesiod, Theogony 116-134 and Euripides, frag. 484.

16

B.4 5ucb5EKd TE SECOV ETTcovuiJias EXsyov TTpcoTous AiyuTTTious

voMioai Ka\ "EXXrivas Tiapd a9Ecov dvaXapETv ...

It is at this juncture that Herodotus enters into a discussion on perhaps the

most controversial aspect of Book E: the origins of the religious practices of the

Greeks. There is a large conflict here between what the Greek says and what

Herodotus was attempting to communicate.

TE 0ECOV ETTCOVUjiiaS

This is a problematic phrase that plagues and often blurs Herodotus'

explanations of the relationships between Greek and Egyptian religious systems. In

his later description of the Pelasgians (E.50), he also confirms that the "names" of the

gods came from Egypt into Greece, but instead of ETTCovuni'as he uses the term

ouvoiiaTQ, the previous term, EircovuMias, can more properly be seen as epithets,

the descriptions or titles of the gods, i.e., their duties and place in the scheme of the

divine universe. In fact Herodotus uses this term, ETTcovuMias, in referring to the gods

as independent entities, but also uses it in reference to Homer's and Hesiod's naming

of the gods (E.53). Lloyd suggests that ouvonaTa should be read for ETTcovunias, in

concord with Herodotus' later statement that the ouvonaTa of the gods came from

Egypt (B.50).^ E we resist this temptation then we can begin to see a larger conflict

occurring in the work as a whole. A dichotomy is created here between reality and

name, and while Eircovunias and ouvonaTa can be altemative terms for the same

^ Despite the success of the powerful Phrygian kingdom, it nonetheless was destroyed in the 7* century. See Lloyd, 6.

^ Lloyd. Vol.2, 29

17

definition, looking at it in the light of Herodotus' narrative stmcture allows one to see

a path of development from an undefined relationship to a strictly organized one

between Greece and Egypt in Book E. At the beginning, as we have seen, he first

attempts to establish the precedence of Egyptian antiquity through language, and now

he moves on to religion. The term used for the naming of the gods, i.e. the

introduction of language into a cultic sphere, at first seems ambiguous and most likely

this was Herodotus' intention. By setting up an unquestionable yet not completely

defined relationship between these two religious systems, he not only creates another

proof of the antiquity of Egypt, by citing the obvious age of Egyptian religious

practices, but also sets a path for the Book to develop along, a path that will define

this relationship closely as his investigations and interviews continue, thereby

drawing the audience along, as if they were part of a natural discovery process, and

validate his assertions all the more.

5ucb5EKd

Lloyd again offers an explanation for this seemingly innocent word. At first

glance one would assume that Herodotus is speaking of the 12 Olympians. Yet the

only likely cognate for his examination here is the Egyptian Ennead. Yet the Ennead

contains normally not 12, but 9 deities.^ Despite his claim however, Herodotus does

^ Ibid. Lloyd's assertion however is based upon the perceived eagemess of the Egyptian priesthood to emphasis to Herodotus that the origins of the names and natures of the gods came from Egypt to Greece, which steps outside the realm of the text itself

^ Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Third Edition (University Printing House, Oxford: 1988). Psdt, or the Ennead, "cycle of the nine gods." Normally this consisted of Atum, Shu, Tphenis, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys.

18

not provide Egyptian cognates for 12 gods. This seems to create no problem for

Herodotus' agenda for some reason. Here is a prime example of one of the many

difficulties that Herodotus encountered in his travels, that of communicating through

two languages. From most of Herodotus' work, we can infer that he was not fluent in

the language of Egypt and did most of his work through translators. The Olympians

and the Ennead are both the prime grouping of the deities of the respective cultures,

so it seems to be a natural mistake despite the obvious problem of twelve not being

equal to nine. Herodotus could also be constmcting a paradigm of relation based not

on surface, or even reality, but on the essence of the respective systems, therefore

their actual numbers would be mostly immaterial. By doing this, he breaks down the

barriers of visible relations, and the objections one would make on observational

grounds to the relationship between Greece and Egypt he is trying to make.

E.5 TouTo HEV E7T\ TOOOOTO 5T]XOT 7Tp6xv/aiv Tfis yfjs EoOoav.

At the end of chapter 5 and after a description of lake Moeris and the

explanation of the draining of the swamps of Egypt, Herodotus begins a long and

often overlooked section of Book E concemed with the geography of Egypt and those

lands surrounding it. The actual measurements per se are not important to this

investigation save for the care that Herodotus takes to measure out the country into

^ The most common pairings, according to Lloyd, ibid., are Re'/Helios, Shu/Herakles, Osiris/Dionysos, Demeter/Isis, Amun/Zeus and Typhoon/Set. To this Bemal adds Hephaestus/Ptah, Hathor/Aphrodite, Artemis/Bast, Neith/Athena as well associating Set with Ares.

19

units as small as feet. The fact that is relevant here is that he goes to such great

lengths to present the physical worid of Egypt as real.'° Without much doubt, Egypt

existed as a known location in the minds of most Greeks, especially after the Persian

Wars, yet it was still undefined for them. If we accept that Herodotus is creating a

new origin for Greece as a cultural entity, he could not very well have situated the

starting point for Hellenic culture in a semi-fictional land that, while known, was

completely undefined in the ideological paradigm of the Greece that Herodotus is

trying to influence.

In summary, Herodotus describes the following facets of Egyptian geography:

(1) the boundaries of the country and the type of land; (2) distances between the

major cities; (3) formation of the alluvial plains north of Memphis; (4) the Red Sea

and further theories on the formation of the alluvial plains in Egypt; (5) various

opinions on the definition of the boundaries of Egypt; (6) the flowing and flooding of

the Nile, it being different from all other rivers in the world known to Herodotus in

reference to these matters; (7) discussions of the interior of Africa and the lands that

border Egypt. It is plain to see that with the time and effort Herodotus put into this

^ Lloyd, E.40-128 gives an exhaustive account of the probable modem equivalents to Herodotus' measurements as well as associating Herodotus' experiences and descriptions with physical places. While Herodotus' accounts do not always as a mle match the physical remains left, there are two very important points that must be accepted in dealing with his descriptions of the geography of Egypt: (1) That he was indeed familiar with the land, maybe not through personal experience always, but at least from very reliable first hand reports, perhaps through other geographical texts; (2) The remains that are left in the modem era are without doubt in a much different state than when Herodotus was writing his account, and this has to be taken into account when attempting to correlate physical with literary evidence.

'° Compare the writings and geographic texts of Anaximander of Miletus, which give an origin for the methodology used by Herodotus in his examinations and descriptions of alluvial development in Book E. See Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: 1952) DK 12 30,10.

20

section of Book E, that it is more than a passing addendum or interesting digression.

His descriptions have a very definite purpose.

To find this purpose let us begin with the formal pattem he uses to introduce

his topics. In his first section (E.6) Herodotus begins by discussing the length of the

boundaries of Egypt. His first statement is that the silt from the river travels out a full

day's sail from the coast. This is the first reference to his theory of the alluvial nature

of the country of Egypt. After determining the length of the coastline, he then uses a

noteworthy parallel in constmcting distances.

E.7 EOTi BE 656S ES HXIOU TTOXIV dTr6 BaXdoaris dvco iovTi

TTapaTrXriaiTi T 6 nilKpos TT[) BE, 'A6r|VEcov 65cp Tfj and TCOV

BUCOSEKQ SECOV TOO PCOHOO 9Epoioi] ES TE nToav KQ'I E7T\ T6V

VTl6v TOU Ai6s ToO 'OXUMTTIOU.

The Tcbv BUCOBEKQ SECOV TOO PCOHOU was the altar erected by Peisistratus in

Athens c. 522-521 BCE." Since it stood in the agora near the Stoa of Zeus and was

situated at the convergence of a number of large roads, it was often used, similar to

the Golden Milestone of Augustus, as a starting point for measuring distances to

various points.'^ Hence, here once again Herodotus has cleverly employed an object

that his audience would be well acquainted with, something firmly set in their minds

" Thucydides. IV.54. ' John Camp, The Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical

Athens (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986). While both the altar and the milestone of Augustus were actually removed from major road ways, the Panathenaic being the only major road the altar of the 12 gods was close to, nonetheless they both were intimately associated with the idea of distance in their respective cultures and appropriate ideological metaphors in the sense that they would immediately conjure the appropriate images for the audience. For specific geographic details of the

21

as a "real" object and tool, within his description of a completely foreign area in order

to familiarize it to his audience. The TCOV BUCOSEKQ 0ECOV TOO PCJMOO is very

much an ideological center of Self, standing as a physical reminder of Greek identity,

and using it in reference to Egyptian geography also brings that physical distance

closer in terms of ideological terrain. Also in accordance with his forthcoming

theories of the Egyptian origins of the 12 Olympians, this only serves to remind his

audience, as Herodotus begins a large section that does not seem to be immediately

relevant to his argument conceming religion, that this topic of religious dominance is

not forgotten.

