by Herodotus
184. These were in the form of Osiris, and not only those of the best kind, but all the mummies were put up in the same position, representing the deceased as a figure of Osiris, those only excepted which were of the very poor people, and which were merely wrapped up in mats, or some other common covering. Even the small earthenware and other figures of the dead were in the same form of that deity, whose name Herodotus, as usual, had scruples about mentioning, from having been admitted to a participation of the secrets of the lesser Mysteries.
185. The mummies afford ample evidence of the brain having been extracted through the nostrils; and the ‘drugs’ were employed to clear out what the instrument could not touch.
186. Ethiopian stone either is black flint, or an Ethiopian agate, the use of which was the remnant of a very primitive custom.
187. The ‘spicery, and balm, and myrrh’ carried by the Ishmaelites (or Arabs) to Egypt were principally for the embalmers, who were doubtless supplied regularly with them. (Gen. xxxvii, 25.) Other caravans, like the Midianite merchantmen (Gen. xxxvii, 28), visited Egypt for trade; and ‘the spice merchants’ are noticed (I Kings x, 15) in Solomon’s time.
188. i.e. subcarbonate of soda, which abounds at the natron lakes in the Lybian desert.
189. Not cotton. The microscope has decided (what no one ever doubted in Egypt) that the mummy-cloths are linen.
190. Second-class mummies without any incision are found in the tombs; but the opening in the side was made in many of them, and occasionally even in those of an inferior quality; so that it was not exclusively confined to mummies of the first class. There were, in fact, many gradations in each class.
191. The law which obliged the people to embalm the body of any one found dead, and to bury it in the most expensive manner, was a police, as well as a sanatory, regulation.
192. Khem, the god of Chemmis, or Khemmo, being supposed to answer to Pan, this city was called Panopolis by the Greeks and Romans.
193. The ‘neighbouring Neapolis’ is at least ninety miles further up the river and sixty in a direct line. It has been succeeded by the modern Keneh, a name taken from the Greek kaine polis, the ‘Newtown’ of those days.
194. The court planted with trees seems to be the ‘grove’ mentioned in the Bible.
195. There is no instance on the monuments of Egypt of a man having more than one wife at a time.
196. This nymphaea lotus grows in ponds and small channels in the Delta during the inundation, which are dry during the rest of the year; but it is not found in the Nile itself. It is nearly the same as our white water-lily. The lotus flower was always presented to guests at an Egyptian party and garlands were put round their heads and necks.
197. The use of the pith of its triangular stalk for paper made it a very valuable plant, and the right of growing the best quality, and of selling the papyrus made from it, belonged to the Government.
198. Aristotle shows the absurdity of this statement.
199. The male fish deposits the milt after the female has deposited the spawn and thus renders it prolific. The swallowing of the spawn is simply the act of any hungry fish, male or female, who happens to find it. The bruised heads are a fable.
200. The sudden appearance of the young fish in the ponds was simply owing to these being supplied by the canals from the river, or by its overflowing banks.
201. The intimate acquaintance of Herodotus with the inhabitants of the marsh-region is probably owing to the important position occupied by that region in the revolt of Inaros, which the Athenians, whom Herodotus probably accompanied, went to assist.
202. This was the ricinus communis, the castor-oil plant.
203. A similar practice is found in the valley of the Indus. The custom of sleeping on the flat roofs of their houses is still common in Egypt.
204. A similar practice prevails to this day on the Euphrates.
205. This still happens in those years when the inundation is very high.
206. Manetho, Eratosthenes, and other writers, agree with Herodotus that Mên or Menes (the Mna, or Menai, of the monuments) was the first Egyptian king.
207. Neither Menes nor his immediate successors have left any monuments.
208. That is, from Menes to Moeris.
209. The intermarriages of the Egyptian and Ethiopian royal families may be inferred from the sculptures.
210. The fact of Nitocris having been an early Egyptian queen is proved in her name, Neitakri, occurring in the Turin Papyrus.
