by Oswyn Murray
(Herodotus 2.178–9)
The site was excavated at the end of the nineteenth century by the British; and much of the early history of the Greek settlement can be reconstructed. The town was a Greek town, though clearly under the ultimate control of the Pharaoh: the dominant building in the southern quarter was a large Egyptian structure which may have been a fortified warehouse (the Egyptian economy was traditionally under the control of the Pharaoh, who owned the land, disposed of its surplus produce, and distributed seed-corn annually to the peasants). Four Greek temples were discovered in the north quarter, and the material at those also mentioned by Herodotus conforms to his claim that they were centres for particular groups of merchants: one vase inscription from the Hellenion invokes simply ‘the gods of the Greeks’. A temple to the Dioscuri may in fact be the same as Herodotus’ temple of Zeus, which was not found. There was also an important early sixth century temple of Aphrodite in the south quarter, which seems from the evidence to have been particularly connected with the merchants of Chios. Apart from the pottery associated with the named groups of merchants, quantities of Corinthian and Attic pottery were naturally found, and also a significant amount of Laconian; this was perhaps carried by Samians, for it is normally a localized pottery but happens to be present in quantity on Samos. Some difficulty has been caused by the fact that, although the Hellenion dates from the reign of Amasis, the other temples seem to be earlier; and it is clear that the settlement began about 620 and was already of considerable size by the reign of Amasis. But Herodotus’ account surely records the view of one particular section of the community about their past; the bias of those connected with the Hellenion is revealed in the statement that only members of the Hellenion are entitled to appoint the magistrates, a claim that was denied by others. Since merchants from the great trading cities of Aegina, Samos and Miletus must have been the earliest and largest individual groups, it is likely that their temple organizations are the earlier (perhaps with Chios). Far from being friendly to the Greeks originally, Amasis seized power as a nationalist leader, and may well have closed all Greek access to Egypt except through Naucratis, not as a privilege but in response to Egyptian mistrust of Greeks; the smaller groups of merchants banded together to establish the Hellenion: the struggle for political control in Herodotus’ day is a struggle of the newcomers against the old, and of course these newcomers chose not to remember the time before the Hellenion. Herodotus took as his informants those whom he thought particularly reliable, and was misled.
The curious constitution of Naucratis reflects its beginnings as an emporion, with no original city foundation: the institutions of government grew naturally out of the shrines established by different groups of residents. The town itself was the chief port of Egypt until the foundation of Alexandria by Alexander the Great. It fostered a flourishing Greek tourist trade and like other treaty ports and trading towns (such as Corinth) was famous for its courtesans: Sappho’s brother fell in love with Rhodopis and bought her out of slavery; she went on to offer a tenth of her wealth in iron spits at Delphi ‘where they still lie piled up behind the altar dedicated by the Chians’; and Archedikē was ‘famous in poetry throughout Greece’ (Herodotus 2.135). In the early period Naucratis was also a Greek manufactory of sorts; there was at least one local pottery making vases for dedication at the sanctuaries, and in the sixth century a factory was making ‘Egyptian’ scarabs and faience seals in quantity, specifically designed for export to Greece.
But Naucratis was essentially a trading town. The chief export was undoubtedly corn, obtained from the royal monopoly. Imports included wine and oil, but apparently only for local Greek consumption, since they were not used by Egyptians; and the small amount of pottery found outside particular sites where Greeks lived does not suggest general trading contact with Egyptians. Egyptian society had no great need of slaves. The chief object of barter with the Pharaoh was most probably silver, in which northern Greece especially was rich, whereas Egypt’s source of precious metal was the gold mines of the Red Sea coast. But the question why the non-monetary economy of the Egyptians should desire silver (which they did not themselves use) sufficiently to establish a special port of exchange, entails investigating the activities of the other large group of Greeks present in Egypt – the mercenaries.
The superiority of the hoplite soldier was widely recognized by eastern kings; they employed large numbers of Ionian Greeks and also Carians, who fought in the same style and are said to have been the first to have taken up mercenary service. Unfortunately in most cases direct evidence is lacking, and the existence of such forces has to be inferred, as with Lydia (p. 239). But Antimenidas, brother of Alkaios, spent his exile in the service of Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, and fought in the Palestinian campaign of 597, in which Jerusalem was captured:
You have come from the ends of the earth, ivory
hilted and bound with gold is your sword.
