Graeco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 0199656126, 9780199656127

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Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Greco-Egyptian Interactions (p.ii) (p.iii) Greco-Egyptian Interactions

(p.iv) Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the

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Title Pages prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015941388 ISBN 978–0–19–965612–7 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Acknowledgements

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

(p.v) Acknowledgements Many of the papers in this volume had their origin in a conference at the University of Reading, Graeco-Aegyptiaca/Aegypto-Graeca: Interactions between Greece and Egypt 700 BCE–300 CE. I’d like to thank the British Academy for supporting that with a conference grant and the University of Reading for providing facilities and general support. Some of the editing in the final stages in 2013–14 was done when I was a visiting research scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York. Finally, many thanks to the Sackler Library in Oxford for facilitating research. (p.vi)

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List of Figures

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

(p.ix) List of Figures 6.1 Ptolemy III and Berenike II receive their royal titles and symbols of perpetual rule, all carefully recorded by the god Khonsu. The pharaoh wears the double crown while the queen wears the distinctive Hathor headdress of sun disk, horns, and plumes. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. 154 6.2 Berenike II (face mutilated probably in the early Christian period) wears the distinctive crown of the goddess Hathor. Detail of a relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd LlewellynJones. 154 6.3 Ptolemy gives nu jars and Berenike II offers lotus garlands to the god Khonsu, accompanied behind the throne by Het Heret, a fertility aspect of Hathor. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. 155 8.1 Factors influencing literary interaction and the evaluation of literary parallels 189 9.1 Placement of the Hymns of Isidorus at the gates of the temple at Medinet Madi (plan adapted from Vogliano 1937) 213 11.1 PSI Inv. I 89, first fragment PSI Inv. I 89, second fragment, PSI Inv. I 89, third fragment P.Carlsberg 312 272 12.1 Copies of Greek inscriptions from the temple of Mandulis by Lepsius and Gauthier 289 12.2 ‘Mandulis the great god (netjer aa)’, depicted as a young adult and crowned with the atef and the hemhem crowns © Pr Françoise Dunand 297 12.3 The Underworld is divided into six area caverns (qereret) © Hornung (1999) 299 12.4 Mandulis depicted as a child sitting on a lotus flower © Pr Françoise Dunand 301 Page 1 of 2

List of Figures 12.5 Mandulis the triple god © Pr Françoise Dunand 305 12.6 Mandulis as a solar Greek god sitting on a lotus © Pr Françoise Dunand 307 12.7 Horus in an oracular statue from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo 308 (p.x)

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List of Contributors

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

(p.xi) List of Contributors Gideon Bohak is a Professor in the Department of Jewish Culture at Tel Aviv University. He works on Jewish magic, especially in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. His most recent monographs are Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (2008), and a critical edition of a fifteenth-century manuscript of Jewish magic and Kabbalah (2013). John Dillery is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. He works on ancient historical writing, chiefly Greek. He is especially interested in late Classical and early Hellenistic historiography. He is currently working on a large project involving non-Greek historians of the third century BCE who wrote histories of their native lands in the Greek language. Richard Jasnow is Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Johns Hopkins University. He is a specialist in the Late Period of Egypt, with a particular interest in Demotic Egyptian. He has published, with Professor Karl-Theodor Zauzich, The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth (2005). Ivan A. Ladynin is Associate Professor with the Department of Ancient History, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. His research interests are the history of Egypt under the Argeads and the early Ptolemies; the Ancient Egyptian kingship and, generally, the patterns of the Ancient Egyptian mentality; the reception of the Late Egyptian historiography in the Classical tradition. Nikolaos Lazaridis

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List of Contributors is Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean History at the California State University, Sacramento. He has authored numerous articles on ancient Egyptian and Greek language and literature, as well as the book Wisdom in loose form: The language of proverbs in Egyptian and Greek collections of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (2007). He is currently preparing a monograph on storytelling techniques in Ancient Egypt and Greece and the publication of ancient travellers’ inscriptions discovered north of Kharga Oasis. (p.xii) Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University and a specialist in the history and culture of ancient Iran, Greece, and Egypt. He is the author of Aphrodite’s Tortoise: the veiled woman of Ancient Greece (2003) and of Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient, and King and Court in Ancient Persia (2010). He is editor of Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World (2002), Creating a Hellenistic World (2011), and The Hellenistic Court (forthcoming), and numerous articles on Greek, Egyptian, and Persian culture. Ian Moyer is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism (2011), and numerous articles dealing with the complex relationship between Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. Joachim Quack is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. He is a leading authority on Egyptian literature and religion, especially of the Greco-Roman period, and is the author of Die demotische und gräkoägyptische Literatur (Münster, 2005) and, with Friedhelm Hoffmann, of Anthologie der demotischen Literatur (2007). He is working on an edition of the fragments of the so-called ‘Book of the Temple’, an Egyptian guide to ritual practice. Ian Rutherford is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading. He works on ancient Greek literature and religion, and interactions between Greece and other ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, especially Anatolia and Egypt. Susan Stephens is Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at the University of Stanford. She is author of Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments (with Jack Winkler) (Princeton, 1995), of Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley, 2003), and of Callimachus in Context. From Plato to the Alexandrian Poets (with Benjamin Acosta-Hughes) (Cambridge, 2011). Gaëlle Tallet

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List of Contributors is maître de conférences in Greek History at the University of Limoges. Since 2008, she has been the director of the Archeological Mission of El-Deir (Kharga Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt). Steve Vinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He is author of ‘The craft of a good scribe. Narrative and meaning in the first tale of Setne Khaemwas’. (p.xiii) Alexandra von Lieven, currently Privatdozentin at the Freie Universität of Berlin, is a specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. She is author of Der Himmel über Esna—Eine Fallstudie zur religiösen Astronomie in Ägypten am Beispiel der kosmologischen Decken- und Architravinschriften im Tempel von Esna (Harrassowitz, 2000) and Grundriss des Laufes der Sterne: das sogenannte Nutbuch (2007). Her forthcoming publications include Cultural History of Ancient Egyptian Music (Leiden). Stephanie Winder was, until 2014, a lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in Hellenistic poetry and culture as well as gender and reception theory. She has published on Cavafy and other Greek poets, and now lives in Greece. (p.xiv)

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Introduction

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Introduction Interaction and Translation between Greek Literature and Egypt Ian Rutherford

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This chapter provides an introduction to the volume, setting out a variety of aspects of interaction between Egyptian and Greek literature in the period 700 BCE–300 CE.Section 2 surveys various types of interaction, including translation from Egyptian to Greek, mixed forms, borrowing of genres (the romance, the aretalogy, religious literature), and Greek influence on Egyptian. Section 3 looks specifically at the case of translation from Egyptian to Greece. Section 4 looks at the broader issue of Greek engagement with Egyptian culture. Keywords:   Egypt, Greece, literature, translation, interaction, influence, biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism

1. Preface One of the main ways the study of Ancient Greek literature has advanced over the last few decades is through an increased awareness that there is a lot to be gained by treating it not in isolation but in relation to other cultural traditions of the Mediterranean and Western Asia. For one thing, other literary traditions may provide insight into where and how the forms of early Greek literature originated and what, if anything, is special about them.1 But perhaps even more than that, for ancient Greek writers themselves the similarities and differences between Greeks and other peoples, real or imagined, was a central concern, not only because this is a way of defining what it means to be Greek, but also because in the hyper-connective ancient Mediterranean, encounters with other cultural traditions was a central part of lived experience.2 Page 1 of 46

Introduction (p.2) The subject of this volume is the relationship between Greek literature and the literary and cultural traditions of ancient Egypt. Egyptian culture was of course ancient by Greek standards (as Plato’s Saite priest told Solon)—the first flowering of Egyptian literature was during the Middle Kingdom (early second millennium BCE)—and it was also conservative (which may be why Plato used it as a model in his Laws).3 It was not static, however, and in fact it reinvented itself several times over its long history, most significantly for our purposes in the Greco-Roman period, when the so-called ‘Demotic’ literature emerged.4 Undoubtedly, the relation between Egyptian and Greek culture is at its closest in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, when translations and adaptations of Egyptian literary works were made into Greek (to a lesser extent possibly in the other direction as well), and for this period we can talk about a mixed GrecoEgyptian culture. But this was only the culmination of an older relationship between Greek writers and Egypt. The earliest evidence for contact between Aegean peoples and Egypt comes from the Egyptian New Kingdom (mid‐second millennium BCE), though (despite the argument of Bernal’s Black Athena) the significance of this is uncertain.5 Direct or indirect contact must have continued into the first millennium, though to be on the safe side the official beginning is usually put in the seventh–sixth centuries BCE, when Ionian mercenaries served in the Egyptian army and the celebrated port of trade was founded at Naucratis.6 Early Greek poetry and myth sees Egypt as a magical and dangerous place: witness Homer’s account of Proteus and Helen’s drug,7 and the popular myth (p.3) of the monstrous Busiris, who becomes a symbol for Egyptian xenophobia.8 At the same time, Greece and Egypt were supposed to be linked by ancestral ties, particularly the Argive royal line, which arrived from Egypt (in the person of Danaos and his daughters), having several generations before emigrated in the other direction (in the person of Io). Some have seen Egyptian influence in early Greek sculpture and medicine.9 Are the similarities that have been noted between some of Hesiod’s precepts in the Works and Days and much earlier Egyptian instruction-literature accidental?10

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Introduction From the late sixth century BCE, a Greek discourse about Egypt appears, which influences the way Greeks and Romans write about Egypt for many centuries to come.11 The canonical statement of this is the Second Book of Herodotus’ Histories. Central themes were cultural geography, particularly as concerned the Nile, paradoxography relating to the celebrated thaumata of Egypt, and ethnography which involves discussion of differences or similarities between the cultures, including the religion. Egypt is often seen as a repository and source of wisdom, particularly sacred knowledge; for Herodotus, most of Greek religion was ultimately derived from Egypt—the names of the gods, festivals, and processions, and Orphic and Pythagorean practice. Most modern scholars think Herodotus must have got this wrong, but he still has his defenders.12 Not everything Greek writers report about Egypt is accurate—cultural prejudice and fantasy distorted their judgement to some extent. And some things they say are not meant to be taken seriously—literature has other agendas. However, at least some of it could easily correspond to stories Egyptians were telling about themselves, emanating from (p.4) bilingual priests or Greek residents of Egypt conversant with the local traditions.13 This is the first phase of the relationship between Greek and Egyptian culture. The second begins when Egypt is taken over by a Greek-speaking elite in the last decades of the fourth century. From then on, the two cultures coexisted, which inevitably resulted in interaction and mutual influence between them. Some individuals even had dual Greek and Egyptian identities.14 For the first time we find translations from Egyptian to Greek, mostly narratives, oracles, or religious texts, many of them produced, it would seem, to be read by Greek-speakers resident in Egypt itself. The Hellenistic period also sees the production of a much more accurate history of Egypt in Greek, the Aiguptiaka by the Egyptian priest Manetho, which draws directly on Egyptian sources and discourse-genres. Under Roman control, Egypt remains essentially bicultural, but with changes: the Egyptian language is no longer used as an alternative language of administration, as it had been under the Ptolemies, but its role as a medium for culture, particularly in the temple libraries, remains unchanged.15 Outside Egypt, the Hellenistic and Roman periods see an intensified interest in Egypt as a source for magic and esoteric religion. Isiac cult and Egyptian magic become Empire-wide brands, marketed by travelling religious experts. The Egyptian priest is a stock figure in the Greek romances of the imperial period.16 As the sacred texts for these movements, we find the appearance of Greek works that purport to be translations from the Egyptian, even though the demonstrable Egyptian content is small: first the Isis-aretalogies, and then the treatises of the Hermetic Corpus.17 Plutarch wrote an account of Isiac cult in his On Isis and Osiris, which challenges the usual view of Egyptian priority by presenting Isis as essentially not Egyptian at all but universal.18

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Introduction At its most general, this is the background against which the chapters in this volume should be approached. In the following sections I survey recent developments in the study of the relation between Greek and Demotic Egyptian literature (Section 2), and recent work on broader aspects of interaction between Greek (p.5) literature and Egyptian culture (Section 3). Section 4 provides an introduction to the chapters.

2. Greek and Egyptian Literature What has helped to facilitate the investigation of these interactions more than anything else is rapid advances in our knowledge of the Egyptian literature that was produced in the Greco-Roman period. For many people Egyptian literature still means the texts in Classical Egyptian (written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script) belonging to Middle and New Kingdoms, which are well represented in standard anthologies.19 However, in the Greco-Roman period the dominant medium for Egyptian literature is the ‘Demotic’ language and script, which seems to begin in the Saite period (sixth century BCE), and lasts until Coptic emerges in the third century CE.20 (The older language, usually written in hieratic, continued to be used to a limited extent.21) Knowledge of Demotic literature is owed almost entirely to papyri, many of which have yet to be published; comprehensive syntheses of the material have only recently begun to appear.22

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Introduction Joachim Quack divides Demotic literature into five main genres: narratives, poetry, wisdom literature, discursive and dialogical texts, and prophetic texts.23 This classification excludes texts belonging to what we might call ‘technical literature’, such as the ‘Book of the Temple’, and the Hermopolis legal manual.24 Of Quack’s categories, three are particularly rich. The first is narrative literature, which includes narratives set in a wide range of time periods, from the distant past (the Sesostris-narrative), to the more recent past of the Assyrian occupation of Egypt (the Inaros Cycle), or even the fourth (p.6) century BCE (the Story of Nectanebo).25 Another type of narrative is concerned with magicians, such as the two stories of Setne Khaemwase, first published by Griffith in 1900,26 or the stories of Petese, recently published by Kim Ryholt (1999, 2006). Much of this material may have existed in the form of oral narratives before or alongside the written versions. The second category comprises discursive and dialogical texts; these include the so-called ‘Book of Thoth’, a set of religious expositions apparently put into the mouth of the god Thoth and addressed to a disciple, the text known as ‘Isis, the Divine Child and the World Order’, in which the young Harpocrates answers questions put to him by his mother Isis, and the ‘Myth of the Sun’s Eye’, which narrates how the god Thoth escorted the goddess Tefnut from Ethiopia back to Egypt, both deities being in animal form, and on the way persuaded and instructed her with animal fables.27 The third category is prophetic literature, including the ‘Demotic Chronicle’, which, despite its modern name, is a sequence of prophecies concerned mainly with Egyptian history of the fourth century BCE, and the ‘Oracle of the Lamb’, a prophecy put in the mouth of a lamb in the reign of Bocchoris, predicting a long period of unrest, followed by the return of order.28 Most known manuscripts of Demotic literature seem to have been produced in the early centuries of the Roman period, though there is enough earlier material for it to be certain that the tradition dates back many centuries and was already thriving in the Hellenistic period. Competence in the complex Demotic script— much harder than any alphabet—needed special training and was not shared by the Egyptian population at large. The context for production is most likely the institution of the temple library or ‘House of Life’ (pr-ankh) attached to Egyptian temples.29 Much of this literature—particularly (p.7) the Inaros Cycle and the oracles—has a marked nationalist spirit, as if emerging from a consciousness that Egyptian culture was under threat from a succession of foreign occupiers, a trend which likely starts under the Persian occupation or before, and continues in the Greco-Roman period.30

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Introduction It is becoming ever clearer that in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, the practice of translating or adapting Egyptian texts into Greek was common, and that translation and adaptation may even have occurred occasionally in the opposite direction as well. The best example of translation from Egyptian to Greek remains the Myth of the Sun’s Eye;31 other important cases that have come to light are the Nectanebo-story32 and the Book of the Temple, a guide to religious practice.33 There seem to have been Greek and Egyptian versions of the Sesostris-narrative as well.34 The nationalistic ‘Oracle of the Potter’ is likely to be a close adaptation of an Egyptian original, not dissimilar to the shorter Demotic ‘Prophecy of the Lamb’, the surviving copy of which is dated to the reign of Augustus.35 Greek magical texts also purport to be translated, although there the case may be more complicated (see below).36 We even hear of one Greek work with an Egyptian title—the ‘Semenouthi’, attributed to ApollonidesHorapios, the ‘arch-prophet’ (second century CE); the title probably means ‘Sacred Scroll’ in Egyptian (d--m-ntr).37 In most cases, the readership of ‘GrecoEgyptian’ literature seems to have been confined to Egypt; the only GrecoEgyptian genre which seems to have had a wider dissemination is that of magical texts (see Bohak this volume). Translation is of course not the only form of relationship between works in the two languages. In some cases, Egyptian texts were not only translated but reshaped and adapted to make a Greek text that looked rather unlike the original. Thus, John Dillery has argued that (p.8) Manetho’s Greek Aiguptiaka (unfortunately known only from fragments) was a fusion of two different Egyptian genres: the annalistic structure of the king-lists, and the simple narratives of the ‘Königsnovelle’ (‘a form of Egyptian narrative which focuses on the role of the king as recipient of divine inspiration or as protagonist of the ensuing decision-making process’). The elements are thus Egyptian, but the idea of putting it all together to make a continuous and comprehensive narrative resembles (though it is not identical to) Greek historia.38 The term ‘Greco-Egyptian’ can also be used for texts produced in and showing signs of a mixed cultural environment, even if translation has not taken place. Here we might place the ‘curse of Artemisia’, a Greek papyrus text from the fourth century BCE that seems to adapt Egyptian religious language;39 and also the Isis-Hymns of Isidorus of Narmouthis/MedinetMadi in the Fayyum, which though composed in Greek, clearly emanate from a bicultural environment of the local cult of Isis-Thermouthis (see Moyer, this volume). The hymns to MandulisAion from Talmis/Kalabsha in Nubia are in this respect analogous (see Tallet, this volume). Most texts of this sort are found in Egypt, though they are occasionally found outside it, such as the extraordinary dedicatory epigram by Damaios from Thessalonike in which Osiris is addressed as the deity who sails at night in a larnax (which sounds Egyptian) and as having invented ships (which sounds Greek).40 Page 6 of 46

Introduction The new discoveries in Demotic literature oblige us to re-evaluate the relationship between Greek writers and Egyptian sources. Take the case of Greek narrative fiction and Demotic literature. It is now over fifty years since John Barns argued that the Greek ‘romance’ might have been indebted to Demotic models, motivated in part by the knowledge that one narrative, the socalled ‘Myth of the Sun’s Eye’, existed in both Egyptian (first published in 1917) and Greek (first published in 1923) versions, in part by knowledge of a rich tradition of Egyptian fiction which included an element of romance, and in part by the existence of isolated fragments of Greek narratives that looked as if they might have been translated from (p.9) Egyptian.41 Recent publications of Demotic literature have increased the evidence for ‘romantic’ fiction, but they have not proved a link. One Greek narrative text that does seem to show at least some Egyptian influence is the Alexander Romance, in particular the introductory episode where the last pharaoh Nectanebo becomes the father of Alexander in Macedonia, having left Egypt and disguised himself as a wandering magician. Nectanebo’s reign in Egypt is the subject of a narrative which seems to have existed in both Greek and Demotic versions, and it has been suggested that it may have included an apocalyptic prophecy involving Alexander.42

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Introduction A similar game can be played with the Greek religious and magical texts of the late Hellenistic and Roman period that purport to be of Egyptian origin, such as Isiac aretalogies, the Hermetic Corpus, or even the Greek Magical Papyri. Are we to treat the claims such texts make for Egyptian origin as empty rhetoric designed to make the audiences take them more seriously, in a period when Egyptian wisdom was highly regarded, or is the Egyptian background to some extent real? In the case of the aretalogies, it looks like a mixture: some Egyptian elements (Isis riding with the Sun, for example), but also some elements that look resolutely Greek (such as Isis and Osiris stamping out cannibalism).43 Again, the claims of the treatises of the Hermetic Corpus to be of Egyptian origin have generally been treated with some scepticism, since the doctrines contained in them seem similar to the bland Greek popular philosophy of the Roman Empire, and completely different from the abstruse formulations of Egyptian theological treatises. The orthodox view these days is that the Corpus is essentially Greek, albeit produced in Alexandria and although a few elements look to be derived from Egyptian thought, such as the title of Hermes ‘Trismegistos’44 and the prophecy about the re-emergence of Egypt in the Asclepius.45 But the recent publication of a Demotic (p.10) Egyptian text christened ‘The Book of Thoth’ by its editors seems at least to supply an analogous dramatic situation in which Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, instructs a disciple in wisdom.46 The dialogues between the prophet Horus and Isis in ‘Isis, the Divine Child and the World Order’ also resemble some Hermetic treatises. Finally, some Greek astrological works were attributed to the Egyptian Nechepso, often believed to be Necho II of the Saite Dynasty, and Ryholt has published Demotic narratives concerning this pharaoh which use the name ‘Nechepso’; it follows that the Greek idea of Nechepso the astrologer and magician could have derived from an Egyptian tradition.47

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Introduction It has also been suggested that the form of Hellenistic poetry might have been influenced by Egyptian models. In 1946 the Egyptologist Pierre Gilbert speculated about parallels between Horace’s lyrics and Egyptian poetry, and what they might mean, including a striking parallel between the start of Odes 3.30: exegi monumentum aere perennius… and a passage from a New Kingdom text usually called ‘A Student’s Miscellany’ which maintains that true immortality comes from books rather than from monuments.48 And Alfred Hermann argued in 1955 that the Greco-Roman ‘paraklausithyron’ genre shows such striking parallels to Egyptian poetry that borrowing is the likeliest hypothesis.49 Of course, not all parallels of form or content imply direct borrowing: to some extent, we should expect independent literary traditions to develop in the same way (cf. Lazaridis, this volume). Equally, it is possible that some apparent parallels are the result of independent borrowing from a third culture: thus, the Near Eastern Ahiqar tradition of wisdom literature probably influenced both Egyptian and Greek literatures (in fact, fragments of a Demotic translation of Ahiqar survive), and the fact that some of the animal fables in the Myth of the Sun’s Eye closely resemble some of (p.11) Aesop’s Fables could be explained as independent borrowing from a common Near Eastern source.50

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Introduction Although Egyptian literature barely acknowledges the existence of Greece (mentioned in the Demotic Chronicle and, as ‘Typhonians’, in the Oracle of the Potter), there is a possibility that Egyptian writers of the Greco-Roman period were influenced by Greek models.51 The nearest we come to translation seems to be Demotic magical spells, which, on Dielemann’s hypothesis, may be translations of Greek spells that are themselves modelled on oral Egyptian magical practice; in other words, the Greek practice of committing magical spells to writing might have triggered the same practice in Egypt.52 Martin Stadler has recently suggested that a Demotic Isis-Hymn might show influence from an Egyptian-influenced Greek Isis hymn in a similar way.53 Some have suggested a more general influence rather than translation, for example that Egyptian satiric, didactic,’ or biographical literature may owe something to Greek models.54 The journey to the Underworld (katabasis) in the Second Setne narrative and description of people being punished there (1.34 ff.) was linked to Greek models already by Isidore Lévy in 1927, who saw it as part of the Mediterranean reception of Pythagorean literature.55 Above all, the influence of Greek epic has been detected in the Inaros Cycle of narratives,56 which are concerned with the exploits of heroic warriors, chief among them Inaros of Athribis who rebelled against Assyrian occupiers in the seventh century BCE.57 The extant texts mostly date from the Roman period, though there is reason to think that tradition is much older.58 As its title suggests, one of the narratives, the (p.12) ‘Struggle for the Armour of Inaros’, recounts how the weapons of the eponymous hero Inaros were fought over by two parties of epigones, which has been thought to recall the contest for the arms of Achilles. Another narrative, ‘Pedikhons and Serpot’, describes how an Egyptian prince is pitted against a warrior queen Serpot, and how they fall in love, recalling the Greek story of Achilles and Penthesileia, as in the Aithiopis. The similarities to Greek epic are all broad features of plot; there are no specific parallels (although the ‘Struggle over the Arms’ contains a sort of mini-‘Catalogue of Ships’, which is unmotivated when the mise-en-scène is central Egypt).59 Opinions differ about whether there really was any influence from Greek literature here, and if so, when it was. A recent editor of some of these texts, Friedhelm Hoffmann, prefers the hypothesis that they originated within the Egyptian tradition.60 More recently it has been suggested that some of these narratives show knowledge of the story of Alexander the Great or of Hellenistic literature.61

3. Translation

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Introduction I mentioned earlier the emergence via translation or close adaptation of literature which we can conveniently call ‘Greco-Egyptian’. This seems to be a phenomenon of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A possible earlier case is the work called ‘Dialogues of Dogs’ attributed to the fourth-century mathematician, Eudoxus of Cnidus, which some in Antiquity claimed was translated from the Egyptian—given that talking animals are familiar in Egyptian literature, the title sounds plausible enough62—but the evidence is not decisive.63 (p.13) Written translations into Aramaic of at least parts of Egyptian narrative texts are known to have been made as early as the fifth century BCE, and indeed Aramaic texts may have been translated into Demotic as well.64 Hence, it is not out of the question that written translations into Greek were also made this early. In any case, a formal mode of translation, via interpreters, is likely to be much older. According to Herodotus, Egyptian interpreters made up one of the seven castes, and were descended from Egyptian boys who, thanks to the intervention of Psammetichus I, learnt Greek from mercenaries; he also mentions one occasion when an interpreter translated hieroglyphs on the Pyramid of Cheops.65 Such interpreters could easily have enabled Greeks to learn about local Egyptian literary traditions, even without the production of written versions.66 The establishment of a Greek-speaking ruling class in Egypt necessitated the practice of translation between Greek and Egyptian at least for the purposes of government, as we see for example, in the tri-lingual (hieroglyphs, Demotic, Greek) ‘synodal’ decrees, such as the Rosetta Stone.67 The early Ptolemies probably also commissioned the translation of the Egyptian Law Code into Greek, just as two centuries earlier Darius is supposed to have had it translated into Aramaic.68 There is no record of officially organized translation of Egyptian literary texts into Greek, although this cannot be ruled out, especially in view of the early Ptolemies’ cultural interests; Manetho might have (p.14) had official backing for his Aegyptiaca, for example.69 The tradition in the Aristeas Letter that Ptolemy Philadelphus engineered the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek would provide a model.70 Translation of Greek cultural or literary texts into Egyptian is difficult to document, with the exception of the examples discussed earlier (p. 7); translations of Akkadian astronomical texts into Demotic are attested.71

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Introduction We know little about the practicalities of translation from Egyptian to Greek (contrast the detailed account in the Aristeas Letter).72 The chances are that much of it was carried out by bilingual priests and scribes in the libraries that we know to have been attached to Egyptian temples.73 The period it is best attested for—i.e. that from which most of the surviving Greek translations come —is the early Roman Empire, but this period gives us the majority of Greek literary papyri, and translations are found in the Hellenistic period as well. At many sites, the papyrological evidence suggests that Demotic and Greek texts were in circulation together.74 The archive of Apollonius and Ptolemaios, the sons of Glaukias from the Memphite Sarapieion (second century BCE), contains both Greek and Demotic texts, including literary texts in both languages—the Greek texts include the Dream of Nectanebo, identified by Wilcken as copied in Apollonius’ own hand (did he translate it?).75 At Tebtunis, Ryholt has shown that, although the vast majority of the texts are Egyptian, the small proportion of Greek texts surviving suggests that the temple staff were well-versed in Greek as well.76 Non-literary texts occasionally code-switch between Greek and Egyptian, for example some magical (p.15) papyri, and some accounts of dreams,77 but code-switching is not found in literary texts.78 In this volume Joachim Quack explores the bilingual context of papyri from Oxyrynchus. Texts with religious significance seem to have been the most commonly translated.79 Probably the best example is P.Oxy. 1381, the so-called aretalogy of Imhotep-Asclepius, which describes the adventure of a certain Nechautes who, having been instructed by the pharaoh Nectanebo (‘Nectanebis’ in this text), discovers a sacred book of Imhotep-Asclepius. He decided to translate it, but put off the translation until he was older. Later on in his life, after his mother experienced a dream-epiphany of the deity, he returned to the task. Quack suggests that the original version may survive in a Demotic narrative that describes dialogues between Imhotep and the Pharaoh.80 Ideally, we would like to be able to assess how close the translations are to the originals, but the fact that in almost every case we lack the Egyptian original makes this impossible. The exception is the Myth of the Sun’s Eye, for which an extensive Demotic text and sizeable and partly overlapping fragments in Greek survive. In this case at least, effective comparison is hampered by numerous obscurities in the Demotic text, but it appears that the Greek follows the Egyptian closely, although it also shows some differences: for example, in streamlining sections with what might be conceived as containing abstruse religious content.81

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Introduction (p.16) Possibly we should expect different degrees of fidelity to the original depending on the genre: texts with a religious or deep cultural significance (like the Oracle of the Potter) would tend to receive more ‘faithful’ translations, whereas in the case of entertaining narratives like the Myth of the Sun’s Eye a higher premium would be placed on transparency and literary style. On the other hand, even Nechautes seems to envisage combining translation with a certain editorial work (ll.174–81):82 ‘And in the whole composition, I filled out the deficient, and removed excess; in the case of a lengthy narrative I spoke it briefly, and in the case of complex speech, I expressed it once and once only.’83 Nechautes’ motive is to make the virtues of Imhotep known to a broader audience, but there was also another attitude to translation from Egyptian to Greek: that it was impossible, because the Egyptian language had a special, untranslatable power. This is famously set out in the introduction to Treatise 16 of the Hermetic Corpus: ‘the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action.’84 The paradox here is that the writer is himself writing in Greek. Similar is the attitude to the Egyptian language found in Greek writers of the Roman period; for example, Iamblichus in his On the Mysteries (7.5) and particularly in the Hieroglyphica attributed to Horapollo, hieroglyphs are not simply a way of conveying speech, but a complex system where the sign used to represent something encodes a philosophical or theological belief about it.85

4. Engagement with Egyptian Culture

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Introduction Alongside the idea of ‘translation’ from one language to another, there is also the notion of engagement of one culture with another, (p.17) which can be seen as a form of translation.86 Take the example of Herodotus’ account of Egyptian history. Some Hellenists have argued that Herodotus did not know much about Egyptian history, or imposed Greek narrative patterns on the Egyptian material.87 But it now seems likely that at least some of his narratives correspond roughly to the sort of self-promoting accounts of their past being promulgated by Egyptians in the period of the Persian occupation.88 The story of Sesostris’ world-conquests, for example, looks very like part of a literature of resistance that the Egyptians could have developed in response to the reality of foreign occupation.89 John Dillery has shown that Herodotus’ account of Cambyses resembles the Egyptian Königsnovelle.90 Ryholt recently published a Demotic text containing a sequence of stories, one of which bears a striking resemblance to Herodotus’ story of the pharaoh Pheros.91 The manuscript is from the Roman period, and it cannot be ruled out that this is borrowed from a Greek historical narrative. But it seems likely that the content is much older and Ryholt suggests that this could be the original Egyptian story that Herodotus heard in translation, or at least related to it. While the idea that Herodotus drew on real Egyptian sources would probably be widely accepted today, it would be much harder to make a convincing case that Plato’s Atlantis myth really was told to Solon by a priest of Sais, as he represents it in the Timaeus. The orthodox view these days is that Plato was writing an allegory about the contemporary situation of Athens, inventing the story and its Egyptian origin.92 It may be observed, however, that the general theme of Egyptian push-back against the imperial ambitions of another power in the distant past seems exactly the sort of thing that would have appealed to Egyptian sentiment in this period—it is in fact the flipside of the Sesostrisnarrative (on the one hand celebration of a world conqueror, on the other hand resistance to the world-conquering ambitions of others). And the image of Egyptian (p.18) society that Plato presents in the Critias and the Laws as a model of good order and social stability is also reminiscent of Egyptian views about their own culture.93 Similar issues arise for many other Greek texts: do the accounts of the Nile in Homer, Pindar, or Aeschylus reflect knowledge of Egyptian representations of the river?94 Did the action of Sophocles’ satyr-play Inachus make use of the figure of Zeus as Osiris?95 Do Hecataeus of Abdera’s euhemeristic account of the warrior Osiris, the foundation of Egyptian colonies abroad, or the idealized picture of the Pharaoh reflect Egyptian sources or are they simply invented?96 How close is the Stoic philosopher Chaeremon’s depiction of the life of Egyptian priests to reality? Or the portrayal of Egypt in the Greek romance? Or the Neoplatonist and theurgic De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum ascribed to Iamblichus of Chalcis (third century CE)?97 Page 14 of 46

Introduction In these cases there is explicit reference to Egyptian subject matter, but other scholars have explored the possibility of less obvious Egyptian influence on Greek thought or literature. A particular focus here has been Hellenistic poetry. In several pioneering studies published in the last few decades Ludwig Koenen has argued that the representation of Ptolemaic kings in contemporary Greek literature was subtly influenced by Egyptian ideas of kingship.98 In his 1983 article he successful applied this approach to Theocritus’ Encomium of Ptolemy Soter, where the stress on the importance of family relationships between husband and wife and between fathers and sons seems likely to reflect Egyptian ideology, and also to Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, where the narratives that seem wholly Greek—the birth of Apollo and Apollo’s defeat of the Gauls at Delphi—can equally be interpreted as bearing the stamp of Egyptian ideology. Another key text in this debate has been Callimachus’ fragmentary poem The Lock of Berenice, the subject of which is the lock of hair dedicated by Queen (p. 19) Berenice, wife of Ptolemy III, in a temple, which subsequently disappeared and was believed to have reappeared in the sky as a constellation. That this too resonates with Egyptian ideas has been argued by Koenen and also by Daniel Selden in his article Alibis (1998) (for more on this poem, see Llewellyn-Jones and Winder, this volume).99 Similarly, it has been suggested that the cosmic significance apparently given to the god Hermes in Eratosthenes of Cyrene’s elegiac poem ‘Hermes’ may be drawn partly from Egyptian representations of Thoth.100 More recently, Susan Stephens in her Seeing Double has explored further Egyptian associations embedded in the Hellenistic poets, including Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, which alludes to Herodotus’ claim that Colchis, the Argonauts’ destination, was originally colonized by Sesostris; Stephens reads the return journey of the Argonauts from Colchis as incorporating references to Egyptian solar mythology.101 Some have suggested influence in the reverse direction. In 1969 Eberhard Otto drew attention to a striking parallel between a Ptolemaic Egyptian account of the Golden Age and the Phainomena of the Hellenistic poet Aratus: Aratus pictures Justice personified (‘Dike’) initially ‘on earth’ (Phaen.101) and living in the midst of men (Phaen.104), but in the Silver Age she retreats from the company of men to the mountains, and finally in the Bronze Age she flies up to the Heavens (Phaen.133).102 In a hieroglyphic text found in several copies on Ptolemaic temples, Ma’at, i.e. justice in Egyptian, came down from the heavens to mankind, and ‘united with the earthly’, in an idealized primordial time when there was plenty of everything and no war or violence. Could Aratus be the source for the Egyptian text? Or is it too obvious an idea to need to be explained in terms of borrowing?103

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Introduction (p.20) There are also more general ways in which the writers of one culture engage with the other. Part of this is the discourse of comparison and contrast: Herodotus’ account of the otherness of Egyptian customs, racial stereotyping in the fragments of Greek comedy and, ultimately, Juvenal’s Fifteenth Satire, usually focused on the ideas of animal worship and violence.104 Other writers talk about human sacrifice in Egypt.105 On the other hand, some Greek writers make Egypt into a utopia: Isocrates in the admittedly parodistic Busiris, Plato’s praise of the conservative culture and mathematical education of Egypt in the Laws, Hecataeus of Abdera’s idealistic account of Egyptian kingship, and Chaeremon’s exposition of the wise contemplative life of Egyptian priests. A similar attitude can be attributed to the author of a Greek epigram inscribed on the Sphinx at Giza, which explicitly contrasts the peaceful Egyptian Sphinx with the homicidal Sphinx of Greek legend.106 Are the things Greek writers say about Egyptians always crude ethnic stereotyping, or is there to some extent a basis in how Egyptians represented themselves? Might there also be a tendency in Egyptian culture of the Greco-Roman period to appropriate the stereotypes that foreign writers create, resisting foreign occupation by, as it were, making themselves more Egyptian.107 Another form of cultural engagement is the translation of the cultural codes between cultures, and the working out of systems of equivalence between the two. In polytheistic ancient cultures where the gods play a primary role as symbols of social structure and identity, a key focus for ‘translation’ are the names of deities, something that the Egyptologist Jan Assmann and the Semiticist Mark S. Smith have recently examined.108 The case of translation between Egyptian and Greek deities is particularly complex, because a belief that the two panthea are largely ‘translatable’—which must have established itself by the early fifth century if not earlier—coexists with the idea that the Egyptians were unique, and weird, in worshipping animals.109 (For translation of divine names between Egypt and Greece, see von Lieven, this volume.) Herodotus’ view (Hist. 2.50) (p.21) that the names of the Greek gods are actually Egyptian in origin can be seen as an idiosyncratic variant of the same attitude. The Hellenistic and Roman periods produce new and extreme versions of theological equivalence: on the one hand, the premise of the long prose aretalogy in P.Oxy.1380, a Greek text but arguably showing Egyptian influence, where Isis is identified with goddesses and divine powers throughout the Mediterranean and Western Asia; and, on the other hand, Plutarch’s view, which reverses Herodotus, that the name and essence of Isis are after all in fact Greek.110

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Introduction Somewhat analogous is the synchronization of historical traditions between the cultures, something which has its roots as early as Hecataeus of Miletus, who according to Herodotus described how the Egyptian priests proved to him that Egyptian history was vastly more ancient that that of Greece (‘ten thousand years old’).111 This claim was both repeated and challenged by Plato who has the priests of Sais tell Solon both that Egyptian civilization is indeed ten thousand years old (‘you Greeks are children’), and also that there was an Ur-Athens in existence a thousand years before, later to be destroyed by natural disaster, whereas Egypt was protected by the Nile. Hence it is the durability and continuity of Egyptian civilization that marks it out rather than simply its age. More detailed attempts to establish synchronies between Greek and Egyptian traditions have to wait until the Hellenistic period, and particularly important is Manetho’s contribution in the Aiguptiaka (see Dillery, this volume). As is clear from the preceding, another focus of investigation has been the issue of origins: Martin Bernal writing in Black Athena (1989) posited what he calls an ‘Ancient Model’ of Greek origins according to which Greece was colonized from Egypt and the Near East—the myths of the Danaids and Cadmus bear a heavy burden in this, and also Herodotus’ view of the Egyptian origins of Greek religion. One might add that there are many stories about Greek philosophers absorbing Egyptian wisdom on visits to Egypt,112 and some Greek cities were said to have been founded from Egypt, such as Athens from Sais. However, it is misleading to give the impression that all Greek writers shared a belief in Egyptian origins. There was also a view, arguably traceable to Hecataeus of Miletus, that early (p.22) Egypt was colonized by wandering Greek heroes;113 and the Danaid-myth is usually conceived as the latter half of a mythological arc that begins with Io leaving Argos.114 In fact, in so far as there was an ‘Ancient Model’, it was a complex amalgam of autochthonous traditions and stories about migrations in different directions. Early Greek traditions do not give any special position to Egyptian origins of any sort, and there is rather less stress on Egypt than, say, on parts of Asia Minor. It would be more accurate to describe the Greek writers as engaged in an ongoing dialogue about their relationship to Egypt, sometimes accepting the possibility that some things originated in Egypt, and sometimes asserting Greek originality and supremacy.

5. The Chapters

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Introduction Prof. Susan Stephens (Stanford), ‘PLATO’S EGYPTIAN REPUBLIC’. If we take Plato at his word, he had a high regard for the Egyptian political system: in the Timaeus Solon reports the Saite priest’s account of the stable Egyptian caste system, and in the Laws the Athenian praises the Egyptian use of visual schemata to inculcate moral values. Most modern scholars have tended to assume that Plato had little knowledge of Egyptian society and is adapting an established Greek idea of Egypt as a utopia that we also find in Isocrates’ Busiris. In this chapter, Susan Stephens argues that Plato’s debt to Egypt is much greater than has usually been acknowledged, and in fact that the ideal state as sketched out in the Republic (which is often thought to be related to the castesystem of the Timaeus) can be seen as a reworking of the Ma’at or divine justice of Egyptian thought. Alexandra von Lieven (Berlin), ‘TRANSLATING GODS, INTERPRETING GODS’. When Greek writers want to refer to Egyptian gods, they generally use the names of equivalent Greek gods, employing a standard system of translation known as ‘interpretatio graeca’. If one wants to investigate translation of culture between Greece and Egypt, it would be hard to find a more central topic than this, yet it is a topic surprisingly neglected in modern scholarship. In this paper (p.23) Alexandra von Lieven gives a full account of the phenomenon, covering both expected and less expected aspects. Ian Rutherford (Reading), ‘THE EARLIEST CROSS-CULTURAL RECEPTION OF HOMER? THE INAROS‐NARRATIVES OF GRECO-ROMAN EGYPT’. The quasiepic Demotic Egyptian narratives about Inaros and his sons are without precedent in Egyptian literature, and they have long been suspected of having been influenced by Greek epic, influence which has usually been put in the Hellenistic period. In this paper Rutherford examines various explanations that have been proposed, including the possibility of Aramaic influence, and suggests that Greek epic may indeed have influenced the Inaros-Narratives, but much earlier than has usually been suggested, at a time when Greeks and Egyptians were fighting on the same side against Persian occupation.

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Introduction Prof. John Dillery (Virginia), ‘LITERARY INTERACTION BETWEEN GREECE AND EGYPT: MANETHO AND SYNCHRONISM’. Another aspect of cultural translation is the attempt to correlate historical events and signposts in one culture with those of another, a process which leads ultimately to the ‘universal histories’ of the early Christian period. One of the first ancient historians to use such ‘synchronisms’ was Manetho of Sebennytos in his Aiguptiaka, who several times points out that an event of importance in Greek myth-history coincides with the reign of this or that Egyptian pharaoh. In this paper Dillery examines these references in the context of the use of synchronisms in Greek history, and asks why Manetho included them. Part of the answer is that Manetho was himself caught between two cultures, writing simultaneously for Greek and Egyptian audiences, while another part is that such references may serve to back up the argument made by both Herodotus and Plato that even the most ancient Greek history is quite recent in Egyptian terms. Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder (Edinburgh), ‘THE HATHORIC MODEL OF QUEENSHIP IN EARLY PTOLEMAIC EGYPT: THE CASE OF BERENIKE’s LOCK’. Over the last few decades a number of scholars have investigated the extent to which the Ptolemaic ruling elite of Egypt adapted native Egyptian ideology and imagery for the purposes of propaganda.115 The learned poets of Alexandria who were technically servants of the Ptolemaic court make remarkably (p.24) few explicit references to Egypt, but it has been argued that nevertheless their work contains echoes of native Egyptian practices. A case in point is Callimachus’ famous ‘Lock of Berenice’ poem, the subject of which was a lock of hair dedicated to all the gods by Berenice, queen to Ptolemy III Euergetes, for her husband’s safe return from the war in Syria.116 On the basis of a penetrating survey of her life and representation in iconography, Llewellyn-Jones and Winder advance a bold new thesis that Berenice set out to model herself specifically on the Egyptian goddess Hathor, a sensual goddess associated with orgiastic celebration, and defined as the protector of Horus, who in the normal scheme of things represents the pharaoh.