211. Their obscurity was owing to Egypt being part of the time under the dominion of the Shepherds, who, finding Egypt divided into several kingdoms, or principalities, invaded the country, and succeeded at length in dispossessing the Memphite kings of their territories.
212. See chs. 13 and 100.
213. See ch. 149.
214. The original Sesostris was the first king of the 12th dynasty, Osirtasen I, who was the first great Egyptian conqueror; but when Osirei or Sethi (Sethos) and his son Rameses II surpassed the exploits of their predecessor, the name of Sesostris became confounded with Sethos, and the conquests of that king, and his still greater son, were ascribed to the original Sesostris.
215. These memorials, which belong to Rameses II, are found in Syria, on the rocks above the mouth of the Lycus (now Nahr el Kelb).
216. Herodotus also alludes in ch. 57 to the black colour of the Egyptians; but not only do the paintings pointedly distinguish the Egyptians from the blacks of Africa, and even from the copper-coloured Ethiopians, both of whom are shown to have been of the same hue as their descendants: but the mummies prove that the Egyptians were neither black nor woolly-haired, and the formation of the head at once decides that they are of Asiatic, and not of African, origin. Egypt was called Chemi, ‘black’, from the colour of the rich soil, not from that of the people.
217. Herodotus apparently alludes to the Jews.
218. The Syrians here intended are undoubtedly the Cappadocians.
219. Circumcision was not practised by the Philistines (I Sam. xiv, 6; xvii, 26; xviii, 27; 2 Sam. i, 20; I Chron. x, 4), nor by the generality of the Phoenicians.
220. Colchis was famous for its linen.
221. A figure, which seems certainly to be one of the two here mentioned by Herodotus, has been discovered at Ninfi, on what appears to have been the ancient road from Sardis to Smyrna.
222. Herodotus shows his discrimination in rejecting the notion of his being Memnon, which had already become prevalent among the Greeks, who saw Memnon everywhere in Egypt merely because he was mentioned in Homer. A similar error is made at the present day in expecting to find a reference to Jewish history on the monuments, though it is obviously not the custom of any people to record their misfortunes to posterity in painting or sculpture.
223. It was the custom of the Egyptian kings to bring their prisoners to Egypt, and to employ them in public works, as the sculptures abundantly prove, and as Herodotus states (ch. 108). The Jews were employed in the same way: for though at first they obtained grazing-lands for their cattle in the land of Goshen (Gen. xlvi, 34), or the Bucolia, where they tended the king’s herds (Gen. xlvii, 6 and 27), they were afterwards forced to perform various services, like ordinary prisoners of war.
224. This at once shows that the conqueror here mentioned is not the early Sesostris of the 12th dynasty, but the great king of the 19th dynasty.
225. It is very possible that the number of canals may have increased in the time of Rameses II: and this, like the rest of Herodotus’ account, shows that this king is the Sesostris whose actions he is describing.
226. The water filtrates through the alluvial soil to the inland wells, where it is sweet, though sometimes hard.
227. The gnomon was of course part of every dial. Herodotus, however, is correct in making a difference between the gnomon and the polos
. The former, called also stoikheion, was a perpendicular rod, whose shadow indicated noon, and also by its length a particular part of the day, being longest at sunrise and sunset. The polos was an improvement, and a real dial, on which the division of the day was set off by lines, and indicated by the shadow of its gnomon.
228. This cannot apply to any one Egyptian king in particular, as many ruled in Ethiopia; and though Osirtasen I (the original Sesostris) may have been the first, the monuments show that his successors of the 12th dynasty, and others, ruled and erected buildings in Ethiopia. The Egyptians evidently overran all Ethiopia, and part of the interior of Africa, in the time of the 18th and 19th dynasties, and had long before conquered Negro tribes.
229. The name of Darius occurs in the sculptures. He seems to have treated the Egyptians with far more uniform lenity than the other Persian kings.
