Stephanie West

Quintus:  I see, my brother, that you think that different rules must be observed in history

And in poetry.

Marcus:  Of course, since in the one everything is judged by reference to the truth, in the

Other generally by the pleasure it gives; and yet both in Herodotus the father of history and in Theopompus there are innumerable tales.

(Cic. Leg. 1.5)

Herodotus’ survey of Egyptian history before the coming of the Greeks (2.99-142) is a neglected area, understandably. It is hard to dispute Macan’s assessment (Macan 1895: xiv): ‘‘the grotesque and laughable substitutes for history connected with the memory of ‘Rhamsinitos’ and the Pharaohs of the three empires.’’ We do not here depend on Herodotus, as we so often must, for a narrative framework into which may be fitted our other evidence for the period or region concerned, and the historical value of these chapters lies rather in what they reveal about fifth-century Greek views of Egypt - not just Herodotus’ own views, but what he judged his audience would find credible and interesting.

Herodotus’ authorial presence is unusually prominent in his account of Egypt; we have frequent references to what he himself saw or heard (Dewald 1987; Marincola 1987). He starts his account of Egyptian history with a careful statement of his sources (2.99.1): ‘‘Up to this point my own observation, opinion, and inquiry are the basis of my report; but from now on I am going to relate Egyptian accounts as I heard them; something also will be added from my own observation.’’ Nearly fifty chapters later, as he passes to the events which led to regular Greek contact, he repeats his claim that the narrative hitherto comes from native sources (147.1). We are given to understand that his account derives from priestly traditions; the phrase ‘‘the priests said’’ repeatedly indicates that this ‘‘history’’ is a continuous and unitary account, and recurrent references to Memphis and its monuments, and in particular to the temple of Hephaestus (i. e., Ptah: Herodotus does not actually mention the Egyptian name, surprisingly, since we now know that it was given by Hecataeus: FGrHist 1 F 327bis), imply that, unless otherwise stated, this narrative is to be understood as representing, specifically, the traditions of the Memphite clergy (2.99.2, 100.1,

101.1,  102.2, 107.1, 109.1, 111.1, 112.1, 113.1, 116.1, 118.1, 120.1, 121.1,

122.1,  124.1, 127.1, 129.1, 136.1, 139.1). Nowhere else do we get so strong a sense of a dialogue between Herodotus and his informants. Repeated use of the imperfect tense, elegon (‘‘they were saying’’), reinforces the impression of a corporate tradition. Herodotus would not wish us to suppose that he might have been misled by the inventions of an irresponsible individual. One member of the clergy confirms or amplifies what another mentioned earlier; mutual agreement provides an assurance of truthfulness. Familiar as we are with our cathedrals as centers of cultural memory, we accept this picture very readily.

But some caution is needed. The hotchpotch of material offered in this section long ago raised doubts about Herodotus’ priestly informants, and hence about his source-citations more generally, a topic which gained renewed prominence in 1971 with the publication of Fehling’s monograph and became hard to ignore with the appearance of a revised, English translation (Fehling 1971, 1989; Luraghi 2001a). It is clear that Herodotus had to guess at the sequence of the rulers whose various achievements or vicissitudes are related here. The Old Kingdom pyramid-builders, Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus (2.124-134), are displaced to follow the Trojan War Pharaoh, Proteus (2.112-120), himself an import from Greek literature (as we now know, from the version ofHelen’s story related by Stesichorus, PMG 193). With the tale told of Proteus’ predecessor, Pheros (2.111), we see that the title familiar to us from the Old Testament as Pharaoh has been interpreted as a personal name which could have had no place in any king list.