You fought alongside the Babylonians and won
great fame, and saved them from troubles
killing a warrior man
who lacked only a single span
from five royal cubits in height
(Alkaios Fragment 350 = 50D)
The height is that of a real Goliath, 8’ 4”.
It is only in Egypt that a detailed history of such a mercenary force can be reconstructed. Since the late thirteenth century and the successful repulse of the Peoples of the Sea (Mycenean refugees among them), Egypt had been in decline; in the eighth century she was first subject to the power of Nubia, and then disputed territory between Nubia and the Assyrians. The resurgence of national Egyptian power began when Psammetichus I, a Delta princeling, succeeded in reuniting Egypt; Herodotus’ narrative shows the debt of the new dynasty to Greek mercenaries from the start. Psammetichus was told by an oracle to enlist the help of ‘brazen men’; and when Ionian and Carian pirates dressed in armour descended on the coast in the style of Odysseus’ raids, he chose to employ them: with their help he conquered Egypt, and granted them two pieces of land on either side of the Pelusian branch of the Nile, known as ‘The Camps’; he also caused a group of Egyptians to be trained as interpreters. These settlements remained until Amasis transferred the troops of Memphis to be his personal bodyguard against the Egyptians; and they were the first ‘foreign-speakers’ (alloglōssoi) to settle in Egypt (Herodotus 2.152–4). The story shows the importance of mercenaries to the dynasty; from the start they were present in large numbers, and were perhaps supplied with the help of Gyges king of Lydia, anxious to weaken the Assyrians. After the conquest of Egypt they were settled on the eastern border as a protection against the Assyrians, much as later there was a Jewish mercenary settlement at Elephantinē guarding the border with Nubia. Connected with the Camps is the site of Tell Defenneh (probably ancient Daphnae), excavated in 1886. The town contained a large Egyptian building like that at Naucratis, fort or storehouse; Greeks were present there from the reign of Psammetichus to the Persian invasion, and this must be connected with the Greek mercenaries in the area – a supply town perhaps which serviced the military zone. The pottery is sufficiently different from that found at Naucratis to suggest that the mercenary and trading communities were kept separate.
The Saite dynasty continued to rely heavily on mercenaries. The second king, Necho (610–595), dedicated the armour in which he fought his Syrian campaign of 608 in the temple of Apollo at Branchidae (Miletus); at Carchemish, the scene of his defeat by the Babylonians, a razed house was found, containing Egyptian objects and scarabs from his reign, together with a Greek bronze shield. His successor Psammetichus II (595–89) made an expedition to Nubia in 591:700 miles from the sea by the second cataract at Abu Simbel, there is record of the presence of Greek (and also Carian) soldiers; a series of inscriptions is scratched on the left leg of a colossal statue of Rameses II:
When king Psammatichos came to Elephantinē, those who sailed with Psammatichos son of Theokles wrote this. They came beyond Kerkis as far as
the river allowed. Potasimto commanded the foreign-speakers (aloglōsoi), Amasis the Egyptians. He wrote us, Archon son of Amoibichos and Axe son of Nobody (or for those without humour, ‘Pelechos son of Eudamos’).
