The Aeginetans seem to have played a prominent role at the settlement of Nau-cratis in the Nile Delta. According to Herodotus (Document 10.1), the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis (569-525) allowed Greeks - perhaps former mercenaries - to settle permanently at Naucratis but he also provided land for Greek nonresident traders to build precincts to the gods. A coalition of East Greek cities built the so-called Hellenion but the Aeginetans, Samians, and Milesians independently built precincts for Zeus, Hera, and Apollo respectively. Other authors mention the foundation of Naucratis but differ from Herodotus on details. Strabo (17.1.18) believes that Naucratis was a Milesian foundation at the time of either Psammetichus I (664-610) or Psammetichus II (595-589); Polychar-mus (fr. 1), a local historian of the Hellenistic period, thought that the polis was already in existence by the twenty-third Olympiad of 688-685, while Eusebius (88b) dates the foundation of Naucratis to the middle of the eighth century.
Archaeological exploration of Naucratis has been hampered by the fact that, even before Flinders Petrie’s excavations of 1884, much of the site had already been destroyed by farmers who were using the soil as a high-phosphate fertilizer. Today, much of the area of the earliest excavations lies under water and attempts to determine the precise stratigraphy of the site are frustrated by weathering and continued destruction. Nevertheless, enough information exists to cast more light on the literary testimonia for Naucratis. The precinct that Herodotus names the Hellenion has been identified, thanks to inscriptions to “the gods of the Hellenes” as well as to Aphrodite, Artemis, and perhaps Heracles and Poseidon. Reconstructed shortly before the middle of the fifth century, the earliest evidence stretches back to ca. 570, which would certainly allow the construction of the precinct to have been authorized by Amasis.
World History