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Introduction Prof. Ivan Ladynin (Moscow), ‘VIRTUAL HISTORY EGYPTIAN STYLE: THE ISOLATIONIST CONCEPT OF THE POTTER’S ORACLE AND ITS ALTERNATIVE’. One of the main genres of Greco-Egyptian literature is the prophecy, the best known example of which is the Oracle of the Potter (second century BCE), which is set at a time in the distant past (perhaps in the 19th dynasty, about a millennium before), when a potter makes a prophecy describing a series of disasters that will befall Egypt, including the arrival of the so-called ‘Typhonians’ and the foundation of Alexandria; he also predicts the eventual downfall of the Typhonians and the rise of a legitimate pharaoh. In his paper, Ladynin places the Oracle of the Potter in context, comparing it both with classical Egyptian prophetic literature, for example, the Middle Egyptian Prophecy of Neferti, and with the Hellenistic narratives describing similar prophecies such as the story of Amenophis and the Lepers, known from the accounts of Manetho and Chaeremon preserved in Josephus’ Against Apion, as well as the Nectanebo story and the Alexander Romance, where Alexander is represented as the legitimate pharaoh, returning after a long period of foreign rule as the new Sesostris. Ladynin establishes that all these texts share a repertoire of common features, but also that there are significant differences between them. In particular, whereas the ‘isolationist’ Oracle of the Potter and most of the other texts tend to ignore Egyptian interaction with the world beyond Egypt, in the Alexander Romance foreign conquests are emphasized. Also, while all these works share a similar concept of historical time as a succession of periods of disaster and foreign occupation followed by saviour kings, they differ in how (p.25) they map this on to real historical events: thus whereas Manetho and the Alexander Romance see the Ptolemies as saviour kings, the Oracle of the Potter sees them as Typhonian occupiers. Dr. Nikolaos Lazaridis (Sacramento), ‘DIFFERENT PARALLELS, DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION: READING PARALLELS BETWEEN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND GREEK WORKS OF LITERATURE’. When investigating the relationship between any two literary traditions, an obvious question that arises is, given apparent similarities of content or formal technique, how are we to assess whether they are just coincidences or are to be explained as the result of contact between the two cultures, or as the result of some other relationship, for example, derivation from a common source. In this chapter, Lazaridis sets out a theory for how we might go about doing this, taking into account not just the parallel itself, but also the work it comes from, the genre, and its setting. He applies this model to five case studies, drawn from different genres of Greek and Egyptian literature and from different periods.

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Introduction Ian Moyer (Michigan), ‘ISIDORUS AT THE GATES OF THE TEMPLE’. Italian archaeologists excavating the temple of Isis-Hermouthis at Narmouthis/Medinet Madi in the Fayyum in the 1930s discovered the text of four Greek hymns inscribed on the gateway to the southernmost portico of the temple. The Hymns were composed by the otherwise unknown poet Isidorus, presumably a local poet, and are thought to date from around 100 BCE. They are written in Greek metrical forms—two in hexameters and two in elegiacs—and the poetic idiom is mostly Greek, although local elements shine through, particularly in Hymn 4. In this chapter, Moyer seeks to position the Hymns of Isidorus between the Greek and Egyptian world, mapping their cultural affiliation onto the spatial position of the poems. Steve Vinson (Indiana), ‘GOOD AND BAD WOMEN IN EGYPTIAN AND GREEK FICTION’. Ever since Karl Kerenyi, scholars have been attracted to the idea that the Greek novel might owe something to Egyptian religion, and in a paper published in 1956 the papyrologist John Barns argued that there might be a specific link to Demotic Egyptian literature, e.g. the narratives of Setne Khaemwas and the Inaros Cycle. In this paper, Steve Vinson looks at an aspect of the subject that has been hitherto neglected, namely the role of heroines in Greek and Demotic Egyptian literature. He shows that narrative literature in both traditions favours strong female characters, often cast as supporters of their lovers or husbands, and he suggests that this owes (p.26) something to the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris. Whether this proves that the origins of the Greek novel go back to Hellenistic Egypt is another matter, but Vinson has at least made the case for a sort of parallel development in the evolution of the narrative literature in the two traditions. Joachim Quack (Heidelberg), ‘TRANSLATING THE REALITIES OF CULT: THE CASE OF THE BOOK OF THE TEMPLE’. The ‘Book of the Temple’ is one of the new discoveries that have brought a new perspective to the topic of GrecoEgyptian literature. This was a priestly manual concerned with ritual procedures and the correct behaviour of priests and temple staff. It was originally composed in classical Egyptian; it seems to have been translated into Demotic in the Saite period, and at a much later point into Greek. In this paper Quack concentrates on the two surviving Greek fragments, which he convincingly shows come from the same papyrus originating in Oxyrhynchus in the second century CE. Since Oxyrhynchus has been such an important source for Greek papyri in the last century, there might be a tendency to think of it as a town where Greek culture dominated, but in fact, as Quack shows in the latter part of his paper, there as elsewhere there has been a tendency to ignore the evidence for Egyptian texts, and we would do better to think of both cultures existing side by side in the Roman period, albeit the fragments of the Greek Book of the Temple are themselves evidence that Greek was replacing Egyptian as the language for ritual.

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Introduction Gaëlle Tallet, ‘MANDULIS APOLLO’S DIPLOMACY: ECHOES OF GREEK CULTURE AND HELLENISM AT TALMIS (NUBIA) IN THE ROMAN PERIOD’. The walls of the temple of Mandulis at Kalabsha-Talmis preserve a large number of graffiti, among them several poems and prayers in honour of the god, apparently carved by or on behalf of Roman soldiers in the first to third centuries CE. They were published by Henri Gauthier in 1911, and one of them was the subject of a classic study by Arthur Darby Nock, ‘A Vision of Mandulis Aion’ (Nock 1934). In this paper, Gaëlle Tallet aims to distinguish Greek and native Egyptian elements in the graffiti, showing in particular that ritual patterns preserved in them derive from both Greek and Egyptian traditions. Richard Jasnow (Johns Hopkins University), ‘ “BETWEEN TWO WATERS”: THE BOOK OF THOTH AND THE PROBLEM OF GRECO-EGYPTIAN INTERACTION’. One of the most important new discoveries, and surely the most difficult, has been the so-called Book of Thoth, a Demotic work of esoteric religion that consists of dialogue between a teacher, who may be Thoth, and a pupil, identified as ‘mr-rhḫ’, which seems to (p.27) be an equivalent to Greek philosophos. In their pioneering edition of the fragments of this work Richard Jasnow and Karl Zauzich suggested it be seen as a sort of Egyptian equivalent to the Greek Hermetica. The comparison is justified in so far as Hermes Trismegistos is widely agreed to be an interpretatio graeca of a form of Egyptian Thoth, though not in terms of the doctrines of the two works, which seem somewhat different. In this paper Richard Jasnow develops the comparison between the Book of Thoth and Greek writings. After first looking at two main divine characters in the work, Thoth and Imhotep (= Greek Asclepius), he focuses on the so-called ‘House of Life’, which seems to be a primary focus for ritual activity in the Book of Thoth and also has significant parallels in Greek texts, e.g. Clement of Alexandria’s account of the forty-two Hermetic books in the Stromata and Diodorus’ account of the Library at the Ramasseum. Dr. Gideon Bohak (Tel-Aviv), ‘THE DIFFUSION OF THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN MAGICAL TRADITION IN LATE ANTIQUITY’. One of the best attested forms of Greco-Egyptian textual culture are magical texts, generally agreed these days to have originated in Egypt at the hand of Hellenized Egyptian priests. Unlike most Greco-Egyptian material, the magical texts are widely disseminated outside Egypt in Late Antiquity. In this paper, Gideon Bohak surveys the evidence for Greco-Egyptian magic outside Egypt, addressing the questions of how it was disseminated and why it became so popular (his answer is partly that it had the advantage of being ‘scribal’). He also tries to explain why, ultimately, GrecoEgyptian magic was displaced by competing pan-Mediterranean traditions of Jewish and Christian magic. Abbreviations 4DC Page 22 of 46

Introduction See Johnson (ed.), 1992 5DC E. Bresciani (ed.), Acta Demotica [=EVO 17] (1994)] 7DC K. Ryholt (ed.), Acts of the seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies, Copenhagen, 23–27 August 1999 (Copenhagen, 2002) 9DC G. Widmer and D. Devauchelle, Actes du IXe Congrès International des Études Démotiques Paris, 31 août–3 septembre 2005 [BdE 147] (Kairo, 2009) LÄ: Lexikon der Ägyptologie, ed. W. Helck and E. Otto (7 vols., Wiesbaden, 1975–92) (p.28) Bibliography Bibliography references: Allen, J. (2005), The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt (New York). Anderson, G. (1984), Ancient Fiction. The Novel in the Greco-Roman World (London). Assmann, J. (1990), Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (Munich). Assmann, J. (1996a), ‘Translating Gods: Religion as a Factor of Cultural (Un)translatabilty’, in S. Budick and W. Iser, The Translatability of Cultures. Figurations of the Space Between (Stanford), 25–36. Assmann, J. (1996b), ‘Kulturelle und literarische Texte’, in Loprieno (1996a), 59– 82. Assmann, J. (2002a), The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, tr. A. Jenkins (Cambridge, Mass.). Assmann, J. (2002b), ‘Der Tempel der ägyptischen Spätzeit als Kanonisirung kultureller Identität’, in The Heritage of Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honour of Erik Iversen (Copenhagen), 9 ff. Aufrère, S. H. (2007), Thot Hermès l’Égyptien: de l’infiniment grand à l’infiniment petit (Paris). Azzoni, A., and Lippert, S. ‘An Achaemenid Loanword in the Legal Code of Hermopolis: 3bykrm’, ENCHORIA 26 (2000), 20–30.

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Introduction Riess, E. (1890), Nechepsonis et Petosiridis fragmenta magica: dissertatio philologica (Bonn). Roccati, A. (1986), ‘Übersetzung’, LÄ 6, 833–8. Rochette, B. (1994), ‘Traducteurs et traductions dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine’, CdÉ 69, 313–22. Rochette, B. (1995), ‘La traduction de textes religieux dans l’Égypt grécoromaine’, Kernos 8, 151–66. Rochette, B. (1996), ‘Sur le bilinguisme dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine’, CdÉ 71, 153–68. Roeder, G. (1927), Altägyptische Erzählungen und Märchen (Jena). Rutherford, I. (1997), ‘Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas: A Greek Novel and some Egyptian Models’, ZPE 117, 203–9. Rutherford, I. (2000), ‘The Genealogy of the Boukoloi’, JHS 120, 106–21. Rutherford, I. (2009), ‘Bilingualism in Roman Egypt? Phratres of Narmouthis and the Origin of Coptic’, in T. Evans (ed.), Buried Linguistic Treasure (Oxford), 198–207. Rutherford, I. (2013a), ‘Greek Fiction and Egyptian Fiction: Are they related and, if so, how?’ in Whitmarsh and Thomson (eds.) (2013), 23–37. Rutherford, I. (2013b), ‘Strictly Ballroom: Egyptian Mousike and Plato’s Comparative Poetics’, in N. Peponi (ed.), Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws (Cambridge, 2013), 67–83. Ryholt, K. (1998), ‘A Demotic Version of Nectanebo’s Dream (P.Carlsberg 562)’, ZPE 122, 197–200. Ryholt, K. (1999), The Story of Petese, Son of Petetum and Seventy Other Good and Bad Stories (P. Petese) [The Carlsberg Papyri 4] (Copenhagen). Ryholt, K. (2002), ‘Nectanebo’s Dream or the Prophecy of Petesis’, in Blasius and Schipper (2002), 221–41. Ryholt, K. (2004), ‘The Assyrian Invasion of Egypt in Egyptian Literary Tradition’, Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen (Leiden), 483–511. Ryholt, K. (2005), ‘On the Content and Nature of the Tebtunis Temple Library’, in Lippert and Schentuleit (2005), 141–70. (p.37)

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Introduction Ryholt, K. (2006), The Petese Stories II (P. Petese II) [The Carlsberg Papyri 6] (Copenhagen). Ryholt, K. (2009), ‘The Life of Imhotep (P.Carlsberg 85)’, 9 DC, 305–15. Ryholt, K. (2010a), ‘Late Period Literature’, in Lloyd (ed.) (2010), 2. 709–31. Ryholt, K. (2010b), ‘A Sesostris Story in Demotic Egyptian and Demotic Literary Exercises (O. Leipzig UB 2217)’, in H. Knuf, C. Leitz, and D. von Recklinghausen (eds.), Honi soit qui mal y pense. Studien zum pharaonischen, griechischrömischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von Heinz-Josef Thissen (Leuven). Ryholt, K. (2012), Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library [The Carlsberg Papyri 10] (Copenhagen). Ryholt, K. (2013), ‘Imitatio Alexandri in Egyptian Literary Tradition’, in Whitmarsh and Thomson (eds.) (2013) 59–78. Satzinger, H. (1991), ‘Old Coptic’, The Coptic Encyclopaedia (New York), Vol. 8, 169–75. Schiesaro, A. (1996), ‘Aratus’ Myth of Dike’, Materiali e discussion per Panalisi dei testi classiei 37, 9–26. Schmidt, K. F. W. (1918), rev. P.Oxy.11, GGA 180, 81–136. Schwartz, J. (1948), ‘Les conquérants perses et la littérature égyptienne’, BIFAO 48, 65–80. Schwartz, J. (1950), ‘Le “Cycle de Petoubastis” et les commentaires égyptiens de l’Exode’, BIFAO 49, 67–83. Seaford, R. (1980), ‘Black Zeus in Sophocles’ Inachos’, CQ 30, 23–9. Selden, D. A. (1998), ‘Alibis’, CA 17, 289–420. Signoretti, M. (2010), ‘A Tale of Two Tongues? The Myth of the Sun’s Eye and its Greek Translation’, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Congress of Papyrology (Ann Arbor), 725–32. Simpson, W. K. et al., (2003), The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, 3rd edn. (New Haven and London). Smelik, K. A. D., and Hemelrijk, E. A. (1984), ‘ “Who Knows What Monsters Demented Egypt Worships?’ Opinions on Egyptian Animal Worship in Antiquity as Part of the Ancient Conception of Egypt’, ANRW II 17.4, 1852–2000. Smith, M. (1984), ‘Sonnenauge, Demotischer Mythos vom’, LÄ 5, 1982–7. Page 35 of 46

Introduction Smith, M. (2002), On the primaeval ocean (Copenhagen). Smith, M. S. (2008), God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Tübingen). Solmsen, F. (1942), ‘Eratosthenes as Platonist and Poet’, TAPA 73, 192–213. Solmsen, F. (1966), ‘Aratus on the Maiden and the Golden Age’, Hermes 94, 124– 8. Spiegelberg, W. (1914), Die sogenannte demotische Chronik des Pap. 215 der Bibliothèque nationale zu Paris (Leipzig). (p.38) Stadler, M. A. (2004), Isis, das göttliche Kind und die Weltordnung: neue religiöse Texte aus dem Fayum nach dem Papyrus Wien D, 12006 recto (Vienna). Stadler, M. A. (2009a), Weiser und Wesir: Studien zu Vorkommen, Rolle und Wesen des Gottes Thot im ägyptischen Totenbuch (Tübingen). Stadler, M. A. (2009b), “Spätägyptische Hymnen als Quellen für den interkulturellen Austausch und den Umgang mit dem eigenen Erbe—drei Fallstudien’, in M. Witte and J. F. Diehl (eds.), Orakel und Gebete. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Sprache der Religion in Ägypten, Vorderasien und Griechenland in hellenistischer Zeit. Forschungen zum Alten Testament II/38 (Tübingen), 141–63. Stephens. S. (2003), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley). Stephens, S., and Winkler, J. (1995), Ancient Greek Novels. The Fragments (Princeton). Steuer, R. O., and Saunders, J. B. de. C. M. (1959), Ancient Egyptian and Cnidian Medicine (Berkeley). Tait, W. J. (1976), ‘The Fable of Sight and Hearing in the Demotic Kufi Text’, Acta Orientalia 37, 27–44. Tait, W. J. (1994), ‘Egyptian Fiction in Demotic and Greek’, in J. R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London), 203–22. Tait, W. J. (1996), ‘Demotic Literature: Forms and Genres’, in Loprieno (1996a), 175–87. Tanner, J. (2003), ‘Finding the Egyptian in Early Greek Art’, in R. Matthews and C. Roemer (eds.), Ancient Perspectives on Egypt (London), 115–44. Thissen, H.-J. (1989), ‘Der verkommene Harfenspieler’, ZPE 77, 227–40. Page 36 of 46

Introduction Thissen, H.-J. (1993), ‘ “. . αἰγυπτιάςων τῃ̑ φωνῃ̑…” : zum Umgang mit der ägyptischen Sprache in der griechisch-römischen Antike’, ZPE 97, 239–52. Thissen, H.-J. (1999), ‘Homerischer Einfluss im Inaros-Petubastis-Zyklus?’, SAK 27, 369–87. Thompson, D. J. (1988), Memphis under the Ptolemies (Princeton). Thompson, D. J. (1992), ‘Language and Literacy in Hellenistic Egypt’, in P. Bilde (ed.), Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt [Studies in Hellenistic Civilization 3], (Aarhus), 39–52. Thompson, D. J. (1994), ‘Literacy and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt’, in A. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge), 67– 83. Totti, M. (1985), Ausgewählte Texte der Isis- und Sarapis Religion [Subsidia Epigraphica 12] (Hildesheim). Turner, E. (1984), ‘Ptolemaic Egypt’”, in F. Walbank (ed.), CAH 2nd ed., 7.1 (Cambridge), 118–74. (p.39) Vasunia, P. (2001), The Gift of the Nile. Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander (California). Vittmann, G. (1998), ‘Tradition und Neuerung in der demotischen Literatur’, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 125, 62–77. Vittmann, G. (2000), ‘Von Kastraten, Hundskopfmenschen und Kannibalen’, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache 127, 167–80. Vittmann, G. (2003), Ägypten und die Fremden im ersten vorchristlichen Jahrtausend (Mainz am Rhein). Vittmann, G. (2006), ‘Zur Rolle des “Auslandes” im demotischen InarosPetubastis-Zyklus’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 86, 305– 37. Vleeming, S. P. (2001), Some Coins of Artaxerxes and Other Short Texts in the Demotic Script found on Various Objects and Gathered from Many Publications (Leuven). von Bissing, F. W. (1949), ‘Eudoxos von Knidos’ Aufenthalt in Ägypten und seine Übertragung ägyptischer Tierfabeln’, in Forschungen und Fortschrift 25, 225–30. Walcot, P. (1962), ‘Hesiod and the Instructions of “Onchsheshonqy” ’, JNES 21, 215–19.

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Introduction Wasserstein, A., and Wasserstein, D. (2006), The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today (Cambridge). West, M. L. (1978), Hesiod Works and Days (Oxford). West, M. L. (1997), The East Face of Helicon (Oxford). West, S. (1969), ‘The Greek Version of the Legend of Tefnut’, JEA 55, 161–83. West, S. (2013), ‘Divine Anger Management: The Greek Version of the Myth of the Sun’s Eye (P.Lond.Lit. 192)’, in Whitmarsh and Thomson (eds.), (2013), 79– 90. Whitmarsh, T. and Thomson, S. (eds.) (2013), The Romance between Greece and the East (Cambridge). Widmer, G. (2002), ‘Pharao Maa-Re, Pharao Amenemhet and Sesostris: Three Figures from Egypt’s Past as Seen in Sources of the Greco-Roman Period’, in 7DC, 377–90. Wilcken, U. (1927–57), Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (ältere Funde) (Berlin). Wiotte-Franz, C. (2001), Hermeneus und Interpres: Zum Dolmetscherwesen in der Antike (Saarbrücken). Yoyotte, J. (1980–1), ‘Hera d’Heliopolis et le sacrifice humain’, Annuaire (École pratique des hautes études. Section sciences religieuses), 89, 31–102. (p.40) Notes:

(1) See in particular the works of Martin West, especially M. L. West (1997); also Burkert and Stolz (1994) on the hymn; notice that in the survey of ancient epic in Foley (2005), there are six essays on Near Eastern epic, though Egyptian literature is not covered. A similar absence of Egyptian material can be observed in the collection of essays on historiography in different cultures in Konstan and Raaflaub (2010). (2) Hall (1991) is a powerful statement of this point of view; Hartog (1988) discusses ethnography in Herodotus. (3) Plato, Timaeus 22a–24d and Laws 656e–657b. (4) On Egyptian literature, see the essays in Loprieno (1996a), particularly Assmann (1996b). On Demotic literature, see below, Section 2, pp. 5–7. (5) Bernal (1991). On the archaeological evidence Cline (1994), 31–47; Phillips and Cline (2005); O’Connor (1996); on possible influence of myth and religion: Griffith (2008). Bernal (1991) presents a lot of valuable evidence, but its argument has been widely criticized, e.g. by O’Connor (1996). Page 38 of 46

Introduction (6) For the historical background, Lloyd (2000). (7) Proteus: Od. 4.385; Helen’s drug: Od. 4.230. Some have compared Homer to the Middle Kingdom ‘Tale of the Ship-Wrecked Sailor’: see Germain (1954), 299– 306; Bérard (1931), 100–2; Gilbert (1939), 55–6; J. B. Hainsworth, in Heubeck, West, Hainsworth, Russo, Fernández-Galliano, (1988–92), vol. 1.290. In his narrative of the Battle of Qadesh, Ramesses II described the epiphany of the god Amun to him (Gardiner (1960), 10) in a way reminiscent of the battle-epiphanies in Greek Epic (see Lazaridis, this volume). For other hypotheses about early influence, cf. Griffith (1998); Faraone and Teeter (2004); Mewes (2005). (8) Vasunia (2001), 183–93. (9) Sculpture: Guralnik (1997), Tanner (2003); medicine: Steuer and Saunders (1959); Ryholt (2010a), 722. (10) On these, M. L. West (1978), pp. 8–13; Lazaridis (this volume), pp. 199–201. (11) Greek texts about Egypt are conveniently collected in Hopfner (1924). (12) Hist. 2.50–1, 58. In favour of Herodotus, Burkert (2004); cf. Casadio (1996); a much earlier advocate of this view was Foucart (1895). Cf. also Burkert (1987), 20 and n. 39 on the parallel between the ‘healing by burning’ motif in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 219–274 and the fourth century BCE ‘MetternichStele’, building on earlier work on this motif in Greek and Egyptian magical texts by Koenen. 1962 (for a translation on the Metternich Stele, see Allen (2005), 53–63). Quack (2009b) suggests that Pythagorean philosophy is indebted to Demotic wisdom texts in various ways, particularly the akousmata (cf. id. (2009a), 145–6), suggesting even that the Greek term ‘philosophos’ is based on Egyptian (p. 291); see further Jasnow, this volume, p. 325. (13) See below, Section 4, pp. 16–18. (14) Cf. Quaegebeur (1992). (15) On the language of administration: Bagnall (1993), 236–7, Thompson (1994). (16) De Salvia (1987). (17) Fowden (1986). (18) Richter (2001). (19) On these, see now the convenient surveys of Enmarch (2010); Moers (2010); on Middle Kingdom literature, the standard treatment is Parkinson (2002). (20) See Hoffmann (2000), Depauw (1997).

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Introduction (21) Depauw (1997), 28–33; Ryholt (2010a), 727, on the different uses of Classical Egyptian and Demotic in this period: the latter is used for mythological narratives, whereas the older language is used for ‘systematic collections of mythological material’. (22) Quack (2009a); Ryholt (2010a); Hoffmann and Quack (2007). (23) Quack (2009a). (24) On the former, see Quack, this volume; on the legal manual, see below, Section 3, n. 68. (25) A recent survey is Hoffmann (2009). (26) See Griffith (1900) Fragments preserve evidence for several more stories: see Ryholt (2010a), 713. For the real Khaemwase, see Ray (2001), 78–96. (27) The Book of Thoth: Jasnow and Zauzich (2005); Isis, the Divine Child and the World Order: Stadler (2004); Myth of the Sun’s Eye: Quack (2009a), 148–60; M. Smith (1984); there is a German translation by A. Loprieno (Loprieno (1995)); for the Ancient Greek translation, see below, Section 3. (28) Demotic Chronicle: Felber (2002); Gozzoli (2006), 283–90; Johnson (1983); Quack (2009a), 178–81; Oracle of the Lamb: Gozzoli (2006), 293–7; Quack (2009a), 176–8. (29) For temple libraries, Assmann (2002b), (2002a), 412–13; Fowden (1986), 58– 9; Osing (1999); Gardiner (1938); Burkard (1980); the contents seem to be described in Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.4.35–7, on which, and the whole subject, see Jasnow, this volume, pp. 345–6 on the Temple Library at the Ramesseum. (30) Lloyd (1982); Podemann Sørensen (1992). (31) See below, Section 3, p. 15. (32) On Nectanebo, Ryholt (1998), (2002); Gozzoli (2006), 290–3; Koenen (1985) on the Greek. Ryholt (2002) posits two versions, an original and a sequel. (33) Quack (2003a) and this volume. (34) Ryholt (2010a), 713. On fragments of the Demotic version, Widmer (2002); Ryholt (2010b). (35) For the Oracle of the Potter, see Ladynin, this volume; for the Prophecy of the Lamb, see R.K. Ritner in Simpson et al. (2003), 445–9. (36) Dieleman (2005), 274–5. Page 40 of 46

Introduction (37) Quaegebeur (1980–1), 228–31 with n. 11. (38) See Dillery (1999). On the Königsnovelle, Loprieno (1996b), 277 (source for the quote); Enmarch (2010), 679; Osing (1979). (39) PGM 40; cf. Wilcken (1927–57), vol. 1. 98–104. (40) IG 10.2.108. (41) Barns (1956). See Rutherford (2013a). Particular attention has focused on fragments of narratives, such as P.Mich. 3378 (Stephens and Winkler (1995), 426–7). The role of Egyptian magicians (de Salvia (1987)) is a link. Karl Kerenyi and Isidore Lévy had already been speculating on the relation between Greek and Egyptian narratives in the 1920s. (42) Ryholt (2002); Ladynin (this volume), pp. 14–15. On the Alexander Romance, also Jasnow (1997) and Dillery (2004). On the Greek version, Koenen (1985). (43) See most recently Quack (2003b). (44) For the Demotic equivalent to this, see Ray (1976), 159–60. (45) See Fowden (1986). (46) Jasnow and Zauzich (2005); cf. Jasnow this volume. On the Egyptian background of Hermes Trismegistus, see now Stadler (2009), 34–5; Aufrère (2007). (47) Ryholt (2010a), 721, (2012), 131–41. For Nechepso, Riess (1890); in his account of his pilgrimage to Egyptian Thebes to obtain esoteric wisdom, Thessalos of Tralles refers to king Nechespo: see Totti (1985), 115–18 (no. 45a, 5, 26–7). (48) Gilbert (1946); cf. also Fuchs (1962); Koenen (1976), 128; for the text, see Lichtheim (1973) vol. 2. 175–8. (49) Hermann (1955), 134–9; cf. Koenen (1976), 128, (1983), 148. For a Middle Egyptian example, see Lichtheim (1973), vol. 2, 118 (n. 7). (50) Translation of Ahiqar: Quack (2009a), 138–9; Ahiqar and Greece: Luzzato (1992); Fales (1993); Ahiqar and Onkhsheshonky: Quack (2009a), 139–40; Lichtheim (1983), 13–52; the Myth of the Sun’s Eye and Aesop: Lazaridis, this volume; S. West (2013). (51) A major proponent of this view has been Philippe Derchain, e.g. Derchain (1990). (52) Dieleman (2005). Page 41 of 46

Introduction (53) Stadler (2009). (54) Thissen (1989); Walcot (1962); Ryholt (2009), 312–13. De Cenival (2002) sees the Myth of the Sun’s Eye as indebted to Greek stylistic and philosophical influence. (55) Lévy (1927), 197–8; Quack (2009a), 46–7, who links it to Greek-influenced funerary iconography from the Roman period; Hoffmann (1994) is sceptical. (56) Thissen (1999); Hoffmann (1996), 17, 49–78; Quack (2005); (2009a), 66–70. First in Roeder (1927), 337–8, Schwartz (1948) and (1950), 69. A good survey in Gozzoli (2006), 274–9. See Rutherford (this volume). (57) Ryholt (2004), 488–9; (2010a), 714. (58) A fragment of a narrative in Aramaic survives from the fifth century BCE: see Holm (2007). (59) Schwartz (1950),60; Rutherford (this volume), 91–2. (60) Hoffmann (1996), 49–105, esp. 104–5. (61) Vittmann (1998) points to the reference to India in ‘Egypt and Amazons’, and suggests influence from the story of Stryangaios and Zarinaia in the Persika of Ctesias. See also Vittmann (2006); Ryholt (2010a), 715, (2013). (62) Quack (2009a), 159. (63) Fr. 374 Laserre, Diogenes Laertius 8.89; Griffiths (1965); von Bissing (1949); Quack (2009a), 139–40. See the new interpretation of Jasnow, Ch. 13, pp. 322–3. Eudoxus is supposed to have worked with an Egyptian called Chonouphis and, according to Plutarch, On the Sign of Socrates 577e–579d, the same Chonouphis translated a bronze tablet found in the tomb of Alcmene at Haliartos in Boeotia; the text turned out to be an instruction to honour the Muses. On Eudoxus as a more general authority on Egyptian religion, see Burstein (1996), Méautis (1919). (64) Demotic narratives translated into Aramaic: Porten (2004); on Hor ben Punesh, and the inscribed text from Sheikh Fadl, see Quack (2009a), 6 etc., Dalley (2001), 154–5; Holm (2007); Aramaic translated into Demotic: see on Ahiqar above (n. 50); Aramaic poetry in Demotic script P.Amherst 63: Depauw (1997), 40–1; Zoroastrian influence on Egyptian religion: Quack (2006). (65) Herod. 2. 164, 154, and 125; Rochette (1994); Wiotte-Franz (2001), 18. Pythagoras learnt Egyptian, according to Antiphon: Diog. Laet. 8.3; Thissen (1993), 241. (66) Ryholt (2010a), 716. Page 42 of 46

Introduction (67) See Depauw (1997), 126. For general translation, Daumas (1952). For documents, Depauw (1997), 41–6. For a recent study of a trilingual decree, Hoffmann, Minas-Nerpel, Pfeiffer (2009). (68) Part of the Greek version survives as P.Oxy. 3285 (see Rea (1978), 30–2); the Egyptian original survives as the ‘Law Code of Hermopolis’. The evidence for Darius’ translation is a short narrative that survives on the reverse of the papyrus that transmits the ‘Demotic Chronicle’ = P.Bib.Nat. 215 vs. 6–16: Speigelberg (1914), 30–2; Lippert (2008), 85, 87; Ryholt (2010a), 719–20. The Demotic Law Code of Hermopolis may contain a loanword from Aramaic: Azzoni and Lippert (2000). An Aramaic–Egyptian bilingual funerary stele survives from Saqqara (482 BCE): see Vittmann (2003), 106–7. (69) According to Plutarch, DIO 28–30 he was a religious adviser to the Ptolemies; cf. Gozzoli (2006), 191. (70) On the Septuagint, Honigman (2003), Wasserstein and Wasserstein (2006). Cf. the tradition that Hermippus the Callimachean wrote a commentary on the works of Zoroaster: Pliny, NH 30.4; Fraser (1972), vol. 1.330. (71) Roccati (1986), with n. 17. (72) The evidence for the hermeneus in general is neatly summarized in WiotteFranz (2001), 17–24, 63–71, and 111–19. (73) For temple libraries, see Section 2, n. 29 and the text before that. For translation taking place in temples, see Iamblichus, Myst. 8.5, 10.7 on Bitys. (74) Ryholt (2010a), 710. (75) Thompson (1988), 263; Clarysse (1983), 58–9; for Apollonius as copyist of the Dream of Nectanebo, see Wilcken (1927-), 370. For Apollonius and the Dream of Nectanebo, see Ray (2006), 191–2. For Apollonius as having a dual Greco-Egyptian identity, see Ray (2001), 143. (76) Ryholt (2005). (77) Cf. also the dream text published by Naether and Renberg (2010). From later on we have the code-switching Narmouthis Ostraka: Rutherford (2009). So too an extraordinary bilingual stele dedicated to Osiris by a certain Moschion, ostentatiously celebrating his deliverance from a foot-complaint, presenting poems in both Greek and Demotic: see Bernand (1969), no. 108; Vleeming (2001). no. 205.

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Introduction (78) Note, however, that Greek words are sometimes found in Demotic narratives: Ryholt (2009), 313, n. 30, has noted that in a fragment from narrative about Imhotep the magician the Greek word αἴνιγμα seems to occur in transliteration. (79) Quack, this volume, adds legal texts as well. (80) Quack (2009a), 169. For Imhotep and Asclepius, see further Jasnow, this volume. (81) On this, see most recently Signoretti (2010), Prada (2012), S.West (2013); S. West (1969) is still valuable; on religious streamlining, see Betrò (1984); on the fable of Sight and Hearing, Tait (1976). Betrò (1984), 1360, reports a suggestion by Jan Quaegebeur that the author of the extant Greek version might have been adapting a more faithful and less literary Greek version produced earlier. One apparent difference between the extant versions—that in the Greek Thoth has the form of a ‘lukolunx’ (wolf-lynx), whereas in the Egyptian he seems to be a ‘small dog-ape’ (p3 sm n wns kwf, i.e. a baboon)—has recently been shown to be illusory since the Greek ‘lunx’ may refer to a type of monkey: see Prada (2014). (82) Cf. the useful remarks in Brock (1979) and Wiotte-Franz (2001), 4. On the Oracle of the Potter as a translation, see Lloyd (1982), 50, n. 55. The relationship of the Demotic and Greek versions of the ‘Dream of Nectanebo’ is also difficult to assess: Ryholt (1998). (83) For the text see Totti (1985), incorporating the emendation of Schmidt (1918), 121. (84) Tr. Copenhaver (1992), 58. cf. Rochette (1995); Préaux (1967). (85) Assmann (2002a), 355–6, 419; Iverson (1961). (86) For cultural translation, Assmann (1996a). (87) The so-called ‘liar school’ of Herodotus; so Vasunia (2001) also sees Herodotus as essentially imposing Greek schemata on Egypt. (88) Vasunia (2001); Moyer (2002), 80–2; Loprieno (2003). (89) Lloyd (1982), 40; Ryholt (2010a), 716, who also points out that Sesostris is later presented as a rival to Alexander; cf. also Dillery (2004); also Ladynin in this volume for Sesostris in Dicaearchus. (90) Dillery (2005). (91) Ryholt (2006), 31–46. (92) Morgan (1998). Page 44 of 46

Introduction (93) Stephens, this volume; Rutherford (2013b). (94) Homer: Griffith (1997); Pindar: Bonneau (1964), 230; Derchain (1999); Aeschylus: Kranz (1933), 101. On the origin of the name of the Nile, see Luft (1992) (< n-jrw-’3 = ‘the great streams’). (95) Seaford (1980). (96) For Hecataeus as a source for Diodorus, Murray (1970); Quack (2009a), 26– 7 thinks that the euhemeristic king Osiris of these sources might be Egyptian in origin. (97) Chaeremon: van der Horst (1984); the Greek novel: Rutherford (2000); Iamblichus: Quack (2008). (98) Koenen (1983), (1993), 25: in particular ‘Ptolemaic kingship had a Janus-like character’, simultaneously reflecting and combining Greek and Egyptian ideologies. (99) Koenen (1993), 109; Selden (1998). (100) See Solmsen (1942), 213, n. 88, Stephens (2003), 226 n. 151 for references; Geus (2002), 127 is sceptical. (101) Stephens (2003), whose interpretation of the Argonautica is developed further by Noegel (2004). Similar claims have been made for Roman poetry, for example Hardie (2006) on Virgil’s Aeneid. (102) Classicists often trace this passage of Aratus back to Hesiod’s account of Nemesis and Aidos at Works and Days 197–201: Schiesaro (1996); Solmsen (1966). (103) See also Assmann (1990), 225–6. For Ma’at, cf. Stephens, this volume, on Plato. Drioton (1943) on an Egyptian text from Buto about a festival; Derchain (1974) on the plot of the Iliad as reflected in Egyptian sacred iconography of the Hellenistic period (cf. Koenen (1983), 146); also Derchain (1998) on Stoic influence in the theology of Kom Ombo; Vittmann (2000) on Greek ethnography in Demotic magical papyri. (104) Cooper (2003); Smelik and Hemelrijk (1984). For contrasts between Egypt and other cultures in Egyptian literature, see: Quack (2009a), 49. (105) Yoyotte (1980–1). (106) Bernand (1969), no. 129; for the similar case of Greek and Egyptian Asclepiuses, see Dieleman (2003), 150, n. 47.

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Introduction (107) Stereotyping: Hall (1991); stereotype appropriation: Frankfurter (1998), 225–33. (108) Assmann (1996a); Smith (2008). (109) See Kolta (1968). (110) NB: this text is written on the back of the Imhotep-aretalogy, P.Oxy. 1381. On Plutarch, Richter (2001). (111) Moyer (2002). (112) Brisson (1987). (113) Burstein (2009). (114) Cline (1994) thinks that there may actually have been some Egyptian influence in Argos (‘Tanaja’) in particular). (115) Koenen (1983), (1993); Selden (1998); Stephens (2003). (116) Discussed by Koenen (1993), Selden (1998).