230. This is one of the Greek ciceroni tales. A Greek poet might make a graceful story of Achilles and a Trojan stream, but the prosaic Egyptians would never represent one of their kings performing a feat so opposed to his habits, and to all their religious notions. The story about the women is equally un-Egyptian; but the mention of a remedy which is still used in Egypt for ophthalmia, shows that some simple fact has been converted into a wholly improbable tale.
231. They were therefore most probably at Heliopolis. The height of 100 cubits, at least 150 feet, far exceeds that of any found in Egypt, the highest being less than 100 feet. The mode of raising an obelisk seems to have been by tilting it from an inclined plane into a pit, at the bottom of which the pedestal was placed to receive it, a wheel or roller of wood being fastened on each side to the end of the obelisk, which enabled it to run down the wall opposite the inclined plane to its proper position. During this operation it was dragged by ropes up the inclined plane, and then gradually lowered into the pit as soon as it had been tilted.
232. This was evidently Astarte, the Aphrodite of the Phoenicians and Syrians.
233. The eagerness of the Greeks to ‘inquire’ after events mentioned by Homer, and the readiness of the Egyptians to take advantage of it, are shown in this story related to Herodotus. The fact of Homer having believed that Helen went to Egypt, only proves that the story was not invented in Herodotus’ time but was current long before.
234. This branch of the Nile entered the sea a little to the east of the town of Canopus, close to Heracleum.
235. Showing they were dedicated to the service of the deity. To set a mark on any one as a protection was a very ancient custom. Cf. Gen. iv, 15.
236. Herodotus very properly ranks the Sidonians before the Tyrians (viii, 67), and Isaiah calls Tyre daughter of Sidon (xxiii, 12), having been founded by the Sidonians. Sidon is in Genesis (x, 19), but not Tyre; and Homer only mentions Sidon and not Tyre, as Strabo observes. It may be ‘doubtful which was the metropolis of Phoenicia,’ in later times; Sidon, however, appears to be the older city.
237. Iliad vi, 290–2.
238. Odyssey iv, 227-230.
239. Ibid. iv, 351–2
240. The criticism here is better than the argument. There can be no doubt that Homer was not the author of the rambling epic called the Cypria.
241. This story recalls the ‘Sanguine placastis ventos, et virgine caesa’, Virgil, Aeneid ii, 116; and Herodotus actually records human sacrifices in Achaia, or Phthiotis (vii, 197). Some have attributed human sacrifices to the Egyptians; and Virgil says ‘Quis illaudati nescit Busiridis aras?’ (Georgics iii, 5); but it must be quite evident that such a custom was inconsistent with the habits of the civilised Egyptians, and Herodotus has disproved the probability of human sacrifices in Egypt by his judicious remarks in ch. 45.
242. This is evidently the name of a Rameses, and not of a king of an early dynasty.
243. This is a curious mistake for any one to make who had been in Egypt, since the soldiers had no beards, and it was the custom of all classes to shave. This we know from ancient authors, and, above all, from the sculptures where the only persons who have beards are foreigners. Herodotus even allows that the Egyptians shaved their heads and beards (ch. 36; cf. Gen. xli, 4). Joseph, when sent for from prison by Pharaoh, ‘shaved himself and changed his raiment’. Herodotus could not have learnt this story from the Egyptians, and it is evidently from a Greek source
244. This in a country where social ties were so much regarded, and where the distinction of royal and noble classes was more rigidly maintained than in the most exclusive community of modern Europe, shows that the story was of foreign origin.
245. Hades was called in Egyptian Ament or Amenti, over which Osiris presided as judge of the dead.
246. This was the great doctrine of the Egyptians, and their belief in it is everywhere proclaimed in the paintings of the tombs. But the souls of wicked men alone appear to have suffered the disgrace of entering the body of an animal, when, ‘weighed in the balance’ before the tribunal of Osiris, they were pronounced unworthy to enter the abode of the blessed.
247. [As a matter of fact we can find no trace in Egyptian religion of this doctrine of ‘metempsychosis’ – at least in the form in which Herodotus gives it – E.H.B.]