Then in six different hands are signatures, ‘Elesibios the Teian’, ‘Telephos wrote me the Ialysian’, ‘Python son of Amoibichos’, ‘[?] and Krithis wrote me’, ‘Pabis the Colophonian with Psammata’, ‘Anaxanor [?] the Ialysian when the king led the army first [?] Psammatichos’ (Greek Historical Inscriptions no. 7 = 29F). It is dangerous to construct much on the basis of a casual record left by seven soldiers; but in order to clarify certain problems, let us suppose these soldiers are typical, and draw tentative inferences. Firstly the inscriptions suggest a remarkable level of literacy and education among the hoplite class throughout the Greek world, for the men wrote in the different scripts of their home towns: their competence extended at least to signing their names, and these men will not have been the richest or best educated members of their cities. Secondly the organization of the Egyptian army: the word alloglōssoi appears in Greek only in this inscription and in the passage of Herodotus; it is clearly not a Greek coining (what Greek would describe himself as a ‘foreign-speaker’?), but the translation of an Egyptian technical term, the official designation of a Foreign Legion. This force was large and important, and commanded by a prominent Egyptian: for the sarcophagus of Potasimto has been found and he is called ‘General of the Greeks’ on Egyptian monuments. Thirdly the origins of the soldiers: the Greek officer under Potasimto is Psammetichus son of Theokles, whose Egyptian name shows that he is a second generation mercenary, son of one of the original force of Psammetichus I, possibly by a mixed marriage; although other Greeks were prohibited from marrying Egyptians, the continued existence centuries later of ‘Caromemphitai’ and ‘Hellenomemphitai’ at Memphis, where mercenaries had been stationed, shows that they had succeeded in establishing a mixed community. But the other soldiers of the inscriptions are probably recent arrivals; they write in local scripts, and either their names are not wholly Greek, or they even record their native cities. Some of them mention Egyptian slaves: later hoplites traditionally possessed, and were paid for, one slave attendant on campaign. The cities of origin, where known, are the smaller, less commercially active Ionian towns, and also those without colonies. One implication may be that mercenary service was a possible response to population pressure in the more backward and smaller cities, where such problems struck the individual rather than the community; but the variety of origins does raise the question of how such men were recruited.
The size of the problem emerges in the next reign: when Apries (589–70) faced a rebellion of his Egyptian forces under Amasis, he mustered 30,000 Carians and Ionians, and was only narrowly defeated. Even Amasis (570–26), who began as a nationalist leader, could not dispense with the mercenaries, and later used them as his bodyguard in preference to Egyptians; in the second half of his reign, when the menace from Persia became obvious, he was clearly trying to build up his Greek connections as much as possible. It was only with the Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525 that the Greek mercenary presence ceased to dominate the country.
Thirty thousand men is one of the largest mercenary armies ever created. The comparative rarity of early Greek finds in Egypt, outside the mercenary camps, shows that Greeks cannot have been settled on the land in any large numbers. The majority must have been recruited on a contract basis, and returned home after discharge. But the problems even of recruiting 1000 men a year (assuming a thirty-year term) are considerable; one of the reasons for the rich dedications and other honours lavished by the kings of Egypt and Lydia on the oracular shrines of Greece (especially Branchidae and Delphi), may well be that these were centres for recruiting drives during the great international festivals: the power and magnificence of oriental despotism was displayed there for all to see. And it is with such conditions of service that the significance of Naucratis becomes clear. The Pharaoh had established a trading cycle, in which corn was exchanged for silver, and the silver used to pay mercenaries, who then returned to recirculate their savings in the Aegean world; the existence of mercenaries required the existence of Naucratis, and neither could be dispensed with. So a dynasty which prided itself on recreating ancient Egyptian modes in art and culture was forced to distort the Egyptian economy and discard its inherent xenophobia, in order to maintain a huge foreign presence in Egypt.