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Plato’s Egyptian Republic Susan Stephens

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Starting from similarities that exist between the caste-system of Egyptian society as described by Isocrates and other Greek writers, this paper argues that Plato’s ideal state as sketched out in the Republic was in fact inspired by Egypt. In particular, Plato’s political system can be seen as a reworking of the principle of Ma’at or divine justice found in Egyptian thought. Keywords:   Plato, Egypt, politics, utopia, Ma’at, Isocrates, Busiris, caste-system

Plato’s Republic, in so far as the division of labor is treated in it as the formative principle of the state, is merely an Athenian idealization of the Egyptian caste system, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to others of his contemporaries, for example, Isocrates. It retained this importance for the Greeks even at the time of the Roman Empire. Karl Marx, Das Kapital1

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic Marx’s observation comes from a section of Das Kapital in which he compares ancient views of the value of labour with those of the bourgeois capitalism of his own day. However startling his comment may appear to the modern classical reader, there is good ancient evidence to support it, and he was not alone among ancients or moderns in drawing this conclusion. Marx’s view, in fact, reflects a strain of scholarly argument about Plato’s interest in Egypt from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that was later popularized by Martin Bernal in Black Athena. The sensational nature of the latter’s claims about the ‘origins’ of many Greek cultural behaviours in Egypt have not found ready acceptance in classical scholarship, and this in turn suggests the need for greater caution and nuance in articulating and demonstrating the dimension of such cultural borrowings (if indeed they exist). In what follows I will first examine the basis for Marx’s assumption, and then turn to Plato’s construction of justice in the Republic, and what connections may be drawn (p.42) between it and the standard for normative behaviour (called Ma’at) pervasive in Egyptian culture. The point of departure is Isocrates, who wrote an occasional piece called Busiris, to be dated, either between 390 and 380 BCE, which would make it an early work,2 or just after and in response to Plato’s Republic (some time in the 370s).3 This work purports to be an encomium of the mythical Egyptian king, Busiris. Isocrates’ purpose in writing, or so he says, was to demonstrate the proper means of delivering an encomiastic set piece, and to ‘correct’ one Polycrates, an Athenian teacher of rhetoric who had himself just written a similar, but— according to Isocrates—inadequate encomium of Busiris. Polycrates was somewhat older than Isocrates, and known for writing on paradoxical or perverse themes, like an Encomium for Clytemnestra or an attack on Socrates,4 while according to Demetrius his style was playful, and unserious.5 Today, Isocrates’ Busiris is no longer much read, Polycrates occupies a small footnote in the history of Greek rhetoric, and the real context for the two encomia is certainly lost. Nonetheless, Isocrates’ piece has its points of interest: it provides us with considerable evidence about the status of Egypt as a topic in fourthcentury Athenian discourse.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic Isocrates’ subject was a figure whose presence is well attested from at least the sixth century in Greek vase painting and was featured on the comic stage in Isocrates’ and Plato’s day. Busiris was reputed to have sacrificed all foreigners who came into his territory to Zeus Ammon, and, according to some versions, to have eaten his victims. From surviving fragments of comedy he seems also to have been a glutton, and possibly cannibalism featured as an extension of his gluttony. His demise, according to Greeks, was at his own altar and at the hands of Heracles, whom Busiris was intending to sacrifice. At least one black-figure (Vienna 3576, a Caeretan hydria c.520–500 BCE) and many red-figure vases portray this confrontation in a standard configuration: Heracles attacks the king and his followers at an altar.6 (p.43) As previous scholars have pointed out, the manner of attack mimics standard Egyptian depictions of the pharaoh routing the foe: Heracles tramples the king’s attendants under foot while their bodies are tumbled in every direction.7 Despite occasional burlesque, Busiris was a stereotypical barbarian tyrant, a king who behaved, like the sons of Aegyptus in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, as an autocrat whose modus vivendi was antithetical to the moderate rule of democratic Athens. In this context it is quite possible that Heracles, whose status as a popular hero was unparalleled, may have stood for the democratic man in his confrontation with Busiris. Therefore when Isocrates, and Polycrates before him, chose Busiris as an object for an encomium, they were working against the entrenched popular view of Busiris, whether for reasons of parody (as was certainly the case with Polycrates), or with the serious intent of refashioning the Egyptian’s reputation (which is one reading of Isocrates’ encomium), or to use him as a reductive model to critique Plato’s Republic (as many scholars understand Isocrates’ text). Isocrates specifically makes Busiris a nomothete, or lawgiver, and connects his accomplishments with those of Solon in Athens or Lycurgus in Sparta. He asserts that Busiris moved the Egyptians out of the realm of nature and into culture by giving them laws, religious institutions, and a political system. According to Isocrates, Busiris’ political innovations included dividing the Egyptians into classes: Some he appointed to religious tasks, others he turned to crafts, and others he compelled to practise the martial arts…[Moreover,] he gave orders that the same individuals should always engage in the same pursuits because he knew that those who continually change their occupations do not achieve excellence in even one of their tasks, but those who continually apply themselves to the same activities perform each thing extremely well.8

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic (p.44) Whatever the truth value of Isocrates’ assertions, these words cannot help but remind us of a far more famous and nearly contemporary text—Plato’s Republic. In it Socrates sets up his imaginary city with a tripartite class system of guardians, auxiliaries, and workers, the functions of whom are respectively to rule, to serve as a military elite, and to provide the goods and services necessary for the city to function properly. Membership in these classes was permanent and hereditary, though constructed with an escape clause for the occasional individual who was born with talents manifestly unsuited to his or her station.9 The similarities between these two passages cannot be accidental—the class structure that Isocrates specifically identifies as Egyptian is virtually the same class structure that Socrates adumbrates in the Republic.10 While one may object that guardians are not priests, it is significant that Isocrates praises the Egyptian priestly class not for its devotion to religious ritual, but for the leisure that exempts it ‘from the dangers of war and other work’ and by means of which it was able to introduce ‘the practice of philosophy’ a pursuit ‘which has the power, not only to establish laws, but also to investigate the nature of the universe’ (§23). Busiris, we are told, placed ‘the older of these men [the priests] in charge of the most important matters, and the younger he persuaded, neglecting pleasures to study the stars and arithmetic and geometry, the values of which some praise as useful for some things, but others try to demonstrate that they are especially conducive to the pursuit of virtue’.11 While as a description of actual Egyptian priesthoods Isocrates’ narrative may be less than historically (p.45) accurate, it is strikingly consistent with the behaviour and education that Socrates proposes for his guardians.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic Isocrates himself actually states that he is not the first to find similarities between Greek and Egyptian political practices: ‘with respect to the system by which they preserved kingship and the rest of their polity, they [sc. Egyptians] have been so successful that philosophers who undertake to discuss such things and who are especially esteemed prefer to commend the polity of Egypt’. Further, the Lacedaemonians, in so far as they mimic (μιμουμένους) Egyptian practices, govern their own city most admirably.’12 But to what philosophers does Isocrates refer? Plato and Isocrates were contemporaries: both were members of the Athenian elite; both appropriate the term philosophia for their enterprise; and both write at length about the nature of government, though from differing perspectives. Their works make it clear that they knew each other and read each other’s work—Isocrates is mentioned by name in Plato’s Phaedrus §§278–9. As a result some scholars believe that Isocrates is specifically referring to Plato when he mentions philosophers ‘who undertake to discuss such things’ (§17).13 If the Busiris is a response to the Republic, then we have the two sophist/philosophers within the late fifth and early fourth century demonstrating familiarity with Egyptian polity. If the Busiris pre-dates the Republic, Isocrates’ esteemed philosophers must allude to earlier Sophists or, as some have conjectured, the disciples of Pythagoras, and Plato can stand no earlier than third in the line of ‘philosophers’ who devote attention to the class system of Egypt. How Polycrates would fit into this is moot. His work was undoubtedly a parody, but why he would choose Busiris as a subject is not at all clear, unless Busiris already had some purchase in elite discourse about the state. Whatever the relative dates of the Busiris and the Republic (and the order of the two texts is irrelevant for what follows), the resemblances do raise a question: could Plato have been aware of the resemblance between this Egyptian class structure and that of the Republic? Or was the resemblance an unfortunate coincidence that allowed Isocrates to (p.46) mock Plato by insinuating that his ideal city structure had already been realized on the banks of the Nile? Scholars who insist that it is indeed coincidence also argue that Isocrates’ Busiris must have been written later, and that Plato himself must have been unaware of the resemblance.14 Their position is partially corroborated by ancient testimony: Crantor of Soli, a member of the Academy whose floruit falls at the end of the fourth century (340–275 BCE) and who is said to have written on the Timaeus, alleges that ‘Plato was mocked by his contemporaries on the grounds that he was not the inventor of the Republic, but copied it from (μεταγράψαντα) that of the Egyptians.’15 As now represented in Proclus, Crantor goes on to claim that the Timaeus was an attempt by Plato to rectify the situation:

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic And he [Plato] took the opinion of the mockers so seriously that he assigned to the Egyptians this history about the Athenians and the Atlantans to the effect that the Athenians once lived in accordance with that politeia.16 We may conclude from Crantor’s reported remarks that Plato’s contemporaries (note the plural τῶν τότε) saw a resemblance between the class structure of the Republic and that of fourth-century Egypt, while Crantor himself also saw a resemblance between the class structure of the Republic and that which is sketched out in the opening of the Timaeus. The Timaeus begins with a recap of Socrates’ vision of the ‘best constitution for a city and from what kind of men such a city might be fashioned’ (§17c1–2). Critias, one of the participants in the dialogue, then relates a story about the antiquity of Athens that, allegedly, the Athenian lawgiver, Solon, learned from Egyptian priest from the Delta city of Sais. According to the priest, the original establishment of Athens not only predated, it was the ancestor of Egyptian Sais, and for this reason, the priest says: (p.47) you will find today among us [Egyptians] many examples of your institutions in those days. First, our priestly class is kept separate from others, also our artisan class…and of course, you have noticed that our soldier class is kept separate from all others.17 In other words, pre-Saitic Athens is said to have had a class structure that mirrored that of Socrates’ ideal city and which was acknowledged to be the same structure as the Egypt of Solon’s day. A structure that was, in fact, not unlike the actual political structure of sixth-century Egypt. Similarities between the ideal polity of the Republic and political reality of Egypt in Plato’s day could be extended beyond this formal class structure. Egyptian priests, like the hypothetical guardians, had the leisure to pursue the life of the mind, and during the Late Period, were sufficiently powerful to exert political control over the state (something that Plato knows, since he remarks on it in the Politicus 290d9–e3).18 Also, the Egyptian artistic display of Pharaonic power was deliberately constructed to project immense stability. Even in the fourth century when Egypt had been subsumed under the Persian Empire, the structures of governance, monuments, and ideological representations of the pharaoh (now a Persian satrap) remained the same. This was a stability that Isocrates certainly views positively and that Plato too regards favourably in the Laws (see below). For Socrates’ hypothetical state, stability is a central desideratum, without which all forms of government must inevitably degenerate.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic Moreover, this Egyptian socio-political structure seems to have been well known in Athens among the literate elite: Herodotus, after all, presents us with the same organizational model at the end of his Egyptian book (2.164). Although he lists seven classes, it is obvious that in his own reckoning the priests and military are conceptually different from the other five, who pursue occupations classifiable as βάναυσοι. By the time of Plato, Athens and Egypt (p.48) were economically linked, with Egypt providing a major source of grain for the city.19 In the period 395–380 BCE Athenians had supported Egypt against Persia; afterwards in the 360s the Athenian Chabrias served as admiral of the Egyptian fleet under the Saite pharaoh Tachos (or Teos) of the 30th dynasty. Egyptians resident in Athens extended into the privileged classes; they are known from private legal proceedings during the century as well as from Attic comedy. All this suggests, prima facie, that philosophers could have been familiar with Egypt, especially the organizing principles of its state, even without the postdoctoral study in Egypt that subsequent writers are so eager to attribute to a number of the Presocratics and to Pythagoras, as well as to Plato himself. It is easy to understand the fascination that Egypt might have held for Athenian intellectuals. It was not only an older, but a far richer culture than Greece, both in material and artistic terms. But although it is generally acknowledged that the Greeks borrowed extensively from Egyptian material culture, especially in the areas of plastic arts, monumental architecture, sculpture, wall painting, and even the motifs on vase painting, scholars are still disinclined to consider the possibility of exchange in the conceptual realm.20 There are, however, excellent grounds to infer that Greeks may have been engaged in more than economic and artistic exchange with Egypt. The fact that a nearly contemporary writer like Herodotus could suppose that the Thesmophoria was brought from Egypt by the daughters of Danaus and taught to Greek women—however mistaken his assumption—suggests that Greeks themselves would not have baulked at entertaining Egyptian behaviours that might be classified as religious or philosophical. Also, there is the explicit statement in the Busiris that ‘on a visit to Egypt [Pythagoras] became a student of the religion of the people, and was the first to bring the Greeks all philosophy’ (§28). Again, this remark depends on an underlying assumption that engagement with such fundamental thought processes was possible. Finally, Plato himself in the Critias—the now incomplete dialogue that follows the Timaeus—presents us with a cultural exchange on the level of language; initially, he tells us, Egyptians descended from Athenians learned the significance of Greek names and translated (p.49) them into Egyptian; much later, Solon is described as having become aware of this earlier translation, and in turn having learned the significance of Egyptian names, translated them back into Greek.21 These three separate testimonies to GrecoEgyptian intellectual interaction should alert us to the possibility that the Greeks were not as close-minded on this subject as much scholarship has been. Though, this too is changing: John Dillon writing on the Heirs of Plato in 2003 remarks: Page 7 of 21

Plato’s Egyptian Republic No one, to my knowledge, in modern times, has proposed the view that Egypt, with its priestly elite and strict hierarchies of class and occupation, might have been Plato’s main inspiration. And yet this does not seem by any means improbable.22 Let us consider for a moment that Plato did deliberately intend his audience to think of Egypt as Socrates unfolds his plan for an ideal city, what inferences should we draw from this? If Plato was following the precedent of Isocrates’ ‘highly esteemed’ philosophers, it is easy to imagine that Egypt figured as a clearly delineated topos that might be invoked whenever the literate elite fell to discussing the nature of the state. Egypt, as a political entity, provided a ready alternative to Greek democracy, since the former was tested by time and seemingly constructed to maximize the contribution of those with elite knowledge and specialized skills. Even if its main intent was parody, Isocrates’ revisionist history of an anti-democratic figure like Busiris can easily be understood in this context. Egypt could, therefore, have come to serve for Plato, and possibly even for Isocrates, as a viable model against which to position, and hence to test, the institutions and values of the radical democracy of the fourth century.23 There is another factor: while Sparta might have been able to furnish an (p.50) opposing ideal to Athenian democracy in the fifth century, the failure of the Thirty and of Sparta itself in the early fourth century would have severely limited its usefulness as a trope in discussing model polities. Egypt may have come to fill the void; in fact, Isocrates explicitly links the two in the Busiris, remarking that ‘the Lacedaemonians…govern their own city in admirable fashion because they imitate certain of the Egyptian customs’.24 But, he continues, the Lacedaemonians have not employed the institutions they have imitated particularly well. This double gesture of asserting that what is admirable about Sparta is really not Spartan, and what is reprehensible is their own fault does seem to delineate a revisionist position on Sparta, while not wholly abandoning the political model of which it is now a subset.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic As it happens, Egypt was not the only model of government available for those who wished to find alternatives to democracy. The whitewashing of the character of Minos, the legendary king of Crete, provides a cogent parallel example. Minos was consistently protrayed on the Attic stage in the fifth century as a tyrannical and violent collector of tribute, the father of the Minotaur, the long-term enemy of Theseus and of Athens. However, in the fourth century in some writings his reputation, like that of Busiris, underwent a complete change. He became ‘a great and wise legislator, instructed by Zeus’.25 Cretan laws began to be valued for their antiquity. There is even a treatise on Minos, attached to the Platonic corpus, in which the Cretan king, now praised as a nomothete, is defended against the current misrepresentations of him by the Athenian dramatists (Minos 320d7–e8). Crete, too, like Egypt, is shown to be connected with Sparta. In this version, Sparta is said to have derived many of her civic institutions in the time of Lycurgus, from Crete. Thus Plato and Isocrates and their contemporaries appear to have provided themselves with a range of ‘historical’ solutions, which they conveniently discovered in an Egypt or a Crete, to perceived contemporary problems—political stability, the legitimation of government, the place of elites in the city—issues that continued to be debated the more urgently among elites as the radical democracy seemed not only (p.51) to survive the oligarchic coups of the late fifth century, but even to prosper.26 In Plato’s Republic, however, the class system does not function as simply as it does in Isocrates’ Busiris, namely, as an example of the best form of government. In attempting to find an adequate definition of justice, Socrates explicitly links the classes to the human psyche. Man’s soul, we are told, is also divided into three parts and justice is identified as the harmony of those parts. In truth, as it seems, justice is something like this, but not in regard to external activity—but to internal, and truly concerns the self and its business—a man who allows none of the classes of his soul to tend to another’s business or to interfere with the others. But he puts what are truly his own affairs in order, arranges and takes command of himself, and tunes his three parts like three notes of a chord—low, high and middle and whatever may lie between—binding them into one harmonious whole, having become one out of many, temperate and in harmony, only then does he act, if he finds something to do in financial affairs or care of the body, in public or private business; in all these undertakings considering and naming any act that produces or preserves this condition, ‘beautiful and just’, and the knowledge that pertains to such an act, ‘wisdom’, and he will name ‘unjust’ any action that tends to dissolve this condition…27

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic In this passage justice is an ordering principle, one that extends from the individual through to the actions of the state, and where, if the individual is in disorder, the consequence is not only personal but also of significance for the larger social and political unit. And, if we may extrapolate from the argument of the Timaeus, this ordering (p.52) principle can be extended even to the universe as a whole. Since Plato takes pains to position his highly elaborated system against what are presented as more popular, or familiar, or culturally acceptable views of justice in the opening book of the Republic—particularly those articulated by Thrasymachus—we must assume that his system in fact differed, perhaps radically, from popularly advocated morality as well as from the teachings of the Sophists. But is it unique to Plato or, as we have seen with the class system, is he elaborating a system known at least to some of his elite contemporaries to have elements in common with another culture? In fact, two of the central features of Plato’s system—that justice is an ordering principle and that it is a principle extending from individual human psychology to state—are fundamental to Egyptian thought. Although there are no explicit Egyptian texts defining the concept in Western standards of expository prose, according to Erik Hornung, a leading theorist of Egyptian thought, Egyptian visual and written texts consistently articulated a principle of ‘immanent lawfulness’ as ‘the foundation of all order in the created world, as the basis for life in a specifically social sense, as well as in the much broader sense of cosmic order or balance’.28 This ordering principle included ‘human integrity in thought, word and deed’, and like Plato’s notion of justice, it is an activity that extends from the indvidual to the social: only through proper behaviour and active engagement of the individual can world order be achieved. Called Ma’at it was the basis of the legal as well as the religious and political system; the king at the top of the social and political hierarchy was most responsible to maintain Ma’at, but learning how to act in accordance with Ma’at was the responsibility of every Egyptian whatever his or her class, and the purpose of Egyptian education.29 Humans were measured against it at the moment of death. For example, illustrations found in the Egyptian Books of the Dead portray Ma’at as a feather or a goddess with a feather headdress sitting on a scale. In the opposite scale, as a counterbalance, is the individual human heart undergoing final judgment. The heart that was lighter than Ma’at (that is, just, in its human earthly life) was judged worthy of entrance into the afterlife; the heart heavier than Ma’at perished and subsided into the realm of non-being. Gods too participated in (p.53) this ordering principle; the universe was constructed according to its guidelines.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic The realm of Ma’at also extended to music, poetry, and art. ‘It was the harmony of tones, the melodious sound, the proper measure in architecture, the antidote for every excess.’30 The apparently static quality of Egyptian art—in visual terms, pharaohs are represented with the same fixed poses for millennia—was the instantiation of Ma’at. Ma’at dictated that form be represented in a correct and timeless manner; a circumstance that led to the establishment of the normative canon by which figures were proportionally reproduced in Egyptian wall painting. This canon was certainly exported or borrowed by the Greeks as early as the Archaic period.31 Along with the canon may have come its explicit rationale. Certainly Plato seems to have been aware of it, as I will discuss below. Indeed, the vase paintings of Heracles and Busiris that were mentioned above (pp. 42–3), exploit a visual representation of Ma’at. In Egyptian artistic tradition the pharaoh is often represented as striding forward to trample his enemy, who are always portrayed in disarray at this feet, and this is the force of Ma’at restoring order from chaos. In the Greek vases, we find the same pictorial gestures—Heracles smashes Busiris on the head with his club (or on one vase with an Egyptian that he has grasped by the foot)—either in parody, or more likely, the replacement of the pharaoh with Heracles is a conscious attempt to appropriate for Heracles the properties of the pharaoh as the bearer of order and civilized community. This is not to claim that the notion of justice that Socrates articulates in the Republic and Ma’at are one and the same—indeed, there is no exact Egyptian parallel for the tripartite division of the human soul, each with its separate sphere of responsibilities. But if justice in the Republic is not completely coextensive with Egyptian Ma’at, the two systems have large areas of undeniable similarity. Thus it is a fair question to ask if Plato could have been sufficiently acquainted with this ordering principle for it to have influenced his (or Socrates’) construction of justice? In fact, in the Laws, Plato does appear to be alluding to this principle of Ma’at in his discussion of artistic production. When addressing the proper musical education (656c–657b), the Athenian stranger praises the Egyptians as a society (p.54) that appeared to have, with respect to its musical arts, determined what constitutes ‘natural correctness’ (ὀρθότητα φύσει) and to have guaranteed its unity and stability through law in order to prevent degenerating innovation. He states:

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic It is a thing marvellous to hear. It appears that long ago this principle that we are now talking about was settled on by them [the Egyptians], namely that the young in their cities should practise postures and tunes that are fair (καλὰ μὲν σχήματα, καλὰ δὲ μέλη). Prescribing in detail—what they were and their kinds—they posted them clearly in the temples (ταξάμενοι δὲ ταῦτα, ἅττα ἐστὶ καὶ ὁποῖ’ ἄττα ἀπέφηναν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς), and apart from them, it was forbidden and still is to painters and other artists to modify or innovate, whether in such productions or in any other branch of music, over and above the traditional forms. And if you look there, you will find that things painted or moulded 10,000 years ago are not at all better or worse than modern works, but are produced with the same artistic skill. …At all events it is an undoubted and a noteworthy fact in the history of music that it has proved possible for a man legislating about such things to give the effective sanction of religion to that which is naturally correct.32 In fact, Plato’s ‘natural correctness’ (ὀρθότητα φύσει) would, in Egyptian terms, be Ma’at. Moreover, Plato’s discussion of Egyptian artistic canonicity in the Laws is not so restricted in its application that we should dismiss it as irrelevant to the discussion in the Republic. Plato explicitly connects obedience to the laws of ‘genre’ with obedience to the city’s laws, arguing in Laws that ‘freedom’ in musical arts is but a precursor to ‘refusal to be subject to rulers’, ‘to be sumissive to parents and elders’, and finally to ‘disregard of the city’s laws’.33 This same (p.55) argument occurs at Republic 424b–d in a slightly altered form where Socrates says: to state it briefly then: those in charge of the city must hold to this and stay watchful to prevent corruption secretly creeping in; to prevent innovation in gymnastics and in poetry, contrary to the established order…Change to a novel form of music must be guarded against as a risk to the whole order. Conventions of music are nowhere disturbed without disturbing the most fundamental ways of the state.34 Of course, it is the insight that ‘natural correctness’ links all spheres of human endeavour that prompts the Egyptians to stabilize harmony by law and that, in turn, prompts Plato to express his approval of their society within his own text the Laws. Further, a statement in the Timaeus suggests that Plato may also have been aware of a pervasive ordering principle in Egyptian thought beyond the governing of artistic creation. The Egyptian priest remarks:

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic then again as to wisdom, you see what attention our land has given to it from the very starting-point; how it has encouraged cosmology, deriving salutary regulations for human life, right down to the rules of divination and physic, from the principles of that divine study [cosmology] (ἐκ τούτων θείων ὄντων εἰς τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ἀνευρών) and mastering all the sciences which derive from it.35 Given that Plato was not unaware of the class structure of Egypt as he constructed his argument in the Timaeus, given also that his Athenian stranger (in the Laws) and his Egyptian priest (in the Timaeus) are familiar with and can openly express admiration for some aspects of the intellectual construct that the Egyptians would call Ma’at, it should not be surprising if aspects of Plato’s idea of justice—the correct order of the human psyche and his attempt to fix it or stabilize it within the state—do self-consciously evoke Egyptian social norms, (p. 56) and what—demonstrably—he does know about them. In fact, one scholar— James McEvoy—has gone so far as to suggest that the Egyptian pharaoh was Plato’s model for the philosopher king.36 The fact that Isocrates, in the Busiris, nowhere explicitly invokes an overarching principle that we could identify as Ma’at, and that Herodotus does not do so in his Histories—although he does record some specific instantiations of it, particularly with respect to song—is likely to reflect differing literary goals not the limits of actual knowledge. Neither Herodotus nor Isocrates was articulating a model for universal justice, or thinking in such global or generalizing terms. If Egypt served as a touchstone or frame of reference for Plato, this may well result from his particular philosophical interests that recognized in the Egyptian system a stimulating analogue to his own ideas.37

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic There is one further alignment with Egyptian thought that cannot be supported by pointing to particular passages of Plato, but suggests itself rather out of the narrative trajectory of the Republic as a whole. That is the connection, hinted at as the dialogue opens and made explicit in Book 10 with the elaboration of the Myth of Er, between justice and judgment with reward or punishment in the afterlife. More than in any other ancient culture, visions of death permeate Egypt. It was famous for its tombs, for its cult of the afterlife. Among its most notable literary productions were Books of the Dead, texts that each person who could afford to do so carried into the tomb to help in negotiating the world of the dead. Each Book contained a representation of the judgment of the dead owner of the book as he or she presented him (or herself) to Osiris, the judge of the underworld.38 No ancient culture more closely linked just behaviour while alive with judgment after death, and concommitant rewards or punishments. The narrator of the Republic, Socrates, initially sketches a class structure that, I would argue, must suggest Egypt to its contemporary elite readers (or at least the subset engaged in debates about the best kind of constitution), articulates a notion of justice that is reminiscent of actual Egyptian social norms, then (p.57) presents us with a final tableau, not of the cave or of the philosopher king, but of the judgment of the dead in accordance with the principles of justice set out earlier in the discourse. A judgment that finds its closest cultural analogues not in Greek society, but in Egyptian.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic If, as I have been arguing, there are so many echoes of Egyptian culture in the Republic, why does Plato not make his references clear by explicitly drawing the connections as he does in the Timaeus? Probably because Socrates, perhaps disingenuously, claims to be imagining an idealized state, one that is distanced from contemporary polities, and he does not, in fact, mention any real contemporary state in connection with his construct. As a control, it is worth remembering that there are, in fact, a number of places in the Republic that scholars have taken to be allusions to Spartan society, where Sparta is certainly not mentioned—the military class system being the most obvious. (Although he does mention Sparta in Book 8 in connection with oligarchy and timocracy, this has nothing to do with the ideal workings of his state.) When Plato does mention Egypt in other texts, as in the Timaeus or the Laws, the identity of the country is important to his overall argument. For example, the claim that Athens is older than Egypt gains weight and plausibility from its articulation by an Egyptian, not a Greek. But nothing in the argument in the Republic positively requires or depends on our knowing that his class system and that of Egypt are similar. Any more than his argument depends on explicit references to Spartan or Cretan patterns of behaviour. This text seems rather to have been constructed and set in a world that is deliberately distanced from contemporary political realities— although his audience would necessarily be aware of those realities, and he would have expected that they would be. At a very minimum, Egypt seems to stand behind the text as a touchstone that links the Republic with other contemporary elite discourse on the state (including Plato’s own work)—and this may be all that it is intended to do. Ultimately, what we make of Plato’s Egyptian connection depends on what we make of the Republic as a whole—and it is not a text whose meanings are straightforward or uncontroversial. My goal has not been to claim, like Martin Bernal (and before him Plato’s ancient critics), that Plato got it all from Egypt, but to reframe discussion about the meanings of the Republic in a way that acknowledges the limits of an entirely Hellenocentric perspective. As modern readers of Plato, most classicists know little or nothing about Egypt, yet statements in Herodotus, Isocrates, and Crantor convey the impression (p.58) that ancient Athenians were much better informed. Whether ancient readers would have viewed an Egyptian prototype for Socrates’ ideal city as a serious contender or an ironic pretender, the consequence of admitting this alien culture into the text of the Republic is to move Plato’s argument much more firmly in the direction of a concretized political discourse (an interpretative trend that we can see in the writing of scholars like Josiah Ober and Kathryn Morgan). Moreover, it makes it a political discourse that provides a ‘real time’ model for a state with a tightly constrained social, artistic, and religious order. And a state with a highly complex and sophisticated cosmogonic and moral scaffolding that guaranteed its social order. As such it would not have been unworthy of Plato’s attention and would well have repaid serious thought. Page 15 of 21

Plato’s Egyptian Republic Bibliography Bibliography references: Boardman, J. (1999), The Greeks Overseas (4th edn.) (London and New York). Cameron, A. (1983), ‘Crantor and Posidonius on Atlantis’, CQ 3.1, 81–91. Dillon, J. (2003), The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC) (Oxford). Eucken, C. (1983), Isokrates: Seine Positionen in der Auseinandersetzung mit den zeitgenössischen Philosophen (Berlin). Froidefond, C. (1971), Le mirage égyptien…dans la littérature grecque d’Homère à Aristotle (Aix-en-Provence). Gombrich, E. H. (1961), Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton). Hansen, M. (1975), Aspects of Athenian Society in the Fourth Century B.C. (Odense Universitetsforlag). Hornung, E. (1992), Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought, (tr. by E. Bredeck (Timken). Laurens, A.-F. (1986), ‘Bousiris’, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae III.i (Munich), 147–52. Livingstone, N. A. (2001), A Commentary on Isocrates’ Busiris (Leiden). McEvoy, J. (1993), ‘Platon et la sagesse de l’Égypte’, Kernos 6, 245–75. Marx, K. (1990), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I, tr. Ben Fowkes (New York). Morgan, K. (1998), ‘Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Story and Fourth-Century Ideology’, JHS 118, 101–18. (p.59) Morrow, G. R. (1993), Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws (Princeton, repr). Nightingale, A. (1999), ‘Plato’s Lawcode in Context’, CQ 49, 100–22. Papillon, T. L. (2001), ‘Rhetoric, Art, and Myth: Isocrates and Busiris’, in C. Wooten (ed.), The Orator in Action and Theory in Greece & Rome: Essays in Honor of George A. Kennedy (Leiden), 73–96.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic Taylor, A. E. (1928), A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford: repr. 1967, New York). Teichmüller, G. (1881), Literarische Fehden (Breslau) 2 vols. (p.60) Notes:

(1) Tr. B. Fowkes (1990), 488–9. (2) See Livingstone (2001), 44 and n. 112, where he lists those who support this dating. (3) Livingstone (2001), 45–7 follows Eucken (1983), 180–3, in arguing for the later date. (4) Quintilian 2.17.4. Livingstone (2001), 28–40 provides a thorough discussion of the evidence for Polycrates and his oeuvre. (5) On Style 120: ἔπαιζεν γάρ οὐκ ἐσπούδαζεν, καὶ αὐτὸς τῆς γραφῆς ὁ ὄγκος παίγνιόν ἐστι. (6) See Papillon (2001), 76 n. 10 for a list of vases and 77–85 for illustrations; illustrations may also be found in LIMC III. i. 147–52, especially pls. 9–12, 19, 23, 28, 32. (7) Gombrich (1961), 135–6 and cited in Papillon (2001), 78. Livingstone (2001), 87–90 discusses these vases with relation to Isocrates’ text. (8) Busiris, §15: μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα διελόμενος χωρὶς ἑκάστους, τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς ἱερωσύνας κατέστησεν, τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ τὰς τέχνας ἔτρεψεν, τοὺς δὲ τὰ περὶ τὸν πόλεμον μελετᾶν ἠνάγκασεν…and §16:…ἀεὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς τὰς αὐτὰς πράξεις μεταχειρίζεσθαι προσέταξεν, εἰδὼς τοὺς μὲν μεταβαλλομένους τὰς ἐργασίας οὐδὲ πρὸς ἓν τῶν ἔργων ἀκριβῶς ἔχοντας, τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς αὐταῖς πράξεσι συνεχῶς διαμένοντας εἰς ὑπερβολὴν ἕκαστον ἀποτελοῦντας. (9) This ‘escape clause’ was part of the ‘noble lie’ (§§414b–415d), a ‘charter myth’ for the ideal city that operated by instilling the desired class structure into children. They were told that gold, silver, or baser metals were implanted in their souls, which in turn determined their roles in the state (Morgan (1998), 101 and notes). It may be relevant that features of the noble lie resemble the Athenian Stranger’s assertion at Laws §819b7–d that Egyptian children learned to sort out bowls of gold, bronze, and silver mixed together, thus ‘adapting the rules of elementary arithmetic to play; in this way they (the teachers) are of service to the pupils for their future tasks of marshalling, leading, and marching of armies, or of household management…’. What the stranger describes has no historical support as an Egyptian practice.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic (10) See Livingstone (2001), 48–56 for a discussion of the relationship between the two texts. (11) Busiris §23: καὶ τοὺς μὲν πρεσβυτέρους ἐπὶ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν πραγμάτων ἔταξεν, τοὺς δὲ νεωτέρους ἀμελήσαντας τῶν ἡδονῶν ἐπ’ ἀστρολογίᾳ καὶ λογισμοῖς καὶ γεωμετρίᾳ διατρίβειν ἔπεισεν, ὧν τὰς δυνάμεις οἱ μὲν ὡς πρὸς ἔνια χρησίμους ἐπαινοῦσιν, οἱ δ’ ὡς πλεῖστα πρὸς ἀρετὴν συμβαλλομένας ἀποφαίνειν ἐπιχειροῦσιν. (12) Busiris §17: καὶ πρὸς τὴν σύνταξινδι’ ἧς τήν τε βασιλείαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην πολιτείαν διαφυλάττουσιν, οὕτω καλῶς ἔχοντας ὥστε καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν τοιούτων λέγειν ἐπιχειροῦντας καὶ μάλιστ’ εὐδοκιμοῦντας τὴν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ προαιρεῖσθαι πολιτείαν ἐπαινεῖν, καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους μέρος τι τῶν ἐκεῖθεν μιμουμένους ἄριστα διοικεῖν τὴν αὑτῶν πόλιν. (13) Livingstone (2001), 138 reprises the discussion. (14) See the discussions of Froidefond (1971), 240–2 and Teichmüller (1881), vol. I. 105–10. (15) Crantor’s writing is not extant, but these lines are attributed to him by Proclus in his own commentary on the Timaeus: καὶ σκώπτεσθαι μέν φησιν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῶν τότε ὡς οὐκ αὐτὸν ὄντα τῆς πολιτείας εὑρετήν, ἀλλὰ μεταγράψαντα τὰ Αἰγυπτίων (Proc. In Tim. 1. (p. 76 Diehl)). (16) Proclus in Tim. 1: τὸν δὲ τοσοῦτον ποιήσασθαι τῶν σκωπτόντων λόγον, ὥστε ἐπὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἀναπέμψαι τὴν περὶ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Ἀτλαντίνων ταύτην ἱστορίαν, ὡς τῶν Ἀθηναίων κατὰ ταύτην ζησάντων ποτὲ τὴν πολιτείαν. For a discussion of the passage, see Cameron 1983: 81–3, who attributes these sentences to Crantor, not Proclus. (17) Timaeus §24a3–b1: πολλὰ γὰρ παραδείγματα τῶν τότε παρ᾿ ὑμȋιν ὄντων ἐνθάδε νῦν ἀνευρήσεις, πρῶτον μὲν τὸ τῶν ἱερέων γένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων χωρὶς ἀφωρισμένον, μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν δημιουργῶν,…καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ μάχιμον γένος ᾔσθησαί που τῇδε ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν γενῶν κεχωρισμένον…(§24a3–b1). (18) Politicus §290d9–e3: ὥστε περὶ μὲν Αἴγυπτον οὐδ’ ἔξεστι βασιλέα χωρὶς ἱερατικῆς ἄρχειν, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ἄρα καὶ τύχῃ πρότερον ἐξ ἄαλλους γένους βιασάμενος, ὕστερον ἀναγκαῖον εἰς τοῦτο εἰστελεῖσθαι αὐτὸν τὸ γένος). ‘Thus in Egypt it is not possible for a king to rule without priestly powers, and if he happens to have forced himself in from another class, afterwards he must be enrolled in this class.’ (19) According to Hansen (1975), 46, approximately 66% of all hoards found in Egypt that are datable to the fourth century consisted of Athenian coins. (20) E.g. Boardman (1999), 142–3. Page 18 of 21

Plato’s Egyptian Republic (21) Critias §113a1–b2: μὴ πολλάκις ἀκούοντες Ἑλληνικὰ βαρβάρων ἀνδρῶν ὀνόματα θαυμάζητε· τὸ γὰρ αἴτιον αὐτῶν πεύσεσθε. Σόλων, ἅτ’ ἐπινοῶν εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ ποίησιν καταχρήσασθαι τῷ λόγῳ, διαπυνθανόμενος τὴν τῶν ὀνομάτων δύναμιν, εὗρεν τούς τε Αἰγυπτίους τοὺς πρώτους ἐκείνους αὐτὰ γραψαμένους εἰς τὴν αὑτῶν φωνὴν μετενηνοχότας, αὐτός τε αὖ πάλιν ἑκάστου τὴν διάνοιαν ὀνόματος ἀναλαμβάνων εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ἄγων φωνὴν ἀπεγράφετο. (22) (2003), 219–20. (23) C. Froidefond in his massive study of images of Egypt in Greek writing suggests that: ‘The Egyptian system gave an original solution to the great problems of the moment, namely its political stability, the legitimation of government, the place of religion in the city, the function of elites, the problem, in a word, of the foundation of the entire πόλις’ (Froidefond (1971), 234–5). (24) Busiris §17: μάλιστ’ εὐδοκιμοῦντας τὴν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ προαιρεῖσθαι πολιτείαν ἐπαινεῖν, καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους μέρος τι τῶν ἐκεῖθεν μιμουμένους ἄριστα διοικεῖν τὴν αὑτῶν πόλιν. (25) Morrow (1993), 23. (26) For another example, see Morgan’s discussion of Plato’s Atlantis myth as a topos that mediated concerns about the legitimacy of contemporary politeiai (1998). (27) Republic §§443c9–444a1: τὸ δέ γε ἀληθές, τοιοῦτόν τι ἦν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡ δικαιοσύνη ἀλλ’ οὐ περὶ τὴν ἔξω πρᾶξιν τῶν αὑτοῦ, ἀλλὰ περὶ τὴν ἐντός, ὡς ἀληθῶς περὶ ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, μὴ ἐάσαντα τἀλλότρια πράττειν ἕκαστον ἐν αὑτῷ μηδὲ πολυπραγμονεῖν πρὸς ἄλληλα τὰ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γένη, ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι τὰ οἰκεῖα εὖ θέμενον καὶ ἄρξαντα αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ καὶ κοσμήσαντα καὶ φίλον γενόμενον ἑαυτῷ καὶ συναρμόσαντα τρία ὄντα, ὥσπερ ὅρους τρεῖς ἁρμονίας ἀτεχνῶς, νεάτης τε καὶ ὑπάτης καὶ μέσης, καὶ εἰ ἄλλα ἄττα μεταξὺ τυγχάνει ὄντα, πάντα ταῦτα συνδήσαντα καὶ παντάπασιν ἕνα γενόμενον ἐκ πολλῶν, σώφρονα καὶ ἡρμοσμένον, οὕτω δὴ πράττειν ἤδη, ἐάν τι πράττῃ ἢ περὶ χρημάτων κτῆσιν ἢ περὶ σώματος θεραπείαν ἢ καὶ πολιτικόν τι ἢ περὶ τὰ ἴδια συμβόλαια, ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις ἡγούμενον καὶ ὀνομάζοντα δικαίαν μὲν καὶ καλὴν πρᾶξιν ἣ ἂν ταύτην τὴν ἕξιν σῴζῃ τε καὶ συναπεργάζηται, σοφίαν δὲ τὴν ἐπιστατοῦσαν ταύτῃ τῇ πράξει ἐπιστήμην, ἄδικον δὲ πρᾶξιν ἣ ἂν ἀεὶ ταύτην λύῃ… (28) (1992), 134. (29) (1992), 135–40. (30) (1992), 140. (31) Boardman (1999), 144.

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Plato’s Egyptian Republic (32) Laws 656d–657a: (Athenian) θαῦμα καὶ ἀκοῦσαι. πάλαι γὰρ δή ποτε, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐγνώσθη παρ’ αὐτοῖς οὗτος ὁ λόγος ὃν τὰ νῦν λέγομεν ἡμεῖς, ὅτι καλὰ μὲν σχήματα, καλὰ δὲ μέλη δεῖ μεταχειρίζεσθαι ταῖς συνηθείαις τοὺς ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι νέους· ταξάμενοι δὲ ταῦτα, ἅττα ἐστὶ καὶ ὁποῖ’ ἄττα ἀπέφηναν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς, καὶ παρὰ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἐξῆν οὔτε ζωγράφοις, οὔτ’ ἄλλοις ὅσοι σχήματα καὶ ὁμοῖ’ ἄττα ἀπεργάζονται, καινοτομεῖν οὐδ’ ἐπινοεῖν ἄλλ’ ἄττα ἢ τὰ πάτρια, οὐδὲ νῦν ἔξεστιν, οὔτε ἐν τούτοις οὔτε ἐν μουσικῇ συμπάσῃ. σκοπῶν εὑρήσεις αὐτόθι τὰ μυριοστὸν ἔτος γεγραμμένα ἢ τετυπωμένα—τῶν νῦν δεδημιουργημένων οὔτε τι καλλίονα οὔτ’ αἰσχίω, τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ τέχνην ἀπειργασμένα…τοῦτο δ’ οὗν τὸ περὶ μουσικὴν ἀληθές τε καὶ ἄξιον ἐννόίας, ὅτι δυνατὸν ἄρ' ἦν περὶ τῶν τοιούτων νομοθετεῖσθαι καὶ βεβαίως καθιεροῦν τὰ μέλη τὰ τὴν ὀρθότητα φύσει παρεχόμενα. The passage has a textual variant: βεβαίως θαρροῦντα μέλη mss.Burnet; καὶ βεβαίως καθιεροῦν τὰ England, which does not affect this argument. (33) Laws 701b5–11: Ἐφεξῆς δὴ ταύτῃ τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡ τοῦ μὴ ἐθέλειν τοῖς ἄρχουσι δουλεύειν γίγνοιτ’ ἄν, καὶ ἑπομένη ταύτῃ φεύγειν πατρὸς καὶ μητρὸς καὶ πρεσβυτέρων δουλείαν καὶ νουθέτησιν, καὶ ἐγγὺς τοῦ τέλους οὖσιν νόμων ζητεῖν μὴ ὑπηκόοις εἶναι, πρὸς αὐτῷ δὲ ἤδη τῷ τέλει ὅρκων καὶ πίστεων καὶ τὸ παράπαν θεῶν μὴ φροντίζειν… (34) Republic §424b3–c6: ‘Ως τοίνυν διὰ βραχέων εἰπεῖν, τούτου ἀνθεκτέον τοῖς ἐπιμεληταῖς τῆς πόλεως, ὅπως ἂν αὐτοὺς μὴ λάθῃ διαφθαρὲν ἀλλὰ παρὰ πάντα αὐτὸ φυλάττωσι, τὸ μὴ νεωτερίζειν περὶ γυμναστικήν τε καὶ μουσικὴν παρὰ τὴν τάξιν…εἶδος γὰρ καινὸν μουσικῆς μεταβάλλειν εὐλαβητέον ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ κινδυνεύοντα· οὐδαμοῦ γὰρ κινοῦνται μουσικῆς τρόποι ἄνευ πολιτικῶν νόμων τῶν μεγίστων… (35) Timaeus §24b7–c3: τὸ δ’ αὖ περὶ τῆς φρονήσεως, ὁρᾷς που τὸν νόμον τῇδε ὅσην ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιήσατο εὐθὺς κατ’ ἀρχὰς περί τε τὸν κόσμον, ἅπαντα μέχρι μαντικῆς καὶ ἰατρικῆς πρὸς ὑγίειαν ἐκ τούτων θείων ὄντων εἰς τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ἀνευρών, ὅσα τε ἄλλα τούτοις ἕπεται μαθήματα πάντα κτησάμενος. Taylor’s translation. (36) McEvoy (1993). (37) In a different conceptual context, Nightingale (1999), 122, argues that Plato may have looked to the fixity of Egypt’s laws (that is, his understanding of Egypt’s laws) for a ‘code of detailed rules that is both “divinely” authored/ authorized and inscribed in sacred books’. (38) These are not pronouns chosen for political correctness; scenes of judgment could represent women as well as men.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods On the Mechanisms behind the Interpretatio Graeca of Egyptian Gods Alexandra von Lieven

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter looks at an aspect of the translation of religious ideas between Egypt and Greece. When Greeks refer to Egyptian deities, they commonly avoid the Egyptian names and prefer to translate them into an equivalent form within their own religious system, a process known as ‘interpretatio graeca’. This paper presents a systematic and comprehensive survey of the ‘interpretatio graeca’ of Egyptian theonyms in the light of new advances in our understanding of Egyptian sources. Keywords:   religion, polytheism, translation, Egypt, Greece, theonyms, gods

As is well known, many Greek and Latin authors comment in one way or another on Egyptian religion and its deities.* However, for most of the gods they do not use the Greek form of their original Egyptian names, although they would have been readily available, but instead names of Greek or Roman gods with whom the Egyptian ones were identified. This process, which is known as interpretatio Graeca (or Romana) is not only used with Egyptian gods but basically in all the ‘barbarian’ cultures which the Greco-Roman world encountered from India to Roman Britain.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Perhaps just because it is so common, scholars, at least within Egyptology, have rarely wondered how exactly interpretatio graeca worked.1 Why was a particular god or goddess identified with another one? This question is all the more pressing, as some of those identifications are far from being obvious choices, at least from the viewpoint of modern scholarship. Therefore, a closer look at these mechanisms (p.62) might potentially uncover interesting aspects of these gods and their cults from the ancient viewpoint. On the following pages, the gods for whom the phenomenon is attested will be discussed individually, before a general conclusion will be attempted. The collection of examples is intended to be representative, but by no means exhaustive. The most obvious case is of course the identification of the sun god Re and his various forms with Helios.2 This does not need any further comment, as they are functionally identical. Only slightly more interesting case is the identification between Amun and Zeus.3 For Egypt, Herodotus was the first to systematically employ interpretatio graeca. He visited Egypt in the Late Period, during the 27th dynasty. This is important, as Egyptian religion, contrary to popular misconceptions, did not stay static over the three millennia of its existence. In this period, Amun or rather Amun-Re was still seen as the king of gods in Egypt, a position he had occupied since the New Kingdom. In the Ptolemaic and especially in the Roman period, Amun’s importance started to dwindle slightly. However, by that time, the identification had been firmly established and was continued. As Amun was Zeus, his consort Mut became Hera,4 although there is no particular similarity in the two goddesses’ characters other than their marriage to the respective male god. Herodotus II 50 seems to imply that in his time this equation had not yet been effected, which clearly shows it to be secondary. The identification of the creator Ptah with the limping smith Hephaistos is already not that straightforward.5 While according to some theological texts Ptah creates via thought and utterance, other traditions see him as a craftsman, who models an egg on a potter’s wheel. Closer to Hephaistos and his smithing activities is the common association of Ptah with Sokar, another Memphite deity, with whom he is often syncretized into a form Ptah-Sokar. This syncretism started very early and is particularly important in the Late Period. For Sokar, close connections with smithing are evident from a range of sources.6 As for Ptah himself, the connection with Hephaistos (p.63) might also have sprung from the latter’s physical defect. Some rather esoteric forms of Ptah are depicted as dwarves with crippled legs.7 These are especially connected with his creative abilities. However, these Pataikoi (identified as Ptah’s children) are mentioned by Herodotus III 37, where they are called Kabires.8 This is apparently just due to their bodily shape as well. Page 2 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods As Hathor is among other aspects associated with love and lovemaking, Aphrodite is a likely choice for her and believed to be the standard equation.9 However, the third-century CE Coptic Gnostic treatise Pistis Sophia gives an interesting variant in its chapters 139–40. In a context of astrological speculation, which in some parts betrays clear evidence of traditional pagan Egyptian religion, the planet Venus is mentioned five times as ‘Bubastis which in the world is called Aphrodite’.10 So there clearly must have been a deviant tradition.11 As in the third-century CE, traditional beliefs were still alive,12 a misunderstanding of an already defunct system is not likely. Moreover, Bubastis, which is a Greek form of the name of the cat goddess Bastet, is a perfectly plausible candidate for identification with Aphrodite as well. Already in Egyptian texts, the two goddesses Hathor and Bastet are identified with each other. In fact, the strong sexual connection is even more prominent in the case of Bastet, as Herodotus testifies in his famous account of the feast of Bastet.13 Such rites were of course also associated with other goddesses,14 but apparently, Bastet was especially prominent in this context. This is not only attested by Herodotus’ account, which clearly implies this to have been a feast of nationwide appeal, but also by the so-called ‘Bastet text’, a Demotic papyrus containing a poem related to this feast.15 The (p.64) poem clearly attests to the general orgiastic character and the sexual activities associated with it in particular. All the more astonishingly, Herodotus himself explicitly identifies Bastet with Artemis,16 who according to Greek tradition is a virgin. Apparently as a sort of reason for the identification, in II 156.5 he refers to the fact that Artemis and Apollo are siblings born to Dionysos and Isis, the latter of whom is then herself identified with Demeter. Apollo is Horus, Dionysos Osiris. In Greek mythology, the fact that Artemis and Apollo were siblings is well known. On the other hand, until recently, the fact that Osiris had a daughter was virtually unknown to Egyptology. Luckily, meanwhile, this situation has changed. In the Mythological Manual of the Delta, P.Brooklyn 47.218.84, we learn in the chapters on Bubastis (§§20, 23)17 that indeed Osiris had a daughter called Horit (i.e. female Horus), who is none other than Bastet. Coupled with the fact that Bastet is commonly associated with archery—in fact her seven arrows are themselves personified as demons18—Bastet now becomes quite plausibly a form of Artemis.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Even the virginity problem could be accounted for, as Bastet is never associated with a male partner in a triad as other goddesses are. This is of course due to her role as main deity of Bubastis—a main deity, for reasons of gender stereotypes, cannot have a partner, if she is a goddess, because that would automatically delegate her to second rank. Herodotus might therefore easily have thought of Bastet as a virgin as well, although this clearly was not the case in contemporary Egypt. In fact, the above-cited P.Brooklyn 47.218.84 relates the story of Bastet-Horit’s threefold rape by her father Osiris and later by Seth as well as her subsequent birthing of five sons. These sons are Humehen, HorusHekenu, Horus of Medenu, The Son of Isis and The Son of the Two Lords. The first three are the sons of Osiris by rape, the fourth seems to be the well-known god Horus, and in the associated mythical episode Bastet-Horit suddenly seems to have become Isis, while in the following episode her rape by Seth and the birth of the fifth son is loosely but clearly related to the famous episode when the moon is born from the seed of Horus accidentally swallowed by Seth. This is reflected in the name of that child, who is also a lunar avatar. (p.65) The papyrus was written in the early 26th dynasty, approximately 150– 200 years before Herodotus’ time. It is compiled from a range of many diverse sources, which were worked into each other with more or less success. Apart from this, Bastet in other sources is quite regularly attributed with only one son, namely the lion god Maihesa. Interestingly, the latter is always called ‘son of Bastet’, but never given a father. Therefore, it is possible, that originally indeed the Egyptians themselves thought of Bastet as a virginal creatrix like Neith and only later identified her with the unfortunate Horit, who at least in the way she is presented in the Delta papyrus seems to be a creation of priestly speculation to fit mythical episodes from different sources into a new context. Horit’s rape by Seth (there called Be) and the fact that she is a daughter of Osiris is also recounted later in the text (§§47–8) for the city Imet and its goddess Wadjet. Of course, the possibility of basically identifying all goddesses with one another was much exploited in Late Period Egypt.19