The other milestone used for the distance comparison also serves a more

sinister purpose than at first assumed. While the exact nature of what Herodotus

means when using the term ES TE niaav is debatable, it seems here to refer not only

to the district of Pisatis, but also to the site of Olympia itself'^ The vri6v TOU Ai6s

ToO 'OXunTTiou Herodotus is referring to was completed c. 466-456 BCE, well

within not only Herodotus' lifetime, but also that of most of his audience. Also, the

pediments are decorated in accordance with a sense of identity after the repulsion of

the Persian invasions.''* These pedimental sculptures created a new motif in much of

Greek architectural decoration.

Not only has Herodotus managed to bring in a physical reminder of distance,

the altar in Athens, in order to familiarize his audience with his description of a place

location of the Altar of the Twelve Gods see John Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (New York: Praeger, 1971) 458-461.

' Lloyd. Ibid. 46.

22

most of them would have never seen, now he has used the Temple of Zeus as a tool to

bring the description into the present. His audience would have known and

remembered the actual constmction of the temple. By using an object so recent in

time, his description of Egypt is not only physical, but it is current as well. Egypt is a

place with definite boundaries now, but more importantly, rather than merely a

constmct existing in the past, it has contemporaneous existence as well.

E.IO ... cooTTEp Td TE TTEpi "IXiov Ka\ TEu07ravir|v Ka\ ''E9E00V

TE KQI Maidv5pou TTEBIOV...

Herodotus makes another bold assertion in chapter 10. He seems to be

motivated by his interest in alluvial development, as this was a fascinating subject for

most Ionian philosophers.'^ His interest in this subject, however, also paves the way

for his description of the similarities between Egypt and one of the most ideologically

significant areas for the Greeks: Ilium.

While topographically there is a great similarity between the geographical

processes of alluvial depositing in the Nile valley and on the Scamander plain, one

can not ignore the implications here. Herodotus has bound Troy with Egypt, in the

mind of his audience. Herodotus has placed Egypt along with the Diad and the

Odvssev. documents that defined the national Greek identity, in his attempt to define

a new identity based not solely on an intemal discourse, but an intemational one.

'"* See E. Norman Gardiner, Olympia, Its History and Remains (Oxford: Oxford Press 1925) and Ludwig Drees, Olympia (New York: Praeger, 1968),135-140, for more in-depth examinations of Olympia's architecture and history.

E one looks at the geography of the areas around Miletus, especially because of the Meander, one can see a possible origin for the extreme interest that Ionian philosophers had in alluvial deposits in reference to the creation of the world.

23

E.19 TOU TTOTaHoO 5E 9UaiOS TTEpl OUTE Tl TCOV lEpCOV OUTE

dXXou OOBEVOS TTapaXapETv EBuvdaOiiv.

Herodotus has yet to stress the maimer in which many aspects of Egypt

behave in a way opposite to the rest of the worid, at least the rest of the worid as seen

by his Greek audience. Rather than being merely an interesting aside conceming an

exotic country, it is instead a careftilly implemented plan to use Egypt as an

ideological tool. The Nile is by far the largest geographical feature of the Egyptian

landscape, and often the use of its name refers to the entire country by synecdoche.

The Nile, however, behaves in opposition to all other rivers known to Herodotus, i.e.,

in the direction it flows and the times it floods. As well as its actions, Herodotus is

interested, like any Greek of his time following the Ionian tradition, in the origins of

the river. Unlike his other investigations, no definitive answer can be found. We hear

of two prevailing Greek theories, which Herodotus summarily dismisses, to put forth

his own third theory, based on his own observations. Yet no definitive conclusion

comes of this and he ends the section with the ambiguous statement TQUTQ UEV VUV

EOTco cos £< Ti T£ Ka\ cos ^PXh^ EyEVETo (E.28). This seems to be a divergence

from Herodotus' previous process of painstakingly defining every minute detail of the

geography of Egypt. As we shall see in the development of his narrative throughout

the book, this dissolution of the factual as it travels temporally backwards is instead a

counter-approach that he will use to attempt to seal Egypt's role as the progenitor of

Greek culture.

24

n.35 "Epxonai 5E iiEpi AiyuTTTou MTIKUVECJV T6V Xoyov, OTI

-rrXETaTa OuMdoia EXEI [ f\ T] dXXr] Trdoa x^P^l 1 KQI Epya

Xoyou ME co TiapEXETai •TTp6s Tidaav X^P^v.

Having finished with his exhaustive description of the geography of Egypt,

Herodotus now prepares to delve into the cultural peculiarities of the Egyptians

themselves. His opening sentence indicates a logical relationship between the

unusualness of the Nile and the unusualness of the population surrounding it.

E.35 Ev ToToi ai MEV yuvalKEs dyopd^ouai KQI KaMTTiiXEuouoi,

oi 5E dvSpEs KQT' OTKOUS EOVTES u9a(vouoi.

This begins the description of the 'topsy-turvy' nature of Egyptian daily

culture. Gender roles are reversed in both urinary and social practices, with the

female taking the dominant role, whether it is in business, family, or physical labor.

The religious practices and appearances of the priests differ greatly from the Greek

model as well. Egyptians do not differ just from the Greek paradigm, but also from

ToToi dXXoioi dvSpcoTTOioi and TOTOI UEV dXXoiai dvOpcbiroioi x^opis- The

contradiction is not just with what the Greeks normally do, but with practices across

the world.

There are multiple levels to Herodotus' purpose in these descriptions. These

precise descriptions bring the people of Egypt alive for his audience. He describes

their everyday routines, creating breathing subjects with which it is possible to relate.

The veracity of the claims is again a moot point, it is not completely relevant to this

study that yes, indeed, many Egyptian households had interior toilet areas, or that

men did weave in a professional capacity in Egypt.

25

He has also isolated Egypt from the rest of the worid, allowing himself to

concentrate completely on Egypt rather than also worrying about the rest of the worid

in Book E. In order for Greece to have its origins in Egypt, Egypt has to become a

real place for his audience, but it cannot become too familiar. Herodotus' goal to a

certain extent is to give legitimacy to the Greek national identity emergent after the

Persian conflict, not to replace it with one that is purely Egyptian. Hence, while in

the process of attempting to subtly bind Greece to Egypt with his narrative, Herodotus

must also create enough distance that will not only allow Greece to keep an individual

identity but ultimately to show this identity as an improvement over its origins.

E.37 6EOOE|3EES SE TTEpioocbs EOVTES MdXioTa irdvTcov

dvSpcoTTcov vojjoiai TOIOIOIBE XPECOVTQI.

Again Herodotus uses phrases like irdvTcov dvSpcoTTcov to set Egyptian

practices in opposition to the rest of the world. The term SEOOEPEES as Lloyd points

out has a double connotation, both personal devotion to a god or gods and the

resultant magical benefits attained from said devotion.'^ In Book E the important

part of Herodotus' argument for the Egyptian origins of Greek culture is that relating

to religion. Since this issue of religion it so central to Book E's agenda, it stands to

reason that Herodotus would need to emphasize once again the importance of religion

in Egyptian life. As well as using this to provide an origin, he employs the zeal of the

Egyptians as a contrast to the current Greek model. The emergence of Pre-Socratic

thought into the mainstream caused a new era of investigation based not on just pure

knowledge, but on empirical tmths derived from experimentation and observation.

26

This emergent Pre-Socratic thought in Greece questioned both social and

religious institutions. As Herodotus describes the fervent attitude the Egyptians hold

to religious custom, their scouring of drinking vessels daily, their refusal to eat

unclean animals, and the absurd practices of insuring the purity of sacrificed animals,

he creates a twofold picture. One the one hand, admiration for their strict adherence

to their religious beliefs is no doubt aroused in Herodotus' audience. Yet, there has to

be a sense of the Egyptians being trapped by their devotion, for they could in no way

question or examine their practices because of the zealousness of their performance of

them. This anti-intellectual attitude no doubt sounded backward and a bit mstic to

the mind of the 5 century Greek like Herodotus or his audience, who was

experiencing the world in a new way, not bound by religious observances, but

engaged in the physical examination of their environment. We can say therefore that

the Greeks, speaking in general terms about Herodotus' audience, may have admired

the piety of the Egyptians in reference to their religious adherence, and might even

feel a sense of pride that their own religious practices may have originated in such

places. Yet a Greek would also feel alienated from the static nature of the

continuation of such vigorous actions without any real introspective examination of

the practices themselves.

This introduces the main distinctions that Herodotus will draw between Greek

and Egyptian culture. While Egypt has chronological precedence in both the

existence of its nation and its religious practices, it is to a certain extent completely

defined by the life it has led in the past; the Egyptians' anfiquity, and hence their

religion, are remnants from Greek pre-historic time. They are static, with no forward

' Lloyd. Ibid. 164. 27

motion, and therefore in the course of the Persian conquests they are swept under the

dominion of the Persian King without much dispute. Greece on the other hand is a

mobile culture. The intellectual climate is energetic and the world is now open to a

new interpretation. Tmth is no longer rehgious doctrine, instead it has become an

empirical solution. Herein lies the difference between Greece's past and its future.

