by Herodotus
33. This would make the date of Moeris about BC 1355; but it neither agrees with the age of Amun-m’-he III of the Labyrinth, nor of Thothmes III. The Moeris, however, from whom these dates are calculated, appears to have been Menophres, whose era was so remarkable, and was fixed as the Sothic period, BC 1322, which happened about 900 years before Herodotus’ visit, only falling short of that sum by 33 years. It is reasonable to suppose that by Moeris he would refer to that king who was so remarkable for his attention to the levels of the Nile, shown by his making the lake called after him.
34. In Upper Egypt showers only occur about five or six times in the year, but every fifteen or twenty years heavy rain falls there, which will account for the deep ravines cut in the valleys of the Theban hills, about the Tombs of the Kings; in lower Egypt rain is more frequent; and in Alexandria it is as abundant in winter as in the south of Europe.
35. Plutarch, Aelian, and Pliny mention this custom of treading in the grain ‘with pigs’ in Egypt; but no instance occurs of it in the tombs, though goats are sometimes so represented in the paintings. It is indeed more probable that pigs were turned in upon the land to eat up the weeds and roots.
36. The paintings show that oxen were commonly used to tread out the grain from the ear at harvest-time, and occasionally, though rarely, asses were so employed; but pigs not being sufficiently heavy for the purpose, are not likely to have been substituted for oxen.
37. There is no appearance of the name ‘Egypt’ on the ancient monuments, where the country is called ‘Chemi’. Egypt is said to have been called originally Aetia, and the Nile Aetos and Siris. Upper Egypt, or the Thebaïd, has even been confounded with, and called, Ethiopia.
38. This tower stood to the west of the Canopic mouth.
39. Though Egypt really belongs to the continent of Africa, the inhabitants were certainly of Asiatic origin.
40. That is, the course of the Nile.
41. The town of Marea stood near the lake to which it gave the name Mareotis. It was celebrated for the wine produced in its vicinity.
42. Though oxen were lawful food to the Egyptians, cows and heifers were forbidden to be killed, either for the altar or the table, being consecrated (not as Herodotus states, ch. 41, to Isis, but as Strabo says) to Athor, who was represented under the form of a spotted cow, and to whose temple at Atarbechis, ‘the city of Athor’, as Herodotus afterwards shows, the bodies of those that died were carried (ch. 41).
43. Syene and Elephantine were the real frontier of Egypt on the south; Egypt extending ‘from the tower (Migdol) of Syene’ to the sea (Ezek. xxix, 10).
44. Herodotus was surprised that the Nile should rise in the summer solstice and become low in winter. In the latitude of Memphis it begins to rise at the end of June, about the 10th of August it attains to the height requisite for cutting the canals and admitting it into the interior of the plain; and it is generally at its highest about the end of September. This makes from 92 to 100 days, as Herodotus states.
45. The cause of the inundation is the water that falls during the rainy season in Abyssinia; and the range of the tropical rains extends even as far north as latitude 17° 43’.
46. If this signifies that breezes are not generated by, and do not rise from, the Nile, it is true; but not if it means that a current of air does not blow up the valley.
47. The actual north-west winds blow from the Mediterranean during the inundation; but they are not the cause of the rise of the Nile, though they help in a small degree to impede its course northwards. For the navigation of the river they are invaluable.
48. It is possible to justify this statement, which at first sight seems untrue, by considering that the direction of the Etesian winds was north-westerly rather than north. This was natural, as they are caused by the rush of the air from the Mediterranean and Aegean, to fill the vacuum caused by the rarefaction of the atmosphere over the desert lands in the neighbourhood of the sea.
49. That the Nile flowed from the ocean, and that the ocean flowed all round the earth, were certainly opinions of Hecataeus. It is probable, therefore, that his account of the inundation is here intended.
50. This was the opinion of Anaxagoras, as well as of his pupil Euripides and others. Herodotus is wrong in supposing snow could not be found on mountains in the hot climate of Africa; perpetual snow is not confined to certain latitudes, and ancient and modern discoveries prove that it is found in the ranges south of Abyssinia.
51. That is, from Central Africa.
52. Herodotus was not aware of the rainy season in Sennár and the south-south-west of Abyssinia, nor did he know of the Abyssinian snow.
53. I have found nothing in any writer, ancient or modern, to confirm, or so much as to explain, this assertion. In some parts of England there is a saying, that ‘three days of white frost are sure to bring rain’.
54. Cranes and other wading birds are found in the winter in Upper Egypt, but far more in Ethiopia. Kites remain all the winter, and swallows also, though in small numbers, even at Thebes. The swallow was always the harbinger of spring, as in Greece and the rest of Europe.
55. The person to whom Herodotus alludes is Hecataeus. He mentions it also as an opinion of the Greeks of Pontus, that the ocean flowed round the whole Earth (iv, ch. 8).
56. The sources of the great eastern branch of the Nile have long been discovered. They were first visited by the Portuguese Jesuit, Father Lobo, and afterwards by Bruce. Herodotus affirms that of all the persons he had consulted, none pretended to give him any information about the sources, except a scribe of the sacred treasury of Athene at Saïs, who said it rose from a certain abyss beneath two pointed hills between Syene and Elephantine. This is an important passage in his narrative, as it involves the question of his having visited the Thebaïd.