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods The identification of Isis with Demeter in the chapter just quoted in Herodotus is surely due to her prominent motherly aspects.20 Plutarch in De Iside 62, on the other hand, posits that the Egyptians would call Isis Athene, which he then explains as meaning ‘I came from Myself’. This is somewhat unusual, as the normal Egyptian equivalent for Athene is Neith. It is believed that this information derives from Manetho, although strictly speaking Manetho is only explicitly quoted afterwards on some other matter, not on this. Obviously, this etymology cannot work linguistically with ‘Athena’, so one has to substitute Neith here as well. For Neith, a fitting explanation for this meaning has been proposed.21 This means of course that the whole idea of calling Isis ‘Athene’ is in fact a theological statement in a purely Egyptian context. As Neith is a creator goddess, who is credited with having given birth to the sun god without a partner and created everything else according to her plans and utterances, she is a figure of the highest authority, like the Greco-Roman period Isis. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Isis would herself have been regularly called Athene in interpretatio graeca. And indeed in De Iside 56, Isis has already been equated with other Egyptian goddesses, namely Mut, Hathor, and Mehetweret, (p.66) whose names in turn are etymologized.22 This case therefore is strictly speaking not part of the phenomenon discussed here, at least not in relation to Isis. On the other hand, it does show how intimate the identification of Neith and Athene had become. In this context, another singular equation needs to be mentioned. A Roman period gem showing Athene fighting a snake with an axe labels the goddess ‘Thoeris’.23 While the mythological background for the fight is readily provided by Plutarch, in De Iside 19,24 the depiction as Athene is not that easily explainable. However, as the hippopotamus goddess Thoeris could be identified with Isis in Egyptian mythology via being linked to the astral hippopotamus goddess Ipet, this iconography might indeed be related to De Iside 62, as well. A similar, but slightly different case is Isis’ identification with Selene.25 This is a bit problematic in so far as in older Egyptian conceptions the grammatical gender of the word for ‘moon’ was male and therefore the moon was always personified by a male god, most often Thot, Khonsu, Horus, or Osiris. Via the latter two, one is at least already close to Isis. However, there always was the concept of the moon as the eye of Horus. As the word for ‘eye’ in Egyptian is grammatically feminine, the idea to associate a feminine entity with the moon was not entirely alien to the Egyptians, although rarely explored before the Greek period. In Greek, of course, the moon always was feminine. Therefore, a female Egyptian deity had to be found and Isis, who was acquiring all sorts of powers and identities in this period, was a likely candidate. The genderswitching between the cultures is found also in the case of Nemesis, for which see below.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods In fact, however, most often Isis is not identified with any Greek goddess, but keeps her Egyptian name. This tendency grows particularly strong during the Roman period, when Isis becomes the main figure in a missionary cult. As highest goddess, she then gets identified with all other goddesses, who are merely other names for her.26 This, however, is a theological feature, not the regular interpretatio graeca, and therefore it is already outside the scope of this essay. (p.67) As for Neith, her identification with Athene27 is due to several factors, of which her lack of a male partner is just one. Moreover, she is carrying a bow and arrows and was believed to be rather androgynous.28 On the other hand, she was associated with the manufacture of textiles by weaving. The combination of virginity, weaponry and other supposedly male occupations, and weaving is of course a characteristic of the Greek Athena as well. Therefore, this is one of the best-founded identifications of interpretatio graeca. In contrast to that, the association of Horus with Apollo is less obvious.29 It is apparently due to the solar character which both deities can occasionally exhibit. For Horus, this is particularly salient in his form as Horus Behdeti (Horus of Edfu), the Winged Solar Disk. It would be interesting to know whether Apollo’s most prominent characteristic —his association with music, lyre playing in particular—was of any relevance here. Another form of Horus, Horus Mekhentienirti (Horus without eyes), was occasionally associated with music as well—in his case (via the blindness) harp playing. Now one has to be clear about the fact that all these forms originally were very distinct deities in Egypt. Nevertheless, they were all called Horus and therefore were occasionally conflated with each other even in Egypt, therefore it is not entirely out of the question that such considerations might also have played a role in the identification with Greek deities. Herodotus could well have been informed about Horus Mekhentienirti, whose cult was prominent in the Delta city of Letopolis, although he does not mention this city itself. Occasionally also Month was called Apollo.30 As already in the older phases of Egyptian history he is both equated with Horus as well as with Re, this identification is unproblematic. Clearly, the solar aspect is dominant in this case. One of the best known examples of interpretatio graeca is the equation of Osiris with Dionysos.31 However, more often than not, Osiris is invoked under his Egyptian name, particularly in the Roman period, when the cult of Isis and, by association, Osiris, had become a global player in the religious culture of the antique world.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (p.68) Osiris is mainly known as a god of the dead, while Dionysos is usually understood as the god of ecstatic wine–drinking. Interestingly, Osiris is rarely ever identified with the Greek Hades, although one might have expected that to have been a likely choice. This clearly shows that for people in Antiquity this was not the case. One of the rare exceptions is Diodorus I 25.1–2, where, however, the context of this identification is quite significant: ‘In general, there is great disagreement over these gods.…Osiris has been given the name Sarapis by some, Dionysos by others, Pluto by others, Ammon by others, Zeus by some, and many have considered Pan to be the same god; and some say that Sarapis is the god whom the Greeks call Pluto.’32 As is evident, standard equations of interpretatio graeca are not discussed here but rather theological statements. This is particularly obvious from the identification with Ammon or Zeus. These equations do not pertain to Osiris as such, but already to the Hellenized Sarapis. Interestingly, not even here is Osiris called Hades but rather Pluto, thereby emphasizing more his chthonic links with plentiful fertility than with death. The only other pre-Byzantine and independent source mentioning Hades/Pluto and Osiris together is Plutarch, De Iside 28, in the wider context of his discussion of the origins of Sarapis and his name. There he first states that Sarapis would be the Egyptian name of Pluto, then goes on to quote Heraclitus on the relations of Hades and Dionysos and muses over some pseudo-etymology of the name ‘Hades’, before he finally says ‘It is better to equate Osiris with Dionysos, and Sarapis with Osiris, since the latter acquired this name when he changed his nature. For this reason Sarapis is common to all, and this is true also of Osiris, as the initiates know.’33 It is significant that on the one hand he clearly distinguishes between the traditional Egyptian Osiris and the Hellenized form Sarapis and, on the other, he is also careful not to call Sarapis, let alone Osiris, Hades, but only Pluto. As Plutarch is very conscious about the subtleties of the cults he discusses, this is rather telling, especially when compared with the similar testimony by Diodorus.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods One reason for this reluctance to equate Osiris with Hades is of course the fact that the Egyptian positive conception of the hereafter is so fundamentally different from the rather bleak Greek one. Osiris’ postmortal triumph precisely emphasizes this positive view, while (p.69) association with Hades would have lost this point. It is interesting that in the Roman period tombs of Kom eschSchugafa in Alexandria, sometimes the Greek and the Egyptian conceptions are juxtaposed iconographically by combining a scene with Anubis embalming Osiris/the dead person on the one hand and Hades abducting Persephone on the other.34 These scenes are certainly not the same thing, but they complement each other by presenting similar ideas in different mythical pictures from the two cultures. In both cases it is triumph over death—Osiris overcomes it by the help of Anubis and his art of embalming, Persephone overcomes it by being temporarily, but cyclically, allowed back on earth. Interestingly, this juxtaposition also shows the main difference between Hades and Osiris which made an identification of the two less suitable: Hades is death himself, while Osiris suffers death and subsequently is brought back to some sort of life. This closely links Osiris precisely with the special form of Dionysos-Zagreus, who was torn to pieces by the titans—quite similar a fate to that of Osiris being killed and dismembered by Seth. It is therefore interesting that Herodotus, who first attests it in the preserved record, seems to imply that the identification of Osiris and Dionysos was already established by his time. This is quite possible, as the story of Dionysos’ murder was an important theme in orphic literature from the seventh and sixth centuries onwards. Diodorus IV 6.3 explicitly attributes the murder of Osiris to the titans, further establishing this link. As for Dionysos’ character as a wine god, it is true that since the Pyramid Texts, Osiris has occasionally been linked with wine as well. But this character trait is not that prominent, at least in the available sources. Therefore it seems not too likely that this would be the main reason for their identification, although both do have a certain relationship to the cycle of vegetation. Another aspect not to be overlooked is the importance of the phallus in both the cult of Dionysos as well as that of Osiris. However, again it is hardly the main reason for the identification. On the contrary, the phallic element seems to be the main reason for the identification of both Ba of Mendes35 and Min with Pan36 and for the latter’s alternative interpretation as Priapus.37 In the case of Ba of Mendes, his nature as a ram reinforced the ties with Pan. He was (p.70) further believed to be the ba-soul of Osiris, which might be the reason for the latter’s identification with Pan in the above-cited quote from Diodorus I 25.2. The eventual transformation of Ba of Mendes into a male goat has been proposed as a reflection of his interpretation as Pan, although it is difficult to be sure which preceded which.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods The Suda s.v. Priapus38 clearly describes a statue of Min, although he is there called Horus. However, as Min was regularly identified with Horus in Egyptian theology, this is not a problem. More difficult to explain is the third option for Min, namely Perseus.39 It is only attested in Herodotus II 91, on which the only other mention of Perseus in an Egyptian context, but without explicit identification in Diodorus I 24.8, is probably dependent. It has been proposed that the identification with Perseus is due to the phonetic similarity of the name with one of Min’s epithets, namely Pɜwrš ‘The Guardian’ (in Greek documents attested as Πορσῆς). Apart from this, both figures seem to have had a mythological connection to shoes.40 The case of Min with his multiple Greek identities is quite instructive, as it shows the floating character of these identifications according to different elements which were emphasized at different times by different agents. While the identification with Pan and even more so, with Priapus, only goes for one physical, in this case quite literally outstanding, characteristic, namely his erect penis, the connection with Perseus emphasizes the deeper factual contents of the respective mythologies as well as the names. Similarity of name is definitely also the reason for the identification of Nemtiui41 with Antaios.42 A mythological detail is again the decisive factor in identifying Geb as Kronos.43 Like the Greek god, he rebelled against his father Shu and usurped his reign. And although he did not castrate his father, he did sexually distress him nevertheless by raping his own mother.44 As Geb’s wife, Nut then automatically becomes Rhea. (p.71) The goddesses of the two parts of the country, Nekhbet for Upper Egypt and Wadjet for Lower Egypt, were identified with Eileithyia and Leto,45 respectively. In the case of Wadjet as Leto,46 this is due to her protective role for little Horus, which resembled a motherly function. As Horus was identified with Apollo, Leto was a likely candidate for Wadjet. In the case of the vulture goddess Nekhbet, the Egyptian conception of vultures as motherly animals par excellence47 is the likely reason for her identification with the Greek goddess of birth. Apis mostly is called Apis, but Herodotus several times calls him Epaphos.48 As the Greek Epaphos-myth is in itself closely linked with Egypt, it is again a special case. In fact, it is likely that Apis is already contained in the Greek figure from its inception.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Seth was demonized in the Late Period as the murderer of Osiris, who temporarily reigned in the country before being overcome by Horus. Typhon was in Greek mythology a mighty adversary of the god Zeus, who according to some traditions was even temporarily successful. As the two figures share the character of temporarily successful, but ultimately punished anti-gods of supreme strength, they were equated with each other.49 Among the best-known equations of interpretatio graeca is the identification of Thot as Hermes.50 This is quite fitting as Hermes is the cleverest of all the Greek gods while Thot is the god of wisdom, scholarship, and science. Moreover, both are tricksters who do not refrain from stealing.51 Like Hermes, Thot can occasionally act as a messenger. Probably the most thorny problem of interpretatio graeca is the question of Ares and the god of Papremis.52 The exact localization and identification of Papremis is not yet clear. However, the Dream of Nektanebos53 clearly calls the main deity of Sebennytos Ares, therefore leaving no doubt that this god must be OnurisSchu. This fits with the latter’s warlike nature and his usual iconography spearing an enemy with a large lance. It is further corroborated by the fact that Nikander says Ares changed himself into a Lepidotos fish, as from (p.72) archaeological evidence it is clear that this animal was sacred to Onuris-Shu.54 According to Herodotus (II 59, 63), a cult of Ares was celebrated in Papremis as well. During the god’s special feast, priests enacted a fight which commemorated the fight when Ares tried to enter by force the temple in which his mother lived to have sex with her. This, however, is rather unlikely to refer to Onuris-Shu, but it fits perfectly the Egyptian sources speaking about Geb raping his mother Tefnut,55 who is of course the wife of Onuris-Shu. According to the Mythological Manual of the Delta, which gives information on this myth precisely for Sebennytos, one of the main cult centres of Shu and Tefnut, Shu fights his son and plunges his lance in the latter’s upper thigh. Therefore he is eulogized as ‘Lord of the Spear’.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Seeing the prominence accorded to these stories about Geb despite Shu being the main deity of Sebennytos, one can easily see how Herodotus might have confused the protagonists of the story he was told in Papremis. So, in principle, there Ares also would be Shu, and therefore the victim of the attack on his wife, not the culprit. If one effects this slight emendation, the whole makes perfect sense within the framework of Egyptian mythology. What is interesting is that the participants in the mock fight help the attacker, not the defendants. And indeed, Geb himself seems to have enjoyed a special cult of his own in Papremis, because Herodotus states in II 71 that the nome of Papremis particularly venerated the hippopotamus. He later also mentions the Lepidotos in the same context, but it is not entirely clear whether this is still meant to refer to Papremis or to Egypt in general. At any rate, the hippopotamus is not an animal ever associated with Shu, but it does fit Geb and his slightly problematic character. In fact, the Delta papyrus states in §14 that Geb changed into an animal ỉpḥ and was forced by the gods to drink urine as a punishment for ‘the damage he had caused to his father Shu’.56 This damage is of course his rebellion and the rape of his mother. Furthermore, the related texts on the Naos of El-Arish make it quite likely that Shu is also killed in the course of his son’s rebellion.57 In (p.73) this respect, it is interesting to compare Plutarch, De Iside 32, which says the Egyptians associated the hippopotamus with shamelessness, because ‘it is said to violate its mother after killing its father’.58 As for the animal ỉpḥ, it seems to be a male pig, but the exact meaning is not entirely clear. Interestingly, in one of Apa Shenoute of Atripe’s diatribes against pagan gods he associates Ares precisely with a pig (ⲣⲓⲣ).59 It might be useful to keep in mind that the word rr.t also can be used both to refer to a female pig as well as to a female hippopotamus. Other gods like Seth also have this double nature of pig and hippopotamus, therefore it seems most logical to interpret the hippopotamus cult of Papremis as a cult of Geb in this shape. In contrast to earlier literature, it is not necessary to see any connection with Horus and Isis in the Papremis mythology,60 nor should the statement in Plutarch be linked with Seth.61 Another interesting case, where the same Greek god is identified with at least two different Egyptian deities, is Heracles.62 Herodotus calls the Theban god Khonsu Heracles, apparently because of the fact that he is the son of the god Amun, who was identified with Zeus. This is corroborated by the entry Χῶνες in the Etymologicum Magnum (816,27).63

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods On the other hand, from the Greek place name Heracleopolis magna, it is obvious that the local ram god Herishef64 also was identified with Heracles. In his case, it is not that easy to arrive at an explanation.65 Maybe his overcoming the enemy Seth made him a candidate for the identification with the Greek god most known for his strength and for his ridding the country of dangerous beings. Nevertheless, the same would be true for other gods as well. Perhaps it (p.74) would be possible to reach a better solution if more was known about his specific mythology. Sometimes, function even supersedes gender. An example for that is the Greek goddess Nemesis, who is identified with the Egyptian Petbe (Pɜ-dbɜ) ‘The Retribution’—as the male definite article shows, in Egypt clearly a male being. The reason is of course the normal grammatical gender of the word in Egyptian language. The interesting question is whether Petbe did in fact exist before the Egyptians came in contact with the Greek idea of Nemesis or whether, in this case, the Egyptian deity was invented as a native counterpart to the Greek concept. J. Quaegebeur has convincingly argued for the former. He has also demonstrated that Petbe’s iconography as a griffin is an Egyptian invention as well.66 The griffin iconography could in principle easily have been used to veil the gender problem, but on the contrary, most attestations clearly show the animal as female with teats or, less often, with breasts like a human woman or with a female human head.67 Apart from that, there are also depictions of Nemesis in entirely anthropomorphic form attested from Egypt. Apparently the gender switch between Nemesis and Petbe was not seen as problematic.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods This switch has not yet been explained in a satisfactory manner. In fact, an explanation has not even been attempted. Apparently, the fact that the Egyptian word dbɜ ‘retribution’ is grammatically masculine while the traditional Greek goddess of retribution is feminine seems to have sufficed. While this is surely the ultimate reason for the gender switch, one nevertheless must wonder how the Egyptians dealt with this conceptually. And in fact there is a possibility. As Quaegebeur has shown in his study of the griffin iconography, there are several depictions where the wheel of the griffin is not depicted like a wheel but rather like a sort of rosette where the griffin is shown together with the sun god Re or like a shield with crossed spears or arrows when shown together with the goddess Neith-Athena.68 According to the Demotic Myth of the Sun’s Eye, where Petbe as a griffin is described in detail, he is a form of the god Re.69 This fits his (p.75) male gender well and is reflected in the stela showing the griffin in a scene of Pharaoh offering Ma’at to Re. The combination of a presentation of Truth and Justice personified as its divine lord in the company of Retribution personified is certainly a well-planned iconography. This invites the thought that the griffins with the shields in the scenes with Neith hint at them being forms of her. After all, her cult symbol as well as her hieroglyph is precisely a shield with two crossed arrows. Neith, like Re, whose mother she was in some myths, is a supreme deity and creatrix mundi. Moreover, as discussed above, Neith was thought to be androgynous, being two-thirds male despite her female iconography. Therefore, the female griffin Nemesis as a form of the male Petbe would be a perfectly fitting hypostasis of her gender-transcending power.70 For Pschai ‘Fortune, (Good) Destiny’, Quaegebeur has demonstrated how this Egyptian personification of a concept has given rise to a new Greek designation, namely Agathodaimon.71 Therefore it is strictly speaking not a real interpretatio graeca where one deity is labelled with the name of another already existing deity from the other culture. After looking at the gods regularly subjected to interpretatio graeca, it is interesting to see which gods apparently were only rarely or not at all subjected to it. Apis, Osiris, and even more so Isis were already mentioned as cases in point, who more often than not kept their Egyptian names. The reason is of course their prominence and distinct character. The same is true for Amun, who often went by the name of Ammon or Zeus-Ammon—the latter betraying rather a conscious syncretism than simple interpretatio graeca. The same holds true for Horus and Apollo, although much more rarely attested. A prominent example would be the theophoric personal name Horapollo. Another form of Horus, Harpokrates (Horus the child) (p.76) is only very rarely related to Eros, probably mostly for iconographic reasons. Another reason might be his association with Hathor as her son, who, as seen above, was identified with Aphrodite. Most of the time, however, he is just called Harpokrates and, again, personal names like Harpokration etc. have made their way into Greek onomastics in Egypt as well. Page 13 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods In such cases, one might wonder whether the choice of name made any difference to the believers or not. Therefore it is instructive to compare wellattested instances. A case in point is the deified sage Imhotep, who goes both under his graecized name Imouthes as well as under the interpretatio graeca label Asclepius. As A. Łajtar has observed, there is a clear geographical distinction in the use of these designations.72 According to him, in Memphis, where the cult originated and always had its centre in the form of Imhotep’s tomb, Imhotep is always referred to as Imouthes, who moreover is styled ‘son of Hephaistos (i.e. Ptah)’ in the Egyptian way. In contrast, in Deir el-Bahari, where the cult was just a sidekick to the locally centred cult of the deified sage Amenhotep, son of Hapu (referred to as Amenothes in Greek), Imhotep is always called Asclepius in the Greek inscriptions from his sanctuary. Moreover, he is called the ‘offspring of Phoibis’ twice. This suggests a more Greek understanding of him than of Amenhotep and also a more Greek understanding than of himself in Memphis. The only way to explain this remarkable feature is the fact that in Memphis, Imhotep and Ptah, of course, are the main deities, while in Deir el-Bahari, it is Amenhotep. There, Imhotep is just an addition from the outside. In this context, it should be mentioned that three Greek inscriptions from Deir el-Bahari also mention Hygieia, the daughter of the Greek Asclepius. Unfortunately, it must remain unclear which Egyptian goddess venerated in this sanctuary is meant. It is to be assumed that at least one is meant, but which? E. Laskowska-Kusztal proposed the hippopotamus goddess Ipet-Nut,73 as there are several hippopotamus goddesses depicted in the sanctuary in question. However, this seems rather unlikely, as their function is limited to being the guardians of the months. And why should Hygieia have become a hippopotamus? One would rather expect it to be one of the fully anthropomorphous goddesses depicted behind Imhotep and (p.77) Amenhotep. These are their respective mothers and in Imhotep’s case his sister74 Renpetneferet as well. The latter seems perhaps the most plausible suggestion, although this must remain purely conjectural. Other gods have an even stronger tendency to keep their own name. As Sarapis is a deity created precisely at the contact point between Egyptian and Hellenistic culture and his Greek name is in fact a graecized form of the Egyptian Osiris-Apis, who, however, was a very different sort of god, he should better not be mentioned here.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods An interesting case is Anubis, who is always just called that.75 If any other name is used, it is Hermanubis76—again clearly a syncretistic form combining the Egyptian guide of the dead with the Greek one, not an interpretatio graeca. As such, in Egypt, Hermes is always Thot, never Anubis. The syncretism evident in the name Hermanubis also shows in some iconographic forms depicting him with a caduceus.77 What is remarkable about this is that, in purely Egyptian contexts, Thot and Anubis are never syncretized with each other. The iconographical type of Anubis with the lunar disk in his hands discussed by R. Ritner78 is no exception to this, as there the lunar disk is to be understood as a form of Osiris, with whose mummy Anubis is normally occupied. So it is via the combination with the Greek concept of Hermes as a messenger between the worlds of the living and the dead that Anubis becomes associated with Hermes, not via any Egyptian concept of Thot. This is clearly reflected in Hermanubis’ judgement as a synthetic Greek–Egyptian mixture by Porphyry apud Eusebius, Preparatio evangelica III 11.43.79 However, the link of Hermes and Thot secondarily comes in again, as a few Hermanubis figures indeed show him with a moon disk and sickle on his head, i.e. as a lunar deity. As O. Kaper remarks, it is significant, however, that all of these statuettes come from Italy, not from Egypt. (p.78) Other cases in point are Khnum, Sobek, Tutu, and Apopis. They always go under their graecized name forms as Khnoumis/Khnouphis, Souchos,80 Tithoes,81 and Apopis, but nothing else. Interestingly, these gods are also conspicuously rare in works of the classical authors, so that their attestations in Greek almost exclusively stem from documentary sources from Egypt itself. Khnum (called Khnouphis) is mentioned in relation to Elephantine once;82 Souchos is only once given as a name for crocodiles by Damascius;83 Tithoes occurs both in Pliny, Natural History 36, 13 (19) as the putative name of the royal builder of the labyrinth in the Fayum and in Manetho apud Syncellus, frag. 3 as a demigod reigning 27 years;84 Apopis is mentioned only once by Plutarch, De Iside 36, who labels him quite correctly the brother of the sun god.85 The only exception is Sobek in so far as he was identified in Tebtunis in the Fayum already within the Egyptian theology of the local temple as Geb. As such, Sobek can then also become addressed as Kronos,86 but just because Geb is Kronos (for which see above).

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Why were these deities apparently immune against interpretatio graeca? One reason could of course always be a chance lack of preserved evidence. However, as the Fayum and Elephantine, the main cult centres of Khnum and Sobek, are places with exceptionally good documentation and Tutu was very prominent all over Egypt, it is difficult to argue this way. Rather, it seems worthwhile to look for shared traits in them which might offer an explanation. And indeed, such can be found. All three share a very prominent animal character as a ram (Khnum), a crocodile (Sobek), and in the case of Tutu even as a composite fable animal consisting of a human-headed sphinx with other, smaller heads of diverse animals protruding from neck and breast, and a snake-like tail. The same holds true of course for ram-shaped Amun and ibis-headed Thot, (p.79) but they had other traits like being king of the gods and patron of wisdom, which lent themselves easily to Greek equivalents. Amun, moreover, is also most often represented in Egypt in a purely human form, not as a ram. Khnum, Sobek, Tutu, and Apopis, on the other hand, represent nothing which easily lends itself to a Greek identification, which consequently is lacking. This clearly shows that the interpretatio graeca is not a desperate means to squeeze a foreign pantheon into a Greek frame of thought, but that it is well thought out, even if we today do not always understand its structure for lack of knowledge of the ancient theological concepts. Another reason for being not necessarily immune but not too prone to interpretatio graeca is apparently the importance of a certain deity in a certain place. This is well demonstrated by the example of Imhotep in Memphis versus Deir el-Bahari and it surely also accounts for the fact that Isis and Osiris have a strong tendency to keep their own names. For those gods who underwent interpretatio graeca, different mechanisms can be pinpointed on how to arrive at a certain equivalent in the other cultural idiom. In order of frequency, they are similarities in their myths and functions, in their bodily shape, in their familial relations to other gods, and in their names. Name similarity is very rare, as is to be expected. The family relationship is— with the exception of Khonsu/Heracles—restricted to female deities married to some more important male ones. The mythological or functional similarity is by far the most dominant. Sometimes, several of these principles together lead to the same identification, while in other cases, the application of different principles can lead to different identifications as well.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods This chapter could only give an overview of the most important gods and goddesses for whom interpretatio graeca is attested and present some ideas for possible explanations. Without doubt, a new full study of the phenomenon, taking into account all the literary and iconographical evidence in its historic development, would be a very rewarding subject. Of course, the amount of data to be dealt with is enormous. Nevertheless, such a study comparing the different cases would be necessary, as only a comparison can pinpoint the deeper mechanisms at work, which a study of only single well-attested cases in isolation cannot hope to achieve. (p.80) Bibliography Bibliography references: Amélineau, E. (1907–09), Œuvres de Schenoudi I (Paris). Beinlich, H. (1991), Das Buch vom Fayum [ÄA 51] (Wiesbaden). Bergman, J. (1969), ‘Beitrag zur Interpretatio Graeca: Ägyptische Götter in griechischer Übertragung’, in S. S. Hartman (ed.), Syncretism (Stockholm). Bricault, L. (1994), ‘Isis myrionyme’, in C. Berger, G. Clerc, N. Grimal (eds.), Hommages à Jean Leclant [BdÉ 106,3] (Cairo), 67–86. de Cenival, F. (1988), Le mythe de l’œil du soleil [DSt 9] (Sommerhausen). Clerc, G. (1994), ‘Héraklès et les dieux du cercle isiaque’, 3rd edn. in C. C. Berger, G. Clerc, N. Grimal (eds.), Hommages à Jean Leclant [BdÉ 106,3] (Cairo), 97–137. Dasen, V. (1993), Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece, (Oxford ). Delia, D. (1998), ‘Isis, or the Moon’, in W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, H. Willems (eds.), Egyptian Religion. The Last Thousand Years I [OLA 84] (Leuven), 539–50. Frankfurter, D. (1998), Religion in Roman Egypt. Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton). Gamer-Wallert, I. (1970), Fische und Fischkulte im Alten Ägypten [ÄA 21] (Wiesbaden). Gauger, J.-D. (2002), ‘Der ‘Traum des Nektanebos’—Die griechische Fassung’, in A. Blasius and B. U. Schipper (eds.), Apokalyptik und Ägypten. Eine kritische Analyse der relevanten Texte aus dem griechisch-römischen Ägypten [OLA 107] (Leuven/Paris/Sterling, Va), 189–219. Goyon, G. (1936), ‘Les travaux de Chou et les tribulations de Geb d’après le naos 2248 d’Ismaïlia’, KÊMI 6, 1–42. Page 17 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Griffiths, J. G. (1970), Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride (Cambridge). Hani, J. (1976), La religion égyptienne dans la pensée de Plutarque (Paris). Hoffmann, F. and Quack, J. F. (2007), Anthologie der demotischen Literatur [Einführungen und Quellentexte zur Ägyptologie 4] (Berlin). Hopfner, T. (1922–5), Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegyptiacae (Bonn). Kaper, O. (2003), The Egyptian God Tutu. A Study of the Sphinx-God and Master of Demons with a Corpus of Monuments [OLA 119] (Leuven/Paris/Dudley, Mass.). Kaper, O. E. (2005), ‘Anubis-Merkur mit Heroldsstab’, in H. Beck, P. C. Bol, M. Bückling (eds.), Ägypten Griechenland Rom. Abwehr und Berührung (Tübingen/ Berlin). Kaplan, I. (1999), Grabmalerei und Grabreliefs der Römerzeit, Wechselwirkungen zwischen der ägyptischen und griechisch-alexandrinischen Kunst [Beiträge zur Ägyptologie 16, Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der Universität Wien 86] (Vienna). Kolta, K. S. (1968), Die Gleichsetzung ägyptischer und griechischer Götter bei Herodot, PhD thesis, Tübingen. Kurth, D. (1990), Der Sarg der Teüris. Eine Studie zum Totenglauben im römerzeitlichen Ägypten [AegTrev 6] (Mainz). (p.81) Łajtar, A. (2006), Deir el-Bahari in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. A Study of an Egyptian Temple based on Greek Sources [The Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplement IV] (Warsaw). Laskowska-Kusztal, E. (1984), Le sanctuaire ptolémaïque de Deir el-Bahari [Deir el-Bahari III] (Warsaw). Leclant, J. (1992), ‘Diana Nemorensis, Isis et Bubastis’, in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), Studies in Pharaonic Religion and Society in Honour of J. Gwyn Griffiths, [OP 8] (London), 251–7. Lichocka, N. (2004), Nemesis en Égypte romaine [AegTrev 5] (Mainz). von Lieven, A. (2000), Der Himmel über Esna. Eine Fallstudie zur Religiösen Astronomie in Ägypten am Beispiel der kosmologischen Decken- und Architravinschriften im Tempel von Esna [ÄA 64] (Wiesbaden). von Lieven, A. (2002), ‘Gnosis and Astrology: “Book IV” of the Pistis Sophia’, in J. M. Steele and A. Imhausen (eds.), Under One Sky. Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East [AOAT 297] (Münster), 223–36.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods von Lieven, A. (2003), ‘Wein, Weib und Gesang—Rituale für die Gefährliche Göttin’ in Rituale in der Vorgeschichte, Antike und Gegenwart. Neue Forschungen und Perspektiven von Archäologie, Ägyptologie, Altoritalistik, Ethnologie und vergleichender Religionsgeschichte. Interdisziplinäre Tagung vom 1.–2. Februar 2002 in Berlin (ed. C. Metzner-Nebelsick, et.al.), Internationale Archäologie—Arbeitsgemeinschaft, Symposium, Tagung, Kongreß 4, Rahden (Westph.), 47–55. Meeks, D. (2006), Mythes et légendes du Delta d’après le papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.84, [MIFAO 125] (Cairo). Morenz, S. (1954), ‘Ptah—Hephaistos, der Zwerg. Beobachtungen zur Frage der Interpretatio graeca in der ägyptischen Religion’, Festschrift für Friedrich Zucker zum 70. Geburtstage (Berlin), 275–90. Morenz, S. (1963), ‘Lautliches und Sachliches in der Gleichung Min— Perseus’, RdÉ 15, 125–7. Morenz, S. (1968), Die Begegnung Europas mit Ägypten (including M. Kaiser, Herodots Begegnung mit Ägypten), [SSAW Phil.-hist. Klasse 113,5] (Berlin). Morenz, S. (1975), ‘Anubis mit dem Schlüssel’, in E. Blumenthal and S. Hermann (eds.), Religion und Geschichte des alten Ägypten (Weimar), 510–20, figs. 24–9 (originally published in Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig 3 (1953/4), 79–83). Neugebauer, O., and Parker, R. A. (1969), Egyptian Astronomical Texts, III. Decans, Planets, Constellations and Zodiacs (London). Oldfather, C. H. (1933), Diodorus Siculus, Library of History Books I–II.34 (Cambridge Mass./London). Osing, J. (1998), Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I, The Carlsberg Papyri 2, [CNI 17] (Copenhagen). (p.82) Osing, J., and Rosati, G. (1998), Papiri geroglifici e ieratici da Tebtynis (Florence). Quack, J. F. (2006), ‘Apopis, Nabelschnur des Re’, SAK 34, 377–9. Quaegebeur, J. (1975), Le dieu égyptien Shaï dans la religion et l’onomastique [OLA 2] (Leuven). Quaegebeur, J. (1983), ‘De l’origine égyptienne du Griffon Némésis’, Visages du destin dans les mythologies. Mélanges Jacqueline Duchemin, Actes du colloque de Chantilly 1er–2 mai 1980, ed. F. Jouan (Paris), 41–54. Ritner, R. K. (1985), ‘Anubis and the Lunar Disk’, JEA 71, 149–55. Page 19 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods Rübsam, W. J. R. (1974), Götter und Kulte im Faijum während der griechischrömisch-byzantinischen Zeit (Marburg). Sauneron, S. (1961), ‘Le créateur androgyne, Remarques de philologie et d’étymologie (en marge des textes d’Esna)’, Mélanges Mariette, [BdÉ 32] (Cairo), 229–49. Sauneron, S. (1962), ‘Persée, Dieu de Khemmis’, RdÉ 14, 53–7. Schmidt, C. (1925), Pistis Sophia [Coptica II] (Copenhagen). Schmidt, C., and Macdermot, V. (1978), Pistis Sophia, [Nag Hammadi Studies IX] (Leiden). Schmidt, C., and Till, W. (1954), Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, I Die Pistis Sophia, die beiden Bücher des Jeû, Unbekanntes altgnostisches Werk2 (Berlin). Schott, S. (1970), ‘Thot, le dieu qui vole des offrandes et qui trouble le cours du temps’, CRAIBL 114, 547–56. Seyfried, K.-J. (1984), ‘Zu einer Darstellung des Gottes ανταιος’, SAK 11, 461– 72. Spiegelberg, W. (1902), ‘Ein ägyptisches Verzeichnis der Planeten und Tierkreisbilder’, OLZ 5, 6–9. Thissen, H.-J. (2009), ‘Plutarch und die ägyptische Sprache’, ZPE 168, 97–106. Tobin, V. A. (1991), ‘Isis and Demeter: Symbols of Divine Motherhood’, JARCE 28, 187–200. van der Horst, P. W. (1987), Chaeremon, Egyptian Priest and Stoic Philosopher2 [EPRO 101] (Leiden). Verhoeven, U. (1991), ‘Eine Vergewaltigung? Vom Umgang mit einer Textstelle des Naos von El Arish (Tefnut-Studien I)’, in U. Verhoeven and E. Graefe (eds.), Religion und Philosophie im Alten Ägypten (Fs. Derchain), [OLA 39] (Leuven), 319–30. Wagner, C., and Boardman, J. (2003), A Collection of Classical and Eastern Intaglios, Rings and Cameos, [BAR International Series 1136] (Oxford). Willems, H., and Clarysse, W. (2000), Les Empereurs du Nil (Leuven). Winter, E., and Winter, U. (1996), ‘Von der Ununterscheidbarkeit der Geschlechter. Der Geier im Flug durch die Jahrtausende’, in I. Slavinsky and J. P. Strelka (eds.), Viribus Unitis (Fs. B. Stillfried) (Frankfurt etc.), 523–37. Notes: Page 20 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (*) This paper was written during a Heisenberg Fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (reference Li 1846/1–1), for which I am very grateful. (1) The most important study to date is still Kolta (1968). For other general treatments, see Bergman (1969), 207–27; Morenz (1968) 66–9, 240–6; Kaper in Willems and Clarysse (2000), 126–9. Apart from those, the meticulous Index nominum et rerum in Hopfner (1922-5), 803–932 also proved very useful in preparing this paper. (2) Kolta (1968), 105–17. (3) Kolta (1968), 1–15. (4) See e.g. Diodorus I 97.9 (processional feast of Amun and Mut in Thebes), Horapollo I 11 (writing of Mut with the vulture). (5) Kolta (1968), 118–25, Morenz (1954), 275–90. (6) E. Brovarski, LÄ V, cols. 1056–7 s.v. Sokar. (7) Dasen (1993), 84–98, pls. 12–16. (8) Kolta (1968), 140–4. (9) Kolta (1968), 74–81. (10) Schmidt (1925), 361–6, index p. 448 s.v. ⲃⲟⲩⲃⲁⲥⲧⲓ, Schmidt and Till (1954), 238–41, index p. 402 s.v. Bubastis. This German translation is superior to the English one by V. Macdermot (Schmidt and Macdermot (1978) ), which unfortunately obliterates especially the strong astrological content of chapters 136–43, on which see von Lieven (2002). (11) Compare the dedication of a Venus figure to Isis Bubastis in Ostia cited by Leclant (1992), esp. 251 with n. 14. (12) Well summarized in Frankfurter (1998). (13) II 60. (14) von Lieven (2003). (15) The text is still not published in a scholarly edition, but a metrical free rendering of the complete text as far as it is preserved has been published by its prospective editors in Hoffmann and Quack (2007), 305–11. (16) Kolta (1968), 24–30. (17) Meeks (2006), 19, 21–3.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (18) Osing (1998), 253–4; for demonic ‘arrows’ of a deity in general, see von Lieven (2000), 156, index p. 241 s.v. Pfeile and the literature cited there. (19) Meeks (2006), 245–60. (20) Kolta (1968), 42–51, Tobin (1991). (21) See the commentary in Griffiths (1970), 521–2, and most recently Thissen (2009), esp. 102. (22) Thissen (2009), 101. (23) Wagner and Boardman (2003), 75, No. 576, pl. 75 (I would like to thank Joachim Quack very much for this reference). (24) Griffiths (1970), 146–7. (25) Kolta (1968), 155–60, Delia (1998). (26) Bricault (1994). (27) Kolta (1968), 96–104. (28) Compare Esna 252,25 and parallels, where she is called ‘⅔ male, ⅓ female’ (Sauneron (1961), 242–4). (29) Kolta (1968), 31–41. (30) Strabo 17.1.47, Macrobius, Saturnalia 21 (20). (31) Kolta (1968), 58–73, Hani (1976) esp. pp. 166–81. (32) Oldfather (1933), 78–9. (33) Griffiths (1970), 160–1. (34) Kaplan (1999), pls. 42, 46. (35) Kolta (1968), 52–7. (36) Amply attested in inscriptions from Panopolis/Achmim. (37) Compare the statement by Diodorus I 87.1–3. (38) van der Horst (1987), 32–3. (39) Kolta (1968), 150–4. (40) Sauneron (1962), Morenz (1963). (41) Pronounced ‘Entaie’ in the Ptolemaic period. Page 22 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (42) Seyfried (1984), pl. 15. (43) Diodorus I 13.4. (44) Goyon (1936), esp. 14, 31–2; Osing and Rosati (1998), 157–62 with n. 145; Meeks (2006), 26–7, 267–70. The parallels in the papyri clearly demonstrate that the traditional interpretation of the naos text as a rape is correct, contra Verhoeven (1991). (45) Strabo XVII 1.47. (46) Kolta (1968), 145–9. (47) The Egyptians in fact believed that there were only female vultures; compare Horapollo I 11 and E. Winter and U. Winter (1996). (48) Kolta (1968), 16–23. (49) Kolta (1968), 161–8. (50) Kolta (1968), 134–9. (51) Schott (1970). (52) Kolta (1968), 82–95. (53) Most recent translation with all the relevant older literature in Gauger (2002); the relevant part p. 195. (54) Gamer-Wallert (1970), 98. (55) See n. 42 above for the texts in question. (56) Meeks (2006), 15. (57) There it is said several times in different stages of the narrative that Shu flew to heaven, which is a term for dying. However, the Delta papyrus §19 has Haroeris-Onuris clearly alive decapitating Tefnut as a punishment for her son’s sexual assault on her. As the name Shu is avoided there, it could mean that Haroeris-Onuris is not entirely identical there with Shu. Of course, one also may not assume every version of the myth to have been identical or to be logically consistent in modern terms. (58) Griffiths (1970), 168–9. (59) Amélineau (1907–9), 384–5. However, he could, perhaps even more likely, be referring to Greek mythology. (60) So e.g. Kolta (1968), 83. Page 23 of 25

Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (61) The latter was already correctly seen by Griffiths (1970), 423, who wants to see a connection with Horus and the Papremis episode. However, Horus did not kill his father to get his mother. (62) Kolta (1968), 126–33, Clerc (1994), 97–137. (63) Hopfner (1922–5), 754. (64) On the Greek form of this god’s name, see the important note by Thissen (2009) 99. (65) M. Schentuleit is currently working on a monographic study of Herishef. It is to be hoped that this will clarify the issue. (66) Quaegebeur (1983). (67) Lichocka (2004). (68) Quaegebeur (1983), 48 (connection with Re), 49–51 (connection with Neith). For Re, compare the better photo of the same monument in Lichocka (2004) pl. 21. (69) de Cenival (1988), 40–5, pls. 14–15; Hoffmann and Quack (2007), 217–19; Quaegebeur (1983), 52. (70) In relation to the pictures of Neith-Athene crowning her son Tutu in the company of Nemesis griffins, it might be worth recalling the fact that Achilles Statius, Isagoge ad Arat. Phaen. 17, says the Egyptians called the planet Saturn ‘Star of Nemesis’ (Hopfner (1922-5), 413). In fact, the normal Egyptian designation of Saturn was ‘Horus the Bull’ (Neugebauer and Parker (1969), 178– 9). However, in the Roman period temple of Esna, on the ceiling tableau E = Esna 445, right next to the bull-headed figure of that planet, there is a figure of Tutu, clearly labelled ‘Tutu the Great, son of Neith’ (von Lieven, Himmel über Esna, p. 154). Is it by chance that his figure is shown close to Saturn? As for the solar god, the ostracon published by Spiegelberg (1902), 6–9, precisely calls the planet Saturn the ‘Star of Pre’. (71) Quaegebeur (1975), 170–6, 263–5. (72) Łajtar (2006), 47–8. (73) Laskowska-Kusztal (1984), 88. (74) Not his wife, as stated in earlier literature! (75) Singularly, Plutarch, De Iside 44 says ‘to some Anubis seems to be Kronos’, but his reluctant wording seems to be significant here.