The world of the Egyptian is mled by religious doctrine, the world of the Greek is

mled by his own intellect, according to Herodotus' scheme.

E.42 'HpaKXEQ SEXfjaai TrdvTcos i5£o0ai T6V Aia...

Herodotus now begins the problematic process of associating what commonly

seems like two divergent religious traditions, Egyptian and Greek, into a single

system. There are a number of difficulties, because many of the deities worshipped

by the Greeks are antithetical to the Egyptian mindset. Herodotus, rather than

tackling the underlying problems of the different natures of the respective gods,

instead attempts to come to terms with the physical contradictions, starting with the

appearance of Amun.' Introducing this section he states 'AnoOv ydp AiyuTiTioi

KaXsouai T6V Ai'a. Interestingly enough, it is the Egyptians who call Zeus Amun,

rather than the Greeks calling Amun Zeus, as one would expect following Herodotus'

previous antiquity argument. Also, the story begins in the Greek paradigm, i.e. Zeus

is in the form that the Greeks are familiar with, rather than whatever form Amun

would have normally appeared in for the Thebans. Also, Herodotus has yet to make

' 'Imn-r', hterally the dominant male aspect of the Theban trinity, associated with Zeus because of the title 'Imn-r' nsw ntr(w), "Amun-re king of gods." See Gardiner 533 and Lloyd 190.

28

the distinction between the divine Herakles and the hero Herakles and if we assume,

as he states.

GripaToi UEV VUV KQI oooi 5id TOUTOUS otcov dTTEXOvcoTai,

5id Td5E Xsyouoi T6V V6|JOV T6V5E 09(01 T£0fjvai.

that he is reporting an Egyptian story conceming this practice, a number of problems

arise.

First, why would the Thebans need to justify the difference between the

appearance of Zeus, in the Greek pantheon, and Amun, in the Egyptian pantheon.

According to Herodotus, the names of the gods came from Egypt. Herodotus also

emphatically claims that not just names but the forms came from Egypt. Logically

then the burden of explanation would seem to be upon the Greeks to explain why

Zeus does not appear with a ram's head. Secondly, if we look ahead to the end of

chapter 50, when Herodotus plainly states vo\x\^o\Jo\ 5' cbv ou5' fipcooi

OUSEV (E.50) then we have a definite and obvious contradiction. Herakles in this

story is certainly acting as a hero,' since if he was divine why would Zeus/Amun

avoid revealing his visage to him? Yet Herodotus clearly states the Egyptians call no

one heroes.'^

' A hero in the sense that in this scenario Herakles' half-divine nature is stated, i.e., he wishes to see his father Zeus.

' As Lloyd states (194), in this story, from wherever Herodotus may have heard it, Herakles is most likely to be associated with Chonsu, Hns', who was the son aspect of the Theban trinity, along with Mut completing the triad as the female. His name means "to travel" and therefore could have been easily associated with Herakles in the mind of Herodotus.

29

The question is what do these contradictions mean for the argument the

Herodotus is putting forth? Has Herodotus made a mistake? My opinion is definitely

not. Here we have the early stages of his argument for the relationship between

Greek and Egyptian religious systems, therefore his goal is not strict accuracy or

precision, but just repeated and vivid association. This story, with its definite bent

towards the Greek perspective, involves his audience with this new discourse on

religious origins and similarities. Also, strictly speaking, this contradiction would

have been missed by most of his audience, in the original presentations of this

material: The statement conceming the Egyptian taboo against heroes comes

significantly later, and if we posit public recitations of Herodotus' work first, rather

than written distribution, then it is very likely that the audience could not have made

this connection.

E.43 'HPQKXEOS 5E iTEpi T6CO5E [T6V] Xoyov fiKouoa, OTI Z\T[

TCOV BUCOBEKQ 0ECOV

Herodotus continues with the subject of Herakles. Again we mn into the

problem of Herodotus associating the twelve Olympian gods with the Egyptian

pantheon, even though the normally accepted number of the latter, as has been

pointed out earlier, is nine. Along with this, Herodotus also associates Herakles with

a divine figure, following right after the Theban story, despite the fact that the Theban

episode has a distinct heroic flavor. Yet Herodotus then goes on to distinguish

between the "Herakles" of Egypt and the hero of Greece. And of course, since

"Herakles" exists both in Egyptian and Greek cycles, it must have emerged in the

Egyptian fu-st. Working on this assertion then, and still keeping in mind the

30

forthcoming statement conceming heroes and Egypt in chapter 50, we can safely say

that Herodotus claims that a divine Herakles preceded the mortal. He further proves

his point, that the Greeks took the name Herakles from the Egyptian, by citing the

fact that Amphitryon and Alkmene were descendants of Perseus, and therefore of

Egyptian origins. This seems to disregard the half-divine nature of Herakles in the

Greek tradition. However, if Herodotus is eschewing the tradition of Herakles being

the son of Zeus, then why would Herakles in the previous episode conceming Amun

have been seeking to see the visage of his father Zeus?

COOTE TOUTCOV d v Ka\ HdXXoV TCOV 0Ecbv Td OUVOjiaTQ

E^ETTlOTEaTO AiyUTTTlOlOl f\ TOU 'HpOKXEOS-

This brings in the argument over the meaning of the term TO ouvopa.

Assuming that it means simply "name" here is rather absurd, as it is very unlikely that

the Egyptian and Greek names of the deities shared enough phonetic similarity to be

called the "same." ° A better option, although not a completely defensible one, is to

translate the term as "personality" or "aspect." It is an easy logical jump then to

associate these definitions with the term archetype used in categorizing mythological

° Bemal attempts, however, based solely on what he sees as "obvious" linguistic connections, to maintain that the names were indeed the same, and that the Greeks were aware of this connection. This argument presupposes a number of points, however: (1) that Herodotus or his sources were listening to Egyptians speaking Egyptian, and not through some sort of translator who would automatically have associated certain terms with Greek equivalents; (2) that the accepted etymology for the name of Herakles, "Hpa KXEOS is not correct, despite the fact that the name is clearly Greek and the mythological connotations fit rather well; (3) that there was some sort of knowledge of the mles of linguistic development among the Greeks and Egyptians that would allow them to see the trends and changes over time

31

trends. The archetype from which Herakles is a descendent from stretches back,

literally, to time immemorial. '

Herodotus continues his search for the origins of Herakles, but what is he

really searching for? He cannot be searching for the origins of the Greek Herakles.

He has already said that this is a Greek appropriation of an earlier myth, but it has

been changed significantly enough for it to be considered "contaminated" from its

original source. In fact, Herodotus has skillfully hidden a secret message in this

search for a tme Herakles. He does not need to search for the origins of the Greek

Herakles, because he fiill knows where it came from: Greece. Since the Greek

Herakles has been changed and apparently "misrepresented" as the "tme" Herakles,

then the Greeks have created a new character, the hero Herakles, which is foreign to

the tenets of Egyptian religion.

' Bemal does an impressive job of cataloguing the history of the archetype of the Herculean figure throughout Egypt, Assyria, and even Pre-Sumerian settlements. He, however, misses the point of what an archetype is. Without a doubt the kind of character type of Herakles is far more ancient than the Greek figure, yet the details of the Greek figure reflect the unique Greek interpretation of the myth. The Egyptian equivalent can be called the same as the Greek Herakles with only as much validity as say one may call Zeus and Jupiter, or Mars and Ares the same. That is only by reducing the archetype to the extremes of Campbellian generics can these gods be called the same, and then they cease to be the gods we are attempting to talk about. Also, for other discussions on the different varieties Herakles discussed by Herodotus, see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Trans John Raffan (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985) and John Gould, "Herodotus and Religion," Greek Historians (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994).

32

E.49 f\h^ GOV SoKEEi Moi MsXdnTTOus 6 'AMUOECOVOS TTIS OUOITIS

TQUTTisouK ETVQI dSofis dXX' EMTTEipos. "EXXiioi ydp

MEXdnTTous EOTI 6 E^riyiiodnEvos TOU Aiovuoou TO TE ouvopa

Ka\ 0uoir|v Ka\ TTJV TTOHTTTIV TOO 9aXXou.

Besides Herakles, Herodotus is very interested in the parallels between

Dionysus and Osiris. Again he mns into the same blockade he was faced with in the

relation between the Greek Herakles and the other Heraklean archetypes, the fact that

the match can not be made perfectly. The riUials of Osiris and Dionysus were indeed

very different, despite the fact that both deities share a number of traits, i.e., the dying

god motif, vegetation, resurrection, and fertility. Yet the practices of the Dionysian

rituals were not, to Herodotus, Greek in character at all, and therefore had to be the

result of some foreign influence. While there are surface similarities between the

worship of Osiris and Dionysus, Herodotus needs to constmct some reasonable

excuse for the divergence, if he wants to place Dionysus as Osiris. His story of

Melampus of Pylos provides him with just that reason.