Historical ignorance would not in itself impugn the clerical status of Herodotus’ informants. Though he was right in supposing that the experts on Egyptian history were to be found among the priesthood, much must have depended on individual interest. But a more serious objection lies in their apparent ignorance of religious matters, well exemplified in the moving story of Mycerinus (the inspiration of a fine poem by Matthew Arnold), largely based on misunderstanding of rituals in honor of Osiris (2.129.3-130, 132-133). It is not easy to believe in priests who professed to serve deities who punished a just ruler for ruling justly (even if we might think this well in line with Herodotus’ claim that Egyptian custom is regularly the opposite of practices elsewhere [2.35-36], a claim not easily reconciled with his belief in an extensive Greek debt to Egyptian culture, above all in religious matters: see esp. 2.43, 48-50, 52-58). If we are reluctant to credit Herodotus with pure fabrication, we might suppose that he believed priests to be the original source of information which he got elsewhere, often ingeniously combining items of very different provenance with his own speculative reconstructions. Some scholars have sought a compromise, with the suggestion that what Herodotus offers are the tales told by native storytellers in the Memphis bazaar. But so much in this section reflects Greek attitudes and misconceptions that this hypothesis (which would not rescue Herodotus’ good faith) must be dismissed as wishful thinking.

Greek storytellers are another matter. Of all the Herodotean tales which might appropriately find a place in the repertoire of a professional storyteller, none is better suited than that of Rhampsinitos and the clever thief (2.121), and indeed oral narratives of this basic structure have been recorded by folktale collectors throughout Europe and northern Asia (Aarne and Thompson 1961: no. 950; Hansen 2002: 357-371). Heinrich Heine’s witty treatment is well known.

Though Rhampsinitos’ name looks Egyptian, it will not be found in any king list. The first part recalls Ramesses, a name common among the pharaohs of Dynasties xix and xx. The second part, - nitos, ‘‘son of (the goddess) Neith,’’ is an addition found in the royal titulature only from Dynasty xxvi (the Saite dynasty), cf. Psammenitos (3.10). Rhampsinitos is linked with Memphis by building activity at the temple of Hephaistos, but his contest of wits with a clever thief arises from his construction of a treasury as an extension to his palace. The tale is told in indirect speech, with a distancing effect not easily reproduced in English. The style is leisurely and sentence structure relatively straightforward; judicious use of detail contributes strongly to verisimilitude and the psychological aspect of the affair receives careful attention (see further Lloyd 1988: 50; Munson 1993).

The builder employed by Rhampsinitos contrived that one of the stones in the treasury’s outer wall should be easily removable, thus providing a secret entrance. (This ruse is a little disquieting in an Egyptian context; stone buildings were normally designed for eternity, and destined for gods and the dead, mudbrick being the normal building material. But it is an attractive hypothesis that Greeks had taken the pyramids to be royal treasuries [rather as in the Middle Ages they were identified as the granaries constructed on Joseph’s orders against the seven years of famine]; this was not a bad idea, in view of the valuable goods interred with the dead pharaoh and their irresistible attraction to treasure hunters.) During his lifetime the builder kept this secret to himself, revealing it to his two sons only on his deathbed. Following their father’s directions they made the most of access to the treasury. Rhampsinitos was perplexed by their repeated raids on his wealth, and set a trap. On their next visit the first to enter was caught; he promptly told his brother to cut off his head and take it home, to avoid implicating him too. (There are some oddities here. We should expect the king would need to know where the thief was entering, in order to place his trap effectively, and in many versions of the story this point receives appropriate attention. It is difficult to believe in a trap from which the victim could not be released by his accomplice in some less drastic way, if need be, by amputating a limb; in many versions of the story the trap takes the form of a vat of tar. We notice a strong element of family solidarity in this version of the tale. The builder had not himself profited by his ruse, but left the secret as a valuable legacy to his sons. The trapped brother displays an unusual altruism in his readiness to sacrifice his life promptly to avoid compromising his accomplice. More commonly, the builder is also the thief who is trapped, and his accomplice acts on his own initiative in decapitating him.) Next morning the king was amazed to discover the headless corpse; he decided to hang it from the city wall, setting guards with instructions to arrest anyone seen weeping or lamenting nearby. The brothers’ mother insisted that her surviving son should recover the body, otherwise she would betray him to the king. So he contrived to get the guards drunk, took possession of the corpse, and by way of insult shaved off the guards’ beards on the right side. (It is sometimes suggested that Herodotus has here conflated two episodes into one, mourning for and recovery of the corpse being distinguished in many versions of the tale. Certainly we may find worrying the implication that proper funerary rites can be carried out without attracting attention. The insult to the guards may be paralleled from 2 Samuel 10.4. Some have found the detail suspect in a supposedly Egyptian tale, inasmuch as Egyptians were normally clean shaven; this can be countered by the suggestion that foreigners might be envisaged.) Rhampsinitos, furious at being thus outwitted, enlisted his daughter’s help in a scheme which Herodotus professes to find incredible (emoi men ou pista, cf. 2.73.3; 4.25.1, 42.4; 5.86.3; 8.120); his expression of skepticism at this point confirms our confidence in the rest of the narrative, and highlights its last phase. She was to make herself available to all comers, on condition that her visitors told her the cleverest and the most impious things that they had ever done, and was to seize whoever told her of what had happened in connection with the thief. (The disregard of autocrats for conventional sexual morality is a recurrent theme in Herodotus: cf. 1.8-12, 61.1; 2.131; 3.80.5; for the motif of Pharaoh prostituting his daughter cf. Cheops, 2.126.1. We might discern signs of coming decline [cf. 2.124.1] in Rhampsinitos’ valuing his wealth above his daughter’s chastity; but his first concern is to outwit the thief. For an attempt to mitigate the episode’s impropriety see Neitzel 1993.) But the thief, realizing that he is the object of this scheme and attracted by the challenge, secreted under his tunic the arm of a cadaver; Herodotus specifies that this came from a fresh corpse (so we are clearly not meant to infer that he was making use of his brother’s corpse). When the princess attempted to lay hold of him, she found that she had in her hands simply a dead man’s arm. (The thief’s easy access to a corpse has suggested to some that he is supposed to belong to the class of professional embalmers, the taricheutai. ) At this point Rhampsinitos conceded victory in admiration at his rival’s cleverness and daring, proclaiming a pardon and a great reward if the thief would present himself. Trusting the king, the thief declared himself, and got the princess in marriage, Rhampsinitos judging that he surpassed all other Egyptians in cunning, the quality in which the Egyptians surpassed all others.