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Translating Gods, Interpreting Gods (76) e.g. in Plutarch, De Iside 61. (77) Kaper (2005), 614–15. It is also interesting to compare the two depictions of the abduction of Proserpina in Kaplan, Grabmalerei und Grabreliefs der Römerzeit, pl. 11 a and b—the one in completely Greek style from Tuna el-Gebel shows a Greek Hermes with caduceus, while the other one from Kom Abu Billu shows in the same position Anubis with the key to the Underworld. On the latter, see Morenz (1975), Kurth (1990), 51–2. (78) Ritner (1985), 149–55. (79) Hopfner (1922–5), 470. (80) Rübsam (1974) 14. (81) On this deity, see Kaper (2003). On his name in Greek, see p. 14 with n. 3 there. (82) Strabo XVII 1.48. (83) Hopfner (1922–5) 690 (p. 99). (84) Kaper (2003), 222–3. (85) For the Egyptian background, see Quack (2006), 377–9. (86) Σοκνεβτῦνις ὁ καὶ Κρόνος, see Rübsam (1974), 180–3. For Sobek of Tebtunis being called Geb in an Egyptian text, see e.g. the colophon of P. Botti A (Beinlich (1991), 264–7). The translation there (Sobek, lord of Tebtunis and Geb) is to be corrected accordingly.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer?

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? The Inaros-Narratives of Greco-Roman Egypt Ian Rutherford

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the cycle of Demotic heroic narratives concerning Inaros of Athribis who fought against Assyria in the early 7th century BCE. In particular it explores the relation between the Inaros Cycle and Greek literature. In the light of a recent argument that the Inaros Cycle may have already been in existence in the mid-5th century BCE when Inaros ‘the Libyan’ led an Egyptian rebellion against Persia, backed by Athenian forces, it suggests that some of the Greek influence on the Cycle may have happened already in that period. Keywords:   heroic narrative, Egypt, Greek, Inaros

1. The Inaros-Narratives

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? One of the most significant surviving text corpora of Demotic literature is a group of narrative-texts relating to the adventures of Inaros of Athribis and other warriors (the ‘Inaros-Narratives’).* The major texts were published over a century ago, but significant fragments continue to be added. These texts have become a focal point for debate about the relationship between Egyptian and Greek literature for three reasons: first, because they have seemed to many scholars radically different from earlier Egyptian literature; second, because they seem to have been composed or recomposed during the long period in the first millennium BCE when Egypt was under foreign control; and third, because the cultures that controlled Egypt in that period are known to have had literary traditions which can plausibly be said to have influenced them. The aim of this chapter is to assess these issues, and offer some new insights.1 (p.84) Some of the Inaros-Narratives focused on Inaros himself, describing inter alia an attack by him on the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, and a duel with a monstrous griffin.2 But the three best preserved are concerned with the generation of Inaros’ children, the Inarids, as I shall call them.3 These are given the following modern titles:4 ‘The Struggle for the Armour of Inaros’ (henceforth ‘Armour’). ‘The Struggle for Benefice of Amun’ (henceforth ‘Benefice’). ‘Pedekhonsis and Serpot’ (henceforth ‘Serpot’). Armour, the manuscripts of which date from the Roman period,5 recounts how the weapons of Inaros, who has recently died (on a campaign abroad?)6 were fought over by two parties of epigones: one is led by the Inarid Pemu, based in Heliopolis, supported by forty warriors, among them Pekrur, an ally of Inaros from Pisopdet, and his son Pedekhonsis, who together control the Western and South-Eastern Delta; the other is led by Wertiamonnut of Mendes, supported by Ankhhor, son of the pharaoh Pedubastis, who is based in Tanis, controlling the North-East Delta (the pharaoh himself has little part in the action). The story of Armour falls into two parts. The action starts with the stirring up of the dispute by demons sent by Osiris, who is angered, as has recently been shown, by the disruption of a ritual.7 When Pemu finds out that Wertiamonnut has stolen the armour, he and Pekrur visit Pharaoh, and Pharaoh summons Wertiamonnut, who denies any involvement. Meanwhile a funeral ceremony for Inaros takes place attended by mourners from all over Egypt. After another meeting, the parties declare war, deciding on a location for the combat—the Gazelle Lake—and sending messages to various participants, who are listed in the form of catalogues.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? The second part of Armour is the battle. To begin with, Pemu, who has now travelled to the Gazelle Lake, faces Wertiamonnut and his army alone; then he is joined by his principal ally Petekhonsis, and (p.85) Ankhhor joins the other side; finally Pemu’s other allies arrive (their ships are listed). Pharaoh and Pekrur then organize the combat, matching warriors and contingents against each other. When these arrangements are already complete, Monthbaal, another Inarid, arrives from Syria, and is ordered to protect the ships. Battle then begins, and part of Wertiamonnut’s forces are chased back to the river, where Monthbaal kills many of them. Then Pharaoh and Pekrur, who now backs away from war, intervene and Pharaoh agrees to arrange the return of the armour if Monthbaal stops fighting. Two significant deaths are narrowly averted: Pemu almost kills Wertiamonnut, but is dissuaded by Monthbaal, and Petekhonsis is prevented from killing Ankhhor by Pharaoh. The armour is duly returned to Heliopolis. Then Minnemei, yet another Inarid, arrives from Elephantine, bringing troops from Meroe, but he is told that the war is over. Finally, a monument is put up commemorating the events. A second narrative from this Cycle, ‘Benefice’ (the manuscript is now dated to the early first century BCE),8 involves some of the same characters, but also features a ‘Young Priest of Buto’, who is backed up by thirteen ‘shepherds’.9 Here too there is a clear object of dispute: a vacant benefice of Amun in Thebes, which is claimed initially by Pharaoh Pedubastis for his son Ankhhor, and then counterclaimed by the Young Priest of Buto. Pharaoh makes an expedition to Thebes, accompanied by Wertiamonnut, but excluding Pemu and Pedekhonsis, apparently at the instigation of Taos son of Ankhhor (a second figure with that name). The action centres round a festival of Amun at Thebes, and the seizing of a ceremonial ship by the Young Priest of Buto, who captures both Ankhhor and later Wertiamonnut. A repeated motif in the narrative is consultation of the oracle of Amun by the pharaoh. Eventually, in desperation to save his son, Pharaoh asks for the help of Pemu and Petekhonsis, but before they have time to come south, the day is saved by the unexpected appearance of Minnemei of Elephantine, a late arrival (as in Armour) but (unlike in Armour) in time to fight; and in fact he engages the shepherds in combat for four days. The ending is lost, but Pharaoh no doubt reclaimed the Benefice for his son, as the oracle of Amun predicted.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (p.86) A third narrative from the cycle, ‘Serpot’, published in the 1950s (the two manuscripts date from around 200 CE), describes an adventure that takes place outside Egypt. Pedekhonsis, apparently accompanied by Assyrians, fights a campaign in Syria, in the course of which he encounters an army of women, led by Queen Serpot. Instead of having their armies engage in full combat, Pedekhonsis and Serpot decide to fight a duel, which is sustained until nightfall, at which point they catch sight of each other and fall in love. At this critical point the text is sadly broken, but a later part includes an attack by an army of Indians, whom the women defeat with Egyptian support. It is not clear how the story ends.

2. Historical Background The fantastic Serpot aside, many of the principal characters of the InarosNarratives are local Egyptian rulers of the cities of the Delta in the early seventh century BCE, the period immediately preceding the foundation of the Saite Dynasty under Psammetichus I in 664 BCE, when the main external powers were Kushite Nubia and the Assyrian Empire. Some of the rulers are also referred to in Assyrian or Nubian records relating to Assurbanipal’s attacks in 667/6 BCE and 664/3 BCE and Tanutamani’s abortive counter-attack in the interval between them.10 Assyrians are frequently mentioned in the narratives and we even find references to Assurbanipal’s father Esarhaddon.11 The name Inaros is best known to classicists as the name of an Egyptian ruler of the mid-fifth century, the son of Psammetichus called ‘Libyan’ in Greek sources, which say that he led a major and ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the Persians around 463–457 BCE in which Athenians and other foreigners participated. Herodotus reports that he saw the skeletons from the great battle between Inaros the Libyan and the Persians at Papremis in the Delta, and comments (p.87) on the relative thickness of the skulls of the participants on each side.12 The fifth-century Inaros is also referred to in a few Egyptian sources, one of them discovered quite recently.13 The existence of a real Inaros in the epoch of Assurbanipal two centuries earlier has recently been argued for by Joachim Quack on the basis of an Assyrian record of Assurbanipal’s Egyptian campaign (‘Prisms C and A’), which lists Egyptian rulers established by him, among them a ruler of Athribis.14 A fragment of a narrative from the Carlsberg collection, now published by Kim Ryholt as ‘A Story About the Living Prince Inaros’, makes it clear that Inaros had a special connection with Athribis and its deity Horus Khenty-Khety. The cuneiform signs for the name of the ruler in the Assyrian text are not fully preserved, but Quack shows that the surviving latter part can be read as –]h˘ara-u, which would be compatible with an Assyrian rendering of the Egyptian form of the name Inaros.15

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? The extant texts of the Inaros-Narratives mostly date from the Roman period, but the tradition, perhaps to begin with an oral one, could be much older. (Different copies of the same narrative sometimes show significant differences, which suggests a loose, oral tradition.)16 The texts themselves contain few clues about the date.17 A writing board from the third century BCE seems to preserve a short text that has the appearance of coming from an Inaros-Narrative.18 Moreover, the argument has recently been made that the earliest text could be a long graffito, in several columns, painted on the walls of a much older cave tomb near Sheikh Fadl in central (p.88) Egypt.19 This text is not in Egyptian but in Aramaic, and now dated to the early fifth century BCE. The existence of an Aramaic text in Egypt at this time is not surprising, since Aramaic was the principal language used in the Persian Empire, and it was probably the ordinary language among some groups, such as the Jewish population of Elephantine.20 The Sheikh Fadl text is fragmentary, but it seems to contain a narrative, which mentions Esarhaddon, Taharqa (king of Kush and pharaoh of the 25th dynasty, 690–664 BCE) and Necho (apparently Necho I of Sais, father of Psammetichus), as well as forty warriors. It has been recently suggested that the name of one of the characters should be read as ‘Yinharu’, in which case this could be early Inaros-Narrative.21 This idea was taken a stage further in 2007 by Tawny Holm, who argued that the text narrates an episode from an early Inaros-Narrative where Inaros gets Taharqa to order Necho to attack the Assyrians. Furthermore, she suggested that it was written by or on behalf of Aramaic-speaking Egyptians who took part in the revolt of Inaros around 460 BCE. The date more or less matches, since the graffito is now dated to the first half of the fifth century. In other words, for the author of the graffito, Inaros was ‘…a true Egyptian hero, once again attempting to extricate the country from the hands of outsiders from the east, just as his earlier namesake, Inaros of Athribis, had done in the seventh century’.22 This historical reconstruction suits the strongly nationalist tenor of the InarosNarratives. Egypt is represented as dominating the rest of the world in a way that inverts historical reality: in Armour Monthbaal turns up from Syria with an army of Medes (19.15–18), the very people who in fact controlled Egypt in the fifth century; the Armour also states that Inaros’ son Minnemei controls Meroe (Armour 24.14), which Egypt never did;23 in Serpot Assyrians seem to serve in the Egyptian army (3.27, 39), and Pedekhonsis’ expedition to India may be meant to emulate Alexander’s. The representation of Egypt as much more powerful than it really was resembles the ideology implied in the story of Sesostris, the word-conquering pharaoh as (p.89) we find it in Herodotus, except that in the Inaros-Narratives the focal characters of these narratives are not pharaohs but regional warlords whose claims may bring them into conflict with the authority of the pharaoh who is himself represented as ineffectual and weak.24 Page 5 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? 3. The Inaros-Narratives and Greek Literature The Inaros-Narratives contain no explicit references to anything Greek; the closest we come is a reference to a cloak of ‘Milesian wool’ that Pemu dons in Armour.25 The suggestion that they were influenced by Greek epic poetry goes back to Wilhelm Spiegelberg, who wrote about the duels in those works in the preface to his edition of Benefice and Armour (1910: 10, I translate).26 ‘Such duels are completely un-Egyptian and imply foreign literary influence. Whether we should think of the model of the Homeric epics I raise only as a question. It will only be answered with certainty (p.90) if our knowledge of demotic as of all late Egyptian literature improves. Anyone who has the courage to affirm this question now will have to draw the further conclusion that the saga of Petubastis arose in the Hellenistic age, for one can hardly think of Greek influence on the literature before the Ptolemies. I would prefer to think of the Ptolemaic period, perhaps that of Ptolemy Philadelphos, whose interest in Egyptian history is attested by the work of Manetho which he encouraged’. So, Spiegelberg’s premises are: first, that there is no precedent for duels in Egyptian literature and, second, that Egyptian literature could easily have undergone influence from Greek literature in the Hellenistic period. Spiegelberg’s statement has served as something of a challenge to other scholars who in subsequent decades went on to detect various forms of Greek influence in the Inaros-Narratives. Particularly striking from this point of view is Serpot, discussed for the first time by Aksel Volten in 1956. The army of women and the romance between its leader and a male warrior have suggested to many people the Amazons of Greek mythology; either the episode of Achilles and Penthesileia in the Cyclical Aithiopis, as Volten thought, or that between Alexander and the Amazon-queen Thalestris in the Alexander- tradition, as Ryholt has suggested.27 Vittmann suggested a romance without an Amazon, the one in Ctesias’ Persika between the Median Struangaios and Zarinaia queen of the Sacae.28 There is also the issue of the god of the Indians. In the Inaros-Narratives, different characters tend to invoke different deities,29 usually Egyptian ones, though one of Inaros’ sons who has lived in (p.91) the East invokes Baal.30 Even the leader of the Indians in Serpot invokes an Egyptian deity, ‘Osiris the Shai (usually translated ‘Agathos Daimon’) of India’ (9.4). In the standard interpretatio graeca, Osiris was identified with Dionysus, and the idea that Osiris was known in India is often supposed to reflect Greek ideas about Dionysus conquering India, which seems to have been part of the usual account of Alexander’s campaign there.31 So, based on that logic, Serpot would postdate the expedition of Alexander.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Taken together, these points provide a reasonably strong case for a Greek background, and some of them suggest that Greek influence happened in the Hellenistic period. Meanwhile, Greek influence was being detected in the other texts as well, particularly in Armour. Already in the 1920s Günther Roeder pointed out that the theme of conflict over the weapons of the dead hero resembles the Greek story of the Arms of Achilles, with the difference that the Achilles weapons were supposed to be awarded on the basis of a vote to the bravest surviving Greek fighter after Achilles’ death (the ‘best of the Achaeans’).32 Another parallel between Armour and the Greek tradition that Roeder observed is the use of two zones of combat, a main one and a secondary one by the ships, to which troops are driven from the main battle.33 Again the parallel is not exact, because in Armour the most conspicuous fighting on the ships is carried out by warriors who have just sailed in, whereas in the Iliad (Book 15) they have been there for a number of years. Similarly, the Armour, like the Iliad, has a sort of ‘Catalogue of Ships’,34 that is, when the allies of Pemu finally arrive (Armour 17.22–18.4), there is a list of their ships with eleven entries, each having the form: ‘They gave a landing place to the mlꜣ-ship of the people of…’ (p.92) Once again, the parallel is only approximate: the list is much shorter than the one in the Iliad, and there are no specifications of the number of vessels.35 Attention has also been paid to various general features of the action. In the Inaros-Narratives the gods are sometimes instigators of conflict, as Osiris sends demons at the start of Armour, and this is a parallel on a very general level to the conventions of Greek epic.36 Like Homeric warriors, the Inarids are represented as arming themselves for battle and there is one extended arming scene, that of Pemu (whose cloak is of ‘Milesian Wool’: see above). The heroes of the Inaros-Narratives also make boastful speeches, they engage in killing sprees, like the aristeiai of Homeric heroes, and they are motivated by honour and avoidance of shame: thus, Pemu, alone at the Gazelle Lake and facing Wertiamonnut and his army, rejects an offer to delay combat until his brothers arrive, because he believes that his enemies will despise him if he so acts, a decision expressed first in a sort of internal soliloquy and secondly in dialogue with his servant Thinuphis (12.10 and 21).37 Two broader thematic resemblances that are worth pointing out are the idea of a contrast between weak political authority and the strong fighter(s),38 and also an intense focus on (p.93) national identity.39 Finally, it is also worth observing that both the Trojan Cycle and the Inaros-Narratives give a prominent role to a warrior who arrives late from Ethiopia: Memnon in the Greek tradition, Minnemei in both Armour and Benefice.40 Many of these parallels are pretty general, but some of them at least look too good to dismiss out of hand. Page 7 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? It must be admitted that there are also differences. For one thing, the InarosNarratives are much shorter than Greek epics (the translation of Armour in the volume of Hoffmann and Quack takes about thirty pages), and the story moves much faster than that of the Iliad and Odyssey. Secondly, the world of the InarosNarratives is not predominantly oral, like that of the Homeric epic, but presupposes the use of writing: messages are sent by letter, and at the end of Armour the events of the conflict are written up on a stele.41 Thirdly, there is a surprising absence of death,42 at least for the important figures, in the extant narratives (although the death of Inaros himself must have been described in an earlier story). Moreover, Armour at least seems to work on the axiom that life is preferable to death: thus, when Pemu is about to kill Wertiamonnut, Monthbaal dissuades him, admonishing: ‘man is not like plants, and cannot be reborn’.43 Most scholars agree that influence from Greek literature is at least theoretically possible, and they usually point to the Hellenistic or (p.94) Roman periods, when the Egyptian scribes who produced the Demotic texts may well have had access to Greek texts in their temple libraries.44 Not everyone has accepted that it took place, however. Friedhelm Hoffmann, who is generally sceptical about alleged borrowings from Greek, including the famous one from the Underworld scene in the Second Setne story,45 surveyed previous arguments for Greek influence in the introduction to his edition of Armour in 1996, looking at four general areas: formal elements, such as fixed epithets (51–3); themes (53–63), including motifs of various sorts, and ‘typical scenes’, such as arming; compositional techniques (63–74), such as speeches; and the world of ideas (74– 8), for example, the view of man, his relation with the gods, and motivations such as honour and fame.46 He concluded that the parallels have been exaggerated. Furthermore, contra Spiegelberg, he argued that there is little in them that cannot be explained in terms of earlier Egyptian literature; for example, the theme of the duel he traces to the Egyptian ‘Contendings of Horus and Seth …’. a mythical text from the late New Kingdom.47 Hoffmann also pointed to official accounts of campaigns waged by pharaohs, such as the records of the Battle of Qadesh, or King Piye’s lengthy Victory Stela from 734 BCE. The latter in particular has a surprising amount of detail about the conduct of warfare which seems at points to approximate to heroic narrative.48 Hoffmann makes a strong case, but not everything in the Inaros-Narratives can be so easily traced in Egyptian sources, for example the theme of conflict over armour (as he admits).49 (p.95) Hoffmann’s position was quickly challenged by another German Demoticist, Heinz-Josef Thissen, in a paper in 1999.50 His aim was not to reassert what he saw as the older view of heavy Greek influence, but rather to argue for what he called a ‘synthesis’, combining elements of the earlier ‘thesis’ with Hoffmann’s ‘antithesis’. For Thissen, the genre to which the Inaros Cycle belongs is Egyptian, both in origin and in its present form, but it has been crossfertilized with elements from Greek epic. Page 8 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Since 1999, there has been continued support for the general thesis of the influence of Greek literature on the Inaros-Narratives, particularly for Hellenistic influence on Serpot.51 However, influence from other directions has also been suggested, and to this I turn in the next section.

4. Other Possibilities It is always worth bearing in mind that influence may have come from ancient literary traditions that have entirely disappeared. Karl Jansen-Winkeln has proposed that a key role was played by Libyan-literature,52 and that the InarosNarratives reflect the political conditions of the tenth to eighth centuries BCE when many rulers of Egypt seem to have come from Libya (22nd–23rd dynasties); he also pointed to a class of Egyptian warriors called ‘makhimoi’, mentioned in Herodotus, who resemble the warriors of the Inaros-Narratives, and are often said to be the descendants of Libyans who were settled in Egypt.53 The possibility thus arises that the Inaros-Narratives could reflect a lost tradition of Libyan literature or at least Libyo-Egyptian heroic literature. This is an interesting speculation, but it will remain impossible to verify unless some direct evidence for Libyan epic emerges. (p.96) Another theory, which perhaps merits more attention, is that the InarosNarratives go back to Assyrian literature in Aramaic. The Assyrian Empire is certainly part of the mental horizon of the Inaros-Narratives, as we saw earlier, and this reflects the reality of the early seventh century when Assyrians occupied Egypt for several years.54 The British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has suggested that the origin of the Inaros-Narratives may be in Assyrian court literature in Aramaic, which seems to have circulated in Egypt.55 One example of such literature is the narrative known today as The Tale of Assurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin, which dramatizes the events leading up to the momentous Assyrian siege and sack of Babylon in the mid-seventh century BCE, when Shamash-shum-ukin, ruler of Babylon, rebelled against his brother Assurbanipal, who controlled the Assyrian Empire. This text is preserved in an Egyptian papyrus of the fourth century BCE, disconcertingly written in Egyptian Demotic script, although the language is Aramaic.56 Another example is the much better known story of the wise man Ahiqar, who was betrayed by his nephew, sentenced to death by Esarhaddon, then redeemed, and subsequently sent on a mission to Egypt. The earliest known (probably close to the original) version of this, in Aramaic, comes from Egypt, and in fact from fifth-century BCE Elephantine. Fragments of a Demotic Egyptian version of Ahiqar from much later are also known.57 A third example could be a fragmentary Aramaic text about an Egyptian magician, Hor son of Punesh, though this may well be a translation from Demotic.58

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? For Dalley, a key piece of evidence was the Sheikh Fadl graffito, which she saw as an example of an Assyrian court narrative, possibly an autobiography written by or on behalf of an Assyrian, and which, following others at the time, she dated to the seventh century BCE.59 But we have seen that the interpretation of the graffito has now (p.97) changed: it is no longer seen as an autobiography, but a proto-Inaros-Narrative, and it is now dated to the fifth century, a century and a half after the end of the Assyrian Empire. Hence, this text no longer looks like an Aramaic narrative imported to Egypt from outside and it could just as easily be something produced in Egypt in an Aramaic milieu, closely related, presumably, to Egyptian narratives that were circulating at the same time. Taken together, this evidence seems to provide grounds for talking about a sort of bicultural or bilingual literature circulating in Egypt during the Persian occupation in the fifth and fourth centuries, part Aramaic, part Egyptian, some of it close to Assyrian models (e.g. P.Amherst 63 and Ahiqar), and some perhaps not so close to it, and produced locally (e.g. the Sheikh Fadl text). So, while there is no clear evidence that the Inaros-Narratives were influenced from Aramaic literary traditions, they may well have evolved in this Aramaic–Egyptian literary context.

5. Summation It would thus seem that the Inaros-Narratives could have been influenced by any one of a number of foreign literatures, either one of those mentioned already, or another, and a reasonable response to all of this might seem to be to despair of finding an explanation at all. Any apparent parallel between Greek and Egyptian literature could be simply a coincidence, or, if it is more than a coincidence, it could indicate that both have been influenced by some other third tradition, either one known to us, such as Assyrian literature,60 or perhaps one we know nothing about, such as the hypothetical lost epic traditions of Libya. On the other hand, the hypothesis of Greek influence still (p.98) has something to be said for it: some of the parallels look impressive, such as the love-affair-betweenwarriors in Serpot, the main theme of Armour, and in Armour again the two zones of battle. For this reason, I think it is worth thinking again about what the context for the borrowing may have been, and how it might have occurred.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? One possible model which we have met before would be the bilingual hierogrammateus working away in the temple-library in the Hellenistic or Roman periods. Such figures kept the traditions of Demotic narrative literature alive, but they may have known some Greek literature as well, and there is some evidence, albeit limited, for Greek influence on Demotic texts.61 Consistent with this model is the probability that the Greek elements in Serpot at least may reflect the Alexander tradition. If this is right, borrowing should be taken to simply not imply cultural dependency, but rather an element of competitive emulation between cultures: if Alexander achieved something, an Egyptian prince can be represented as having done much the same thing centuries earlier.62 In that case it might seem economical to assume that, if there was influence from Greek epic, it would have happened at the same time. However, since we now have reason to think that the Inaros-Narratives were already around in some form in the mid-fifth century BCE, it is surely time to reconsider the possibility that Greek literature became known in Egypt much earlier. Cultural interaction between Greece and Egypt is generally agreed to have increased greatly during the 25th dynasty, and it remained strong even after Egypt was absorbed into the Persian Empire.63 One model worth entertaining is that the specific context was the presence of Greek military forces in Egypt, attested since the late seventh century BCE. Herodotus says that Greek mercenaries were already employed by Psammetichus I, and this chronology has been confirmed by the discovery of a dedication (p.99) by the mercenary Pedon at Priene.64 During the reign of Psammetichus II they took part in an expedition to Nubia, leaving graffiti at Abu Simbel (591 BCE).65 Apries is said by Herodotus to have used Ionian and Carian mercenaries in the civil war against Amasis, and Amasis in turn, when he came to power, had them resettled in Memphis.66 There were thus Greeks present in Egypt in the period when the Inaros-Narratives are likely to have been forming. But the period that perhaps merits particular attention is the mid-fifth century when Inaros the Libyan was supported in his struggle against the Persians by members of the Athenian Empire, who supplied ships and marines, and sailed up the Nile to Memphis, where they laid siege to the Persians and the Egyptians who had stayed loyal to them in the ‘White Fortress’; however, they were eventually driven away and themselves besieged in the island of Prosopitis, where Persians defeated them by diverting the river, leaving the ships high and dry.67 After Inaros’ death, the revolt continued for a while under the leadership of Amurtaios of Sais, again supported by Athens.68 Thus, for a brief period, Athenians and Egyptians were united against a common foe (this unusual alignment may reverberate almost a century later in Plato’s account in the Timaeus of the joint Athenian–Egyptian campaign against the mythological Atlantis), and the relation between Greeks and Inaros’ other forces must have been, at least for a few years, completely different from what we are used to from the Hellenistic period. Page 11 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Earlier I mentioned Holm’s argument that the Sheikh Fadl text coincides with the revolt of Inaros the Libyan when an attempt was made to exploit the tradition about Inaros the First. Is it possible that, at the same time, an attempt was made to bolster the existing (p.100) narratives about Inaros the First, or to create new ones, by drawing on Greek poetic traditions about heroic conflict with the East? And that some sort of fusion took place between the cultural and literary traditions of Egyptians and Greeks, united for a few intense years in a common struggle against a common oriental enemy? A shared conflict would encourage the formation of a shared narrative and a shared ideology. For the Greeks who fought in this conflict, and experienced the sieges of the White Fortress and Prosopitis, it would have been natural to compare themselves to Homer’s Greek warriors, and to compare their ships and marines to those described in the Iliad. The gap in this argument is that we cannot be sure whether or not Homeric poetry was known to Inaros the Libyan and his Egyptian propagandists, but this should not be ruled out.69 Engaged in a fight with the Persians, they might well have been attracted to the great Greek traditions of conflict between West and East. The Greeks, after all, had seen off Persian armies twice in the preceding decades, and they could well have been considered the model to follow.70 Thus, already by the fifth century the Inaros-Narratives would have taken their basic shape. The individual narratives probably continued to evolve in subsequent centuries, particularly if the transmission was for a time oral, and entirely new ones may have been added; Hellenistic influence may well be particularly visible in Serpot, as I suggested earlier.71 But the main phases of the development of the genre could well have been the seventh to the fifth centuries BCE, which was a period when cultural influences from outside Egypt—Aramaic, Greek, and perhaps others as well—were blended with native Egyptian traditions to produce a uniquely transcultural literary form. (p.101) Abbreviations COS 1: W. Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scripture 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden, 1977). COS 2: W. W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger (eds.), The Context of Scripture 2: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World (Leiden, 2003). Bibliography Bibliography references: Baynham, E. (2001), ‘Alexander and the Amazons’, CQ 51, 115–26. Blatter, R. (1994), ‘Peliou Athla’, LIMC VII.1 (Munich), 277–80. Page 12 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Boehmer, E. (2005), Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Migrant Metaphors (2nd edn.) (Oxford). Breyer, F. (2003), Tanutamani: die Traumstele und ihr Umfeld (Wiesbaden). Brunt, P. A. (1983), Arrian (LCL), vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.). Chauveau, N. (2004), ‘Inarôs, prince des rebelles’, in F. Hoffmann and H. Thissen (eds.), Res Severa Verum Gaudium (Leuven), 39–46. Charles, R. H. (1913), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English (Oxford). Clarysse, W. (1987), ‘Greek Loan Words in Demotic’, in S. P. Vleeming, Aspects of Demotic Lexicography (Leuven), 9–33. Dalley, S. (2001), ‘Assyrian Court Narratives in Aramaic and Egyptian: Historical Fiction’, in T. Abusch et al. (eds.), Historiography in the Cuneiform World, Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Bethesda Miss.: CDL), 149–61. Dalley, S. (2013), ‘The Greek Novel Ninus and Semiramis’, in T. Whitmarsh, and S. Thomson (eds.), The Romance between Greece and the East (Cambridge), 117–26. Dillon, M. P. J. (1997), ‘A Homeric Pun from Abu Simbel (Meiggs & Lewis 7A)’, ZPE 118, 128–30. Drijvers, J. W. (1999), ‘Strabo 17.1.18 (801 C): Inaros, the Milesians and Naucratis’, Mnemosyne 52, 16–22. Dunst, G. (1972), ‘Archaische Inschriften und Dokumente der Pentekontaetie aus Samos’, AM 87, 99–163. Foley, J. M. (2005), A Companion to Ancient Epic (Oxford). Gantz, T. (1993), Early Greek Myth: A Guide to the Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore). Gozzoli, R. B. (2006), The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt during the First Millennium BC (ca 1070–180 BC): Trends and Perspectives (Padstow). Griffith, R. D. (1988), ‘The Origin of Memnon’, Ch 17, 212–34. Haider, P. (2004), ‘Kontakte zwischen Griechen und Ägyptern und ihre Auswirkungen auf die archaisch-griechische Welt’. in R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (eds.), Griechische Archaik: interne Entwicklungen-externe Impulse (Berlin), 447–91. (p.102) Page 13 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Haubold, J. (2007), ‘Xerxes’ Homer’, in E. Bridges, E. Hall, and P. J. Rhodes (eds.), Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars (Oxford), 47–63. Haubold, J. (2013), Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature (Cambridge). Haul, M. (2009), Stele und Legende. Untersuchungen zu den keilschriftlichen Erzählwerken über die Könige von Akkade [Göttinger Beiträge zum Alten Orient Bd 4] (Göttingen). Hoffmann, F. (1994), ‘Seilflechter in der Unterwelt’, ZPE 100, 339–46. Hoffmann, F. (1995), Ägypter und Amazonen. Neubearbeitung zweier demotischer Papyri (Vienna). Hoffmann, F. (1996), Der Kampf um den Panzer des Inaros (Vienna). Hoffmann, F. (2009), Die Entstehung der demotischen Erzählliteratur: Beobachtungen zum überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Kontext’, in H. Roeder (ed.), Das Erzählen in frühen Hochkulturen: Der Fall Ägypten Ägyptologie und Kulturwissenschaft 1 (Munich), 351–84. Hoffmann, F., and Quack, J. F. (2007), Anthologie der demotischen Literatur (Berlin). Holm, T. L. (2007), ‘The Sheikh Fadl Inscription in its Literary and Historical Context’, Aramaic Studies 5, 193–224. Ivantchik, A. I. (1999), ‘Eine griechische Pseudo-Historie der Pharao Sesostris und der Skytho-Ägyptische Krieg’, Historia 48, 395–441. Jansen-Winkeln, K. (2000), ‘Die Fremdherrschaften in Ägypten im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr’, Orientalia 69, 1–20. Kahn, D. (2008), ‘Inaros’ Rebellion against Artaxerxes I and the Athenian Disaster in Egypt’, CQ 58, 424–40. Kitchen, K. (1996), The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 B.C.) (2nd edn.) (Warminster). Kockelmann, H. (2014), ‘Gods at War. Two Demotic Mythological Narratives in the Carlsberg Papyrus Collection, Copenhagen (PC 460 and PC 284)’, in M. Depauw and Y. Broux (eds.), Acts of the Tenth International Congress of Demotic Studies (Leuven), 115–25. Kurke, L. (2011), Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose (Princeton).

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Lemaire, A. (1995), ‘Les inscriptions araméennes de Cheikh-Fadl (Égypte)’, in M. J. Geller, et al. (eds.), Studia Aramaica: New Sources and New Approaches, Papers Delivered at the London Conference of The Institute of Jewish Studies University College London, 26th–28th June 1991 (JSS Suppl. 4; Oxford), 77–132. (p.103) Lenfant, D. (2004), Ctésias de Cnide. La Perse, l’Inde, autres fragments (Paris). Lévy, I. (1927), La légende de Pythagore de Grèce en Palestine (Paris). Lichtheim, M. (1973), Ancient Egyptian Literature. A Book of Readings, 3 vols. (California). Lloyd, A. B. (1975–88), Herodotus Book II, Introduction and Commentary, 3 vols. (Leiden). Lloyd, A. B. (1982), ‘Nationalist Propaganda in Ptolemaic Egypt’, Historia 31, 33– 55. Maspero, G. (1911), Les contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne 4th edn. (Paris). Maspero, G. (1915), Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt, translated by Mrs C. H. W. Johns (A. S. Griffith) from the fourth French edition, revised by Sir G. Maspero (London). Masson, O., and Yoyotte, J. (1988), ‘Une inscription ionienne mentionnant Psammétique Ier’, Epigraphica Anatolica 11, 171–80. Mayor, A. (2014), The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (Princeton). Meiggs, R., and Lewis, D. M. (1969), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford). Onasch, H.-U. (1994), Die Assyrischen Eroberungen Ägyptens, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden). Porten, B. (1997), ‘Egyptian Aramaic Texts’, in E. M. Meyers (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (New York), vol. 2. 213–21 with appendix in vol. 5, 393–410. Porten, B. (2004), ‘The Prophecy of Hor bar Punesh and the Demise of Righteousness: An Aramaic Papyrus in the British Library’, in F. Hoffmann and H. Thissen (eds.), Res Severa Verum Gaudium (Leuven), 427–66. Porten, B., and Yardeni, A. (1986–99), Textbook of Aramaic documents from ancient Egypt, 4 vols. (Winona Lake, Ind.).

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Quack, J. F. (2005), ‘Gibt es eine ägyptische Homer-Rezeption?’, in A. Luther (ed.), Odyssee-Rezeptionen (Frankfurt), 55–72. Quack, J. F. (2006), ‘Inaros, Held von Athribis’, in Robert Rollinger and Brigitte Truschnegg (eds.), Altertum und Mittelmeerraum: Die antike Welt diesseits und jenseits der Levante, Festschrift für Peter W. Haider zum 60. Geburtstag [Oriens et occidens 12] (Stuttgart), 499–505. Quack, J. F. (2009), Einführung in die altägyptische Literaturgeschichte III. Die demotische und gräko-ägyptische Literatur (2nd ed.) (Münster) (1st edn. 2006). Quack, J. F. (2010–11), ‘Ein Fragment eines demotischen ethnographischen Textes (PSI Inv.D88)’. Enchoria 32, 81–5. Quack, J. F. (2011), ‘The Interaction of Egyptian and Aramaic literature’, O. Lipshits, G. N. Knoppers, and M. Oeming (eds.), Judah and the Judeans (p.104) in the Achaemenid Period. Negotiating Identity in an International Context (Winona Lake, Ind), 375–401. Quaegebeur, J. (1975), Le dieu égyptien Shaï dans la religion et l’onomastique (Leuven). Ray, J. (1972), ‘Two Objects in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge’, JEA 58, 247–53. Roeder, G. (1927), Altägyptische Erzählungen und Märchen (Jena). Roller, L. E. (1917), ‘Funeral Games in Greek Literature, Art, and Life’, Ph.D. thesis, University, Pennsylvani. Rutherford, I. (1997), ‘Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas: A Greek Novel and some Egyptian Models’, ZPE 117, 203–9. Rutherford, I. (2000), ‘The Genealogy of the Boukoloi’, JHS 120, 106–21. Ryholt, K. (1998), ‘A Parallel to the Inaros Story’, JEA 84, 151–69. Ryholt, K. (2004), ‘The Assyrian Invasion of Egypt in Egyptian Literary Tradition’, in J. G. Dercksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen (Leiden), 483–511. Ryholt, K. (2005), ‘On the Content and Nature of the Tebtunis Temple Library’, in S. Lippert and M. Schentuleit, Tebtynis und Soknopaiu Nesos: Leben im römerzeitlichen Fajum (Wiesbaden), 141–70. Ryholt, K. (2006), The Petese Stories II (P. Petese II) [The Carlsberg Papyri 6] (Copenhagen).

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Ryholt, K. (2010), ‘Late Period Literature’, in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Egypt (Chichester), 2. 709–31. Ryholt, K. (2012), Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library (Copenhagen). Ryholt, K. (2013a), ‘Imitatio Alexandri in Egyptian literary tradition’, in T. Whitmarsh, and S. Thomson (eds.), The Romance between Greece and the East (Cambridge, 2013), 59–78. Ryholt, K. (2013b), ‘A Demotic Narrative in Berlin and Brooklyn concerning the Assyrian Invasion of Egypt’. in V. M. Lepper (ed.), Forschung in der Papyrussammlung: Eine Festgabe für das Neue Museum (Berlin, 2013), 337– 553. Schwartz, J. (1948), ‘Les conquérants perses et la littérature égyptienne’, BIFAO 48, 65–80. Schwartz, J. (1950), ‘Le “Cycle de Petoubastis” et les commentaires égyptiens de l’Exode’, BIFAO 49, 67–83. Spiegelberg, W. (1910), Der Sagenkreis des Königs Petubastis nach dem Strassburger demotischen Papyrus sowie den Wiener und Pariser Bruchstücken (Leipzig). Stricker, B. H. (1954), ‘De strijd om het pantser van koning Inahrow’, in Oudheidkundige medelingen uit het rijksmuseum van oudheden te Leiden. Nieuwe reeks 35, 47–64. Tait, W. J. (1977), Papyri from Tebtunis in Egyptian and Greek (London). (p.105) Tait, W. J. (1992), ‘Demotic Literature and Egyptian Society’, in J. H. Johnson (ed.), Life in a Multi-cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (Chicago), 303–10. Tait, W. J. (1994), ‘Egyptian Fiction in Demotic and Greek’, in J. R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction: The Greek novel in Context (London), 203–22. Thissen, H.-J. (1986), ‘Tadel der Frauen’, Enchoria 14, 159–60. Thissen, H.-J. (1989), ‘Der verkommene Harfenspieler’, ZPE 77, 227–40. Thissen, H.-J. (1992), Der verkommende Harfenspieler: Eine altägyptische Invektive (P.Wien KM 3877) (Sommerhausen). Thissen, H.-J. (1999), ‘Homerischer Einfluss im Inaros-Petubastis-Zyklus?’, SAK 27, 369–87.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Thissen, H.-J. (2004), ‘Die demotische Literatur als Medium spätägyptischer Geisteshaltung’, in Kon-Texte. Akten des Symposiums ‘Spurensuche– Altägypten im Spiegel seiner Texte’ (Wiesbaden), 91–101. Tuplin, C. J. (2015), ‘Dogs that do not (always) bark: Herodotus on Persian Egypt’, in T. Harrison and E. Irwin (eds.), The Past in the Present: Interpreting Herodotus after Charle Fornara (Oxford). Vittmann, G. (1998), ‘Tradition und Neuerung in der demotischen Literatur’, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 125, 62–77. Vittmann, G. (2002), ‘Ägyptische Onomastik der Spätzeit im Spiegel der nordwestsemitischen und karischen Nebenüberlieferung’, in M. P. Streck and S. Weninger (eds.), Altorientalische und semitische Onomastik (Münster), 85–107. Vittmann, G. (2003), Ägypten und die Fremden im ersten vorchristlichen Jahrtausend (Mainz am Rhein). Vittmann, G. (2006), ‘Zur Rolle des “Auslands” im demotischen InarosPetubastis-Zyklus’. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 86, 305– 37. Vleeming, S. P. (2001), Some Coins of Artaxerxes and Other Short Texts in the Demotic Script Found on Various Objects and Gathered from Many Publications (Sterling, Va.). Vleeming, S. P. and Wesselius, J. W. (1985), Studies in Papyrus Amherst 63: Essays on the Aramaic Texts in Aramaic/demotic Papyrus Amherst 63, Vol. I (Amsterdam). Volten, A. (1956), ‘Der demotische Petubastisroman und seine Beziehung zur griechischen Literatur’. Akten VIII. internat. Kongr. für Papyrol. (Vienna), 147– 52. Volten, A. (1962), Ägypter und Amazonen: Eine demotische Erzählung des Inaros-Petubastis-Kreises aus zwei Papyri der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Pap. Dem. Vindob. 6165 und 6165 A) (Vienna). West, M. L. (1995), ‘The Date of the Iliad’, Museum Helveticum 52, 203–19. West, S. (1969), ‘The Greek Version of the Legend of Tefnut’, JEA 55, 161–83. (p. 106) Yadin, A. (2004), ‘Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory’, Vetus Testamentum 54 , 373–95.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? Zauzich, K. (2010), ‘Serpot und Semiramis’, in J. Finke (ed.), Festschrift für Gernot Wilhelm anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstages am 28. Januar 2010 (Dresden), 447–65. Notes:

(*) Thanks to Christopher Tuplin. A version of this chapter was given at Columbia University in September 2013. (1) See the overview in Quack (2009), 66–70. The hypothesis of borrowing is first suggested in Roeder (1927), 337–8. For the most recently published fragments, see Ryholt (2012). For Inaros and Athribis, see below, p. 87. (2) Ryholt (2004). (3) For sons of Inaros in the Armour, see Hoffmann (1996), 431. (4) There is a recent German translation in Hoffmann and Quack (2007). It is a pity that there is no recent English translation of these texts; the French translation of Maspero (1911), itself translated into English as Maspero (1915), is completely out of date. (5) Hoffmann (1996), 21–2; Ryholt (1998), 152. (6) See Gozzoli (2006), 269, n.196. (7) Ryholt (2012), 73–88. (8) For the date, see Vittmann (2006), 310–11. (9) For the “shepherds”, see Rutherford (2000). (10) See Kitchen (1996), 392–4, 455–61; for the Assyrian records, see Onasch (1994); for Tanutamani’s stela, Breyer (2003). (11) In Armour (5.6–8) Pemu reminds the pharaoh how he fought against the Assyrians when they attacked Egypt, a clear allusion to Esarhaddon’s raid in 674 BCE; in Serpot the Egyptians fight with the Assyrians (3.27, 39); and the fragmentary and thus far unpublished ‘Inaros Epic’ seems to have contained several references to the Assyrians. See the discussion in Ryholt (2004), 492–5. (12) Hdt. Hist. 3.12 and 3.15; see also Thuc. Hist. 1.104, 109–10; Ctesias FGrHist 688F14. The precise dating is disputed, but here I follow Kahn (2008). On Inaros the Libyan, see Tuplin forthcoming. An earlier Inaros, contemporaneous with the foundation of Naucratis, seems to be mentioned by Strabo, Geog. 17.1.18; on this passage see Lloyd (1975-88), Vol. 1, 24–5, Drijvers (1999). (13) Chauveau (2004).

