Hecataeus and the Egyptian Priests in Herodotus, Book 2

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Memoirs, V18, Part 2

William Arthur Heidel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429619342
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1918. While it requires little thought to recognize in Hecatacus a figure of importance in his day, an appraisal in detail of his contribution to science and history is a matter of considerable difficulty. This book includes a general survey of him as well as chapters on Hecataeus as Historian of Egypt, and the objections to this view.

II. GENERAL SURVEY

The literatures of Greece and Rome have much to say of the Egyptian priests and their wisdom. Egyptologists and historians today tend to disregard or even to disparage that tradition, proposing to base their accounts solely on the documents which have become available through the decipherment of the Egyptian records; but we are still far from having a tabula rasa; because a certain prejudice,¹ long in the making, still lingers in the minds even of those who regard themselves as emancipated from its influence, and among the general public the impression left by miscellaneous reading can hardly be effaced.

It is, indeed, a matter for no small wonder that no one has hitherto canvassed the questions relating to the origin and character of this tradition as a whole, for the inquiry is in itself inviting and would certainly lead to conclusions of considerable interest to every student of human thought: whether or not it shed light on Egypt itself, it must reveal the reaction of the young civilizations of Greece and Rome to the immemorial culture of the land of the Nile. The field, however, is so large that, though I have devoted years to the study, I am still reluctant to essay the task, and shall, at least for the present, limit myself to a small part of the whole.

For practical purposes, one may say that the tradition begins with Herodotus, who, in his Second Book, gives an account of Egypt based in great part, as he professes, on the authority of the priests. Every serious student of his account is obliged to assume an attitude toward his professions; but the results thus far attained are not altogether satisfactory, partly because the integrity of the “Father of History” is thought to be involved, if one questions what he says. How curiously this prejudice affects the conclusions of certain writers will be seen as we proceed. That it is literally a prejucide is obvious, because it prejudges the questions what, in the time of Herodotus, constituted “history” and how one cited one’s authorities.

Our task is plainly to examine the data one by one and, if possible, to draw the reasonable conclusion from our survey. How the reputation of Herodotus, if it should thereby be affected, may fare in the process, is not our concern; but really, assuming that anything matters to him now, it can little concern Herodotus himself, whose good name rests essentially on his engaging style and on his story of the Persian Wars, whereas his Second Book, which alone we have here to consider, is a distinct, and practically separable, monograph interlarded in his narrative.

II. 1: Herodotus states that upon the death of Cyrus his son Cambyses ascended the throne. For reasons subsequently stated (III. 1), he set about making an expedition against Egypt, taking with him in his army certain Greeks who were his subjects, Aeolians and Ionians (II. 1; III. 1). Why this fact is mentioned is not clear, because in the further account of the expedition the Greeks play no rôle of whatever kind. It may be that the fact is emphasized only because Herodotus was a Greek and was writing for Greeks, who would be interested in the circumstance; or, again, he may have been led to make the remark because, directly or indirectly, he owed much of his information to some of the Greeks who took part in the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. About the latter fact there can be no doubt, though we may not be in position to specify either his sources or their character. The story of the embassy sent to spy out the land of the Long-lived Ethiopians (III. 20 ff.) is so unmistakably Greek in conception and detail that one is compelled to assume a written account, almost certainly by an Ionian under the influence of Milesian speculation. All this, to be sure, has nothing to do with the Egyptian priests, who are not mentioned in this connection; but as we proceed the question may have to be raised whether one of the authonties used by Herodotus in his account of Egypt, for which he appeals to the priests, may not have been one of the Ionians who accompanied Cambyses.