According to Herodotus, Melampus brought the name of Dionysus from

Egypt to Greece along with the practice of worshipping him as well as the oracular

arts. Yet he did not frilly understand them, therefore the rites practiced in Greece are

cormpted from those of the Egyptians. It is interesting to note that Herodotus does

not go to any lengths to discover other origins for Greek customs besides the

Egyptian ones. Herodotus interjects as almost an aside: 7TEu0£O0ai hi \xo\

5oKE£l JidXlOTQ MEXdHTTOUS Td TTEp'l T 6 V AlOVUOOV TTQpd KdBpOU TE TOO

What exactly is meant by foreign influences has always been problematic. Dionysus was worshipped in Greece as far back as the Mycaenean period, see L.

33

Tuplou Ka\ TCOV cjuv airrcp EK OOIVIKTIS d-rriKOUEVcov ES TTIV VUV BoicoTinv

KQXEOMEVTIV xcbpriv. This is the theory of Phoenician origins for the worship of

Dionysus as transmitted through Cadmus of Tyre. Looking at this explanation in a

purely mythological sense, this seems a much more likely source for the cult of

Dionysus rather than Egypt, yet it gets only a sentence. Also, it seems to contradict

Herodotus' previous statement about Melampus transmitting the worship from Egypt.

The problem lies here with Herodotus trying to reconcile probable traditions

with his current agenda. His audience would certainly be familiar with the Theban

cycle and the theory of transmission from Phoenicia by Cadmus, and would have

noticed its omission in the face of this new theory involving Melampus of Pylos.

Therefore, perhaps as a method of vaccination, Herodotus is obligated to mention it.

We can therefore make the same distinction we did earlier, with the problem of the

multiple Herakles. Dionysus, son of Semele, is a Greek figure, akin to the manner in

which the hero Herakles is a Greek figure, but the larger tradition can indeed be seen

as springing from Egypt, and even farther East.

Palmer Mycenaean Greek Texts (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1963) 225. It seems the most prominent "foreign" influence in the cult of Dionysus is Thracian.

^ A practice by which an author substantiates his own view or point by introducing a counter point and then systematically destroying that point. This pracficed is well attested in Homer by Roland Barthes; this idea is also reflected in the logic problems of Zeno used in his philosophical arguments, see Robinson 121-134, as well as the story of Anaxagoras' explanation of freak occurrences in response to a priest's interpretations, Plutarch Vitae. Pericles. 5.

34

E.50 CJXESOV 5E KQ'I TrdvTcov Td ouvonaTO TCOV 0Ecbv E^

AiyuTTTou EXr|Xu0E ES TTIV 'EXXd5a.

Here Herodotus bluntly and almost anticlimactically states the result of the

argument over Egyptian origins for Greek religious customs. Again, his argument of

antiquity equaling authority backs this assertion. The fact that he uses the phrase Td

ouvouQTa has to be significant. Why not just say all the gods rather than the names

of all the gods came from Egypt into Greece? Those gods that did not come from

Egypt he assigns neatly to the pre-Dorian Pelasgians. While the existence of the

Pelasgians as actual historical figures is debatable at best, nonetheless they are an

integral part in the transmission of the names of the gods to Greece.

E.50 vo[i[C,o\jo\ 5' cbv AiyuTTTioi ou5' iipcooi OU5EV.

This shattering statement is much more important in Herodotus' argument

than Lloyd lets on. The fipcos was an integral part of not just the Greek religious

systems, but the social and cultural history as well. In the 5^ century, for the Greek,

the Tipcos was not just an intermediary between the mortal and divine worlds, he was

an expression of Greek identity in its most concrete form. The presence and

importance of the iipcos was evident in the archaic period, but now, with the re-

enforcement of the power of the TTOXIS and with the importance of the citizen

increasing, the fipcos became an expression of an ideal; this ideal reflects the choice

of the deeds and accomplishments of mortals over those of the gods.

'* Lloyd. 238. He claims that it is just a matter of definitions, but I think indeed there is a much deeper distinction which Herodotus is attempting to make here.

35

This is a very important opposition, and the exclusion of fipcos in the

Egyptian mythic cycle, as a Greek would define npcos, ie., a mortal who attained

special recognition rather than one elevated to divinity, would have alienated a Greek

from the Egyptian religious system. Also, by explicitly stating that the Egyptians did

not have the fipcos which the Greeks did, Herodotus is implicitly asserting this

practice as a uniquely Greek one. This without a doubt is an intentional assertion,

and by looking at the mythological difference between a heroic archetype and a

divine one we can see that Herodotus is further developing one of his main themes. E

we examine the paradigm of Egyptian divinity, it is a relatively static one. Action

within the Egyptian pantheon has occurred in it before, but in the prehistoric past.

The Egyptians, save for the deified pharaohs, have had no significant mythological

movement in historic time.

The Greek cycles rather than static, stale immobility, exhibit an energetic and

historic action. The Trojan War, while hundreds of years in the past, is still within

the realm of historic time for Greece. The retelling of the stories of the heroes after

the war, first by the lyric poets and then in the dramas of the tragedians kept the

action current in the minds of the Greek audience. A hero by nature had to be an

active force. It was for his actions, one of the things that endeared heroes to the 5*

century Greek, that he was rewarded, rather than because of some inherent divinity.

This again stresses the overall difference that Herodotus has set up between

Egypt and Greece. Egypt represents the past, greatness in antiquity. Greece is heir to

that greatness, but exists in the present and still has an active role to play in the

development of the world.

36

E.52 E0UOV BE irdvTa irpoTEpov oi FFEXacry oi 0EOTOI ETTEUXOMEVOI,

cos eyco EV AcoBcbvri oT5a dKouaas, EMCOVUUITIV 5E OU5' ouvopa

ETTOIEOVTO OUBEVI axjTcbv. ou ydp dKTiKOEoav KCO.

Herodotus now provides his audience with an important distinction between

form and title. The Pelasgians worshipped the same gods, apparently, as the

Egyptians did, but had never named them as such. It was only at a later time that the

name of each respective deity was introduced to the Pelasgians, who dutifully applied

and used those names, which of course came from Egypt, and from there the practice

came to the Athenians and hence to the rest of Greece. While seeming an innovative

and rational theory, there are a number of ideological forces at work here in

Herodotus' narrative. First, the idea of the name and Xoyos again enter the picture.

Picking up the thread of a number of Pre-Socratic philosophers, ^ Herodotus is

continuing a tradition of the universe first existing as a jumbled conglomerate, all

mixed and undifferentiated, then giving rise to an ordered system only after it is

categorized, i.e., the universe is ordered only by its actualization in language. This

not only follows the tradition of the cosmogonies of many Pre-Socratics, such as

Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, but also fits well into the idea of 5* century rationalism

that pervaded not only the Pre-Socratics but also the general intellectual environment

of Greece.

Herodotus presupposes a number of things with this statement of the

Pelasgians obtaining the names of the gods from the Egyptians. One, that the gods

across cultures are identical and only separated by their names, which also imply their

37

personalities. Elements of Pythagoreanism are emerging in this statement again with

the fact that only the act of naming an object separates it from an overall unity with

the rest of the universe.

Herodotus glibly states only the day before yesterday the Greeks came to

know what the gods were, for before the introduction of the names and personalities,

the gods had no real existence in the Greek mind. Here it may help to reach back into

the modem critical idiom and pull out Lacan's theories on the Imaginary, Real and

Symbolic to understand the tme significance of this passage. ^ Herodotus is positing

a Real state, an actuality that transcends culture and space. One can only begin to

understand this actuality by attempting to define it, using names and signifiers, and by

representing it in the Symbolic world, which is defined by the use of language, to

organize and look at the Real. Before this state however, all things are jumbled,

blurred, just like the way the Pelasgians thought of the gods before the introduction of

names and personalities of the gods. The Pelasgian interpretation of the divine before

the introduction of the Egyptian is a perfect presentation of Lacan's Imaginary world.

So as well as providing the Greeks with the names of the gods, Herodotus is

also attributing a greater inheritance from the Egyptians, that of the ability to reason

and to order the universe in general. It was the introduction of the practice of naming

the gods that eventually provided the Greeks with the tools with which to develop

9^

See Robinson, in particular the chapters conceming Pythagoras, 57-86, Heraclitus, 87-108, and Empedocles, 151-174.

^ A tripartite distinction found in the works of Jaques Lacan containing the following stmctures: (1) The Imaginary can be seen as the pre-verbal stage, a state of non-distinction between the self and the environment; (2) The Symbolic is the realm of language and symbolism, the social and cultural processes of how we perceive the worid; (3) The Real is finally that which exists outside these two realms, which the Symbolic attempts to represent, but what ultimately can never be known.