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (14) Quack (2006); the Assyrian text is ‘Prisms A + C’; Onasch (1994), vol. 1.42 and 2.107. (15) ‘A Story About the Living Prince Inaros’ is Ryholt (2012), 23–33; for the name of Inaros, see Holm (2007), 202. (16) For the chronology of Egyptian narratives in general, and the possibility of an early oral transmission, see Hoffmann (2009); for canonicity, see Ryholt (2012), 83; Ryholt (1998). An example of a difference is that in one section the Achmim version of Armour uses the third person where the Tebtunis version uses the first person (Ryholt (2012), 84). (17) See Hoffmann (1996), 120–4. (18) Ray (1972), 247–51. (19) Text in Porten and Yardeni (1986–99), vol. 4, D23.1. (20) For an overview of the texts, see Porten (1997); for the documents, see Porten and Yardeni (1986–99). (21) The suggestion was made independently by Vittmann (2002), 92, and Ryholt (2004), 496, followed by Holm (2007), 201. The name was read Snḥrw in Porten and Yardeni (1986–9), vol. 4, 294: Panel IX, 4 and 7. (22) Holm (2007), 223; see also Lemaire (1995). (23) Hoffmann (1996), 121. (24) Sesostris: Hdt. Hist. 2.102–10; see Lloyd (1982); Ivantchik (1999). (25) ‘mylt’ (12.33). ‘Milesian wool’ was exported all over the Mediterranean, and there is reason to think it was produced in the area of Naucratis in the early Hellenistic period. Clarysse (1987), 14, suggests that it is mentioned in an early Ptolemaic document from Naucratis (= Vleeming (2001), no. 134, 7); in view of the involvement of Ionian cities in the establishment of the Greek emporium at Naucratis in the early sixth century BCE, it is quite possible that it had long been produced there. Milesian wool is also mentioned in a fragment of a Demotic ethnographic work, apparently as a characteristic of some foreign people (Greeks?); its editor Joachim Quack thinks that it may be a translation from Greek: see Quack (2010–11). The word for ‘cloak’ in the passage from Armour is ktn, which is cognate with, though probably not derived from, Greek khiton (see Hoffmann (1996), 52). Another word in Armour that may have a Greek origin is knb ‘alarm’ (22.5, 23.25), which could reflect Greek κόναβος: Hoffmann, ibid.

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (26) Spiegelberg (1910), 10, ‘Solche Einzelkämpfe sind aber ganz unägyptisch und legen fremd literarischen Einfluss nahe. Ob man dabei an das Vorbild der homerischen Epen denken darf, wage ich nur als Frage aufzuwerfen. Sie wird sich erst mit Sicherheit beantworten lassen, wenn unsere Kenntnis der demotischen wie der gesamten spätägyptischen Literatur besser geworden ist. Wer aber den Mut hat, diese Frage schon jetzt zu bejahen, der wird dann die weitere Schlussfolgerung ziehen müssen, dass die Petubastissage in der hellenistischen Zeit entstanden ist, denn vor den Ptolemäern wird man in der Literatur kaum an griechischen Einfluss denken wollen. Ich möchte am ehesten an die Ptolemäerzeit denken, etwa an die Zeit des Ptolemaios Philadelphos, dessen Interesse für die Geschichte Ägyptens ja durch das von ihm angeregte Werk Manethos bezeugt ist …’. (27) Achilles and Penthesileia: Volten (1956); Alexander and Thalestris: Ryholt (2013a); Ryholt even suggests that the name ‘Serpot’ could be a translation of the name of the Amazon queen Alexander encountered, Thalestris, and puts this in the context of pseudo-historicizing references to Bactria in the story of the Princess of Bekhten, which he also sees as influenced by the Alexander tradition. Ancient sources for Thalestris are Diod. Sic. 17.77.1–3 and Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni 6.5.24–32; cf. also Plut. Alex.46; Strabo.11.5.4 (sceptical); on the Amazons and Alexander, see Baynham (2001). Ryholt also points out that in the Greek Alexander Romance, although Alexander does not meet Thalestris, she offers him tribute (3.25–6), as Serpot does to Pedikhons Ryholt (pp. 75–6) MS. A, col. 2, lines x+2 7ff. Bactria: Ryholt (2013a), 62–72. (28) Struangaios and Zarinaia: Vittmann (1998), 67, n. 36, Ctesias FGrHist 688F7–F8d (see the Budé edition of Lenfant (2004)). Dalley (2001) provides an Assyrian background to Serpot. See also the detailed treatment of Amazonmyths in Mayor (2014). (29) Petubastis invokes Ammon, Wertiamonnut invokes Mendes, Minnemei invokes Chnum, Pekrur invokes Sopdu (6.8), the falcon-headed god of Pisopde (in fact, the same epithet, ‘Lord of the East’, is used for god and warrior). (30) MonthBaal invokes the semitic deity Baal; by contrast, the Syrian Serpot invokes the Egyptian Isis and Osiris (2.10). (31) For Dionysus in India, see Brunt (1983), 435–42; for the meaning of Shai, see Quaegebeur (1975), 98. See also Vittmann (2006); Ryholt (2010), 715, Ryholt (2013a), 76; Kockelmann (2014). India was also mentioned in Armour as an area where the fame of someone, perhaps Inaros, became known: see Ryholt (2012), 82. (32) Proclus, Chrestomathia, mentions the story at the end of his summary of the Aithiopis (cf. Test. 5 Bernabé) and also towards the start of his summary of the Little Iliad (cf. fr. 2 Bernabé). Page 21 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (33) Roeder (1927), 337, Volten (1956), 149. Cf. Gozzoli (2006), 275–6: ‘The location of the battle in the Papyrus Krall at the Gazelle Lake is indeed quite suspicious’. (34) Pointed out by Schwartz (1950), 69. (35) Notice in particular that this catalogue ends with the remark (18.5): ‘Who saw the wetland for the birds, the sea for the fishes? Who saw the Gazelle Lake for the family of Inaros’ (discussed by Hoffmann (1996), 65), which resembles the simile of cranes which immediately follows the Trojan Catalogue in the Iliad (Il. 3.1–9). (36) See Stricker (1954). For example, Iliad 1.8: ‘who then of the gods was it brought these two to contest? The son of Leto…’ etc. and so on. One might also compare the gods in Greek tragedy (the Erinyes in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Lyssa in Euripides, Heracles Furens or even the savage Allecto in Virgil’s Aeneid, who surely must have had Hellenistic roots. (37) So Homeric heroes weigh up in their minds the pros and cons of a course of action, e.g. Hector at Il. 22.98–130, Agenor at Il. 21.550–70, Odysseus at Il. 11.403–10 and Menelaos at Il.17.90–10, or they discuss their motivation with someone else, as Sarpedon does with Glaukos at Il. 12.300). In Greek epic, a common motivation is ‘fame’ (kleos), and fame is mentioned in a fragment of Armour discussed by Ryholt (2012), 82, in which someone’s fame is said to have been known in the 42 nomes of Egypt and throughout the world. (38) Gozzoli (2006), 277–8, suggests that Pedubastis’ behaviour is in two respects like that of figures in the Iliad. First, there is conflict between ostensible political authority (Agamemnon, Petubastis) and the individual powerful warrior (Achilles, the sons of Inaros); Pedubastis’ initial refusal to restore the armour to its rightful owner seems reminiscent of Agamemnon’s decision to take Achilles’ prize (and Pemu and Pedekhonsis are in their anger like Achilles: see Quack (2009), 67); in the Benefice also he errs by omitting to include Pamu and Pedekhonsis in the expedition to Thebes. The second resemblance to Priam is his having to suffer his son being exposed to danger (in both Armour and Benefice). (39) In the Inaros-Narratives, we see this clearly in the account of the funeral celebration of Inaros, when people come from the four quarters of Egypt. The Greek equivalent of that is the commemorative athletic competition, such as the funeral games of the Thessalian hero Pelias, which drew participants from all over Greece. For funeral games in Greece, see Roller (1982); for the funeral Games of Pelias, Gantz (1993), 191–4; Blatter (1994).

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The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (40) For Minnemei, see the summaries above. In the Greek Trojan Cycle a decisive moment was the arrival of the Ethiopian hero Memnon, who fights on the Trojan side, but is killed by Achilles. Memnon’s story at Troy was told in the Cyclic Epic the Aithiopis, which covers the immediate sequel to the Iliad, but his arrival is mentioned in the last line of the Iliad (also the first line of the Aithiopis). This could be a coincidence, but it is worth bearing in mind that by the late Hellenistic period Memnon had come to be thought of as part of Egyptian history, commemorated in the Memnonion at Abydos and in the statue of Memnon at Thebes. For Memnon in Greek tradition reflecting Amenophis III, see R. D. Griffith (1998). (41) For the commemoration of the events on a stele, it may be worth comparing the Babylonian convention of commemorating events on a naru-stele, found frequently in fictional works: see Haul (2009). (42) Tait (1992), 310. (43) 23.10–15. (44) Tait (1992); Ryholt (2005) on the Tebtunis library; Vittmann (2006), 331–2. For other possible cases of Greek influence on Egyptian literature, see Chapter 1, pp. 11–12. (45) See Hoffmann (1995). (46) Hoffmann (1996), 49–105, esp. 104–5. Formal elements: pp. 51–3; themes: pp. 53–63; compositional techniques: pp. 63–74; and the world of ideas: pp. 74– 8. (47) See Lichtheim (1973), vol. 2, 214–23. (48) ‘The Battle of Qadesh—the “Bulletin” Text’: tr. Kitchen in COS 2, 38–40; Piye’s Stele: tr. Lichtheim in COS 2, 42–51 (= Lichtheim (1973), vol. 3, 66–83). Piye’s Stele has catalogues of participants, and includes (10) the motif of giving a military opponent a fair chance by delaying a military engagement until all participants on the other side have shown up: ‘Then his majesty sent an army to Egypt and challenged them strictly: “Challenge him from afar. If he proposes to await the infantry and chariotry of another town, then sit still until his troops come. Fight when he proposes …” ’; this is exactly what we find in Armour 12.8 (Hoffmann (1996), 85). And just as in Armour MonthBaal rages like Sekhmet, so Ramesses II rages like Sekhmet in the Qadesh Bulletin (96; see Hoffmann (1996), 83). (49) Hoffmann (1996), 82. (50) Thissen (1999); for similar arguments by Thissen on different genres, see Thissen (1986) and (1992). Page 23 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (51) In general: Gozzoli (2006), 275–8; Quack (2009), 66–70; for Hellenistic influence, Vittmann (2006), 331, who also mentions a possible reference to Gaugamela in a text that may be from the Inaros Cycle: Tait (1977), no. 1, 28; Ryholt (2013a), 72–8. (52) Jansen-Winkeln (2000), 9–10. (53) Hdt. Hist. 2.164; Lloyd (1975–88), vol. 3, 184–5. (54) See above, p. 86–7. (55) Dalley (2001), 156–9. (56) For the Tale of Assurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin, contained in P.Amherst 63, cols.18–23, see Vleeming and Wesselius (1985), 31–7; R. C. Steiner in COS 1: 309–27. (57) The Egyptian episode is restored from later versions of the story in Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian: for these, see Charles (1913), vol. 2,715–84. For the Demotic version, see Quack (2009), 138–40. (58) See Porten (2004). (59) Dalley (2001), 158–9, suggests that the name ‘Serpot’ (Egyptian ‘lotus’) could reflect an Assyrian original. So too for Zauzich (2010) Serpot reflects Assyrian Semiramis, whose name Sammuramat he thinks could have been the basis for the Egyptian name; see also Dalley (2013), 122–3. (60) If we make the reasonable assumption of the existence of a tradition of Aramaic epic not unlike that of Greek epic, then the case for the Inaros-tradition borrowing from Greek models would be reduced; furthermore, some of the alleged parallels between Greek epic and the Inaros-Narratives could be explained as common borrowings from such a Near Eastern source. For influence of Assyrian history on Homer, see West (1995), and for influence from Near Eastern literatures in general, see the papers collected in Foley (2005), 213–87. Another example of an Assyrian Aramaic text that may have influenced both Egypt and Greece is Ahiqar: Dalley (2001), 156; Ahiqar and Aesop: see Kurke (2011), 176–85. (61) See above. (62) Cf. Boehmer (2005), 195: ‘To interpret Homer or Shakespeare or Dante on their own terms meant staking a claim to European tradition beyond its conventional boundaries. Take-over or appropriation was in its way a bold refusal of cultural dependency. It signified that powerful paradigms represented by European canonical texts were now mobilized in defence of what had once been seen as secondary, unorthodox, deviant, primitive.’ Page 24 of 25

The Earliest Cross-Cultural Reception of Homer? (63) The best survey of the evidence is Lloyd (1975–88), vol. 1, 14–60; see also Vittmann (2003), 197–235, and Haider (2004). (64) Psammetichus I: Hdt. Hist. 2.152; dedication of Pedon: Masson and Yoyotte (1988); Vittmann (2003), 199, suggests that Greeks may have helped Egypt in the siege of Ashdod (Hdt. Hist. 2.157). (65) Meiggs and Lewis (1969) no. 7; one of the Abu Simbel graffiti already suggests a knowledge of Homer: see Dillon (1997). (66) Apries and Amasis: Hdt. Hist. 2.163, 2.154. (67) Thuc. Hist. 1.104, 109. Inaros the Libyan also made a dedication at Samos: Dunst (1972), xxiv, 153–4. (68) Herodotus, Hist. 3.15; Thuc. Hist. 1.110, 112. Notice that according to Herodotus (Hist. 2.140), Amurtaios also seems to have connected himself with an earlier pharaoh who opposed an invader, this time Anysis who sought refuge from the Ethiopian Sabacos on the island of Elbo; Herodotus says that Amurtaios rediscovered this island. (69) Herodotus (Hist. 2.113–30) reports that the priests of Memphis knew the Trojan War story, though not explicitly that they knew Homer. Haubold (2007) (and also Haubold (2013), 112) argued that Xerxes knew the Trojan War story and manipulated it in the run up to the conflict to legitimate Persian victory. If even the Persians knew their Homer, I do not see why we should deny this knowledge to Inaros and his rebels. (70) Incidentally, if this is right, this would be one of the earliest demonstrable cases of influence of Greek literature on a foreign literature. For another possible case, see Yadin (2004) who suggests that Homeric epic may have had an impact on the Goliath story in First Samuel. (71) On Serpot being later, Hoffmann (1996), 124–6.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Manetho and Synchronism John Dillery

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords This chapter looks at Manetho of Sebennytos, author of the Aiguptiaka, focusing on ‘synchronisms’, i.e. points of synchrony that seem to have been mentioned by Manetho between events of importance in Greek myth or history and the reign of this or that Egyptian pharaoh. It argues that synchronism was a Greek historical trope, and that the main reason Manetho took it over was that it allowed him to back up the argument made by both Herodotus and Plato that even the most ancient Greek history is quite recent in Egyptian terms. Keywords:   Manetho, synchronism, history, Greek, Egypt, Hellenistic

1. Introduction

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt When Manetho of Sebennytus, high priest at Heliopolis, compiled his king list some time in the first quarter of the third century BCE as the chronological framework of his history of Egypt (the Aegyptiaca), what he did was innovative by Egyptian standards. To be sure, the listing of pharaohs had been around for a very long time: the Palermo Stone dates to the Old Kingdom. Almost no one had attempted a comprehensive listing of rulers before Manetho. Many lists left out dynasties on the grounds that they were illegitimate, and virtually all other lists were monumental and were evidently designed chiefly with the veneration of ancestors in mind.1 Only the famous Turin ‘Canon’ (p.108) was both comprehensive and not monumental.2 Like Manetho, too, the Turin List significantly, and uniquely for the documentary lists, provides year lengths for each reign, and also provides totals for groups of pharaohs, that is, dynastic divisions.3 Also, and this is very significant, outside of the scheme of dynasties, both Manetho and the Turin List have the gods ruling Egypt in the pre-dynastic period.4 But if almost all other lists were partial and had non-historical aims, that does not alter the fact that Manetho was working in a traditional scholarly idiom; he simply took up the idea of the list and adapted it for related but distinct historiographic purposes of his own. But one is still left to wonder what Manetho wanted to achieve with his new and definitive listing of all of Egypt’s rulers. In the first place, I believe that the all-inclusive royal list provided for Manetho a comprehensive accounting for the entirety of the Egyptian past: all dynasties and all rulers, the good and the not so good, were required; the new rulers of his land needed to see what legitimate and illegitimate rule looked like.5 I believe Manetho also required a chronological frame so that he could organize and place his narrative blocks; there had to be ‘spaces’ for his major narratives to be ‘slotted in’. But perhaps most crucially, Manetho wanted a way to make linkages between the Egyptian past and the past of the Greeks. The king list made possible all these projects. Here I would like to focus on Manetho and synchronism, for I think that with synchronism as our focus, we can see most clearly why establishing a comprehensive king list with chronicle statements was so important to him. Synchronism, as articulated through his king list, allowed Manetho to connect not abstract dates, but significant events and people. (p.109) Episodes and persons from the Egyptian and Greek (and perhaps Jewish) pasts were correlated and thereby given special meaning,6 opening up opportunities for commentary about the priority of Egypt and its centrality in the history of human civilization.

2. What is meant by ‘Synchronism’?

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt First, some methodological points are in order. I should begin by explaining what I mean by synchronism. It is not my intention to discuss here the ‘real’ synchronisms that exist between Egypt and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean region: an entire scholarly series has been devoted to this project, launched by Manfred Bietak, with its first publication in 2000. It is founded on the basic fact that Egyptian chronology is ‘crucial’ for establishing the timeline of all ancient societies in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions.7 Most spectacularly, the famous cuneiform letters between Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BCE) and several royal courts throughout the Near East found at Amarna permit the modern historian to establish exact and ‘direct’ documentary linkages between different ancient cultures and Egypt at particular moments in time.8 But as J. Klinger has recently observed, no other ‘direct synchronisms’ before the so-called Amarna period are as yet possible.9 This fact underscores an important point: it is thanks to the serendipity of material finds such as the Amarna letters that permit us to see the links between events in Egypt and those in other parts of the ancient world. It is only the accident of royal correspondence, the meeting of states in conflict and diplomacy, or perhaps traded goods, etc. that allow us to see links in time between ancient civilizations. (p.110) It is the synchronisms found in the ‘fragments’ of Manetho that concern me here.10 As David Asheri observed, ‘every chronological statement is, in a sense, a synchronism’: that is, when we read on the Palermo Stone that in the ‘year x + 2’ of the Pharaoh Sneferu, the inundation of the Nile reached 2 cubits and 2 fingers, we are really correlating two events, namely a regnal year of Sneferu, and the particular inundation of the Nile that occurred within that year.11 But that is not the kind of synchronism I mean to look at either. Rather, deliberate and explicit links established by Manetho are what I shall examine. When an event or person from one community is correlated with an event or person from another, an external synchronism can be said to have been established in the text in question. There are no synchronisms of this type in the extant king lists of Egypt with the exception of Manetho. If we can trust the transmission of his chronology (and, as we will see, that is a big ‘if’), Manetho did indeed establish explicit linkages between the history of Egypt and events and persons from the Greek and (possibly) Jewish pasts. It is important to define more particularly what I mean by synchronism, and then discuss the scholarship on the synchronisms in Manetho. Two types of synchronization appear in Manetho’s king list: internal synchronism, where an Egyptian figure is identified with a Greek one, making the linkage implicit; and external synchronism, where a Greek figure or event is said to have lived or taken place during the reign of a particular Egyptian ruler. There are a total of nine Egyptian–Greek linkages in the epitome of Manetho’s chronology.12 Of these, six are in fact identifications; two are real synchronisms stricto sensu; and one case is both an identification and a synchronism together.13 Page 3 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (p.111) 3. Greek Historiographic Synchronism Easily the most important of Manetho’s pure synchronisms concerns Petoubates, the first pharaoh of the 23rd dynasty: ‘Petoubates—ruled 20 years, during whose reign the Olympic Games were initiated (FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus 82 M: Πετουβάτης ἔτη μʹ, ἐφ’ οὗ Ὀλυμπιὰς ἤχθη πρώτη).14 If authentic, this correlation of the start of the Olympics with the reign of an Egyptian king would report not just the beginning of the Games, but also dating by Olympiad as well, and would thus be contemporary with the first systematic attempts in the Greek world to date and synchronize by Olympiads. Much scholarly debate has centred on the synchronisms found in Manetho. The synchronism that is evident throughout the Hyksos story connecting events from the Second Intermediate Period with the biblical story of the Exodus, and most notoriously the identification of the renegade leprous priest Osarseph with Moses (FGrH 609 F 10 = Jos. CAp. 1.250), has drawn particular criticism.15 But, as Jürgen von Beckerath has put it, really all of Manetho’s synchronisms, the majority of which link the Greek and Egyptian pasts, are to be questioned. He is very rightly concerned that the development of the idea of a ‘world-chronicle’, and therefore one of the central tenets underlying the idea of international synchronism—the connection of events and persons between not just disparate communities, but two different civilizations—develops after Manetho’s time:16 in essence, synchronisms do not fit in Manetho’s intellectual context, either from an Egyptian or a Greek perspective. It bears noting in this connection that, to judge from Jacoby’s presentation of the notice of the first Olympiad under Petoubates, he doubted the authenticity of the record.17 It must further be admitted that while Olympiad dating may seem to have been a common enough method of time reckoning in the ancient Greek world, it was not all that common at the end of the fourth century BCE and the beginning of the third. It is true that (p.112) the compilation of a list of Olympic victors is attributed to the fifthcentury sophist Hippias of Elis (DK 86 B 3), and that Aristotle and his relative Callisthenes most certainly drew up a similar list for winners at the Pythian Games at Delphi in the mid-fourth century, as we can tell from a famous inscription (SIG3 275 = FGrH 124 T 23). But those were different enterprises from dating unrelated events to Olympiads.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt However, while it is true that external synchronism does indeed seem not to be part of Egyptian scholarly practice in Manetho’s world, it is in fact an altogether different matter in contemporary Greek historiography. More than a century before, both Herodotus and Thucydides occasionally reported or constructed their own synchronisms. At 1.7.2 of Herodotus’ History we are told that Candaules, ‘whom the Greeks call Myrsilus’, was tyrant of Sardis, an identification that does not really date the episode he is about to tell, or provide any other important information; it is ‘external’, however, inasmuch as a Carian figure is being given a Greek identity, even if erroneously.18 But Herodotus also had synchronisms that went beyond the ornamental. He famously links the battles of Plataea and Mycale (Hdt. 9.101.2), and earlier, reports the local Sicilian logos that the battles of Salamis and Himera were fought on the same day (Hdt. 7.166). Both are examples of ‘significant synchronism’—a coincidence of events that suggests the battles in question, and specifically their outcomes, were at least partly preordained or even shaped by the divine.19 Herodotus also calculates precisely the time it took the Persian host to reach Athens in 480, and then dates the destruction of the city by Athenian archon (Hdt. 8.51.1)—the only time he uses this dating in the whole of the History.20 While not strictly speaking a synchronism, the calculation and the dating do act to coordinate the battle of Salamis in both barbarian and Athenian worlds, with Athens marking the episode definitively, registering in Athenian time the greatest victory in that city’s history. More structurally central to his narrative is Thucydides’ triangulation of three time-reckoning systems (priestess of Hera at Argos, ephor at Sparta, archon at Athens) to mark the beginning of the Peloponnesian War and thus to render the date of its start intelligible to as broad a Greek audience as possible (Thuc. 2.2.1). Similar in (p.113) function is Thucydides’ quotation of the Fifty Years’ Peace treaty between Athens and Sparta that established the end of the Archidamian phase of the war, with its reference to Spartan ephor and Athenian archon (Thuc. 5.19.1).21 It needs to be said, however, that with the exception of cross-cultural identifications of the ‘Myrsilus’ sort in Herodotus,22 we do not see synchronism between Greek and non-Greek worlds. This is noteworthy, especially given the fact that the non-Greek chronologies of Egypt and Lydia were of central importance to Herodotus in his attempt to bring coherence to early Greek history,23 but he did not practise the sort of exact synchronism that we see in the remains of Manetho.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt For an example of a Greek who practised synchronism on a large scale, and who coordinated events from the Greek and non-Greek worlds, specifically by means of Olympiad dating, we have to turn to Timaeus of Tauromenium, an exact contemporary of Manetho (c.350–c.260 BCE).24 Thanks to a reference in Polybius, we know that Timaeus ‘made comparisons (συγκρίσεις ποιούμενος) from earliest times of ephors with the kings at Sparta, and the archons at Athens and priestesses at Argos he was comparing (παραβάλλων) with the Olympic victors’ (Plb. 12.11.1 = FGrH 566 T 10).25 Where exactly he made these synchronisms we do not know, though it is widely believed that it was in his work entitled Olympic Victors or Chronica Praxidika (cf. Suda s.v. Timaeus = T 1); and in any case, his synchronistic attitude was also felt in his more conventional historical work, the Historiai.26 Momigliano has even observed that Timaeus’ (p.114) ‘love of coincidences was notorious’.27 Timaeus managed to take up Thucydides’ triangulated dating of the start of the Peloponnesian War and take it one crucial step further: the list of Olympic victors brought ‘continuity, length and universality’ to his historiography.28 Although this broadening of Thucydides’ model is sometimes characterized as in step with the widely held views of chronology in the third century BCE,29 Timaeus was in fact a pioneer, at least on the scale of time-reckoning he attempted. I would further add that it is illuminating that the most important synchronism Timaeus made was not between items on his Greek lists, but between the list of Olympic victors and the foundations of both Rome and Carthage. Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports that much confusion surrounds the foundation of Rome, including what look like multiple settlements. He continues: Timaeus the Sicilian, using what canon I know not, says that the settlement of Rome which was the last, or foundation, or whatever one should call it, took place at the same time as the foundation of Carthage, and in the thirty-eighth year before the first Olympic Games (D.H. A.R. 1.74.1 = FGrH 566 F 60).30 It is difficult to overstate the importance of this synchronism: as Feeney has observed, with it, Timaeus became the first writer we know of in Antiquity to give a year date for the founding of Rome, and thus to remove the foundation of the city from the mythic world of the epic nostoi.31 For my purposes here it is important to see that non-Greek events have been coordinated with a Greek one, namely, the founding of Rome and Carthage with the first Olympic Games.32 This is unambiguously an ‘international’ synchronism, achieved by an author who was an exact contemporary with Manetho.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt This is not an essay on Timaeus, and I do not want to linger over him, but it is worthwhile drawing out three additional points. In a (p.115) few very important ways, Timaeus was quite like Manetho in his historiographic outlook. In the Polybius text I quoted just above, Polybius cites Timaeus’ fascination with chronological tables as part of a more general critique of him as an historian obsessed with documents, searching out inscriptions and lists of proxenoi on the backs of buildings and in the door-jambs of temples (Plb. 12.11.2 = FGrH 566 T 10): in other words, he practised a kind of chronological and documentary exactness or akribeia (even ‘mania’) with which Polybius was at least in part at odds (cf. Plb 12.11.3-4).33 The second point to keep in mind is that Timaeus’ synchronisms were part of a larger project in his historical writing that was aimed at placing Sicily on an equal footing with Greece.34 The same two points, mutatis mutandis, could be said of Manetho’s historiographic enterprise. Finally, as Frank Walbank has shown regarding Timaeus, the synchronism that Timaeus established for the battle of Himera was not with Salamis (a Greek victory), but was with Thermopylae (a Greek defeat),35 suggesting that synchronization could also be competitive and polemical—in this case, with Herodotus, whose synchronism of Himera and Salamis was famous. We know that Manetho criticized Herodotus; perhaps we can see ‘corrective’ synchronism in his work as well. In the case of his synchronization of the reign of the pharaoh Petoubates with the first Olympic Games, it could perhaps be argued that since Manetho nowhere else alludes to Olympiads, this one reference both acknowledges the Greek system of time-reckoning, but also rejects it, inasmuch as it never recurs. This is an argument from silence, of course, and is problematic for that reason. But what a silence! It is one thing to point out that synchronization, linking the pasts of different parts of the Mediterranean world and Greece, was taking place at exactly the same time that Manetho lived and wrote; it is quite another to prove that a particular Greek historian inspired Manetho to construct his own linkages between Egypt and Hellas. This I cannot do. Perhaps an even more suitable figure to serve as a precedent for the Olympiad dating of Manetho, though still one that (p.116) cannot be linked directly to him, is another Sicilian with an interest in Egypt and synchronization: Dicaearchus of Messene, who flourished c .320–c.300 BCE. In a scholium to Apollonius of Rhodes we learn the following: Dicaearchus in his first [book says] that after Or, son of Isis and Osiris, Sesonchosis became king. There are 2500 years from Sesonchosis to the kingship of Nilus, and from the kingship of Nilus to the capture of Troy 7, and from the capture of Troy to the first Olympiad 436, altogether [totalling] 2943 years (F 58a Wehrli, F 59 Mirhady = Schol. vetus Apollon. Rhod. 4.276).36

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Here, very clearly, is a text that pre-dates Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, and that contains within it a synchronism keyed to an Olympiad date that locates Egyptian figures on a grid of Greek time. Moreover, the passage comes from a text, Dicaearchus’ Life of Greece (Bios Hellados), that was, despite its name, precisely concerned with what might be called ‘world history’.37 Are we to assume that the first Olympic games, and by implication, Olympiad dating itself, were items on Manetho’s radar when they were only just beginning to be experimented with as units of time-reckoning in the Greek world? I hesitate to press the point, but I do note that in addition to emphasizing that Dicaearchus was the first to use the Olympiad to date the Fall of Troy, Burkert also observes that ‘Olympia seems to have loomed large in Aristotle’s historical studies’.38 Aristotelians—members of the so-called Peripatos—were important players in the early Hellenistic kingdoms, and the earliest Ptolemies were no exception. Remember that it was the Aristotelian Demetrius of Phalerum, himself also a chronographer who authored a work on the Record of (Athenian) Archons (FGrH 228 FF 1–3), who helped to design and institute the (p.117) Museum and Library at Alexandria.39 What is more, Dicaearchus’ own Olympiad dating of Troy itself involves a much more elaborate Egyptian dating for the event, one that comes before his Olympiad date. Could Manetho in fact have been exposed to ‘cutting-edge’ Greek chronographic methodology thanks to members of the Peripatos in his midst and others at the court of Soter and Philadelphus, where we know he was active? I admit that this is very speculative, and, in any case, the phrase itself may not be original to Manetho. It is an arresting thought, however, and one that gains a little support from the fact that, as we will see immediately below in his identification of the ‘pharaoh’ Thyoris with Polybus of Egypt from the Odyssey, Manetho seems almost certainly to have been one of the first writers to use the ‘holes’ left in Homer—implying an intimate knowledge of Trojan myth. Further, dating by Olympiad, and the Olympics themselves were perhaps worth Manetho’s notice in part because they were so important to the early Ptolemies. Dorothy Thompson has drawn our attention recently to the importance played by the old panhellenic games at the new Hellenistic courts: as we learn from Posidippus, Soter was celebrated as victor in the chariot at Olympia, as was Philadelphus; and the early Ptolemaic queens were at least as successful.40 Further, in the famous Nikouria decree of 263, that is, about the time Manetho was working on the Aegyptiaca or a little later, Philadelphus was eager to make the Ptolemaia in honour of Soter ‘equal in rank to the Olympics’ (literally: isolumpios).41 Remember, too, that we are only one generation away from the list of Olympic victors compiled by the Alexandrian scholar, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (FGrH 241 FF 4-14), the successor to Apollonius of Rhodes as the head of the great Library at Alexandria.42

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt It must be admitted that none of these texts or authors can be in any way linked directly to Manetho. On the other hand, they do suggest that synchronism, and further synchronism with Olympiad dating, were not impossibilities in Manetho’s time in Greek thought. In what follows, I shall defend many of Manetho’s synchronisms (not (p.118) all), while being fully aware that there are considerable problems attending each one.

4. Thyoris = Polybus: Manetho, Homer, and Herodotus—Filling in the ‘Holes’ It is probably best to start with the one example where both identification and synchronism can be found. This happens also to be a case where the transmitted text can be attributed to Manetho with greater, if not absolute, confidence, inasmuch as it occurs in all the versions of the epitome. Under the last entry for the 19th dynasty we find the following: ςʹΘούωρις, ὁ παρ’ Ὁμήρῳ καλούμενος Πόλυβος, Ἀλκάνδρας ἀνὴρ, ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ Ἴλιον ἑάλω ἔτη ζʹ (Syncellus 80 M) Ruler 6: Thyoris, the one called by Homer Polybus, husband of Alkandre, in whose reign Ilium was captured; [ruled] seven years.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt It is troubling that the regnal period is given after the narrative tag. Manetho’s normal practice is to give the length of reign after the name of the ruler, and then any narrative information he has to relay. But what he does here is not without parallel elsewhere in the Aegyptiaca.43 It is best to begin with the identification: ‘Thyoris, the one called by Homer Polybus’. Several points are worth making here. First, Thyoris is clearly identified as a male figure, and yet the corresponding ruler in Egyptian lists is Twosre, a wife of Seti II, who ruled after her husband’s death, first as regent for the child pharaoh Siptah, and then, for a couple of years, in her own name.44 Gardiner was of the opinion that Manetho’s ‘ “Thyoris”…gives in distorted form the name Twosre, though there misrepresented as a male’.45 It is worth noting here that a similar confusion arises for Queen Hatshepsut, who is identified as ‘Amensis’ in Manetho’s list, ‘the fourth [king]’ of the 18th dynasty. But what of the identification (p.119) of Thyoris with Polybus? The connection to Polybus is clearly derived from Homer’s Odyssey, 4.126ff. Although Polybus is not an uncommon name in Greek myth, and occurs even in Homer several times referring to different people, it is only in these lines of the Odyssey that we find an Egyptian woman, ‘Alkandre, wife of Polybus’. It bears noting that, correspondingly, this is the only king in Manetho’s list whose spouse is also named. This is precisely because Manetho was using, either directly or indirectly, this very section of the Odyssey, where Homer names Alkandre first and in fact devotes at least as much attention to her as to her husband. The identification is significant because we see in it an early, indeed very early, instance of a technique of chronology-building that was to become important in the Hellenistic period: find the ‘holes’ in Homer’s text and fill them in. Carolyn Higbie has noted that the record of dedications and epiphanies of Athena Lindia (the Lindian Chronicle) was clearly written with an eye on Homer: where ‘holes’ were left in the epic narrative, that is, where persons or objects are mentioned but left undeveloped or elaborated, the local historian often intervenes, taking up such persons and items with strong local associations and providing further information relating to these otherwise obscure individuals and things.46 The effect is simultaneously to appropriate epic kleos for a local hero or shrine, and at the same time to go beyond the epic inheritance by filling in Homer. This seems to be what Manetho has done in the case of Thyoris/ Polybus, except that he was working 200 years before the Lindian Chronicle. In this way Manetho can be seen as innovative by Greek standards, not to mention his own Egyptian ones: he is filling narrative holes, and he is dating by Olympiads.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Similarly, what motivates the identification of Thyoris with Polybus is the synchronism of his reign with the Fall of Troy. Manetho clearly wanted to provide the most important event of the Greek mythical past with an Egyptian date. This he achieved through the identification of a suitable figure of Homeric pedigree with a specific pharaoh of approximately correct date. Indeed, we might query the idea here of ‘suitable figure’. Scholars have noted that Polybus and Alkandre are not, in fact, identified in Homer as a royal couple, merely two high-status persons: a ‘lord and lady’ who entertained (p.120) Menelaus and Helen during their sojourn in Egypt and gave them gifts.47 This discontinuity, combined with the obvious problem that the ‘real’ Twosre was in fact a woman, makes me wonder if Manetho has not forced his material here, precisely to make use of the opportunity presented by Polybus and Alkandre. But however we want to decide that question, it remains the case that this dual identification and synchronism is the only such case in all of Manetho’s extant chronology, at least when it comes to connections between the Egyptian and Greek pasts. Was this because it was the most important link for an Egyptian to make with Greek Antiquity? It seems so. The double synchronism and identification reinforce and support each other, precisely at this most crucial point in the Greek past. It also bears remembering in this connection that Manetho’s identification from the Odyssey comes from a context in which Helen and her sojourn in Egypt are central. Herodotus famously tells a story about Helen that has her reside for some time in Egypt;48 what is more, Herodotus claims that he heard this story from Egyptian priests (three times: Hdt. 2.113.1, 116.1, 120.1), and believes that Homer was even aware of this alternative Egyptian account (Hdt. 2.116.1). Herodotus quotes three passages from Homer to demonstrate this awareness, two of which come from the same context as Manetho’s reference to Polybus and Alkandre (Hdt. 2.116.3–5; Od. 4.227–30, 351-2). Further, we are confident that Herodotus knows of the name Thonis from the Thon mentioned at Od. 4.219.49 We even see Herodotus in this section of his history ask the Egyptian priests whether there was any truth to the myth about Troy, and they claim in reply that they had information from Menelaus himself that verified their own account that Helen was in fact being kept safe in Egypt where Paris had been forced to surrender her (Hdt. 2.118). Manetho’s synchronism of Thyoris with Polybus could be seen to corroborate indirectly Herodotus’ own account, and thus show that it was Egyptian priests who were in a position to provide exact knowledge about the most important events in Greek myth. Indeed, perhaps we could argue that Herodotus was filling in ‘holes’ in Homer (p.121) too, and that Manetho saw that he was, and was drawing notice to the Egyptian provenance of Herodotus’ additional information.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Finally, although it is somewhat of a tangential point, I note that votives—the very items that constitute the backbone of the temple chronicles in the Greek world such as we find at Lindos in Rhodes—were not infrequently made by highranking Egyptians or dedicators who styled themselves in Egyptian fashion, beginning already in the Archaic period: there is, for example, the votive of Pedon, son of Amphinneus, from Priene that probably dates to the end of the seventh century; and at the other end of the scale, there are references to dedications by Amasis in the Lindian Chronicle.50 The idea of Greeks travelling with gifts from powerful Egyptians, and of Egyptians themselves giving votives to Greek sanctuaries, were facts of life for Manetho.