We are never told the thief’s name (and are not entitled, pace Heine, to suppose that he is to be identified with Rhampsinitos’ successor Cheops). He clearly has much in common with the arch-trickster Odysseus. The Egyptian reputation for cunning is a Greek commonplace (cf. Hall 1989: 123), the unflattering counterpart of the superior wisdom which is the corollary of their antiquity (cf. 2.160, 177.2). But whether or not the Egyptians shared this view of themselves, the role assigned to Pharaoh’s daughter goes beyond what Egyptians would have found acceptable in the portrayal of their ruler. The familiar fairytale conclusion of the hero’s marriage to the king’s daughter should not make us insensitive to this impropriety, surely a scurrilous Greek fantasy inspired by a determination not to be overawed by Egypt’s wonders and the mystique surrounding its ruler. It is surprising that this narrative has sometimes been included in collections of tales from ancient Egypt.

As Herodotus tells it, the story falling, as it does, into three distinct episodes conforms to the preference for threefold organization characteristic of oral narrative (Olrik 1992: 52). But its widespread popularity is partly to be explained by the ease with which it can be expanded or shortened; a tale’s capacity to change in length without losing its structure greatly improves its chances of retaining its appeal over many generations. Kings and tricksters are stock characters in the storyteller’s repertoire. A named monarch is much more interesting than a nameless figure, but this feature gives the tale a veneer of historicity, encouraging us to classify it as a legend. Stories of tricksters generally run counter to the trend of popular narrative to reinforce conventional ethical standards; they hold an appeal closely akin to that of the picaresque novel. Herodotus undoubtedly had a taste for such stories (see further Dorati 1993); we may wonder how far this influenced his presentation of Themistocles.