II. 2: The first appeal to the priests, occurring immediately after the brief introductory paragraph just mentioned, is in fact one of the most extraordinary, and deserves to be quoted and considered at length. “The Egyptians before the reign of Psammetichus regarded themselves as the oldest people of all mankind; but since that king, upon ascending the throne, conceived the desire to know who were the oldest people, they believe that the Phrygians are older than themselves, but that they themselves are older than all others. Now Psammetichus, not being able by inquiry to discover any means to that end, contrived the following scheme. He took two newborn children at random and gave them to a herdsman to bring them up among his flocks, after the following manner,—commanding that no one should utter any word in their presence, but that they should he by themselves in a lonely hut. The herdsman was to lead in goats at proper times, give the children their fill of milk, and do all else that was needful; this Psammetichus did and enjoined, desiring to hear what word the children would first utter, once they passed beyond unintelligible babbling. And so it happened. For, after the herdsman had for two years observed these instructions, as he opened the door and entered, both the children ran to him with outstretched hands and cried “Bekos.” At first the herdsman, on hearing this, held his tongue; but when, as he came often and cared for the children, he observed that that word was frequently spoken, he made it known to his master, and at his bidding brought the children into the king’s presence. And now that he himself had heard, Psammetichus set about inquiring what people used the word “bekos” to signify something,² and he learned that the Phrygians so called bread. Thus and upon such evidence the Egyptians conceded that the Phrygians were older than they. This version of the story I heard from the priests of Hephaestus at Memphis. Certain Greeks, among other foolish tales, relate that Psammetichus cut out women’s tongues and had the children brought up among them.”

A consideration of this story will convince anyone that we- are dealing with a most extraordinary situation. It will be conceded that the question regarding the age of the Egyptian people was natural and appropriate to the beginning of a monograph on the land of the Nile. Aristotle³ illustrates the secular shift of population consequent on geological changes by reference to the Nile Valley, and the almost universal opinion among the ancients held Egypt to be the oldest land and the cradle of the race.⁴ That Herodotus should relate the story of the experiment of Psammetichus and the inference drawn from it without challenging it is surprising enough; for his subsequent account is clearly based on the conviction that the civilization of Egypt was not only absolutely, but relatively also, extraordinarily ancient, whereas he elsewhere⁵ represents the Phrygians as new-comers in Asia Minor and offers no hint of a notable civilization among them, seeing that they had formerly been neighbors of the Macedonians and that the Armenians are said to have been colonists of theirs. Even more surprising, when one contemplates the story in detail, is the fact that Herodotus asserts that he had it on the authority of the priests of Hephaestus at Memphis.

The tale will reward a closer examination both for what it expressly states and for what it implies. And first, we note that the procedure of Psammetichus is an experiment conducted in due form, according to specifications drawn up by the king, who in the end checks the report of his herdsman-assistant by himself listening to the cries of the children, when at his command they are brought before him. The fact that we here have an experiment attributed to Psammetichus, King of Egypt, is in itself interesting; it becomes doubly interesting when we note that another experiment is referred to him.

This story also calls for consideration at this point, though we shall want to recur to it later on. “Regarding the sources of the Nile,” says Herodotus,⁶ “none of the Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks with whom I conversed professed to have knowledge, except the secretary of the treasury of Athena in the Egyptian city of Sais; and he seemed to me to be jesting when he claimed to have exact knowledge. What he said was this,—that between the city of Syene in the Thebaid and Elephantine there are two mountains rising to sharp peaks,⁷ called respectively Crophi and Mophi, and that the springs of the Nile, which are bottomless, flow from between these mountains, half the water flowing northward to Egypt, half southward to Ethiopia.⁸ That the springs are bottomless, he said, Psammetichus, King of Egypt, showed by experiment; for though he let down a rope of many thousand fathoms’ length he could not reach bottom.”

For the moment we are interested chiefly in two points connected with this account; first, that Psammetichus again appears as an experimenter, and second, that Herodotus, though not appealing to the “priests,” refers the story to an official of an Egyptian temple. Incidentally, one remarks that Herodotus refuses to take the story seriously, regarding it as a jest, and proceeds to explain that Psammetichus might have been mistaken in his inference that the springs were bottomless, because the eddies and the upward rush of the waters might have prevented the plumb-line from reaching bottom. If we think of the habit of experimenting as more in keeping with the mentality of Greeks than of Egyptians, we may be reminded that Herodotus tells us that it was in the reign of Psammetichus that Ionians and Carians first came to Egypt and helped to establish that king on the throne. From his time the Greeks have exact knowledge of the history of Egypt.⁹ Thus one may suppose either that Psammetichus was infected with the Greek habit of experimenting, or that the Greeks in Egypt, owing their earliest settlements to him, attributed to him habits of mind rather characteristic of themselves. At all events the use of the sounding-line was sufficiently familiar to the Greeks.¹⁰