5. Manetho and the Flood? The last pure synchronism of Manetho is problematic. We learn that in the reign of Misphragmouthosis, the sixth pharaoh of Dynasty 18, ‘the flood at the time of Deucalion occurred’ (FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus 78 M: Μισφραγμούθωσις … ἐφ’ οὗ ὁ ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος κατακλυσμός). Jacoby had strong reservations about this statement belonging to Manetho, again to judge by his editorial hand in FGrH.51 The problem, I think, is that while the Flood story was especially important to the later Christian authors who used Manetho, men such as Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus, the Flood, while not unattested before Manetho’s time in the Greek world, was, for all that, a minor myth for the Greeks.52 References to Deucalion and Pyrrha are found (p.122) in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (FF 2–7 Merkelbach–West), in Pindar’s Olympian 9 (lines 43–53), and the fragments of the comic poet Epicharmus (PCG FF 113–20), but they are few and do not constitute an important set of notices, such as we get to the Trojan or Theban cycles throughout Greek Archaic and Classical literature. Hellanicus of Lesbos did write a work entitled Deukalioneia (FGrH 4 FF 6-18), but to judge from the testimonia, it was not widely read.53 It is tempting therefore to see the reference to Deucalion’s Flood in Manetho as perhaps the work of a later Christian authority making use of Manetho’s chronology. But with that said, it is worth noting that the Flood of Deucalion does make an appearance in the Marmor Parium (IG 12.5 444 = FGrH 239, A 4), a text dating to 264/3 BCE, or perhaps a little later, and one with strong ties to Ptolemaic Egypt.54 And perhaps even more to the point, a series of papyri now housed in Leipzig and dating to the first quarter of the second century CE has been published containing a world chronicle that lists pharaohs, Babylonian kings, as well as important Greek figures from myth and legend, including ‘the cataclysm of Deucalion’ (Column III.5–6), where the Flood is clearly treated as establishing an epoch.55 If the synchronism with the Greek Flood in the Epitome is genuine and really belongs to Manetho’s Aegyptiaca,56 I think that we would have a case that suggested the interaction in this instance, not only of Greek and Egyptian, but also the scholarship of the Near East, for it is in that context that the Flood was indeed important, as in the case of Manetho’s contemporary, Berossus. This possibility, remote (p.123) though it is, raises the problem of interactions that go beyond Page 12 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Greece and Egypt in Manetho’s writing. I just note here that the Flood is in fact double-dated in Manetho, for it is described as ‘the cataclysm that occurred during the time of Deucalion’, which in turn happened during the reign of Misphragmouthosis. It is difficult to see how else Manetho could have described the Greek account of the Deluge, but it is tempting to speculate that, insofar as it was epoch-making in the Greek world (as Flood stories always are), so Manetho permitted it to retain some of that epochal value in his own chronological account. Much like the episode reported in Plato’s Timaeus (22 a), where Solon is corrected by Egyptian priests and made to see that the Greeks are in fact a very young people, despite Solon’s mention of the oldest Greek myths (τὰ ἀρχαιότατα), including Deucalion and Pyrrha,57 so Deucalion’s flood in Manetho is shown to be a fairly recent event, by Egyptian standards. Competitive synchronism again perhaps. Another early watershed moment for the Greeks, like the first Olympic Games, that is found a historical place in Egyptian time. I do not consider as genuine Manetho a statement from the Eusebian Excerpta Latina Barbari printed by Waddell in his text and translation of Manetho: ‘Apion the grammarian…believed that [the pharaoh] Amusis lived in the time of Inachus who was king at the founding of Argos’.58 For one thing, the synchronism works in the wrong direction for a text conceived in Egypt. So, by way of comparison, note that it was Troy that fell during the reign of Thyoris, not Thyoris who reigned when Troy fell. For this excerpt to be genuine, I would expect ‘Amusis, during whose life time Inachus was king of Argos’. It needs to be said that the Latin of this text is badly ‘mangled’ and corrupt.59 But if this statement, or something like it, was an authentic notice in Manetho’s chronology, then we see an emphasis on the early history of Argos. This detail would then be extremely important, for, as we shall also see below, myths related to Argos recur in Manetho’s chronography, perhaps because the Ptolemies themselves sought a connection to the Argead ruling house of Macedon,60 a family whose most famous scion, (p.124) Alexander the Great, vigorously fostered a connection to the most important Argive of myth, namely Heracles.61

6. Manetho, Implicit Synchronism, and Dual Identifications

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt All the remaining linkages between Egypt and Greece that we find in the extant remains of Manetho’s chronology involve not synchronism of unrelated events strictly speaking, but the identification of Egyptian individuals with Greek ones. That said, the identifications themselves are often complicated statements whose meanings are problematic if looked at with care. In particular, it is difficult to know what Manetho means when he states that a certain Egyptian figure is considered to be an equivalent Greek one; these identifications are always concerned with legendary or semi-legendary heroes. Thus we read that the second ruler of the 3rd dynasty was ‘Tosorthros [who ruled] 29 years. During his reign [lived] Imouthes. This man is considered (νενόμισται) Asclepius by the Egyptians because of his medical knowledge; he discovered house-building that uses hewn stone, and also made a study of writing.’62 Obviously the Egyptians do not consider Imouthes (a.k.a, Imhotep) to be Asclepius—why would the Egyptians employ a Greek name for one of their own culture heroes? Indeed, contrast the phrasing from the closing of P.Oxy. 1381, the famous Praise of Imouthes-Asclepius: ‘[e]very Greek tongue will tell thy story, and every Greek man will worship the son of Ptah, Imouthes’ (editors’ translation). Rather, what Manetho means here is probably something like: the Egyptians view Imouthes in the same way the Greeks view Asclepius, namely, as the inventor of medicine.63 But the wording is significant. It seems to (p.125) imply an authority holding forth before a Greek audience that is being told what ‘Imouthes’ means to the Egyptians. The identification loses any chronographic significance when seen in this way, because no claims of exact identity are in fact being made and the linkage is itself timeless. And more importantly, if the wording is genuine to the Aegyptiaca, Manetho is speaking almost as a Greek—it is a form of colonial ventriloquism, as it were. Note that in Herodotus, the Greek term is almost always the norm, and it is the non-Greek that requires the gloss.64 This ventriloquism, if authentic, is remarkable on Manetho’s part, for the Egyptian attitude toward barbarity and the divine was precisely that the foreigner would ‘act in a blasphemous way toward the gods’, who would then abandon Egypt:65 the proper names of the gods were not replaceable with foreign ones.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt At first glance, it seems that similar to this is the identification we see in connection with Amenophis III, the sixth ruler of the 18th dynasty: ‘Amenophis [ruled] 31 years. This is the king who is believed to be Memnon and the speaking stone.’66 Since the famous vocal colossus did not start to ‘speak’ until after it was damaged, probably during the earthquake of 26 BCE,67 the mention of the ‘speaking stone’ cannot belong to Manetho—though it is worth pointing out here that, with the exception of Gardiner’s article of 1961,68 few scholars seem to have noticed this text,69 which if really Manetho’s, would radically alter our understanding of the monument. It is even more important to register the use again of nomizo, here in the form of the present participle νομιζόμενος. Like νενόμισται of the notice concerning Imouthes, it suggests that the identification of Amenophis with Memnon is an ongoing activity. But what exactly is meant? ‘Amenophis. (p.126) This is the king who is believed to be Memnon’. Since we are not told by whom he is considered Memnon, it is hard to interpret νομιζόμενος: it could mean ‘believed’, in which case the group doing the believing would presumably be the Greeks; but if ‘treated’ or ‘considered’, the group involved could just as easily be the Egyptians, for whom Amenophis was their Memnon, as it were.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Yet more unsettling is the wording of the notice for the second ruler of the 23rd dynasty: ‘Osorcho [ruled] 8 years; whom the Egyptians call Heracles’.70 This is patently false: presumably, the Egyptians call Osorcho ‘Osorcho’. There is no doubt about the meaning of the Greek in the sentence. Compare an illuminating parallel from Herodotus: ‘the Egyptians call Zeus “Amun” ’ (Hdt. 2.42.5: Ἀμοῦν γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι καλέουσι τὸν Δία), where the object of καλέουσι is clearly τὸν Δία with the article, and the predicate is Ἀμοῦν.71 This is the standard formula for Herodotus’ translations of ‘foreign’ gods into Greek, with the Greek term (‘x’) acting as the subject or object (‘x is called y’, or ‘they call x y’) modified by the foreign term as predicate (‘y’). Conversely, elsewhere in the same book of Herodotus we are told that Horus, the son of Osiris, ruled as king ‘whom the Greeks name “Apollo” ’ (Hdt. 2.144.2:…βασιλεῦσαι Ὦρον τὸν Ὀσίριος παῖδα, τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα Ἕλληνες ὀνομάζουσι). Here we have exactly the same grammatical configuration as we see in Manetho’s statement—relative pronoun acting as external object, with Apollo as predicate. But note that Herodotus is asserting that the Greeks call Horus ‘Apollo’, not the other way around. What sort of mental gymnastics must we imagine Manetho to have gone through in order for his identification of Osorcho to make sense?72 Expanding the notice, if we understand it to mean something like ‘Osorcho—this is what the Egyptians say when they mean Heracles’, then I think we get close to what Manetho himself might have been attempting to communicate.73 Again, a Greek audience (not surprisingly) is the implied one of such a statement, but the translation interference is considerable. By contrast, note that Berossus is scrupulous to give the Babylonian name first, and then the Greek equivalent, among others (p. 127) (FGrH 680 F 12): thus ‘Omor(o)ka’ is the goddess known in ‘Chaldaean’ as Thalatth, ‘and translated into Greek is Thalassa’ (F 1 = Syncellus 30 M:…ὄνομα Ὁμόρωκα· εἶναι δὲ τοῦτο Χαλδαϊστὶ μὲν Θαλάτθ, Ἑλληνιστὶ δὲ μεθερμηνεύεσθαι Θάλασσα).74 It is also worth pointing out in connection with Osorcho that he is not the only Egyptian who is identified as Heracles. After the divine rulers of Egypt are listed, we then find the nine demigod kings; the fourth of these, at least as found in Syncellus as occurring in Manetho’s archaiologia, is Heracles, who ruled for 15 years (FGrH 609 F 27 = Syncellus 19 M). It is tempting to see in the two Heracles of Manetho’s list, the two Heracles that Herodotus speaks of in connection with the Egyptians (Hdt. 2.43–4), the one mortal and the other divine. It is certainly the case that elsewhere in the chronology, Manetho took explicit notice of Herodotus, but in those two cases, it was only to correct misrepresentations of royal names: he notes that Menes is called by Herodotus Men, and that he called the great pyramid builder ‘Cheops’ instead of Souphis.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Before moving on to my conclusion, I want to follow up some of the implications of Manetho’s handling of the identification of Osorcho with Heracles. Again, if we can trust the transmission of the text, Manetho, an Egyptian priest, actually wrote that the Egyptians call Osorcho Heracles. In order for us to make sense of this statement, I think it useful to think about Frankfurter’s concept of stereotype appropriation. To be sure, we do not have in Manetho a figure like Heliodorus’ globetrotting Kalasiris, or the historical Harnouphis, but I think we can see in him, in nuce, a standpoint of priestly mediation between cultures that Frankfurter has sketched for us so clearly, though for a much earlier period than he was treating.75 In the Osorcho notice, Manetho becomes in essence a ‘Greek’ explaining Egyptian culture to fellow Greeks; it is from this perspective that his notice about ‘Osorcho’ can be taken to be the same as saying ‘this is what the Egyptians say when they mean Heracles’. Dieleman’s observations on the ‘paradox of translation’ can also help here. Just as there is a patent illogicality in having an injunction not to translate into Greek a piece of Egyptian sacred wisdom in a text that is itself written (p.128) in Greek, such as Treatise 16 in the Hermetic Corpus,76 so there is a patent fallacy involved in attributing a Greek name to Egyptian speakers. It is true that in the case of Treatise 16, the injunction is a way to give authority and cachet to a secret wisdom text thought to derive from a non-Greek culture, and such authorization is not really in question in Manetho’s notice.77 His authority in his text derives from his position as a Hellenophone Egyptian priest, details that were probably laid out in his proem.78 Insofar as it is the Greek language that permits Manetho’s identifications to be drawn, we seem to be taken far from the world of Herodotus on Egypt, in particular when he claimed that ‘nearly all the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt’ (Hdt. 2.50.1). It is also worth wondering why Heracles comes in for such attention in Manetho’s chronology, perhaps making even two appearances. Heracles was the prototypical Greek hero, of course, so interest in him is natural. But it is tempting also to wonder if his role as a member of the Argive ruling house was not also important. We have already noted that Alexander the Great, indeed all Argead kings of Macedon, considered themselves descendants of the royal family of Argos, and that this was also a connection that was important to the Ptolemies. Might we not see again Manetho responding to this Ptolemaic interest in the Argive connection? The same royal house comes in for considerable attention with the brothers Sethos and Harmais, identified as Aegyptus and Danaus respectively in one of Josephus’ borrowings from Manetho. Indeed, Josephus tells us that Danaus later went to Argos (CAp. 1.102-3 = F 9);79 in the Eusebian version of Manetho’s chronology, we learn that Harmais/ Danaus conquered Argos and became the king of the Argives (Syncellus 81 M = F 3b)80—that is, he founded the line from which Heracles, Alexander, and the Ptolemies themselves descended (at least as they liked to think).

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt To state the obvious: Manetho did not bother coordinating the Egyptian past with individuals and events from the non-Egyptian past that were not important.81 When the ruling house of Argos was founded, when Troy fell, when the Olympic Games were first held—these things mattered to the Greeks. Indeed, some of these details were of direct interest to Manetho’s royal patrons: the Ptolemies. These were the stories that constituted the Greek past, that organized it into eras, and that they told continuously to themselves in one form or another; these were the items that were put onto the grid of the Egyptian past by Manetho. In fact, coming back to Feeney, both Troy and Olympiad dating are connected to the essential task of earliest Greek historiography: separating myth from history. And crucially, as Feeney demonstrates, the Romans were sensitive to the interest the Greeks showed in these epochal markers, picked them up, and ‘transformed [them] creatively for their own purposes’.82 Precisely these two watersheds find a place in Manetho’s chronology. Might we not assume that Manetho was just as attuned to what the Greeks were beginning to talk about in the fourth and third centuries, just as the Romans would begin to do about half a century later? It is certainly the case that later still, Josephus read Manetho (or Alexander Polyhistor’s version of him) precisely for comparisons between the Egyptian and Greek pasts (cf. Jos. Ap. 1.103). It is tempting to speculate further that if the notices in the chronology represent places where narratives may have been slotted in the original form of the Aegyptiaca, somehow Egyptian readings of Greek stories might have been inserted into Manetho’s Aegyptiaca where we find his Greek synchronisms and identifications now in the epitome. Manetho knew his Herodotus well, for we are told by Josephus that he corrected him on several points. What if, for instance, under the heading for Thyoris he appended not just a reworking of Homer’s Odyssey and the story of Menelaus’ sojourn in Egypt, but also Herodotus’ version of the Helen story that had her reside in Egypt for the (p.130) duration of the Trojan War, a story Herodotus attributes to Egyptian priests (Hdt. 2.113.1). It is speculation of course, but it is arresting to think of the resulting historiographic interplay that would have been in evidence: Herodotus had cited Egyptian authorities to correct his Greek forebears—Hecataeus and Homer— when he compiled his history of Egypt; Manetho could have deployed elements from these Greek stories, with their Herodotean critical overlay, in his own account, with suitable expansions of his own that took up Herodotus’ critique and then went further.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt It is important, finally, to think about the purpose behind Manetho’s synchronisms, if in fact they are his. Our best parallels for what Manetho may have done come from the Greek and Roman worlds. Indeed, Timaeus, the first systematic practitioner of synchronization, had a very specific aim with his synchronisms: he wanted to put the western Greek world on the same level as the traditional centres of prestige and power back in mainland Greece and Asia Minor. But Manetho’s case is different. Synchronism between two separate national pasts always implies I think a power relationship of some kind. Considerable effort was expended by the Romans in order to link important events from their past to events that were important in the Greek world: around 300 Fabii were thought to have perished at Cremera in around 480 BCE, of course, just as 300 Spartans perished in the same year at Thermopylae. The Romans sought this connection; the Greeks did not, or at least not initially.83 Manetho’s synchronisms are not like this, strictly speaking. He made the linkages, too, but not as a member of a less sophisticated, perhaps younger culture aspiring to a connection with one whose legacy he admired; rather, his was the learned older culture, and he made note of those places where Greek mythological events and people, and some historical ones too, found a place on the temporal grid of the Egyptian past. It is significant that two of the events he chose were important to the Greeks precisely because they helped to define epochs and to separate the mythical from the historical: the Trojan War and the first Olympic Games. In Manetho’s case, the synchronizer’s culture conferred importance and dignity upon the synchronized; he did not seek it from the Greek past. But then why did Manetho seek these linkages between the Greek and Egyptian pasts if they brought no distinction to his own nation’s (p.131) history? It is tempting to speculate that the answer to this question is because the Greeks were interested in synchronism, even ‘international’ synchronism, and Manetho could reveal through his own participation in it that the scale of Greek time was smaller than Egyptian time, indeed, much smaller, and that by implication the scale of the achievement of Greek civilization compared with Egyptian was correspondingly inferior too. Specifically, through synchronization, Manetho could demonstrate that what constituted ‘history’ was simply much bigger in the Egyptian past.84 The effect on the historical thinking of Hecataeus of Miletus, and on Herodotus too, of their encounters with the priests of Thebes and their piromis statues (Hdt. 2.143; FGrH 1 T 4, F 300), comes to mind.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt I hesitate to conclude with what is no doubt a set of massive oversimplifications, but it is important to make a few general observations on synchronism. Feeney has argued persuasively that while synchronism is something that the modern Western mind turns easily to, for the ancient Greeks and Romans, for whom time was measured in ways utterly different from the Christian time-reckoning system of BCE/CE bequeathed to the modern era, synchronism would have had a very different value too.85 While the Greeks could synchronize events as far back as Homer,86 it was really only in the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE that the correlation of unrelated events on a temporal grid began seriously to be experimented with. In many ways it was not ‘natural’ to the ancient Greek historical mind, despite its naturalness to us. But if synchronism was exotic by the standards of Greek historiographic practice, it was downright unheard of in ancient Egypt. In a culture that saw the sphere of human habitation as a binary opposition between Egypt itself at the centre and the rest of the world as ‘deserts’ (h3swt), what happened in those wastes will simply not have been important to the dwellers by the Nile—simply ‘the River’, unless, of course, those inhabitants of the deserts came from the Red Land to the Black, or conversely, if the Egyptians went abroad.87 Indeed, recall that on the Palermo Stone, the one item that is recorded for every year is the annual inundation of the Nile. This event of literally cosmic importance suggests the Egypt-centred view of traditional Egyptian time reckoning. Hence, for Manetho to have (p.132) included synchronisms with the Greek world in his timeline of Egyptian history was extremely significant. Berossus, Manetho’s exact contemporary, was also writing a native priestly history in Greek in early Seleucid Babylon, but by contrast did not seem to have synchronisms in his Babyloniaca, though it could perhaps be argued that the Babylonian world view was similarly just as centred on Babylon and its environs. I think the only way to explain the presence of synchronisms in Manetho’s chronography is to see them as part of his engagement with Greek historical writing on Egypt, and with the new Macedonian rulers of his land. Partly taking up the Greek stereotype of the Egyptian priest as representative of an ancient culture, Manetho took note of the events that he considered epoch-making, as well as their important mythical figures, and plotted them on the grid of Egyptian time. The net effect of this would have been to make the Greek past happen as minor footnotes on the pages of the great master narrative that was the Egyptian past.88 Abbreviations 9 DC G. Widmer and D. Devauchelle, Actes du IXe Congrès International des Études Démotiques Paris, 31 août–3 septembre 2005 [BdE 147] (Kairo, 2009).

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Bibliography Bibliography references: Adler, W., and Tuffin, P. (2002), The Chronography of George Synkellos (Oxford). Allen, J. P. (2000), Middle Egyptian. An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge). (p.133) Alonso-Núñez, J. M. (1997), ‘Approaches to World History in the Hellenistic Period: Dicearchus and Agatharcides’, Athenaeum 85, 53–67. Alonso-Núñez, J. M. (2002), The Idea of Universal History in Greece. From Herodotus to the Age of Augustus (Amsterdam). Ampolo, C., and Bresciani, E. (1988), ‘Psammetico re d’Egitto e il mercenario Pedon’, Egitto e Vicino Oriente 11, 237–53. Asheri, D. (1991/1992), ‘The Art of Synchronization in Greek Historiography: The Case of Timaeus of Tauromenium’, SCI 11, 52–89. Asheri, D. (2007), Herodotus Book I, in Asheri et al. (2007), 57–218. Asheri, D., Lloyd, A., and Corcella, A. (2007), A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV. edited by O. Murray and A. Moreno (Oxford). Assmann, J. (2002), The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, tr. from German edn. of 1996 (New York). Ax, W. (2000), ‘Dikaiarchs Bios Hellados und Varros De Vita Populi Romani’, RhM 143, 337–69. Badian, E. (1994), ‘Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: A Study of Some Subtle Silences’, in Hornblower (ed.) (1994), 107–30. Beckerath, J. von (1962), ‘Queen Twosre as Guardian of Siptah’, JEA 48, 70–4. Beckerath, J. von (1994), Chronologie des ägyptischen Neuen Reiches (Hildesheim). Beckerath, J. von (1997), Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägypten (Mainz). Bellefonds, P. L. de, (1986), Deukalion I. LIMC 3.1, 384–5. Bernand, A., and Bernand, É. (1960), Les Inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon [BIFAO 31] (Cairo). Bietak, M. (2000), ‘Introduction to this Research Programme’, in Bietak (ed.), (2000) 11–12. Page 21 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Bietak, M. (ed) (2000), The Synchronisation of Civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium BC, (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften). Bowersock, G. W. (1980), ‘The Miracle of Memnon’ BASP 21, 21–32. Bowersock, G. W. (1989), ‘Herodotus, Alexander, and Rome’, The American Scholar 58: 407–14 = Bowersock (1994), 345–52. Bowersock, G. W. (1994), Studies on the Eastern Roman Empire (Goldbach). Bowie, A. M. (2007), Herodotus. Histories VIII (Cambridge). Bremen, R. (2007), ‘The Entire House is Full of Crowns: Hellenistic van Agones and the Commemoration of Victory’, in Hornblower and Morgan (eds.) (2007), 345–75. Briant, P. (1996), From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, tr. P. Daniels (Winona Lake, Ind.). Brown, T. S. (1958), Timaeus of Tauromenium (Berkeley and Los Angeles). Burkert, W. (1985), ‘Herodot über die Namen der Götter: Polytheismus als historisches Problem’, MH 42, 121–32=Burkert (2007) 161–72. (p.134) Burkert, W. (1995), ‘Lydia Between East and West or How to Date the Trojan War: A Study in Herodotus’, in Carter and Morris (eds.) (1995), 139–48 = Burkert (2001), 218–32. Burkert, W. (2001), Kleine Schriften I. Homerica, ed. C. Riedweg (Göttingen). Burkert, W. (2004), Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis. Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge, Mass.). Burkert, W. (2007), Kleine Schriften. VII: Tragica et historica, ed. W. Rösler (Göttingen), 140–60. Burton, A. (1972), Diodorus Siculus Book I. A Commentary (Leiden). Butzer, K. W. (1986), ‘Wüste’, Lexicon der Ägyptologie 6: 1292–5. Caneva, S. (2007), ‘Raccontare nel tempto: Narrazione epica e cronologia nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio Rodio’, in Caneva and Tarenzi (eds.), (2007), 69–135. Caneva, S., and Tarenzi, V. (2007), Il lavoro sul mito nell’epica greca. Letture di Omero e Apollonio Rodio (Pisa). Carter, J. B., and Morris, S. P. (eds.) (1995), The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin). Page 22 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Clarke, K. (2008), Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis (Oxford). Clasen, C. (1883), Untersuchungen über Timaios von Tauromenion, Diss. Jena. Clay, J. S. (2011), Homer’s Trojan Theater: Space, Vision, and Memory in the Iliad (Cambridge). Cole, T. (1990), Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology, rev. and expanded edn. of original from 1967 (Atlanta). Colomo, D., Popko, L., Rücker, M., and Scholl, R. (2010), ‘Die älteste Weltchronik. Europa, die Sintflut und das Lamm’, AfP 56, 1–25 and Tafeln I–IV. Dale, A. (2011), ‘Alcaeus on the Career of Myrsilos: Greeks, Lydians and Luwians at the East Aegean–West Anatolian Interface’, JHS 131, 15–24. David, A. R. (1973), Religious Ritual at Abydos (c.1300 BC) (Warminster). Deacy, S., and Villing, A. (eds.) (2001), Athena in the Classical World (Leiden). Detienne, M. (1981), L’invention de la mythologie (Paris). Dieleman, J. (2005), Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE) (Leiden). Dillery, J. (1999), ‘The First Egyptian Narrative History: Manetho and Greek Historiography’, ZPE 127, 93–116. Dillery, J. (2009), ‘Roman Historians and the Greeks: Audiences and Models’, in Feldherr (ed.) (2009), 77–107. Evans, J. A. S. (ed.) (1974), Polis and Imperium: Studies in Honour of Edward Togo Salmon (Toronto). Feeney, D. (2007), Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History. Sather Classical Lectures 65. (Berkeley). (p.135) Feldherr, A. (ed.) (2009), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge). Foertmeyer, V. A. (1989), Tourism in Greco-Roman Egypt. Diss. Princeton. Fornara, C. (1983), The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley). Frankfurter, D. (1998), Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton). Fraser, P. (1972), Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford).

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Gantz, T. (1993), Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore). Gardiner, A. H. (1958), ‘Only One King Siptah and Twosre Not his Wife’, JEA 44, 12–22. Gardiner, A. H. (1961a), Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford). Gardiner, A. H. (1961b), ‘The Egyptian Memnon’, JEA 47, 91–9. Gomme, A. W. (1945/1980), A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, 5 vols. (last two with A. Andrewes and K. J. Dover) (Oxford). Green, P. (1991), Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 BC: A Historical Biography (Berkeley). Griffiths, J. G. (1960), The Conflict of Horus and Seth. From Egyptian and Classical Sources (Liverpool). Gutzwiller, K. (ed.) (2005), The New Posidippus. A Hellenistic Poetry Book (Oxford). Harrison, T. (2000), Divinity and History. The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford). Harrison, T. (ed.) (2002), Greek and Barbarians (Edinburgh). Hartog, F. (1988), The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, tr. from French edn. of 1980 (Berkeley). Helck, W. (1956), Untersuchungen zu Manetho und den ägyptischen Königslisten [Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Aegyptens 18] (Berlin). Heubeck, A., West, S., and Hainsworth, J. B. (1988), A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, Volume I. Introduction and Books I–VIII (Oxford). Higbie, C. (2001), ‘Homeric Athena in the Chronicle of Lindos’, in Deacy and Villing (eds.) (2001), 105–25. Higbie, C. (2003), The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past (Oxford). Hollmann, A. (2011), The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus’ Histories (Washington, DC). Hornblower, S. (ed.) (1994), Greek Historiography (Oxford). Hornblower, S., and Morgan, C. (eds.) (2007), Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons & Festivals. From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire (Oxford).

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Hornung, E., Krauss, R., and Warburton, D. A. (eds.) (2006), Ancient Egyptian Chronology (Leiden). Jacoby, F. (1912), ‘Hellanikos’, RE 15 104–53 = Jacoby (1956), 262–87. (p.136) Jacoby, F. (1956), Griechische Historiker (Stuttgart). Klinger, J. (2006), ‘Chronological Links Between the Cuneiform World of the Ancient Near East and Ancient Egypt’, in Hornung et al. (eds.) (2006), 304–24. Lane Fox, R. (1973), Alexander the Great, (London). Lesko, B. S. (1969), ‘Royal Mortuary Suites of the Egyptian New Kingdom’, AJA 73, 453–8. Linforth, I. M. (1926), ‘Greek Gods and Foreign Gods in Herodotus’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 9: 1–25 = Linforth (1987), 47–71. Linforth, I. M. (1940), ‘Greek and Egyptian Gods’, CP 35, 300–1 = Linforth (1987), 72–3. Linforth, I. M. (1987), Studies in Herodotus and Plato, Edited with an introduction by L. Tarán, (New York and London). Lloyd, A. B. (1975/1988), Herodotus Book II, 3 vols. [EPRO 43] (Leiden). Lloyd, A. B. (2007), ‘Herodotus Book II’, in Asheri et al. (2007), 219–378. Mariette, A. (1880), Catalogue Général des Monuments d’Abydos, (Paris). Marincola, J. (ed.) (2007), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, 2 vols. (Malden, Mass./Oxford). Masson, O., and Yoyotte, J. (1988), ‘Une Inscription Ionienne mentionnant Psammétique Ier’, EA 11, 171–9. Meister, K. (1975), Historische Kritik bei Polybios, [Palingenesia 9] (Wiesbaden). Möller, A. (2005), ‘Epoch-making Eratosthenes’ GRBS 45, 245–60. Momigliano, A. (1977), Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford). Moran, W. L. (1992), The Amarna Letters (Baltimore and London). Munson, R. V. (2005), Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians (Washington, DC). Nock, A. D. (1972), Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2 vols., ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford). Page 25 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Pearson, L. (1987), The Greek Historians of the West: Timaeus and his Predecessors (Atlanta). Quack, J. F. (2007), ‘Egyptian Rulers until Alexander the Great’, Brill’s New Pauly Supplements 1, 34–46. Rowton, M. B. (1948), ‘Manetho’s Date for Ramesses II’, JEA 34, 57–74. Rudhardt, J. (2002), ‘The Greek Attitude to Foreign Religions’ (orig. published in French in 1992) in Harrison (ed.) (2002), 172–85. Ryholt, K. (1997), The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period c.1800–1550 B.C. [Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 20] (Copenhagen). Ryholt, K. (2009), ‘The Life of Imhotep (P.Carlsberg 85)’, 9DC, 305–15. Schäfer, P. (1997), Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, (Cambridge, Mass.). (p.137) Schepens, G. (2007), ‘History and Historia: Inquiry in the Greek Historians’, in Marincola (ed.) (2007), 1.39–55. Schöne, A. (1875), Eusebi Chronicorum Liber Prior. (repr. in 1967) (Dublin and Zürich). Scodel, R. (2008), ‘Zielinski’s Law Reconsidered’, TAPA 138: 107–25. Sethe, K. (1902), Imhotep der Asklepios der Aegypter: Ein vergötterer Mensch aus der Zeit Königs Doser (Leipzig). Shaw, I. (2000), ‘Introduction: Chronologies and Cultural Change in Egypt’, in Shaw (ed.) (2000), 1–16. Shaw, I. (ed.) (2000), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford). Sijpesteijn, P. J. (1990), ‘The Oldest Inscription on the Colossus of Memnon?’, ZPE 82, 154. Stein, H. (1901), Herodotos (Berlin). Thompson, D. J. (2005), ‘Posidippus, Poet to the Ptolemies’, in Gutzwiller (ed.) (2005), 269–83. Vattuone, R. (2007), ‘Western Greek Historiography’, in Marincola (ed.) (2007), 1.189–99. Vittmann, G. (2003), Ägypten und die Fremden im ersten vorchristlichen Jahrtausend (Mainz am R.). Page 26 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt Waddell, W. G. (1940), Manetho [LCL] (London and Cambridge, Mass.). Walbank, F. W. (1957/1979), A Historical Commentary on Polybius. 3 vols. (Oxford). Walbank, F. W. (1972), Polybius. Sather Classical Lectures 42 (Berkeley). Walbank, F. W. (1974), ‘Synchronisms in Polybius, Books IV and V’, in Evans (ed.) (1974) 59–80 = Walbank (1985), 298–312. Walbank, F. W. (1985), Selected Papers. Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography (Cambridge). Walbank, F. W. (1989/1990), ‘Timaeus’ views on the past’, SCI 10, 41–54 =Walbank (2002), 165–77. Walbank, F. W. (2002), Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections (Cambridge). West, S. (1988), ‘Homer’s Odyssey Books I–IV’, in Heubeck et al. (1988), 51–245. Wildung, D. (1977), Imhotep und Amenhotep [Münchener Ägyptologische Studien 36] (Munich and Berlin). Wilson, J. A. (1951), The Culture of Ancient Egypt (Chicago). (p.138) Notes:

(1) Unlike Manetho and the Turin List, which are the only ones that were written on papyri, all the other lists are monumental, carved into stone, and serve a representational and sacral, as well as a documentary purpose. They are also narrower or more selective in scope. Thus, the Table of Abydos comes from the temple of Sethos I and depicts him and his son, the future Rameses II, making offerings to its list of 76 kings named in cartouches, beginning with Menes. The names of some kings, and even whole dynasties, were deliberately left off by the priestly compilers as being illegitimate: Shaw (2000) 6; see also David (1973) 198. Similarly, the Table of Sakkara is from a tomb of an overseer of works, Tjuneroy; its list of 57 rulers is to identify kings, also named in cartouches, honoured by Rameses II. As A. R. David has observed concerning the Table of Abydos: ‘it is certain that the lists found within the temples were placed there not simply as historical records; their main purpose was to represent the Royal Ancestors in the ritual which was performed on their behalf’: David (1973) 198. Cf. Mariette (1880), 28; Lesko (1969). See also Shaw (2000), 9, for a general statement. (2) Cf. Gardiner (1961a), 47: only the Turin Canon is a ‘genuine chronicle’. Also von Beckerath (1997), 19–23. Note Ryholt (1997), 9, on the inappropriateness of the term ‘canon’ in connection with what he prefers to call the Turin List. Page 27 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (3) Ryholt (1997), 31–3. Cf. Fraser (1972) 2.735, n. 125. (4) Helck (1956), 4; Griffiths (1960), 97. (5) Cf. Ryholt (1997), 9, on the purposes of the Turin List: ‘[the Turin King-list] is, in fact, the only known genuine king-list from ancient Egypt. As distinct from a canon, the purpose of the Turin King-list was evidently to establish an objective record of all kings from primeval times until—or perhaps including part of—the New Kingdom, in their correct chronological order, and with length of reign noted for each king’. (6) I have deliberately modelled my last two sentences on Feeney (2007), 15: ‘But [the ancients] are not connecting numbers; they are connecting significant events and people. In so doing they are not placing events within a preexisting time frame; they are constructing a time frame within which the events have meaning’. See also Asheri (1991/2), 56. (7) Bietak (2000), 12. (8) For the terminology, see, e.g. Quack (2007), 34. For an introduction to the Amarna letters, see Moran (1992), xiii–xxxix. (9) Klinger (2006), 312. (10) ‘Fragments’ in scare quotes because they are not really fragments of course, but text quoted, excerpted, paraphrased, or otherwise adapted from Manetho by later authors in antiquity. For the epitome I cite pages from A. A. Mosshammer’s (M) Teubner edition: Georgius Syncellus Ecloga Chronographica (1984). (11) Asheri (1991/2), 52; see also Feeney (2007), 12–16. (12) I do not consider here the pre-dynastic divine identifications that are to be found only in the Armenian translation of Eusebius—namely that the first pharaoh was the god Hephaestus (= Ptah), the second Helios (Ra), then Kronos and, after Osiris, Typhon (Seth). (13) I omit discussion here of Manetho’s entry for Cambyses, Dynasty 27. His rule of Egypt is dated to his ‘fifth year’ of kingship, which is to say, his rule of Egypt is dated to the fifth year of his Persian kingship. (14) Only in the version of Africanus; mention of the foundation of the Olympics missing in the corresponding entry in Eusebius: Syncellus 83 M. (15) Cf. Schäfer (1997), 18–21.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (16) Von Beckerath (1994), 53. He also rightly observes in n. 312 that the reference to the vocal statue of Memnon must post-date Manetho’s composition of the Aegyptiaca, even though a reference to it, as the name implies, is found in Manetho’s identification of the pharaoh Amenophis III with the hero of Greek myth. See below, pp. 125–30. (17) Jacoby prints the phrase ἐφ’ οὗ Ὀλυμπιὰς ἤχθη in small font. (18) Asheri (2007), 80 ad loc.; Dale (2011) 17–19. (19) Cf. Asheri (1991/2) 55–6; Feeney (2007), 44–5. (20) Bowie (2007), 138 ad loc. (21) See esp. Gomme (1945/80) 1.8 and 2.2 ad loc. Also Feeney (2007), 17–18. Polybius’ numerous synchronisms were inspired by Thucydides: ‘to mark the beginning and end of campaigning seasons and to ensure that the reader is in the right year’ (Walbank (1974), 73 = Walbank (1985), 309). (22) Furthermore, several of these identifications occur in Herodotus’ treatment of Egypt, in particular the Egyptian equivalents of Greek divine names (thus Hdt. 2.42.5 and 2.144.2), but also other terms (e.g. 2.30.1: see Munson (2005), 37). It needs to be said that none of these identifications performs a dating function, even indirectly. (23) As demonstrated by Burkert (1995). (24) Cf. Rowton (1948), 61, on Manetho and Timaeus. (25) The translation is based on the punctuation of the text ‘which is usually adopted’: see Walbank (1957/79), 2.348 ad loc. (26) Walbank (1957/79) 2.348: the list of Olympic victors perhaps ‘a handbook, serving as a chronological preparation for Timaeus’ general history’; he usefully compares Callisthenes’ work on Pythian victors (SIG3 275 = FGrH 124 T 23) as preparation for his study of the Phocian War. See also Walbank (1972), 101. Cf. Brown (1958), 10, and 112, n. 55. (27) Momigliano (1977), 51. (28) Clarke (2008), 110. (29) Cf. Momigliano (1977), 49-50. (30) τὸν δὲ τελευταῖον γενόμενον τῆς ῾Ρώμης οἰκισιμὸν ἢ κτίσιν ἢ ὅτι δήποτε χρὴ καλεῖν Τίμαιος μὲν ὁ Σικελιώτης οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅτῳ κανόνι χρησάμενος ἅμα Καρχηδόνι κτιζομένῃ γενέσθαι φησὶν ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακοστῷ πρότερον ἔτει τῆς πρώτης ὀλυμπιάδος. See Pearson (1987), 47. Page 29 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (31) Feeney (2007), 92. Cf. Clasen (1883) 30–1; more recently, Asheri (1991/2), 62. (32) Compare now the 2nd century CE Leipzig papyri series containing a world chronicle mentioning Egyptian pharaohs, Babylonian kings, and Greek mythical and legendary events, but also the Olympic and Pythian Games: Colomo et al. (2010), 7, Columns II.22–3 and III.1–2. (33) Cf. Meister (1975), 54. Cf. Schepens (2007), 51, and Vattuone (2007), 199: Polybius ‘acknowledged Timaeus’ almost maniacal care for documents’. (34) Feeney (2007), 47–8. (35) Diod. 11.24.1, following Timaeus. Walbank (1989/90), 43 = (2002), 167. See also Clarke (2008), 102, n. 59. (36) Δικαίαρχος δὲ ἐν αʹ μετὰ τὸν Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος Ὦρον βασιλέα γεγονέναι Σεσόγχωσιν. γίνεται δὲ ἀπὸ Σεσογχώσεως ἐπὶ τὴν Νείλου βασιλείαν ἔτη ′βφʹ, , ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς Ἰλίου ἁλώσεως ἐπὶ τὴν αʹ Ὀλυμπιάδα υλϛʹ, ὁμοῦ ′βπμγʹ. The supplement is derived from F 58b Wehrli, though there are discrepancies with 58a (Sesostris not Sesonchosis, the total is slightly different, and Troy is not mentioned). Cf. Ax (2000), 342, n. 15, Alonso-Núñez (1997) 55–6 and (2002), 91, and n. 79, and Burton (1972), 186 ad Diod. 1.63.1. (37) Note esp. Alonso-Núñez (1997). Also Cole (1990), 4. Fornara points out (1983), 43, that Ephorus of Cyme (FGrH 70) was really the first to write ‘universal history’, and did so precisely to give Greek culture (paideia) a history in the world of other ancient cultures. (38) Burkert (1995), 143 = (2001), 226. Cf. Clasen (1883) 29. (39) Fraser (1972), 1.315 and 321, relying on the Letter of Aristeas 9–11, 28–31. (40) Thompson (2005), 272–4; also van Bremen (2007), 361–2. (41) Nikouria Decree: Ptolemaia as an agon isolumpios, SIG3 390. See Thompson (2005), 280 and n. 64. (42) See esp. Möller (2005). (43) Compare Sabakon, the first ruler of the 25th dynasty, Syncellus 83 M. (44) Cf. von Beckerath (1962), 72: the seven years given for the reign of Twosre in Manetho include those when she ruled jointly with the child pharaoh Siptah, whereas the reign of her deceased husband Sethos II was always separate. (45) Gardiner (1958), 20. Page 30 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (46) See Higbie (2003), 205, 222–7; also Higbie (2001). (47) Cf. West (1988) 202 ad Od. 4.125–7: ‘[i]t is curious that the poet does not assign any official status either to them or to Menelaus’ other Egyptian friends, Thon and Polydama (228)’. (48) Lloyd (1975/88), 1.88–9, 3.46–51; also (2007), 322–4. (49) Lloyd (1975/88), 3.49; (2007), 323. (50) Pedon SEG 37.994 Πηδῶν μ’ ἀνέθηκε|ν ὠμφίννεω κτλ.; an inscription on a seated Egyptian elite male. Vittmann (2003), 203–6 and plate 103. See Briant (1996), 499, who notes that the gifts bestowed upon Pedon have both Egyptian and Achaemenid parallels. Pedon was in all likelihood a Greek mercenary who served in Egypt under Pharaoh Psammetichus I or II: see esp. Masson and Yoyotte (1988), Ampolo and Bresciani (1988), and Burkert (2004), 10, and 146 n. 44; cf. SEG 39.1266. Amasis in the Lindian Chronicle: FGrH 532 F 1, section C 29. (51) The phrase gets double brackets indicating a later interpolation. (52) Cf. Gantz (1993), 165–6. Note that there are virtually no ancient visual representations of Deucalion/Pyrrha: de Bellefonds (1986). (53) Setting aside the citations in Stephanus of Byzantium (ten altogether), there are only three sources that note the work by name: the scholiast to Apollonius, Athenaeus (once only), and a brief mention in Clement of Alexandria. But note also ff. 117–33. Cf. Jacoby (1912), 114 = (1956), 267. (54) Danaus’ departure from Egypt for Greece (A 9) is mentioned early on as well, an episode prominently featured also in Manetho’s Aegyptiaca (Syncellus 81 M; Jos. Ap. 1.103 = F 9a); at the other end of the temporal spectrum, the Marmor Parium mentions Alexander’s conquests of Egypt and Babylon (B 4, 5), and Ptolemy son of Lagus’ assumption of satrapal power in Egypt (B 8) and his accession to the throne some nineteen years later (B 23). Seleucus is found at B16, sent by the victorious Ptolemy I to Babylon. (55) Colomo et al. (2010), 7: ἀναγραφὴ τῶν βασ[ιλευ]σάν|[τω]ν τοῖς ἔμπροσθ[εν χ]ρόν|[ο]ις μετὰ Δευκ[αλίω]νος | [κατ]ακλυσμόν…Note that the Oracle of the Lamb is also mentioned (Column IV.2–5), a text that is famously also alluded to in Manetho (Syncellus 82 and 84 M). (56) Note that Josephus, in his review of Gentile authors who treated the Flood, mentions one Hieronymus ‘the Egyptian’ who wrote an archaeology of Phoenicia (Jos. A.J. 1.93 = FGrH 787 F 2).

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (57) Cf. Detienne (1981), 166; also Caneva (2007) 93–8, on the Deucalion myth and Egypt in his discussion of Apollonius of Rhodes 3.1085–90. (58) Waddell (1940), F 4, and his translation and notes ad loc.; cf. Schöne (1875), Appendix 6, 215. (59) Waddell (1940), 18, n.4. (60) Fraser (1972), 1.45. (61) See Diod. 17.1.5; Plut. Mor. 334D and Alex. 2.1; Curtius 4.2.3. See e.g. Lane Fox (1973), 41, 44–5; Green (1991), 5. For Alexander I, cf. Badian (1994). (62) FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus 62 M + Waddell’s corrections: Τόσορθρος ἔτη κθʹ. οὗτος Ἀσκληπιὸς Αἰγυπτίοις κατὰ τὴν ἰατρικὴν νενόμισται, καὶ τὴν διὰ ξεστῶν λίθων οἰκοδομίαν εὕρατο· ἀλλὰ καὶ γραφῆς ἐπεμελήθη. Cf. Adler and Tuffin (2002), 79, n. 4. Note that the pharaoh in question is Djoser: Tsr < Dsr. See Ryholt (2009), 308. Also Sethe (1902), 18–19; Wildung (1977), 88–9. (63) Cf. Linforth on Herodotus and the naming of Egyptian gods: (1926) esp. 10– 11 = (1987), 56–7, and (1940), esp. 301 = (1987) 73. Note also the superb discussion of Burkert (1985) following Linforth and, before him, Stein (1901). Consult similarly Rudhardt (2002), 178, and Hollmann (2011), 152–5. Note the reservations of Harrison (2000), 251–64. (64) Hartog (1988) 241–2. Cf. Munson (2005), 30–1. (65) Assmann (2002), 396. (66) FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus 80 M: Ἀμενῶφις ἔτη λαʹ. Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Μέμνων εἶναι νομιζόμενος καὶ φθεγγόμενος λίθος. (67) Date of ‘vocal Memnon’: Bowersock (1984), 25–6 = (1994), 257–8; Foertmeyer (1989), 23–4. Cf. Bernand and Bernand (1960), 31, and Sijpesteijn (1990). (68) Gardiner (1961b) 98: ‘If these words had stood in the original Manetho, the damage done to the statue, as well as the resultant noise, would have gone back as far as the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus.’ But he dismisses the possibility on the next page. (69) Though see von Beckerath (1994), 53, n. 312, and above, n. 16. (70) FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus 82 M: Ὀσορχὼ ἔτη ηʹ, ὃν Ἡρακλέα Αἰγύπτιοι καλοῦσι. (71) Burkert (1985) 125–6 = (2007), 165–6. Page 32 of 34

Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (72) Cf. Dale (2011), 17, n. 6 on Hdt. 1.7: ‘it seems obvious that Herodotus’ words mean that the ruler was called Myrsilos by Greek-speaking peoples.… while amongst Lydians he was known as Kandaules’. (73) See again Linforth, above n. 63. (74) A common practice also in the NT: see, e.g., John 1:38, 41 and esp. 42, σὺ εἶ Σίμων…σὺ κληθήσῃ Κηφᾶς, ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται Πέτρος. (75) Frankfurter (1998), esp. 225. (76) Dieleman (2005), esp. 182–3 for ‘paradox of translation’. (77) Several parallel instances could be produced, including material that goes beyond Greco-Roman Egypt: note esp. the prologue to Sirach, which like Treatise 16, has much to do with the power of the original language. (78) Cf. Dillery (1999), 97–8. (79) Note that Jacoby puts double brackets around the identification in Josephus. (80) Ἄρμαϊς ὁ καὶ Δαναὸς ἔτη εʹ, μεθ’ ἃ ἐκ τῆς Αἰγύπτου ἐκπεσὼν καὶ φεύγων τὸν ἀδελφὸν Αἴγυπτον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἀφικνεῖται, κρατήσας τε τοῦ Ἄργους βασιλεύει τῶν Ἀργείων. (81) Cf. Rowton (1948) 61: ‘it is only natural that [Manetho] should have wished to specify the exact location in Egyptian chronology of the two principal landmarks [fall of Troy and Olympic Games] in Greek chronology’. (82) Feeney (2007), 81. Cf. Clarke (2008), 121–8 in connection with Diodorus’ universal history. (83) Cf. Dillery (2009), 88–90. (84) For an excellent general statement of this view, see Nock (1972), 1.55. (85) Feeney (2007), 12–14. (86) Scodel (2008); Clay (2011). (87) Allen (2000), 21–2; cf. Wilson (1951), 8–17; Butzer (1986), 1292–3.