57. This was one of the great problems of antiquity, as of later times.
58. The scribes had different offices and grades. The sacred scribes held a high priest in the priesthood; and the royal scribes were the king’s sons and military men of rank. There were also ordinary scribes or notaries, who were conveyancers, wrote letters on business, settled accounts, and performed different offices in the market.
59. This fact should have convinced Herodotus of the improbability of the story of the river flowing southwards into Ethiopia. That boats are obliged to be dragged by ropes in order to pass the rapids is true; and in performing this arduous duty great skill and agility are required.
60. The windings of the Maeander are perhaps at the present day still more remarkable than they were anciently, owing to the growth of the alluvial plain through which it flows.
61. The distances given by Herodotus are 4 days through the district of Dodecaschoenus to Tachompso Isle, then 40 days by land, then 12 days by boat to Meroë; altogether 56 days.
62. Amun and Osiris answered to Zeus and Dionysus, and both the Amun of Thebes and the ram-headed Nou (or Kneph) were worshipped in Ethiopia. But it is this last deity to whom Herodotus alludes.
63. The influence of the priests at Meroë, through the belief that they spoke the commands of the deity, is more fully shown by Strabo and Diodorus, who say it was their custom to send to the king, when it pleased them, and order him to put an end to himself, in obedience to the will of the oracle imparted to them; and to such a degree had they contrived to enslave the understanding of those princes by superstitious fears, that they were obeyed without opposition. At length a king called Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, dared to disobey their orders and having entered ‘the golden chapel’ with his soldiers, caused them to be put to death in his stead, and abolished the custom.
64. The descendants of the 240,000 deserters from Psammetichus lived, according to Herodotus, 4 months’ journey above Elephantine (ch. 31), from which Meroë stood half-way.
65. Diodorus says that the reason of the Egyptia
n troops deserting from Psammetichus was his having placed them in the left wing, while the right was given to the strangers in his army, which is not only more probable than the reason assigned by Herodotus, but is strongly confirmed by the discovery of an inscription in Nubia, written apparently by the Greeks who accompanied Psammetichus when in pursuit of the deserters.
66. It was always the custom of the Egyptians to have a garrison stationed, as Herodotus states, on the frontier.
67. This would be a strong argument, if required, against the notion of civilisation having come from the Ethiopians to Egypt, but the monuments prove beyond all question that the Ethiopians borrowed from Egypt their religion and their habits of civilisation.
68. This only applies to the white river, or western branch of the Nile.
69. This was in the modern Oasis of See-wah (Siwah), where remains of the temple are still seen. The oracle long continued in great repute.
70. See iv, 172 and 173.
71. Cape Spartel, near Tangier.
72. That is, the Cyrenaica, and the possessions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, or more properly the Poeni, on the north and west coasts.
73. Men of diminutive size really exist in Africa, but the Nasamones probably only knew of some by report. The pigmies are mentioned by Homer (Iliad iii, 6) and others, and often represented on Greek vases.
74. It seems not improbable that we have here a mention of the river Niger, and of the ancient representative of the modern city of Timbuctoo.
75. Herodotus does not intend any exact correspondency between the Nile and the Danube. He is only speaking of the comparative length of the two streams, and conjectures that they are equal in this respect.
76. The Cynesians are mentioned again in iv, 49 as Cynotes. They are a nation of whom nothing is known but their abode from very ancient times at the extreme south-west of Europe.
77. If the Danube in the time of Herodotus entered the Euxine at Istria it must have changed its course very greatly since he wrote.
78. Cilicia was divided into two portions, the eastern, or ‘Cilicia campestris’, and the western, or ‘Cilicia aspera’. Egypt does not really lie ‘opposite’ – that is, in the same longitude with – the latter region. It rather faces Pamphylia, but Herodotus gives all Africa, as far as the Lesser Syrtis, too easterly a position.
79. See i, 72.
80. This of course is neither true, nor near the truth; and it is difficult to make out in what sense Herodotus meant to assert it. Perhaps he attached no very distinct geographical meaning to the word ‘opposite’.
81. By this statement Herodotus prepares his readers for what he is about to relate; but the desire to tell of the wonders in which it differed from all other countries led Herodotus to indulge in his love of antithesis, so that in some cases he confines to one sex what was done by both (a singular instance being noted down by him as an invariable custom), and in others he has indulged in the marvellous at a sacrifice of truth. If, however, Herodotus had told us that the Egyptian women enjoyed greater liberty, confidence, and consideration than under the hareem system of the Greeks and Persians (Book i, ch. 136), he would have been fully justified, for the treatment of women in Egypt was far better than in Greece. In many cases where Herodotus tells improbable tales, they are on the authority of others, or mere hearsay reports, for which he at once declares himself not responsible, and he justly pleads that his history was not only a relation of facts, but the result of an ‘historia’, or ‘inquiry’, in which all he heard was inserted.
82. The market-place was originally outside the walls, generally in an open space, beneath what was afterwards the citadel or the acropolis.