38

their current intellectual environment. This is not to say that Herodotus attributed the

advances and products of 5''' century Greek natural philosophy directly to the

Egyptians, for the Egyptians only provided the basis, the tools by which the unique

Greek mindset was able to develop into what was. But this distinction is again very

important in Herodotus' overall agenda. Egypt provided the basis, but Greece took it

to the logical conclusion and exercises, in the present, the intellectual power that was

resultant.

E.53 'HoioBov ydp Ka\ 'Oniipov riXiKiriv TETpaKooioioi ETEOI

5oKEco liEu irpEoPuTEpous yEVEoOai Ka\ ou TTXEOOI.

The mention of Homer and Hesiod is very significant in the line of argument

Herodotus is attempting to constmct. As seen earlier, Herodotus claims that while the

foremnners of Hellenic civilizations, the Pelasgians, did worship gods and have

religious institutions in an abstract manner, it was only after appropriating the names

and personalities of the gods from the Egyptians that they entered into a state of

knowing the divinities, as they are popularly conceived of in Herodotus' time. This

does not presuppose that the Egyptians introduced gods or religion into Greece,

because, as stated before, Herodotus claims that only the Td dvopaTa are taken

from the Egyptians, the names, or more aptly, the personalities and aspects. An

obvious contradiction is set up here if we accept that Td dvopaTa means more than

mere names, but the more general aspects and personalities of the gods. Looking

more closely we constmct the line of argument the Herodotus is putting forth here.

The gods, or the forces of creation, are already in place, before the Egyptians

or the Greeks named them. Therefore, the Egyptians did not create the gods, for

39

while Herodotus is attempting to base the origins of certain religious practices firmly

as emanating from Egypt, he however cannot go so far as to remove the sense of

uniqueness of the Greek practices. In using the purposefrilly ambiguous term

Td ovoMOTa Herodotus has both associated the cultural origins of Greece strongly

within Egypt, yet he has also asserted the individuality of Greek culture.

This was the beginning, for Herodotus, of the development of many of the

religious institutions active in Greece, in a diluted form from the original Egyptian

practices. From this base, once the cosmogony of the gods and the worid was

established, the Greek worid proceeded into new intellectual territory that left behind

its Egyptian origins.

Naming Homer and Hesiod now as the progenitors of the popular

cosmogonies leads to a logical contradiction, but an ideological triumph. Without

arguing about the dates and existence of the Pelasgians, we can safely say that they

are just a vehicle for the ideological agenda of Herodotus. He has used them as the

precious link he needed between Egypt and Greece, his Piltdown man if you will.

The actuality of the Pelasgians is moot; for Herodotus they have served their purpose,

and now he has discarded them and instead tumed his attention to the most important

documents for the Greek identity.

Now instead of the Pelasgians asking the oracle at Dodona for permission to

use the Egyptian names, Herodotus has tumed away and back to what, in the Greek

mind, would seem the more important origin of the current ideas of "theogonies." In

his constmction of this new discourse, Herodotus now includes Homer and Hesiod.

So, despite the fact that he has claimed, and effectively bound, the foundations of the

40

Greek religious systems within Egyptian practices, he now tums about and reaffirms

the uniqueness of the Greek religious ideology.

E.58 TravTiyupias 5E dpa KQI TTOHTrds Ka\ trpooaycoyds

TtpcoToi dvOpcoTTcov AiyuTTTioi Eioi oi TToiTioduEvoi, Ka\ irapd

TOUTCOV "EXXriVES M£lia8r|Kaoi.

Here Herodotus is not just speaking of strictly religious gatherings, but also of

those festivals that combine many social functions, i.e. the Olympian or Pythian

festivals, also the local gatherings such as the Hyacinthia in Sparta and the Eleusinia

in Athens, along with the Dionysia, both Greater and Lessers. ^ Herodotus claims

again that because of the antiquity of the meetings in Egypt, the Greeks must have

borrowed the practice from them. Herodotus however fails to cite any evidence for

the "obvious" antiquity of the Egyptian practices. His purpose in this passage is not in

fact to draw another link between Greece and Egypt, but instead to distance them in

order to define Greek culture more clearly.

Herodotus continues this passage by claiming that rather than the "rare"

meetings of the Greeks in such festivals, because of their great adherence to religious

practices, the Egyptians have many such events. He then goes on to describe one

such event, yet the effect Herodotus creates is one of excess. Herodotus paints for his

audience pictures of hordes of Egyptian citizens performing arcane dances and rituals,

for no obvious religious, not even speaking of any practical, purpose. Across the

countryside, lights and dancing indicate a festival day. Everyone participates in these

celebrations without distinction. There is no escape from such festivals in Egypt, for

27 Lloyd. 265-5.

41

they are the essence of what the underlying pylons of Egyptian culture are

constmcted from.

This scene provides a telling glimpse into a 5* century Greek's view of Egypt.

The solemn has become commonplace. Instead of creating a sense of a pious

population, we have a frenzied people performing esoteric rites they do not

understand; the repeated actions have lost their meanings. Rather than looking

towards the real world, the physical world, the Egyptian is caught up in some sort of

religious dream. Their religious practices take up so much of their time that they are

ineffectual as forces of change in the world. Herodotus leaves his audience with a

sense of Egypt being all practice, and very little substance, as compared to the

Greeks, who do participate in such large festivals, but are not so controlled by them

that they lose touch with their physical existence. It is a stark contrast between

Greece and Egypt when we see the Egyptians praying for guidance as the Persian

army marches upon them, when conversely we have the Greeks preparing for war.

Ultimately this is the major distinction and improvement of Greek culture over that of

the Egyptians.

42

E.77 AuTcbv BE Brj AiyuTTTicov o'l UEV iTEpi TTIV OTTEiponEVTiv

AiyuTTTov oiKEOuoi, nvriunv dv0pcb7Tcov TrdvTcov EiraoKEovTEs

pdXioTa XoyicoTaToiEioi uaKTrcp TCOV Eycb so BidiTEipav

dTTiKonriv.

This begins Herodotus' attempt to legitimize the superiority of the knowledge

of the leamed men of Egypt, the priestly caste, from whom Herodotus claims to have

acquired most of his information. An interesting fact is that Herodotus attributes no

innate intellectual superiority to the Egyptian. Not from any love of knowledge, but

through astute and assiduous record keeping do the Egyptians have claim to

information not available to the Greeks. Herodotus continues in this section with

descriptions of the gmeling physical life that the priest undergoes to ensure his health,

and therefore his longevity, and hence his ability to pass on information.

There are two ways to approach Herodotus' account of the practices of the

priests to ensure their health. The first, and most commonly held, is one of

admiration for the piety of the priests. Herodotus is recording these things as proof of

the diligence and hence love of knowledge that the Egyptians have. Their physical

rigors in a certain sense reflect the lengths that the priest is willing to go in order to

preserve and pass on knowledge.

The other interpretation is less flattering. The priest, lacking the intellectual

drive to pursue knowledge, and not just the drive, but the capability, must resort to

physical measures to enable him to pass on knowledge and history effectively. This

is not immediately evident, but in later chapters, as Herodotus goes to great length to

describe the care and diligence with which the Egyptian priests preserve the memory

of the past, the audience is delivered a mixed signal of both admiration at such effort

43

and the incredulity at the absurd lengths gone to for the sake of the preservation of

tradition, i.e. the apparent use of wooden statues by the Egyptian priests to represent

generations that represent time spanning back 11,340 years. ^

E.99 Msxpi MEV Tovrrou 6v|;is TE EMTI KQI yvcbun KQI ioTopi'ri

TOOTQ Xsyouod EOTI, T6 BE dird TOUBE AiyuriTious Epxonai

Xoyous epecov KOTd Td fiKouov.

This statement conceming the methodology of Herodotus' previous inquiries

here is a preamble to his discussion of the wider issue of Egyptian history. Of note is

the use of the words Xsyco and Xoyos. Apparently the previous chapters were

written either from first hand observation or previous sources. Now, however,

Herodotus is moving towards what the Egyptians think of their own history, or more

importantly, what Herodotus believes, or wants his audience to believe, that the

Egyptians, and more specifically the oral record, hold to be their history. The terms

Xsyco and Xoyos tie Herodotus' sources to the oral record, in which he has

particular interest. This is not to say that Herodotus is going to completely reshape

the stories he is told in order to fulfill some nefarious project of his, conjuring his

evidence out of thin air and then attributing it to credible sources. Instead I am

claiming that he has a predetermined course, within his self determined objectivity,

which he is set upon, and that it is with this in mind that he approaches and

interrogates the priests. One must look at the questions the Herodotus is asking in

order to understand the subtle constmction that is going on.

^ Herodoms, E. 142.