The opening episode of this tale has a tantalizing parallel in the legend of the master builders Trophonios and Agamedes (whose name marks him as ‘‘very clever’’) as reported by two writers of the Roman period, Pausanias (9.37.5) and Charax of Pergamum (FGrHist 103 F 5); the victim is either the Boeotian king Hyrieus or the better known Augeas, king of Elis. We cannot simply dismiss these late narratives as Hellenistic fantastications. We know from Proclus’ summary that there was a reference to the episode in the Telegony, the old epic which continued Odysseus’ adventures after the Odyssey., attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene and probably composed in the earlier part of the sixth century. Odysseus, we are told, visiting Elis to inspect his herds, was entertained by Polyxenos, Augeas’ grandson, and given a mixing bowl on which was depicted the story of Trophonios, Agamedes, and Augeas. We might expect this to have some relevance to Odysseus’ adventures, but the point escapes us. We cannot assume that the motif of the dishonest builder was already part of the story when the Telegony was composed; it may have been imported from Herodotus into the versions of the tale related by Pausanias and Charax. Myth has faded into tale. Originally Trophonios was a god, and those stories were myths centering on the storage of seed corn, not to be touched as long as it was kept in sacred granaries, ‘‘those mysterious, half-buried depositaries of wealth’’ (Burkert 1983: 44) to be opened only in secret with appropriate sacrifice (see further Radke 1948: 693). But that takes us too far from the story of Rhampsinitos. (Herodotus relates a further exploit of Rhampsinitos [2.122], his descent to Hades, where he played dice with Demeter [i. e., Isis], and his return to the upper world with a piece of cloth as a souvenir. Herodotus says he was told by the priests that this was the origin of a festival still celebrated. Applying a process of ‘‘remythologization’’ it has recently been argued that there is a closer connection with the preceding tale than appears at first sight [see further Muller 1992; Baudy 1996]; but this approach seems more ingenious than persuasive.)

Certainly neither the parallel opening nor its agonal character justifies the hypothesis that the tale of the clever thief’s contest with the king was originally a Greek story. (Students of folktale often object to the concept of the original form of a story, but when the narrative turns on a succession of clever ideas it is hard to avoid postulating invention by a single individual at a particular time.) It may be a Greek product, perhaps brought to Egypt from Cyrene. But we should not underestimate the ease with which intellectual property could travel through the Persian empire, stimulating the exchange of ideas in settings much less grand than Darius’ comparative inquiry into funerary practice (3.38.3-4). With Aramaic as a widely current lingua franca storytelling must regularly have whiled away the evenings in caravanserais along the trade routes. The story’s origin need not be either Greek or Egyptian. The diffusion of the Story of Ahiqar, of which our oldest copy, in Aramaic, comes from the Jewish colony at Elephantine, is instructive.

Comparative research on oral narrative has revealed the presence in Herodotus of very many migratory themes and motifs. It is not illuminating to characterize such material as folktale or Marchen. These terms are appropriate for distinguishing oral narrative from written, for classifying tales judged appropriate for the illiterate peasantry, and nowadays for dismissing what we regard as unscientific or otherwise insufficiently validated. But Herodotus, who relied extensively on oral sources, had no reason to view such material with particular skepticism, and we should certainly not regard his use of it as indicative of naivete or of an uncritical approach. We should rather study the purposes which it serves and the manner in which it is integrated into his grand design (Cobet 1988). Here the tale of Rhampsinitos helps to distract attention from his lack of Egyptian material of genuine interest to the serious historian of the period before the seventh century, a lack the more embarrassing in view of his theoretical appreciation of the excellence of Egyptian historical tradition (cf. 2.77.1), preserved in written records allowing an extraordinary extension of the spatium historicum (cf. 2.100.1) and embodied in monuments which bore witness to a stable, prosperous, and distinctive civilization.

FURTHER READING

This essay is extensively indebted to Alan Lloyd’s commentary on this book (Lloyd 1975-1988), and ‘‘see further, Lloyd’’ might appropriately be supplied at every reference to Book 2.

Of the works cited in the course of this essay I would highlight Fehling 1989; Lloyd 1975-1988, 1988; and Hansen 2002. Among other recent publications the following articles are particularly relevant: Vannicelli 2001; Moyer 2002; Harrison 2003a. Several essays in Bakker et al. 2002 relate to issues discussed here. The following books bear on various aspects of the subject: Romm 1992; MciUer 2000; Thomas 2000; Munson 2001; Vasunia 2001.