83. The ancients generally seem to have believed the charge of effeminacy brought by Herodotus against the Egyptians.
84. That they sometimes ate in the street is not to be doubted; but this was only the poorer class, as in other parts of ancient and modern Europe, and could not be mentioned in contradistinction to a Greek custom. The Egyptians generally dined at a small round table, having one leg (similar to the monopodium), at which one or more persons sat, and they ate with their fingers like the Greeks and the modern Arabs. Several dishes were placed upon the table, and before eating it was their custom to say grace.
85. Though men held the priesthood in Egypt, as in other countries, women were not excluded from certain important duties in the temples, as Herodotus also shows (chs. 54 and 56); the queens made offerings with the kings; and the monuments, as well as Diodorus, show that an order of women, chosen from the principal families, were employed in the service of the gods.
86. Of the daughters being forced to support their parents instead of the sons, it is difficult to decide; but the improbability of the custom is glaring. It is the son on whom the duty fell of providing for the services in honour of his deceased parent; and the law of debt mentioned by Herodotus (in ch. 136) contradicts his assertion here.
87. The custom of shaving the head as well as beard was not confined to the priests in Egypt, it was general among all classes; and all the men wore wigs or caps fitting close to their heads, except some of the poorest class. The custom of allowing the hair to grow in mourning was not confined to Egypt.
88. Their living with animals not only contradicts a previous assertion of their eating in the streets, but is contrary to fact.
89. Their considering it a ‘disgrace’ to live on wheat and barley is equally extravagant.
90. See ch. 104.
91. The men having two dresses, and the women one, gives an erroneous impression. The usual dress of men was a long upper robe and a short kilt beneath it, the former being laid aside when at work; while women had only the long robe. When an extra upper garment was worn over these the men had three, the women two; so that, instead of limiting the latter to one, he should have given to men always one more garment than the women.
92. The ancient custom of fastening the braces and sheets of the sails to rings within the gunwale fully agrees with that still adopted in the Nile boats.
93. The Egyptians wrote from right to left in hieratic and demotic (or enchorial), which are the two modes of writing here mentioned. The Greeks also in old times wrote from right to left, like the Phoenicians, from whom they borrowed their alphabet. This seems the natural mode of writing; for though we have always been accustomed to write from left to right, we invariably use our pencil, in shading a drawing, from right to left, in spite of all our previous habit.
94. The extreme religious views of the Egyptians became at length a gross superstition, and were naturally a subject for ridicule and contempt.
95. This, he says, is the universal custom without exception; but we not only know that Joseph had a silver drinking-cup (Gen. xliv, 2 and 5), but the sculptures show the wealthy Egyptians used glass, porcelain, and gold, sometimes inlaid with a coloured composition resembling enamel, or with precious stones. That persons who could not afford cups of more costly materials should have been contented with those of bronze is very probable.
96. Their attention to cleanliness was very remarkable, as is shown by their shaving the head and beard, and removing the hair from the whole body by their frequent ablutions, and by the strict rules instituted to ensure it.
97. The dress of the priests consisted, as Herodotus states, of linen (ch. 81); but he does not say they were confined (as some have supposed) to a single robe; and whether walking abroad or officiating in the temple, they were permitted to have more than one garment. The high priest styled Sem always wore a leopard-skin placed over the linen dress as his costume of office. The fine texture of the Egyptian linen is fully proved by its transparency, as represented in the paintings, and by the statements of ancient writers sacred (Gen. xli, 42; and 2 Chron. i, 16) as well as profane.
98. Their sandals were made of the papyrus, an inferior quality being of matted palm-lea
ves; and they either slept on a simple skin stretched on the ground, or on a wicker bed, made of palm-branches.
99. The greatest of these was the paramount influence they exercised over the spiritual, and consequently over the temporal, concerns of the whole community, which was secured to them through their superior knowledge, by the dependence of all classes on them for the instruction they chose to impart, and by their exclusive right of possessing all the secrets of religion which were thought to place them far above the rest of mankind. Nor did their power over an individual cease with his life; it would even reach him after death; and their veto could prevent his being buried in his tomb, and consign his name to lasting infamy.
100. They were exempt from taxes, and were provided with a daily allowance of meat, corn, and wine, and when Pharaoh, by the advice of Joseph, took all the land of the Egyptians in lieu of corn (Gen. xlvii, 20 and 22), the land of the priests was exempt, and the tax of the fifth part of the produce was not levied upon it.
101. Herodotus is quite right in saying they were allowed to drink wine, and the assertion of Plutarch that the kings (who were also of the priestly caste) were not permitted to drink it before the reign of Psammetichus is contradicted by the authority of the Bible (Gen. xl, 10 and 13) and the sculptures.
102. Though fish were so generally eaten by the rest of the Egyptians, they were forbidden to the priests. The principal food of the priests was beef and goose, and the gazelle, ibex, oryx, and wild-fowl were not forbidden; but they ‘abstained from most sorts of pulse, from mutton, and swine’s flesh, and in their more solemn purifications they even excluded salt from their meals’. Garlic, leeks, onions, lentils, peas, and above all beans, are said to have been excluded from the tables of the priests.