44

1.100 METd BE TOOTOV KOTEXEyov oi ipEES EK popXou dXXcov

PQOIXECOV TplTlKOOlCOV TE Ka\ Tpir|KOVTa ouvonaTQ.

Ewe recall Herodotus' description of the geography of Egypt, then we will

remember the painstaking effort he goes to so as to create an actual physical location

for Egypt in the new ideological system that Herodotus is attempting to create for his

Greek audience. He did this by making such precise measurements and records that

his audience apparently has no choice but to accept the existence of such a place in

the face of overwhelming evidence. Now that Egypt is firmly fixed as a physical

entity, Herodotus can tum his attention back to a subject more integral to his

argument: time. Just as Egypt needed a legitimate physical location, now it needs

some substantiation for its antiquity. In fact, Herodotus employs the same

methodology in defining Egypt's physical geography as he uses to establish its

temporal geography: overwhelming detail.

Herodotus introduces this detail by claiming the priests had in their possession

a record of monarchs that lists three hundred and thirty different mlers of Egypt.

While not an impossible figure, since most of what are termed King Lists have

included up to three hundred and twenty-three mlers, ^ it nonetheless is an enormous

number, and has no comparison with any genealogy or list in Greece at this time.

Along with the list, the priests have a very accurate record of the specific details of

most of the mlers. Herodotus goes on to recount an extensive history of the exploits

^ Manetho. Manetho. (Cambridge, Mass: Waddell, 1940). Manetho, an Egyptian high priest, under the first two Ptolemaic mlers scribed an extensive history of Egypt, AiyuTTTiQKd, in which he recorded three hundred and thirty-three pharaohs, also originating the divisions of Old, Middle and New Kingdoms that are commonly applied to Egyptian chronology.

45

of the various monarchs, one of which is of special interest to this study, that of the

so-called pharaoh Proteus.

B.112 TouTou BE EKBE^QOOQI TTIV PaoiXriiriv IXEyov dvBpa

MEH91TTIV, Tcp KQTd TTIV 'EXXr)Vcov yXcbooav ouvona

npCOTEQ ETVQI.

The subject of Proteus opens up a new facet of Herodotus' examination. The

fact that Herodotus points out KOTd TTIV 'EXXTIVCOV yXcbooav ouvona

TTpcoTEQ ETVQI is an indicator that his account is not going to be as straightforward

as it initially appears. Herodotus does not give the Egyptian name of this pharaoh,

although undoubtedly he had access to it, if in fact we can assume that he is talking

about an actual historical personage. Proteus, as an Egyptian Sea-god (as ironic as

the existence of such a figure is given the inclination of Egyptians to pathologically

fear the sea) appears in Homer. ° In this version however he has been transformed,

whether by Herodotus or an earlier source, into an actual pharaoh. E Herodotus has

originated this theory of Proteus as a human king, it would fit well with his previous

practice (such as in the proem when he equates mythical rape scenarios to actual

historical events leading to the Persian conflicts) of rationalizing a mythological

source, turning it into a "believable" event.

The story goes as follows in Herodotus: Paris, with his abducted bride, is

forced to harbor in Egypt, and news of his crime reaches the ears of Proteus thanks to

° Homer Odvssev. IV.531 ff. ' This is either a Herodotean or Hecataean invention, but as Lloyd states,

3.112, the actual relation between a pharaoh and the sea-god Proteus may have been influenced by the Egyptian representations of Nile Gods, and by associating this with

46

a number of mnaway slaves. Proteus then orders the arrest of Paris and the seizure of

Helen and his goods until Paris justified himself Proteus then refuses to return Helen

to Paris, and despite his crime, allows Paris to flee Egypt. Hence, the Trojan War

continued on without Helen ever actually being at Troy, and she was later remmed to

Menelaus in Egypt after the war.

Despite the obvious discomfort a Greek audience might feel with this account,

i.e. the fact that this epic battle was fought without the object of desire even being

present, it is yet another example of connecting something paramount in Greek

identity, i.e. the Trojan cycle, with what Herodotus has attempted to establish as an

actual figure in Egyptian history. Herodotus displays a sense of dark humor in this

account of the Trojan War, and there seems every chance that this version would have

stmck his audience as quite frinny because of the fact that the entire war was fought

over miscommunication. The importance of the Proteus incident is Herodotus'

appropriation of this story, one that would have been familiar to his audience, for his

own purposes.^'

E.142 'Es MEV TOOOVBE TOU Xoyou AiyuTTTioi TE KQI ipEEs

IXsyov...

Compare this to the previous statement Herodotus made when he was shifting

to his description of Egyptian history (E.99, E. 100). Having spent a number of pages

describing the various exploits of the cumbersome list of Egyptian mlers, Herodotus

the thus far unspoken practice of deifying deceased pharaohs, we can see the visual evidence for this apparentiy absurd coupling.

47

has given his audience no choice but to accept his information on the temporal

geography as factual based on the sheer weight of the evidence he presents, in a

similar manner to his description of the physical geography earlier. Compare the

calculation of years by the number of generations with Herodotus' calculation of the

distance of the coastiine of Egypt. Both processes create a sense of intimacy with

such large figures which makes them more palatable to his audience.

What other purpose does this copious amount of information serve in

Herodotus' ideological agenda? It re-estabhshes the authority that the priests of

Egypt hold over history and the past. To add to their authority, they cite portents such

as the sun behaving in the opposite manner and eclipses, great events in the natural

world, also of particular importance to early philosophers in Greece, that no one

would dare use unless they were tme.

E.143 npoTEpov BE 'EKOTaicp TCO Xoyoiroicb EV ©riPrjoi

yEVETiXoyf|oavTi [TE] ECOUTOV Ka\ dvaBrjoavTi TTIV TTaTpifiv ES

E K K Q I B E K Q T O V 0 £ 6 V ETTOlTlOaV o'l IpEES ToO A l 6 s OTOV T l KQI EMo\

ou yEV£TiXoyr|oavTi EMECOUTOV.

Herodotus, when beginning this section on the physical proof of the antiquity

of the Egyptians and their preservation of knowledge, names one of his predecessors

and main sources, Hecataeus. Herodotus however makes a distinction between the

realms of Greek power and that of the Egyptians that Hecataeus never did. Herodotus

needed Egypt to have a stronger claim to antiquity, and therefore rather than

^ 9 w««

The idea of Helen being absent from Troy, or being represented only in the form of a ghost or EIBOXOV, was an old and popular idea (cf Hesiod, Stesichoms, Euripides and others listed by Lloyd, Vol 3.46-7)

48

challenging their dominance, he instead works to uphold it. In Herodotus' scheme,

Hecataeus did not recognize that Greece's idea of antiquity, i.e. what was considered

old, was of no consequence when compared to that of the Egyptians.

Greece in Herodotus' scheme needed to be relatively new on the scene, at

least the Greece that he was trying to influence. What is the point of attempting to

create a new sense of identity if the Greeks already had a far reaching history that

provided them with one? Including this encounter between Hecataeus and the

Egyptian priests only stresses the immense span of time that lies between the world of

the Greeks and the world of the Egyptians.

Hecateaus' claims are quickly put to shame by the priests, as his attempt to

constmct his genealogy back sixteen generations is faced against the three hundred

and forty-one statues that represent every generation of the families of the high kings

spanning back to the foundation of Egypt as a country. This number was mentioned

earlier by Herodotus as the number of monarchs for which the priests of Egypt had

information in written form. With the Egyptian love of tradition as attested by

Herodotus, it only stands to reason that the high priest would have some similar

system of recording.

Another aspect of this particular line of discussion in Herodotus is the

physical manifestation of the age and authenticity of the historical documentation of

the Egyptians. The fact that there are three hundred and thirty-three statues, each

representing a generation (and with anywhere from three to five generations a

century, which can equal a stretch of time ranging from about eleven thousand three

hundred sixty-six to six thousand eight hundred years) is a startiing reminder of the

49

actual scope of time one must consider when looking at the history of Egypt. Nothing

in Greece, that can be readily identified as such, had such age to it for Herodoms or

his Greek audience.

Also of importance in this passage is the statement ou BEKOMEVOI Trap*

auTou dird 0EOO yEVEoOai dv0pco7Tov. It seems that for the Egyptian, there is a

clear demarcation between the divine worid and the mortal coil. Consider the phrase

once again VOMI'COUOI B' COV Aiyurmoi ouB* fjpcooi OUBEV (E.50); it reinforces the

fact there is no intermediate position between gods and men in the Egyptian scheme.

One must wonder why Herodoms fails to mention that after the reign of the gods in

Egypt, the pharaohs are deified after their deaths. Surely he would have been able to

grasp such a basic tenet of the Egyptian religious systems? Herodotus has previously

created the impression of the overall piety of the Egyptians. This extreme piety

however leads to an ultimate inabihty for them to attain anything resembling divinity,

or more aptiy, immortality. Again we can look at the fact when the Persian army

begins its conquest of Egypt, they are praying, rather than preparing. Their adherence

to rimal disables them in the present world.