The Greeks themselves were enormously impressed by Egypt, its great antiquity, its highly stratified society, its powerful religion and its massive monuments: they naїvely confused what was earlier than their own civilization with its possible origins. They attributed primacy to Egyptian gods over Greek ones, they ascribed to the Egyptians the origins of writing and most of the arts, and they asserted that many Greek thinkers had visited Egypt (for instance Homer, Lykourgos, Solon, Thales and Pythagoras), and taken their ideas from there. In fact, in contrast to the Greek debt to the east (of which the Greeks were almost totally unaware), archaic Greek culture owed very little to Egypt; the basic reason for this is of course that Egyptian influence was not exerted until Greek culture was already formed. It is in art that the influence was strongest. There are Egyptianizing tendencies in archaic pottery, both in individual motifs and in the style of polychrome decoration; one sixth century Athenian potter-painter was called Amasis. Contemporary furniture shows Egyptian influence, as does fresco painting. But the major impact was in religious architecture. Three related developments of the late seventh century can best be explained by reference to Egypt. The sudden appearance of stone temples and of the monumental Doric style suggests such contact, although most of the individual details of the style can be traced back to earlier wooden buildings or even Mycenean influence. The impact of Egypt is also clear in the new planning of religious complexes, for instance the sixth century avenue of lions on Delos with its sacred lake, or the avenue of seated figures at Miletus. Similarly in sculpture: the main function of the kouros is as religious furniture. That idea derived from the great Egyptian sanctuaries, together with the conception of sculpting in stone in life size or even larger. Some early kouroi even conform to the canon of proportions worked out by Egyptian artists, though the majority are expanded versions of earlier Greek small figurines, and the Greeks ultimately worked out their own canon. Although there is no copying in detail, the purity of line, the stance of one foot forward and fists clenched, the style of hair and of some of the facial details, recall contemporary archaising Egyptian statuary. It is noticeable that in each of these three areas of religious architecture there is the same curious phenomenon, of influence on the general conception combined with comparative lack of influence on the detailed execution. This has puzzled some archaeologists and led them to deny or underestimate the importance of Egypt; but it is surely due to the nature of the transmission. Temples, temple plans and monumental sculpture cannot be transported; they have to be seen on the spot, and then translated into Greek terms months or even years later; and in many cases the sculptors and architects will have been working from travellers’ descriptions rather than autopsy.
Closely connected with the international movement of materials and men is the invention of a new medium of exchange – coinage. Greek coinage possessed from the start certain characteristics which have had such an influence on western coinages until this century, that they have often though wrongly been thought to be necessary characteristics. It consisted of uniform weights of precious metal (usually silver) calibrated into a more or less extensive system of fractions; these were stamped on one side with the official city seal, and on the other with a punch mark, which sometimes also became a subsidiary design. This double stamping is the most important step in the creation of a coinage, since it provides at the same time an official guarantee that the weight and purity are standard, together with some protection against clipping or shaving edges or back. It is this relative guarantee which makes coinage the most easily negotia
ble form of money; its precious content means that it does not require any very complex institutional backing. As money, it facilitates a number of economic transactions; it acts as a medium of exchange, as a measure of value, and it is easily stored and accounted for; it is therefore a basic device in what is sometimes grandly called a money economy, as distinct from a barter economy. In fact, of course, no clear line can be drawn between premonetary and monetary economies: the Greeks already possessed various units of value for various types of transaction, of which the commonest were value expressed in terms of oxen or other livestock (used primarily in the transfer of property and marriage negotiations), tripods (an index of a man’s standing or timē in relation to other men or the gods) and iron nails. The last of these acted in a way closest to that of coinage. It derives from a time when iron was rare and therefore had a scarcity value apart from its usefulness; it was retained at Sparta into the historical period as the only permitted coinage; and at Athens and elsewhere the names used in the coinage system moved from weight (talent and mina) to the drachma (handful), comprised of six obols (or nails). The story of Rhodopis shows that iron spits continued to be dedicated as wealth at religious sanctuaries even after she was presumably actually paid for her services in silver coin; such dedications have been found at Perachora and the Heraion of Argos. Equally the advent of coinage does not imply the existence of a monetary economy, in the sense that transactions are usually carried out with the help of coinage; for until the invention of token coinage in base metal, the value of even the smallest practicable denomination was too high for everyday activities.
‘The Lydians were the first men known to us to mint and use gold and silver coinage’ (Herodotus 1 .94); Lydian coinage was in fact in electrum, a mixture of the two metals panned from the rivers of Anatolia. Foundation deposits, laid about 600 under the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, show the beginnings: they contain unstamped metal dumps of a standard size, dumps punched on one side, dumps punched and scratched on the reverse, and finally coins proper, stamped on both sides and marked with a lion device. It is reasonable to assume that this mixture of types could occur only in the generation of the invention of coinage, which can therefore be placed about 625–600. This date, established in 1951, has caused a major reworking of the whole chronology of early coinage. Since Greek coinage appears fully formed from the start, without the initial stages of the Lydian, it must be derivative. In Greek tradition the earliest Greek state held to have coinage was Aegina (now believed to begin about 595), closely followed by Athens (about 575), Corinth (about 570) and a large number of other states during the sixth century.