248. Pythagoras is supposed to be included among the later writers. Herodotus with more judgment and fairness, and on better information, than some modern writers allows that the Greeks borrowed their early lessons of philosophy and science from Egypt.
249. The western hills being specially appropriated to tombs in all the places where pyramids were built will account for these monuments being on that side of the Nile. The abode of the dead was supposed to be the west, the land of darkness where the sun ended his course.
250. The remains of two causeways still exist – the northern one, which is the largest, corresponding with the Great Pyramid, as the other does with the third.
251. This was levelling the top of the hill to form a platform. A piece of rock was also left in the centre as a nucleus on which the pyramid was built.
252. There is no trace of a canal, nor is there any probability of its having existed.
253. The dimensions of the Great Pyramid were – each face, 756 feet, now reduced to 732 feet; original height when entire, 480 feet 9 inches, now 460 feet, angles at the base, 51° 50’, angle at the apex, 76° 20’, it covered an area of 571,536 square feet, now 535,824 square feet. Herodotus’ measurement of eight plethra, or 800 feet, for each face, is not very far from the truth as a round number; but the height, which he says was the same, is far from correct.
254. The size of the stones varies. Herodotus alludes to those of the outer surface, which are now gone.
255. These steps, or successive stages, had their faces nearly perpendicular, or at an angle of about 75°, and the triangular space, formed by each projecting considerably beyond the one immediately above it, was afterwards filled in, thus completing the general form of the pyramid. It is a curious question if the Egyptians brought with them the idea of the pyramid, or sepulchral mound, when they migrated into the valley of the Nile, and if it originated in the same idea as the tower, built also in stages, of Assyria, and the pagoda of India.
256. The notion of Diodorus that machines were not yet invented is sufficiently disproved by common sense and by the assertion of Herodotus. The position of these pyramids is very remarkable in being placed so exactly facing the four cardinal points that the variation of the compass may be ascertained from them. This accuracy would imply some astronomical knowledge and careful observations at that time.
257. This must have been in hieroglyphics, the monumental character. The outer stones being gone, it is impossible to verify, or disprove, the assertion of Herodotus.
258. Iron was known in Egypt at a very early time.
259. The story of the daughter of Cheops is on a par with that of the daughter of Rhampsinitus; and we may be certain that Herodotus never received it from �
��the priests’, whose language he did not understand, but from some of the Greek ‘interpreters’, by whom he was so often misled.
260. The measurements of the Second Pyramid are: present base, 690 feet; former base (according to Colonel Howard Vyse), 707 feet 9 inches; present perpendicular height (calculating the angle 52° 20’), 446 feet 9 inches; former height, 454 feet 3 inches. Herodotus supposes it was 40 feet less in height than the Great Pyramid, but the real difference was only 24 feet 6 inches. It is singular that Herodotus takes no notice of the sphinx, which was made at least as early as the eighteenth dynasty, as it bears the name of Thothmes IV.
261. This was red granite of Syene; and Herodotus appears to be correct in saying that the lower tier was of that stone, or at least the casing, which was all that he could see; and the numbers of fragments of granite lying about this pyramid show that it has been partly faced with it. The casing which remains on the upper part is of the limestone of the eastern hills. All the pyramids were opened by the Arab caliphs in the hopes of finding treasure.
262. This can have no connection with the invasion, or the memory, of the Shepherd-kings, at least as founders of the pyramids, for those monuments were raised long before the rule of the Shepherd-kings in Egypt. In the mind of the Egyptians two periods of oppression may have gradually come to be confounded, and they may have ascribed to the tyranny of the Shepherd-kings what in reality belonged to a far earlier time of misrule.
263. This was Osiris.
264. Charaxus, the brother of Sappho, traded in wine from Lesbos, which he was in the habit of taking to Naucratis, the entrepot of all Greek merchandise.
265. It is probable that he was Shishak, of the 22nd dynasty.
266. The lofty pyramidal towers forming the façades of the courts, or vestibules, of the temple.