This is not to say that divinity is the ultimate goal, or even possible, in the

Greek religious system. We are not dealing with divinity as in deification, but more

aptiy defined as surpassing the expectations of the mortal world. 0£cbv BE TTOXXOV

diraXXayMSVOS (E.144) sums up the current population, and even the dominant

ideology conceming the condition of humanity in Egypt. The human experience of

Egypt is limited, perhaps by their blind adherence to custom, while the dynamic

50

personality of Greece is able to surpass all previous expectations, and even reach the

heights of semi-divinity.

E.144 T 6 BE TTpoTEpov TCOV dvBpcbv TOUTGDV OEOUS ETVQI TOUS

EV AiyuTTTcp dpxovTQs OIKEOVTQS QMa TOTOI dv0pcb7Toioi, KQ'I

TOUTCOV aiEi Eva T6V KpaTEovTo ETVQI.

This statement at first seems out of place, following Herodotus' previous

insistence on the separation between the human and the divine in Egypt. Yet here

Herodoms is speaking of the far past, not just TTpOTEpov, but a time previous to the

first human mler of Egypt, that is over eleven thousand years before. This creates a

stark contrast to the mundane mortality of hfe in Egypt contemporary with

Herodoms.

Herodoms sends a clear signal here: the Egypt of old was a land of power and

influence, with gods walking among men. The power and grandeur of Egypt lie in

the past, along with such feats as building projects (E. 122-130) and foreign conquests

(E. 104-112). The Egypt of the present is a vassal state to the Persian Empire and

lacking in tme power, save for its ties to the past. This is the difference between

Egypt and Greece. Greece, having no set past or at least one as ancient as the one the

Egyptians claim, is forced to live in the present as a dynamic force. Yet Herodotus

feels that despite this incUnation towards the present and present action, Greece needs

a past with which to associate itself, so that it may completely form an ideological

center as it is thmst into an intemational world for the first time in almost a thousand

years.

51

E.182 TQUTQ MEV dvE0TlKE 6 "AMQOIS- ETXE BE KuTTpOV TTpCOTOS

dvOpcoTTcov KQ\ KQTEOTpEvj^QTo ES 9 6 p o u d7Taycoyr|V.

Herodoms ends his exploration of not only the history of Egyptian culmre, but

also its importance as the progenitor of Greek culture and civilization with this

anticlimactic sentence which seems to be a simple aside about Amasis, the last of the

Egyptian pharaohs within the realm of Herodoms' examination. After the scope and

impact of his intense geographic, ethnographic, temporal, and, most importantiy,

ideological survey, why does Herodotus insert such a banal sentence? Often, in

reference to many of Herodoms' conclusionary methods, scholars have felt jilted, ^ as

if the build-up and power of his work are snubbed by the lack of closure or

significantiy groundbreaking statements on some sort of universal tmth.

I contend however that this statement is a perfect cap to the

AiyuTTTous Xoyos, because in its simplicity there is hidden a deeper message which

is not done justice by the sparse wording. Herodoms' goal is not to follow the formal

mles of dramatic stmcmre, or to reveal some greater universal tmth. Instead in Book

E, as a whole, he is uncovering the layers within the ideas that both the Greeks and

the Egyptians hold about themselves and each other. This ending hides the

groundbreaking statement he has already made, on ideological territory, in the

preceding chapters of Book B. To a certain extent, it sets the audience at ease, allows

them quietiy to digest the sweeping remarks and amazing reports he has made earlier,

by not alerting them to the bold scope of his intentions. The choice to include Cypms

within the last sentence is, I would suggest, completely intentional and serves a

specific purpose. Geographically and culturally speaking, Cypms has always been a

52

link between the East and the West. What better location to end his examination on

the bonds between Greece and Egypt than the first place that most likely allowed

them to come into contact with each other?

53

CHAPTER m

CONCLUSIONS

Herodotus' account in Book E has spanned thousands of years and thousands

of miles across time and space, yet his goal retums to the core of the Greek self In

the introduction the impems of Herodoms' work was discussed, but now, having

followed through Herodotus' joumey across Egypt, we may talk more specifically

about what he has set out to do and what he has actually accomplished within the

confines of Book E.

Charles Fomara addresses the issue of the unity of the Histories as a whole by

claiming that while there may be a unity to the overall stmcture, one cannot use that

fact, he claims, "as a principle which solves the problems of the composition of this

work."' He then goes on to claim that although one can justify the presence of Book

E within this so called unity, nevertheless Herodotus did not compose it with a Grand

Design in mind. The assertions that Fonara continues to make conceming that book,

i.e. the biographical approach to Herodoms as an author and traveler, while insightful,

are ultimately untenable in a more in-depth examination of the book.

E Herodotus' goal was merely an account of the cultural nuances of Egypt by

examining the environmental, religious, and economic forces at work to serve as a

record in as facmal a manner as possible to an ignorant audience, as Fomara has

claimed was Herodoms' goal, then I would have to agree with him that Herodoms

failed. Herodotus has not provided accurate information of the ethnographic and

' Fomara, 6. ^ Ibid., 15. ^ Ibid., 16.

54

geographic spheres of the Egyptian worid. What if Herodoms set out to be a

historian, has he succeeded at that? A trickier question to be sure tiian the previous,

for the namre of what a historian is is still not defined satisfactorily in our modem

era. Even in applying this term to Herodoms and his work, we are in a sense judging

him and his work by inapplicable standards. What validity do our modem standards

of history and historical research hold in reference to the groundbreaking work of

Herodoms? That leads to the questions of what historical criticism is and how much

intent clouds the narrative form of the researches. Ultimately, whatever the tme

definition of a historian, in our modem sense, it is an intelligent bet that Herodotus

also failed to accomplish this. Was he then a geographer or merely someone creating

a travelog in Book E? E we open the rest of the Histories to the same examination,

then the water becomes more clouded, but if we at first confine our attentions to Book

E, we can see that it is a microcosmic representation of the ultimate goal that

Herodoms has set out to accomplish with his work. The Histories is a text, and it must

be examined as a text, with all the attendant components associated with it. More

importantly though, it is also a culmral document, and contains encoded within it

ideological stmcmres that, as responsible scholars, we must take into account when

examining the Histories.

The impact of the Histories then lies not in some tmth or transcendent fact that

is encoded within. Martin Bemal has used Book E as a rallying point for his attack

on Westem academia in general, and Westem Classical scholarship specifically. The

discourse that Bemal has opened with his work in Black Athena, however, is more

important than the mythologically based histories or the fanciful etymologies he

55

creates. While Classics has been a relative late comer to the scene in terms of modem

critical theories, Bemal's work has brought to the forefront the point, as Edith Hall

states, that "academic discourse is as ideologically laden as political discourse,

journalism, art and literamre."^

Despite this, however, the reason that Bemal's arguments ultimately fail is his

inability not only to examine Herodoms' work as a text with the same ideologically

laden aspects that the modem scholarship he is attacking contains, but also to admit

that his own work contains them. He seems to suffer under the illusion that he is

immune from the prejudices that he attributes to those who have spent their lives and

livelihoods smdying the literary and physical remains of the Classical world. As

stated before anyone who approaches a text is going to carry his or her own

contingent sociopolitical preoccupations. It is impossible to separate oneself

completely from a given temporal, political, and social frame of reference. By

recognizing these limitations, however, while not able to eliminate them completely,

one can compensate for these biases and at least identify such forces in one's own

work.

Bemal confuses, or more aptiy fuses, two basic tenets of scx:ial anthropology:

acmal, biological relation and culmrally based assumptions about ethnicity. The first

is a biological, supposedly empirical, category that formnately is no longer of great

importance in modem scholarship. The second, based on the culmral constmcts used

to define ethnicity, is of special importance to the work of Herodoms. Most of

* Editii Hall, "When is a Myth Not a Mytii?: Bemal's Ancient Model." Black Athena Revisited. 334.

See Edith Hall, ibid. 336, for an examination of the history of these aspects of social and physical anthropology and how Bemal abuses this idea.

56

Bemal's work ironically enough reeks of the same self-serving scholarship used to

reinforce culmral ideas of white superiority over those of different complexions, a

sort of pseudo-science that attempts to create evidence to justify an already arrived-at

conclusion. It is a futile task to attempt to constmct the biological origins for the

Greek-speaking ancient worid, since the materials needed to substantiate any claim

conceming this, i.e. the actual Greeks of the ancient worid, have long since departed

the worid of the tangible. For most of Bemal's discussions, however, proof has

never been an insurmountable barrier, since he states that he is not out to create a

theory backed "solely" with facts, but he wants to make an argument that has

"competitive plausibility."^ While the basis behind this practice, i.e., the creation of

plausible scenarios to offer counter explanations for prominent and accepted theories,

is sound, this usually requires some sort of proof for the counter explanation.

