An Account of Egypt | Page 3

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Etext prepared by Dagny, [email protected] and John Bickers,
[email protected]

AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPT By Herodotus

Translated By G. C. Macaulay

NOTE
HERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast of
Asia Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we
know almost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to
collect the material for his writings, and that he finally settled down at
Thurii, in southern Italy, where his great work was composed. He died
in 424 B. C.
The subject of the history of Herodotus is the struggle between the
Greeks and the barbarians, which he brings down to the battle of
Mycale in 479 B. C. The work, as we have it, is divided into nine books,
named after the nine Muses, but this division is probably due to the
Alexandrine grammarians. His information he gathered mainly from
oral sources, as he traveled through Asia Minor, down into Egypt,
round the Black Sea, and into various parts of Greece and the
neighboring countries. The chronological narrative halts from time to
time to give opportunity for descriptions of the country, the people, and
their customs and previous history; and the political account is
constantly varied by rare tales and wonders.
Among these descriptions of countries the most fascinating to the
modern, as it was to the ancient, reader is his account of the marvels of
the land of Egypt. From the priests at Memphis, Heliopolis, and the
Egyptian Thebes he learned what he reports of the size of the country,
the wonders of the Nile, the ceremonies of their religion, the sacredness

of their animals. He tells also of the strange ways of the crocodile and
of that marvelous bird, the Phoenix; of dress and funerals and
embalming; of the eating of lotos and papyrus; of the pyramids and the
great labyrinth; of their kings and queens and courtesans.
Yet Herodotus is not a mere teller of strange tales. However credulous
he may appear to a modern judgment, he takes care to keep separate
what he knows by his own observation from what he has merely
inferred and from what he has been told. He is candid about
acknowledging