But, to return to the linguistic experiment, the implications of the tale of Herodotus are even more interesting than the fact of the experiment itself. Seeing that the Egyptians are said to have formerly regarded themselves as the most ancient people in the world, and that the experiment led to the inference that the Phrygians were older, there is obviously implied a theory touching the nature of language and its relation to the history¹¹ and evolution of the race. So far as I have observed, this point has been quite overlooked. The injunction of the king that none should speak a word in the hearing of the children is a clear recognition that in the ordinary course of things speech is learned by imitation and is therefore, like other social habits, the result of convention (νόμψ);¹² but the elimination of this possibility just as clearly implies that speech may be prompted solely by nature or instinct (ϕύσει), which would naturally be regarded as original. The inference drawn from the first word spoken by the isolated children confirms this; for when it was discovered that the word “bekos” meant “bread” m the Phrygian tongue, the conclusion was drawn that the Phrygians were not only older than the Egyptians, but were in fact the oldest (original) race. These notions were, as we know, commonplaces among the Greeks of the late Fifth Century, but we do not know when they originated. It is therefore a matter of some consequence to determine, if possible, the source and age of this reported experiment.

This tale must not, however, be dismissed without further scrutiny. We have noted that in the account of the experiment of Psammetichus touching the source of the Nile Herodotus fancied that his informant was jesting, presumably because it was easy to see that the inference drawn from the experiment might be mistaken, as no account was taken of the action of the turbulent currents in the rapids at Aswân. One naturally asks whether his authority for the linguistic experiment of Psammetichus may not for similar reasons be suspected of indulging in a jest. How can one doubt it? Herodotus, to be sure, is quite innocent, and gives no hint that he suspected his source, though he had ample grounds for doing so.

We have no means of knowing how accurately he reproduced his source; but, taking the tale as it stands, one readily discovers the mocking tone of the story. That the experiment as a whole is not to be taken seriously is, as we have seen, quite obvious, because it does not comport either with the general view, which Herodotus shares, of the antiquity of Egypt and its civilization, or with the known history of the Phrygians. Further, if Psammetichus had inquired regarding the meaning of “bekos” from his natural counsellors, the priests, it is certain that they could have given him no information pointing to Phrygia, since, as Tacitus says,¹³ even in his day the Egyptian priests had little knowledge of foreign parts. Psammetichus might, indeed, have consulted his Ionian and Carian mercenaries, and they could have told him that in Ionia and in Crete “bekos” meant “bread”; but were they sufficiently learned to inform him that the word was properly Phrygian? Besides, had Psammetichus really conducted his experiment with the necessary precautions? He had excluded human speech, but he had admitted goats to the fold where the children were isolated; and would not the goats bleat in their presence? Here, it would seem, is the real point of the “bekos”-story, though by a farcical turn the word is referred to the Phrygians.

Various ancient¹⁴ and modern writers have noted the probability that “bekos” was intended to remind one of the bleating of the goats, although the convenient fact that the Phrygian-Ionian word “bekos” meant “bread,” for which the children might properly be calling and stretching out their hands, offered a temptation too great for a wit to resist. But, granting that “bekos” alluded to the bleating of the goats, another conclusion seems to follow. The experiment was to determine the original, or natural language. What could better prove that one had found what was natural (ϕύσει) than the fact that it agreed with the conduct of the lower animals? The appeal to animals to show what was natural and right was, as is well known, a commonplace at the close of the Fifth Century; but it was of course older, as witness Herodotus, II. 64. Again, we must observe, it becomes a matter of some importance for the history of G...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• I. Introduction
• II. General Survey
• III. Summary of the Principal Data
• IV. Hecataeus as Historian of Egypt
• V. Objections to this View
• VI. The List of Kings from Moeris to Sethos and the Chronological Errors of Herodotus
• VII. Fiction and Citation in Ancient History