The acceptance of Bemal's account lies only with the acceptance of myth and

the resultant literature involved with the examination of myth as transcendent tmth.

Bemal's approach ignores the inner workings of ideology that drive myth and, more

importantly for the scope of this study, with the advent of Herodotus' work, history.

This is the tme crime of Bemal's scholarship. It is not that he has debunked or

^ One of Bemal's favorite tactics is that of analogy, i.e. taking two relatively disparate customs and by associating surface relationships reinforces a theory that necessitated the creation of the analogy. An example can be found in the anatomical sciences in the 18^ and 19* century that claimed that intelligence defines the superior, and since obviously the white European was superior to the Black African, the cranial volume of the white European would be greater, and then results were manufactured to substantiate this claim. Compare this to Bemal's assertion that mythological cycles hold "precious kemels of historical tmth", and since Greece must certainly have spmng from the cultures of the Levant and Egypt, he then goes on to pick and choose passages to support his claim while ignoring other passages that contradict him openly.

^ Bemal, 1.8.

57

unseated any preconceived notions of the origins of Greek culture. Classicists,

historians, and archaeologists have long recognized the debt that Greece owed not

just to Egypt, but to a wider system of Mediterranean trade and contact that involved

numerous cultures. The main boon of his so-called scholarship has been the opening

of a new discourse of why we think what we do about history, and what this means to

our approaches to said material. Unfortunately, his actual work denies this

introspection, and instead makes a large reversion back to an ultimately uncritical

arena that neglects the contributions of other areas of scholarship, and instead of

creating a new multicultural methodology, blindly supports assumed dogma that

accepts myth as "tmth."

Bemal associates the ideologically-driven ideas of subjective ethnicity with

actual physical relationships. He makes no distinction between actuality and belief

He fails to understand the inherent difference between what the actual origins of

Greek culture were, and what the Greeks thought their origins were. In fact, he

continually uses the ideological techniques that Herodotus propounded as proof of an

acmal relationship, using material already weighted with predetermined assumptions,

i.e., the Histories as a text, to reinforce his self determined objective report, i.e., that

Greek culture was a direct descendant of Egyptian culture.

Bemal cannot see the ultimate goal of Herodotus' work in Book E because he

is too preoccupied with using it for his own agenda, not seeing the forest for the trees.

His attention to certain details seems to be derived from a scholarly examination of

the text. However, many of his assertions are inmitively based and he even goes on

58

to formulate motives for passages in Herodotus based solely on what he feels the

author, as a person, would have written.

Bemal's work is ultimately as subjective as Herodoms' is, that is to say Bemal

picks and chooses with even more impudence than Herodotus from the material

available to him to prove a point. There are a number of facts, given the familiarity

Herodoms exhibits with Egyptian culture, that we can assume Herodotus knew about

but purposefully left out. Bemal performs the same selective rendering of his

predecessors. Bemal ignores the emergent Pre-Socratic thought in Herodotus'

examination that points to the ulterior nature of Herodoms' examination. References

to such terms as EXEUOEPIQ raise red flags that Herodoms is dealing not with a

paradigm based on the reporting of material based only on information obtained from

Egyptian sources, but within the stmcture of a 5* century Greek mindset examining

the world around him. Again, Bemal recognizes no such thing as a text, but instead

he credits the Histories as having only its stated purpose, with no underlying

stmcmres or agenda.

In the end, one must examine Bemal's work for what it is: a masterpiece of

cultural rhetoric based only loosely on evidence. On this count. Classics owes him a

great debt of gratitude, for he has thmst the discipline into the light of self

examination and critical re-evaluation that will only strengthen the type of

scholarship done, open avenues for new approaches to the material, and discard that

material based on unstable academic and scholarly grounds. Unfortunately, Bemal's

examination does not answer many questions about Book E. Instead of opening up a

59

new approach to the way Book E is read, Bemal has instead employed in his own

ideological battie.

In fomung the question of origins into the stmcture of a narrative concemed

primarily with events of the past, Herodotus has opened up a new, at least in extant

literature, discourse of historical narrative. This can be said with certainty for a

number of reasons. The period in which Herodotus is writing, following the re-

introduction of Greece into the intemational worid after five hundred years of "dark

ages" provides him with a new arena in which to stage his ideological examination of

Greek identity . The material he is dealing with, the origins of a culture's religious,

social, and cultural practices, is always going to carry with it a number of difficulties,

since they are so close to the way a culture thinks about itself and conceives its own

self image.

The fact that Herodotus has chosen narrative is of great importance to the

scope of his work. He could have very easily followed his contemporaries in the

natural sciences and written treatises that were more records of observations rather

than arguments for or against theories. Herodotus has created a new narrative

stmcture in Book E, whether conscious or unconscious, that must be at the very least

acknowledged, even if not fully examined, in order to do justice in any reading of the

text.

The challenge then lies in decoding the forces at work within the text. Within

this examination I have continually attempted to bring the tools of the modem critical

idiom to the forefront in order to show how this may be done. This is not to say in

60

any way that we are able, or ever will be able to decode all of the forces at work with

Herodotus, or even in any work for that matter. These forces are always changing, or

better yet, the way we are able to view and consume our investigations of these forces

is continually changing.

The findings in this particular approach to Book E have illuminated the

following the points that have not always been as preeminent as they need to be in

Herodotean scholarship in general and in dealing with Book E in particular.

Herodotus did indeed have preset agenda as he approached this work. Prominent, but

not necessarily the only, is the creation of a new ideological origin for 5* century

Greek culture based firmly in Egypt but using processes associated with the

intellectual environment of Greece, in order to reinforce his claims. As stated before,

the political climate of Greece and its involvement in the intemational conflict

surrounding the expansion of the Persian Empire, besides being the impetus for

Herodotus' work in general, demanded a new interpretation of not only the Greek

idea of self, but also the ability to place that self within a larger world context.

The Histories then, as stated before, is much more than a recount. Herodotus

has developed a methodology of defining culture and origins that continues into our

modem views of history and origins. Every time we name the Greco-Roman worid

as the progenitor of Westem civilization, we are partaking of the same ideological

feast that Herodotus fed his audience in Book E. The revelation of this fact in no way

diminishes the scope or importance of Herodoms, and I would claim, actually

reinforces the need for a more in-depth look at his work. Ultimately any examination

o

In using the term "dark ages", I am referring to the period following the fall of the Mycenaean civilization and preceding the Archaic period in Ancient Greece, as

61

of the Classical worid and its literamre, in fact any other culture separated in time and

space from our own, is an attempt to discover more about ourselves. This is not to

say that such scholarship is a vicious sohpsistic circle, but instead that as we seek to

discover tiie secrets of other cultures, we reveal more about ourselves, in what we

look for, what questions we ask, and how we interpret the answers we find. This was

exactiy the process Herodoms was involved in, asking the same questions of the

Egyptian priests as we ask of his text. In this manner we share die same difficulties,

biases, and triumphs that Herodoms experienced, and by looking at the voyage of

exploration that he undertook, we might begin to understand the reasons why we look

to the past in order to discover ourselves.

Therefore, in order to understand more of the framework in which Herodotus

was working, having examined Book E in-depth in order to uncover hitherto hidden

stmcmres of self definition and identity, these findings and new understandings of

Book B must be applied to the stmcture as the Histories as a whole. In the first four

books of the Histories, Herodoms provides his audience with the "historical" and

more importantly ideological basis for a conflict that is going to change the face of

the world. With this basis so established, Herodoms then moves on to trace the action

of the conflict through the major events, or events that served to further his narrative,

yet within this progression he continually refers back to his previous work, and

repeatedly provides anecdotal information conceming the areas or peoples involved

in these events. In fact, the ending of his masterpiece has nothing to do with the final

stmggles of the Greeks against the army of Xerxes or the freeing of the Ionian states,

and instead refers to what seems a rather simple event.

it is characterized by the art that remains. 62

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Camp, John. The Athenian Aeora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens.

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Diop, Cheikh Anta. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology.

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Drees, Ludwig. Olympia. New York: Praeger, 1968.

Fomara, Charles. Herodoms: An Interpretive Essay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

von Fritz, Kurt. Die Griechische Geschichtsschreibung. Berlin: de Gmyter, 1967.

Gardiner, Alan. Egyptian Grammar. Third Edition. Oxford: University Printing

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(jrardiner, E. Norman. Olympia. Its History and Remains. Oxford: Oxford Press,

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Gould, John. "Herodoms and Religion," Greek Historians. Oxford: Clarendon Press,

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63

Hall, Edith. "When is a Myth Not a Myth?: Bemal's Ancient Model". Mary

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Immerwahr, H. R. Form and Thought in Herodoms Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1966.

Jacoby, Felix. M Suppl. 2, cf FGrH 76. F64

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64

Wiedemann, A. Herodots zweites Buch mit sachlirhen Rriautemngen. Leipzig:

Teubner, 1890.

65

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