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Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt (88) It is a distinct pleasure to thank Ian Rutherford for the invitation to participate in the conference at the University of Reading on Literary Interaction between Greece and Egypt in the Fall of 2007. Elements of this paper were also delivered at the University of Cambridge (Spring 2008) and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Spring 2009). I thank the audiences at all these places for their insights. Kim Ryholt, Gideon Bohak, Ian Rutherford, and Susan Stephens at the conference in Reading were especially helpful. In particular Kim Ryholt alerted me to the then forthcoming publication of the Leipzig world chronicle papyri; Lutz Popko very kindly sent me an offprint of the chronicle soon after publication. All errors and bad judgements that remain are mine.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt The Case of Berenike’s Lock Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Stephanie Winder

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter looks at queen Berenike II of Egypt and in particular her dedication at the temple of Arsinoe II at Cape Zephyrion in connection with her husband Ptolemy III Euergetes’ successful return from the Third Syrian War (246– 241BCE). This dedication had been commemorated by Callimachus in his Lock of Berenice. On the basis of a full study of the political events of her lifetime and of representation in iconography, Llewellyn and Winder argue that Berenike set out to project herself as an equivalent of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The role Berenike played in relation to her husband could thus be represented as analogous to Hathor’s role in relation to Horus, partly that of lover and partly that of protector. Keywords:   Hathor, Ptolemy, Berenike, queenship, imagery, hair

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt The starting point for the present study is a very small one: a lock of hair, specifically, the lock of Berenike II, dedicated to Aphrodite in connection with the safety of her husband, Ptolemy III Euergetes, in the Third Syrian War (246– 241 BCE). The theme of this study, however, is bigger: it explores Ptolemaic queenship and the construction of the female royal image in literature and visual culture in the formative period for the ideology of Greco-Egyptian monarchy. Ptolemy I Soter was necessarily concerned with amassing and securing land; his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, instituted a socio-cultural and religious framework for the dynasty. Their goals and priorities were clear; but what was the role, or place, or orientation of Ptolemy III Euergetes’ reign in this dynastic progression? This examination approaches that question by focusing not on the image of the king, but on that of his wife, Berenike, whose situation, in many ways, like that of her husband also, epitomizes the problems of a classic ‘third child’ scenario.1

(p.140) Berenike in Cyrene This investigation has its roots in a well-known piece of poetry, the wryly imaginative biography of Berenike’s lock of hair by Callimachus, the Coma Berenices. The methodological approach adopted here, however, is concerned with the historical Berenike’s biography and is essentially grounded in historical questions about Ptolemaic self-perception and self-promotion. It is necessary, therefore, to clarify the early events of the queen’s life, prior to the period of the lock’s adventures, since they play a formative role in her subsequent career management. Taking into account the events in the young Berenike’s life which led up to the Egyptian marriage, a picture emerges of a desperately unstable family relationship (or dynamic) which, in turn, produced tensions at court and, as a consequence, a conflicted foreign policy for Cyrene as a whole. From the shaky chronology, it is possible to extract a coherent narrative, and it is one that suggests that Berenike’s position as future queen of Egypt could have appeared exceptionally perilous to her at the time of her marriage to Ptolemy III.2 According to the most commonly accepted account of the period, that provided by Justin (and despite its obvious pitfalls), Magas of Cyrene betrothed his daughter Berenike to prince Ptolemy, the recognized heir-to-be of Ptolemy II Philadelphos towards the end of his life (d. 250 BCE) and did so from the political necessity of realigning Cyrene under Ptolemaic rule.3 Certainly this makes sense in the bigger light of Philadelphos’ foreign policy whereby throughout the late 250s BCE he was actively using his children to form marriage alliances with neighbouring kings. The most notable occasion, and of relevance here, was in 253 BCE when his daughter Berenike Syra made the trip from Alexandria to Antioch to wed Antiochus II and he provided a dowry so vast that it gained for her the showy title Phernophoros, ‘dowry bringer’.4

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt (p.141) The evident gap in time between the betrothal of Berenike to Ptolemy Euergetes (late 250s BCE) and her eventual marriage into the Egyptian royal house in 246 BCE is problematic. It is usually explained by recourse to Justin’s juicy story involving the sexual shenanigans of Berenike’s mother, Apame, who pursued her own foreign policy and bid for power by inviting the pro-Seleucid Macedonian Prince, Demetrios the Fair, to marry Berenike and thereby effectively cancelling the betrothal to Ptolemy Euergetes and reasserting a bid for Cyrenaica’s independence. For her part, the precocious Berenike, aged (it can only be presumed) just 13 or 14, is credited with taking the initiative by having Demetrios murdered (while in the bed of Apame), and consequently reconfirming her alliance with Egypt and reactivating the former betrothal arrangement.5 The Demetrios affair is not the only indication in the sources that powerful factions in Cyrene continued to resist the prospect of Egyptian rule and Berenike’s pursuit of her father’s plan. She was impeded in exercising her independent power when (probably c.249 BCE) a ‘republican’ party managed to gain the upper hand in Cyrene.6 Their hold on Cyrene was short-lived, however, when Ptolemy II sent his eldest son to restore order in the country and effectively make Cyrene into an Egyptian protectorate. Crown Prince Ptolemy appears to have stayed in Cyrenaica for almost five years, perhaps as a viceroy or regent for Ptolemy II, before heading back to Alexandria when news reached him of the impending death of his father (246 BCE). The fact that Ptolemy did not marry his cousin Berenike during this period is difficult to understand. Berenike was, after all, certainly of marriageable age and, as Cyrene’s heiress, a desirable commodity.7 For her part, Berenike gives the strongest indication that her vision of becoming queen of Egypt via marriage and of uniting the two kingdoms remained active policy during this period. Indeed, her ambition (p.142) is given striking emphasis by the possibility, following Tarn’s reading of the evidence, that she minted coins in Cyrene on which she chose to depict herself as an eligible queen, very youthful, wide-eyed, and unveiled.8 Her elegant coinage bears the superscription of ‘Queen Berenike and King Ptolemy’, a tag by which Berenike decisively staked her claim as the First Lady of Egypt. The message that the coins gave out to Egypt and Cyrene was clear: the young queen advertised her desire to continue the policies of Magas and Philadelphos by marrying the Egyptian heir. To prince Ptolemy the coins must have read like love letters. The events between Berenike’s original betrothal and eventual marriage are crucial for understanding how she may have later reacted, as queen of Egypt, on both a personal and a political level. A detailed account of Cyrenian internal politics during this period is not yet accessible but what emerges is Berenike’s unbending will to marry into the Ptolemaic family and reunite the two kingdoms.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Given this, what did the disturbingly long gap between her betrothal and eventual marriage mean for the young princess who discovered herself fighting her own mother on one side and astute politicians on another, whilst determined to realize her own vision of her future? On her early coin portraits, Berenike, despite her pretensions of greatness and her pro-Egyptian aspirations, is revealed as actually in an uncomfortable state of limbo. She is, on the coins and in real life, parthenos—and is destined to remain so until her progress to nymphē and gynē is confirmed through marriage. The parthenos state was perilous for any normal girl, but it was especially so when the girl happened to be the ruler of a nation which was also in a similar state of limbo. The political turmoil of Cyrenaica highlights Berenike’s single-minded policy, but it cannot account for the length of time she remained unwed. The glaring question, then, is why didn’t prince Ptolemy come to his betrothed’s rescue, marry her and release her from her parthenos state, fulfil his father’s wishes, and secure Egypt’s hold over North Africa? The answer would appear to lie in an emerging Ptolemaic royal practice whereby a king took a wife only upon his accession to the throne, that is to say, in this case, not until Ptolemy Philadelphos was dead. In the late nineteenth century, (p.143) Mahaffy had perceptively observed that, ‘it was not the practice of Ptolemaic crown princes to get married before they ascended the throne…though the reigning Ptolemies marry as soon as possible’.9 It should be emphasized, however, that this is not a Pharaonic tradition per se, but an innovation enthusiastically practised by every Ptolemy, with the exception of the rulers of the last generation of the royal house. For instance, while Ptolemy Philadelphos did have a wife, Arsinoe I (the mother of all his known children), he repudiated her in favour of his own sister, Arsinoe II, whom he married, in imitation of an incompletely understood Pharaonic tradition,10 around 276 BCE, approximately seven years after becoming king. Ogden suggests that Arsinoe I was not so much repudiated as ‘retired’.11 If this is so, and the Demotic evidence for this is good, argues Ogden, Philadelphos’ decision to marry his own sister was used to create a new authorized line of heirs; effectively, his reign might be said to start afresh with his marriage to Arsinoe II. Ptolemy III did indeed honour the betrothal and follow his father’s practice by marrying as soon as he had taken the double crown (246 BCE).

Berenike II, Queen of Egypt

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Ptolemaic policy based on Philadelphos’ precedent can account for the delay in Berenike’s marriage but it may be justifiable to wonder how much reassurance during the long engagement she could have derived from a single precedent. In fact, the same policy points to a much more dangerous and ongoing threat. White has argued that, drawing on Philadelphos’ example, there was an expectation at court that the new king, Ptolemy III, would likewise marry his blood sister.12 A full brother–sister relationship offered, after all, the safest (p. 144) or most trustworthy bond in the permeable politicking of the royal house. At the time of his accession in 246 BCE, Ptolemy III’s only sister, Berenike Syra, had already been shipped off to Syria to marry Antiochus II (in 253 BCE) and he honoured his promise to marry his cousin Berenike. Nonetheless, the pressure on Ptolemy III to marry his sister might have been very real, and Berenike’s status, both when betrothed and in her new role as Egypt’s queen, remained tentative. Philadelphos had already rejected one wife in order to marry a sister and in doing so had changed the face of Ptolemaic religious and cultural practice. According to Hazzard’s interpretation of events, Ptolemy III was keen to promote a public image of his deep affection for his sister who played a key role in royal propaganda before and during the Third Syrian War.13 Ptolemy even, arguably, struck gold and silver coins with her image, in imitation of Philadelphos’ similar coinage for Arsinoe II. In comparison, Berenike’s position was negligible, and she must have felt it acutely. The threat posed by Berenike Syra to Berenike’s hold on Ptolemy III and the Egyptian throne was made real very soon after their marriage in January 246 BCE. Just a few months later, Berenike Syra’s husband, Antiochus II, suddenly died—poisoned, perhaps, by his rejected wife Laodike II. Not only was Ptolemy’s sister free to marry him, and thereby continue the important socio-religious policy invented by their father, but considering the geographic, military, and financial benefits of allying himself to either Cyrene or the Seleucid Empire, then the large and wealthy lands of Asia obviously had their appeal for the young king. Berenike Syra Phernophoros could earn her title once more and on an even grander scale. When Berenike Syra’s call came for her brother to aid her in her plan to rule Asia in the name of her infant son, Ptolemy immediately gathered his forces and advanced towards Syria, leaving his new bride, and possibly their joint future, behind him. The resulting Third Syrian, or Laodikean, War saw a heavy Egyptian presence in Syria. There are many uncertainties as to the events of the war and the reliability of the sources, but the balance of opinion suggests that before Ptolemy reached Antioch, Berenike Syra and her (p.145) son had already been killed on the orders of Laodike.14 This does not necessarily change Ptolemy’s imperialist policy towards Syria, merely the mode of claiming it—from bridegroom to avenger.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt What concerns this investigation is queen Berenike’s perception of, and response to, these events. As Ptolemy III embarked on his Syrian campaign, Berenike vowed that she would dedicate (or dedicated there and then) a lock of her hair, to all the gods in exchange for his safe return.15 The exact timing of the dedication is not important here, but the place of the dedication is: Berenike chose the temple of her dead and deified mother-in-law Arsinoe II on Cape Zephyrion, a cult site for the late queen’s worship as Aphrodite. The act of dedication was, no doubt, accompanied by the kind of pompē in which the Ptolemies so lavishly indulged. Famously, around these events, the poet Callimachus constructed a poetic narrative wherein following its dedication, the lock mysteriously vanished until the astronomer Conon once again found it in the form of a constellation of stars. Several scholars have argued for the poem’s function as a legitimizing tool for the new dynastic couple, and Gutzwiller claims that it was designed specifically to serve Berenike’s own propaganda policy.16 It is generally acknowledged that an early version of this poem probably circulated independently and was later incorporated into the closing of Book Four of the Aitia.17 If this is so, then the socio-cultural, and even political, implications of the poem resonated deeply enough within the poet for him to revisit the work in the last years of his creative life. What could have been so significant about this single act to cause both poet and queen to lavish such attention upon it? The act of dedicating the lock of hair and accompanying ritual fanfare, as well the poem’s wide cultural advertisement had, for Berenike, a double bonus. It assimilated her closely to the growing cult of Ptolemaic queenship, since she offered the lock in the temple of Arsinoe (called in the poem μητρός, line 45), and establishes in the most public manner possible a private passion shared between the king and (p.146) queen. The need for such a public declaration, and recognition, may have seemed particularly urgent given the way in which Ptolemy had abandoned her to aid his sister and potential wife shortly after the wedding. As she did in Cyrene when her status was under threat, so, in Egypt, Berenike again made adroit use of public imagery to reassert and emphasize a bond with Ptolemy and his dynasty, a bond which was, in reality, far more permeable than those images suggest.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt This is a strategy she continues to employ during the difficult years of her husband’s absence. Shortly after Ptolemy’s departure to Syria, Berenike sought to consolidate her queenship with the issue of new coin types, minted in Alexandria, showing the youthful queen’s highly idealized facial features and representing her wearing a veil. A single cornucopia and royal diadem is also used, in imitation of, but not as a duplicate of Arsinoe II, who is regularly shown wearing a veil and with a double cornucopia.18 This indicates that Berenike is keen to mould herself as a descendant of, and heir to, Arsinoe II, but not to claim any of Arsinoe’s remarkable privileges or honours. A series of marble and faience heads of the queen, showing her distinctive chubbiness, probably date to this part of the reign too.19 The marked corpulence of the queen’s image is an Egyptian tradition readily adopted by the Ptolemies as a signifier of power. Further evidence of Berenike’s concern regarding the status of her marriage and her use of image to consolidate and control its public perception occurs early on in the course of the Third Syrian War when she departed from Egypt and sailed to Syria to rendezvous with the king. This important voyage is often overlooked in the scholarship, due to the understandably muddled readings of the often tattered Gurob Papyrus, our chief source for the early stages of the war.20 This document is written in the first person as King Ptolemy narrates, in summary form, the course of the war. The section relevant here describes the king’s arrival at Antioch (in 246 BCE), now under Egyptian control, to a rapturous welcome from the locals. He then talks about meeting his ‘sister’ in the Antioch palace: Nothing pleased us so much as the enthusiasm [they showed]. Then since… the offerings which were ready…and of private individuals, (p.147) we poured libations, and now / that the sun was setting we immediately went in to see (our) sister, and after this we turned to practical business. Here the confusion begins. It is often assumed that Berenike Syra and her child had already been murdered by Laodike at this point. In order to explain the reference to ‘sister’ in the Gurob papyrus, historians have argued, following the testimony of Justin (or the even more bizarre account of Polyaenus)21 that Ptolemy either found his sister still alive in Antioch (and that she met her death while in Egyptian safe-hands somehow later) or that he covered up her death in order to perpetuate the fiction that the war was being waged in her defence.22

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt There is a more logical and economical solution to this problem: that the ‘sister’ mentioned in the Gurob papyrus is the other Berenike, the wife and not the blood sister, following the standard Pharaonic terminology adopted by the Ptolemies whereby ‘sister’ is used to denote ‘wife’ or ‘queen’. This important interpretation was first suggested by Bevan and is still the most cogent account, although it remains largely ignored or rejected in scholarship.23 This reading also makes better sense of a possible earlier mention of the word ‘sister’ in the particularly fragmentary section of the text of Col. II 1–4—a reference to five ships commanded by the Egyptian officers Pythagoras and Aristocles sent by the ‘sister’ to transport money from Cilicia to Seleucia to aid Ptolemy’s war effort. It is more logical to see queen Berenike’s hand in this than Berenike Syra’s, not least because queen Berenike was ideally placed in Alexandria to control the navy. Following Bevan then, it is easy to picture Berenike making the short trip from Alexandria to Egyptian-controlled Antioch to greet her victorious husband. Such a visit, with accompanying pomp no doubt, was the perfect opportunity to enact her vision of public and private queenship as well as to check on Ptolemy’s fidelity to their joint political future. The journey seems to have been worth it for, with her return to Egypt, and Ptolemy’s brief leave of absence from the battlefield in 243/2 BCE, the royal couple declared themselves Theoi Euergetai in the cult of Alexander.24 For Berenike, this meant the surest confirmation that she had achieved both the public and, (p.148) more importantly, private recognition as undisputed wife and queen of Ptolemy III. Her future was assured.

Berenike II’s Royal Image It is clear that early on in Berenike’s career she had to calculate and construct a coherent political image of herself to effect her goals. To see how the queen’s personal propaganda worked, it is important to take a step back to see if the early image is dispensed with after the immediate crisis has past, or whether it is maintained and developed. Scholars have assumed that since Ptolemy III had no known mistresses or concubines then his marital relationship with Berenike was a good one; certainly, in the public eye he promoted her status to both Greek and Egyptian subjects.25 It is reasonable to assume that the queen herself took an active role in her own self promotion, continuing her successful strategy of public image creation thus far. She had much to live up to: the cult of Arsinoe II, and the former queen’s uninhibited exploitation of self-image, was the dominant force in the Ptolemaic ideology of queenship. Berenike, in fact, succeeded in adopting, adapting, and advancing the imagery of the queen throughout her reign.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Studies of Berenikean imagery have explored how the queen essentially copied Arsinoe II’s successful propaganda policy, in which Ptolemaic queens embody Aphrodite (or sometimes Demeter) for Greek eyes and Isis for Egyptian ones.26 But this does an injustice to (and certainly underplays) Berenike’s acumen and individuality in developing an image that draws on, yet stands apart from, that of Arsinoe II. It is Callimachus’ poem, the Coma Berenices, which points the way to understanding Berenike’s innovations. In her study of the romantic dynamics of this poem, Gutzwiller has convincingly advanced the notion that while all three early Ptolemaic queens either promote or benefit from an identification with Aphrodite, the reasons for doing so are varied: (p.149) while the Soteres had emphasized the legitimacy of children born to loving spouses and the Philadelphoi had emphasized the bond of affection between siblings, the third dynastic couple chose to stress the passionate attraction of the young bride and groom.27 This vision is not confined to Ptolemy and Berenike’s honeymoon period, but is endorsed throughout the reign, and, more importantly, was one designed to function in both Greek and Egyptian terms. In fact, the individuality of Berenike emerges clearly only when the Egyptian aspect of her self-promotion is understood. Scholars of Ptolemaic queenship routinely connect royal women with Isis as the Egyptian counterpart of Aphrodite.28 There is, without a doubt, a vital interaction between queens and this most important goddess, who is seen as divine mother, lover, and mourner. That Arsinoe II, in particular, managed to exploit these connections in spectacular and monumental manner is well known. In fact, if Berenike II wanted both to exploit this resource and carve her own niche in the Ptolemaic pantheon she had to forge an identity close enough to, yet far enough from, Arsinoe II. This was no easy task given Arsinoe’s expertise in cross-cultural propaganda and the fact that even Ptolemy III continued to promote his step-mother’s cultic and cultural importance.29 Berenike could draw on the Aphrodite–Isis vision of queenship, but needed to nurture an individual aspect too. She found the key to the problem in the trials of her formative years as a queen, and from the post-Syrian War period onwards: she promoted the use of the Hathoric model of queenship and advanced a self-assimilation with the goddess Hathor. Selden’s groundbreaking work on Egyptian imagery in Callimachus’ work acknowledges an element of Hathoric imagery employed in the Coma Berenices, albeit within an Isidic model.30 It is possible to go further and see that what the poem is drawing upon at those moments is Berenike’s own use of the Hathor image—and, more importantly, Hathor separate from (p.150) Isis—as a tool throughout her political career in Egypt. Moreover, her use of Hathor works best as an Egyptian model, and it is in this form that Berenike’s innovative vision of Ptolemaic queenship is located.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Hathor Of the many goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor is one of the most easily recognizable, and yet mysterious, of deities.31 So vast is her influence, Hathor existed for the entire history of Egyptian culture as a powerful and influential goddess. She is the daughter of Re, the sun god, and is often seen as the eye of the god. As the great cosmic goddess she is ‘the mother of her father’ and ‘the daughter of her son’.32 She is one goddess and many goddesses, and was representative of all goddesses. Thus, she can be Hathor-Isis, Hathor-Mut, Hathor-Nekhbet, and so on. Iconographically, the goddess is usually represented as a beautiful woman, or as a cow-headed woman, or in purely bovine form, wearing a headdress of the sun-disk surmounted between two elongated cowhorns. In Egyptian, she is called Hwt-Hr, which is usually translated as ‘House of Horus’, referring to the elder Horus. In hieroglyphs, her name is represented as a large enclosure with a falcon within. From this, it is to be surmised that Hathor is seen as the great sky itself, holding Horus within her womb, which is poetically referred to as ‘house’. In this form, Hathor is both a solar sky-goddess and a personification of the night-time sky too. Selden has stressed the Ptolemies’ close affiliation with Horus, who represents the living king.33 In fact, in the temple of Philae the identification is made categorically: ‘The king of Upper and Lower Egypt, (p.151) Ptolemy—He is Horus.’34 Hathor, therefore, is the protectress of the living king. But she is more, as a hymn from Denderah makes plain: The One, the sister without equal, The most beautiful of all, She resembles the rising morning star, At the beginning of a happy year. Shining bright, fair of skin, Lovely the look of her eyes, Sweet the speech of her lips… True lapis-lazuli her hair, Her arms surpassing gold…35

Hathor is a supremely sexual goddess and, as not only the protectress of Horus, but also his wife, brings him joy through her beauty, her love, and her nurturing.36 In this aspect, her image as the cow suckling pharaoh is important too.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Hathor is also the goddess most closely connected to the divine queenship; in fact, she is fundamentally representative of royal women. As Robins and Troy have demonstrated, from the Middle Kingdom onwards, but increasingly from the 18th dynasty, queens wear a headdress of straight falcon plumes, representing the eyes of Re and as such, symbols of Hathor.37 The goddess herself is sometimes shown wearing a pair of curved ostrich feathers; in linguistic terms the falcon plumes and ostrich feathers are both called šwty—and a link between the plumes of the queen and goddess is thereby presumed. From the 18th Dynasty onwards, queens begin to wear Hathor’s cow horns and sun disk in conjunction with the falcon feathers, just as Hathor frequently combined them with ostrich plumes. Finally, Hathor is often shown seated with the king on his throne, occupying the place usually reserved for the queen who is shunted to the rear of the scene and cast in the role of Ma’at. In other words, Hathor stands in for the queen herself. In Ptolemaic times, although it is true that Hathor could be assimilated into the important figure of Isis, the goddess never lost (p.152) her right to exist as an independent deity; a fact demonstrated by the numerous temples and shrines erected in her name throughout the period. Hathor, therefore, offered an ideal niche for Berenike inasmuch as she could represent a continuation of the identification with Isis but also occupy a unique place in Greco-Egyptian culture.

Berenike–Hathor There is in fact abundant evidence, as yet unnoticed, for Berenike’s identification with Hathor. The queen’s titles alone demonstrate this aptly. Berenike’s titulary is found at Philae, Dakka, Edfu, Karnak, and in the famous Canopic Decree; it is elaborate if somewhat repetitive. The fullest and most dramatic titulature is found on the base of a now-missing statue in Cairo. It reads: The Female Horus, daughter of the ruler, made [out] of the ruler, ornament of Khnum, she who ascends up to the sublime and beautiful Goddesses, the heiress of the two lands, the female Wazir, daughter of Thoth, Great of Power, Protectress of the miserable which are given to her, the mistress [i.e. Two Ladies] of all lands [lit. the rekhty-people], Her bravery and her strength is that of Neith, mistress of Sais, her excellence is that of Bastet, Mut, and Hathor in her beauty of the w3hy [Festival]-forecourt. Mistress of the Two Lands, Berenike, sister-wife of the son of Re, Ptolemy, the Beneficent Gods.38

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Here, the identification with Hathor as a distinct entity is promoted, even though she is linked to other goddesses too. In an inscription from Philae, however, Berenike is likened to Hathor alone, ‘in her great love’.39 It is important to realize that these titles which directly connect Berenike to Hathor are not made for any other Ptolemaic queen—even though the Philae title was later appropriated for Arsinoe III. It is particularly surprising, given the repetitive nature of royal female titles, that even in Arsinoe II’s rich panoply of titulature, there are no Hathoric connections. Iconography stresses the relationship too: the carved relief on the Kom el-Hisn Stela, which heads the Canopic Decree of 238 BCE, shows Ptolemy III and Berenike II in the company of a number of gods, (p.153) including the first two generations of the royal dynasty.40 The king stands opposite the personification of the third Egyptian nome, whose principal deity was Hathor, while Berenike balances the composition and stands behind her husband in exactly the same place occupied by Hathor in the opposite line-up. It should also be noted that Berenike is the only queen to wear the šwty plumes, horns, and sun disk of Hathor. In 237 BCE, Ptolemy III began the construction of the temple of Horus at Edfu. A relief in Chapel 9 shows him making an offering to Horus, Hathor, and Harpokrates (the youthful aspect of Horus), together with his royal forebears and images of himself and his queen, and once more shows Berenike in the Hathor headdress. While the relief carvings on the chapels surrounding the naos of Horus date predominantly to the reign of Ptolemy IV, nonetheless his divine parents figure prominently on the decorative scheme. Ptolemy III and Berenike II are depicted in the sanctuary, passageways, the hall of offerings, the west staircase, and the hypostyle. They are particularly honoured by being depicted in the pronaos and on the east face of the naos itself.41

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Images of Berenike on Ptolemy’s most notable free-standing structure, the Euergetes Gate at Karnak, also show her wearing the headdress of Hathor (Figure 6.1; Figure 6.2). In one scene (Figure 6.3), Berenike offers lotus garlands, while Ptolemy gives nu jars, to a seated Khonsu accompanied by Het Heret, an aspect of Hathor specifically referring to her role as a sky or astral goddess associated with fertility and bounty. Married women would go to the temples of Het Heret for fertility rites that would hopefully lead to a successful pregnancy. Hathor receives particular honours on the Euergetes Gate, appearing more times than any other goddess and frequently bearing the epithet (wrt) Hrtib bnbn ‘(great one) who resides at the benben’. Her role is that of consort of the god, a fact which again makes her connection to Berenike important. Even in the early years of Ptolemy IV’s reign, Berenike continues to be linked with Hathor. An opaque red and turquoise glass foundation plaque has been found in the Hathor temple at Cusae, written in cursive hieroglyphs and Greek uncials.42 Here Ptolemy IV records cult honours given to his royal parents as well as to ‘Hathor who is in Heaven’. (p.154)

Fig. 6.1. Ptolemy III and Berenike II receive their royal titles and symbols of perpetual rule, all carefully recorded by the god Khonsu. The pharaoh wears the double crown while the queen wears the distinctive Hathor headdress of sun disk, horns, and plumes. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt (p.155)

Fig. 6.2. Berenike II (face mutilated probably in the early Christian period) wears the distinctive crown of the goddess Hathor. Detail of a relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt It is clear that in the Egyptian Fig. 6.3. Ptolemy gives nu jars and cultural vocabulary, throughout Berenike II offers lotus garlands to the the reign of Ptolemy III and god Khonsu, accompanied behind the beyond, Berenike is assimilated throne by Het Heret, a fertility aspect of to the royal fertility goddess Hathor. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, Hathor. But can this Hathoric temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd imagery translate into the Llewellyn-Jones Greek cultural sphere? It is useful to remember that there is no specific Greek equivalent for Hathor. Since the Hathoric element is so important to Berenike’s Egyptian-style self-promotion, and since it is the one aspect which is unique to her amongst the Ptolemaic women, it is reasonable to conclude that it was within an Egyptian frame of reference that she found her image first, and then attempted to construct it into a Greek framework, and not vice versa. Thus, as Lady of Byblos,43 Hathor was seen by her Egyptian worshippers as the mistress of their empire in Asia, an image which Berenike herself would have been keen to appropriate, especially as she made the sea voyage north by ship to join her husband in his reclamation of Antioch and other Seleucid territories. Was she not Hathor journeying to her Horus, in the mode of the annual Festival of the Beautiful Embrace, celebrated at Edfu? This important ritual was a spectacular celebration of the god’s love for his goddess when (p.156) Hathor was taken by ship from her temple at Denderah down the Nile to reside with him for two weeks at his home in Edfu.44 For his part, Horus came part way up the Nile to greet his consort and escort her back to his temple. The citizens of Edfu and devotees of Hathor who travelled from far afield to commemorate the great reunion celebrated with feasting and music, but there was another purpose to the ritual: on the second day of the feast there was a change of emphasis as statues of the two gods were carried across the desert to the site of Behdet, the sacred burial ground of the primeval gods of Edfu. Here priests enacted a prophylactic ritual in which wax hippopotami and fish, inscribed with the names of the king’s enemies, were symbolically destroyed.45 So the purpose of the festival was twofold: to celebrate the sexual reunion of the gods and therefore stimulate Egypt’s fertility, and the power of that sexual union manifested in crushing and dissolving the nation’s enemies.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Ptolemy’s building of the Edfu temple can be viewed partly as a commemoration of that important event when Berenike travelled to Syria for a reunion with her husband at the moment when Ptolemy was engaged in the annihilation of his Seleucid enemies. That is not to say, of course, that Berenike sailed to Syria with the thought that she was Hathor going to meet her Horus, but only in hindsight and in the light of her evolving relationship with the Hathoric model of queenship, did the Euergetes couple mine the potential of associating themselves with a festive ritual of national importance for the populace of Upper Egypt.

Hathor’s Hair and Berenike’s Lock One of the most distinctive features about the cult and worship of Hathor, is the remarkable emphasis placed on the goddess’s hair.46 Not only does she wear a wide variety of hairstyles and wigs, including a distinctive form of bouffant hairstyle ending in two spiral locks (p.157) over the shoulders, but even her titles refer to her hair: Hathor is ‘she of the beautiful hair’ and ‘Lady of the Lock’. Hymns praise her hair as being ‘finer than linen’ and ‘blacker than night, raisins, and figs’.47 Even her priestesses display abundant hair, often supplemented with a three-strand plait woven into their wigs. In Egyptian tradition, hair, wigs, and hairstyling is flaunted as unambiguously sensual; ‘Come put on your wig and let us spend a happy hour’ says one woman to her beloved.48 For a goddess of sexuality and sensuality, the perfumed locks of Hathor are key to her character and so central is hair to Hathor’s power that Egyptian mythology imagines the loss of a lock of her hair as cosmically catastrophic, or as Selden sees it, a disaster bound up in the conflict of Horus and Seth: ‘My heart is for you…like the heart of Horus for his eye,…[of] Seth for his testicles,…as Hathor for her lock of hair’, reads one Ramesside papyrus.49

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Berenike’s portraiture, in Greco-Egyptian style, shows her in wigs or hairstyles of ringlets and curls, as opposed to the tiny kiss curls of her Greek imagery.50 This in itself is not unusual, since other Ptolemaic queens adopt similar coiffures (but not in any specific Isidic role), but what is important about the Egyptian ringlets of the Berenike portraits is their connection to Callimachus’ poem. The lock dedicated in the Coma Berenices is described first as a βόστρυχος (line 8), that is, a tight ringlet or spiral of hair: it is an Egyptian lock. At this important moment in her reign, and like much else in her later propaganda, Berenike promotes the Egyptian image first. The Greek hairstyles of the Ptolemaic royal women tend to be simple affairs, the hair merely softly pulled back to the nape of the neck in a simple chignon; moreover, the heads of the queens are usually veiled. The display of hair is not a Greek preoccupation and it has been argued that the veiling of the head and hair is derigueur for respectable women throughout the Hellenistic period.51 If Berenike wanted to create a memorable and individual public impression and promote her self-image, then it is likely that she brought the Egyptian elements (p.158) to the forefront, cutting off a long spiral of hair which would have framed her face and offering that as her dedication.

The Appeal of Hathor Given Berenike’s tenuous hold on the affections and political vision of her husband at the beginning of his reign, it is clear that the young queen needed to find a way to promote herself quickly and unambiguously. The Aphrodite/Isis image had nothing left to offer on its own—having been so fully utilized by Arsinoe II—and Berenike turned instead towards a Hathoric image. Moreover, the choice of Hathor was based not just on her availability as a separate entity in the pantheon, for it was Hathor, rather than Isis, who was the supreme goddess of sexual love in the Egyptian pantheon. Isis represents wifely devotion, the mourning widow, and the mother. When the relationship between Isis and Osiris stresses sexual desirability it is that of the husband rather than the wife, and the sexual beauty and fertile power of Osiris is lyricized. Hathor, however, rejoices in her own beauty and in the knowledge that she is the one sexually desired by her husband. In Callimachus’ poem, the lock’s separation from Berenike works as an analogue for Ptolemy’s separation from and desire for the queen. In the surviving fragment (110 Pf.), the lock relates his journey away from Berenike; he laments pitiably being apart from the queen and speaks longingly of his desire to experience the sensual pleasures of being with the queen. While the poem relates an event which might seem to commemorate Berenike’s desire for her absent husband’s return, the emphasis throughout is actually on the physical desire felt for Berenike; Horus desiring Hathor.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt The closest Greek counterpart for this aspect of Hathor is, of course, Aphrodite, but Hathor provides the Ptolemaic queen with even more: an intimate connection with divine queenship which any Greek model would entirely lack. Hathor offers Berenike a key into unlocking the codes of Pharaonic queenship, for Hathor is the lover of the king but also his divine protectress. She is the gatekeeper to the kingship, and acts as his alter ego, the feminine prototype. In the Greek pantheon, the sexually active, one might almost say voracious goddesses, like Aphrodite, are marginalized from access to power; the virgin goddeses are allowed to take the more masculine roles and (p.159) play the power games. In the Egyptian pantheon, fully sexualized goddesses are de facto powerful; their sexuality does not marginalize them. In fact, in Hathor’s case, her sexual relationship with Horus, that is to say the king, defines her. For Berenike, Hathor (and only Hathor) offers a legitimacy which even Aphrodite cannot guarantee. Macurdy and, more recently, Hazzard have seen Berenike as occupying a subordinate role to her husband but this is to misunderstand Berenike’s image by viewing it in purely Greek mode without its Egyptian framework.52 She is not passive and subservient but a supportive counterpart. Together they are Euergetai and as such were endowed with numerous Greek and Egyptian public honours. In effect, she played the perfect Hathor to his Horus, a role lyrically evoked in one New Kingdom Hymn to Hathor: The beauty of your face Glitters when you rise, Oh come in peace. One is drunk At your beautiful face Oh golden Hathor.53

Bibliography Bibliography references: Ager, S. (2005), ‘Familiarity breeds: incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty’, JHS 125, 1–34. Ager, S. (2006), ‘The power of excess: royal incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty’, Anthropologica: The Journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society 48, 165–86. Allam, S. (1963), Beiträge zum Hathorkult bis zum Ende des Mittlern Reich (Berlin). Antelme, R. S., and Rossini, S. (1999), Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt (Rochester). Ashton, S.-A. (2003), The Last Queens of Egypt (Harlow).

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Austin, M. M. (1981), The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest (Cambridge). Baum, N. (2007), Le Temple d’Edfou: A la découverte du Grand Siège de RêHarakhty (Paris). (p.160) Bernard, A. (1969), Les Inscriptions grecques de Philae, 2 vols. (Paris). Bevan, E. R. (1902), The House of Seleucus, 2 vols. (London). Bevan, E. R. (1927), The House of Ptolemy. A History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (London). Bianchi, R. S. (1988), Cleopatra’s Egypt. The Age of the Ptolemies (Brooklyn). Bingen, J. (2007), Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture (Berkeley). Carney, E. D. (1991), ‘What’s in a name? The emergence of a title for royal women in the Hellenistic period’, in S. B. Pomeroy (ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill), 154–72. Carney, E. D. (1992), ‘The politics of polygyny’, Historia 41, 169–89. Carney, E. D. (2000), Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman). Criscuolo, L. (2003), ‘Agoni e politica alla corte di Alessandria. Riflessioni su alcuni epigrammi di Posidippo’, Chiron 33, 311–33. Davis, N., and Kraay, C. M. (1973), The Hellenistic Kingdoms. Portrait Coins and History (London). Fletcher, J. (1994), ‘A tale of wigs, hair and lice’, Egyptian Archaeology 5, 31–3. Fletcher, J. (1995), Ancient Egyptian Hair: A Study in Style, Form and Function, unpubl. PhD thesis, Manchester Univ. Fletcher, J. (2005), ‘The decorated body in Ancient Egypt: hairstyles, cosmetics and tattoos’, in L. Cleland, M. Harlow, and L. Llewellyn-Jones (eds.), The Clothed Body in the Ancient World (Oxford), 3–13. Gelzer, T. (1982), ‘Kallimachos und das Zeremoniell des Ptolemaischen Königshauses’, in J. Stagl (ed.), Aspekte der Kultursoziologie. Aufsatze M. Rassem (Berlin), 13–30. Green, L. (1992), ‘Queen as goddess. The religious role of royal women in the late eighteenth dynasty’, in Amarna Letters. Essays on Ancient Egypt (San Francisco), Vol. 2. 28–41.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Gutzwiller, K. (1992), ‘Callimachus’ Lock of Berenike: fantasy, romance, and propaganda’, AJP 113, 359–85. Hauben, H. (1983), ‘Arsinoe II et la politique extérieure de l’Égypte’, in E. Van Dack et al. (eds.), Egypt and the Hellenistic World (Leuven), 99–127. Hauben, H. (1990), ‘L’expédition de Ptolemée III en Orient et la sédition domestique de 235 av. J.-C.’, APF 36, 29–37. Hazzard, R. A. (2000), Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda (Toronto). Heyob, S. K. (1975), The Cult of Isis among Women in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden). Hölbl, G. (2000), A History of the Ptolemaic Empire (London). Hollis, S. T. (2008), The Ancient Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers (2nd edn.) (Oakville). (p.161) Hornung, H. (1982), Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Ithaca). Koenen, L. (1993), ‘The Ptolemaic king as a religious figure’, in A. W. Bulloch et al. (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World. (Berkeley), 25–115. Laronde, A. (1987), Cyrène et la Libye hellénistique (Paris). Lesko, B. S. (1999), The Great Goddesses of Egypt (Norman). Lichtheim, M. (1976), Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III. The Late Period (Berkeley). Llewellyn-Jones, L. (2003), Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea). Macurdy, G. H. (1932), Hellenistic Queens (Baltimore). Mahaffy, J. P. (1895), The Empire of the Ptolemies (New York). Marinone, N. (1984), Berenike, da Callimaco a Catullo (Bologna). Ogden, D. (1999), Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death. The Hellenistic Dynasties (London). Pinch, G. (1993), Votive Offerings to Hathor (Oxford). Pomeroy, S. B. (1984), Women in Hellenistic Egypt (Detroit). Page 20 of 25

The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Posener, G. (1986), ‘La légende de la tresse d’Hathor’, in L. H. Lesko (ed.), Egyptological Studies in Honor of Richard A. Parker (Hanover), 111–17. Quaegebeur, J. (1988), ‘Cleopatra and the cults of the Ptolemaic queens’, in Bianchi (ed.) (1988), 41–54. Roberts, A. (1995), Hathor Rising (Trowbridge). Robins, G. (1993), Women in Ancient Egypt (London). Robins, G. (1999), ‘Hair and the construction of identity in Ancient Egypt c. 1480–1350 BC’, Journal of the American Research Centre in Egypt 36, 55–69. Rowlandson, J. (1988), Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge). Scheil, V. (1894), ‘Tombeaux thébains’, Mé moires de la Mission archéologique de française du Caire 11, 541–656. Seibert, J. (1967), Historische Beiträge zu den dynastischen Verbindungen in hellenistischer Zeit [Historia Einzelschriften 10] (Wiesbaden). Selden, D. (1998), ‘Alibis’, Classical Antiquity 17, 289–420. Sherwin-White, S., and Kuhrt, A. (1993), From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire (Berkeley). Stephens, S. (2003), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley). Tarn, W. W. (1913), Antigonos Gonatas (Oxford). Thompson, D. B. (1973), Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience: Aspects of the Ruler Cult (Oxford). Troy, L. (1986), Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History (Uppsala). (p.162) Walker, S., and Higgs, P. (eds.) (2001), Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth (London). Watterson, B. (1998), The House of Horus at Edfu: Ritual in an Egyptian Temple (Stroud). West, S. (1985), ‘Venus observed? A note on Callimachus, Fr. 10’, CQ n. s 35, 61– 6. White, R. E. (1898), ‘Women in Ptolemaic Egypt’, JHS 18, 238–66.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Witt, R. E. (1971), Isis in the Greco-Roman World (London). Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the Carnegie Trust of Scotland for their support in providing funding for a research trip to Egypt to study primary artefacts in Alexandria, Cairo, and Luxor. The authors are also grateful to Andrew Erskine for his patience and perseverance. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of our Egyptian friend and brother Eltaher Marey—known to all as Refaat—who died unexpectedly and before his time in 2009. Notes:

(1) Throughout, Berenike II, the wife and queen of Ptolemy III Euergetes, is referred to simply as ‘Berenike’; Euergetes’ sister, confusingly (but typically of the Hellenistic dynasties) also called Berenike, we will call ‘Berenike Syra’, after her Seleucid-Syrian connection. (2) An outline biography for Berenike (usually coupled with that of Ptolemy III) is provided by Bevan (1927), 74–5, 194–216; Macurdy (1932), 130–6; Ogden (1999), 80–1, 127–32, and Hölbl (2001), 45–51, 105. (3) Justin 26.3.2. See also Hölbl (2000), 45. (4) See Porphyry FGrH 260 F 43 (= Jerome In Danielum 11.6a). This text suggests that Ptolemy II used military aggression to constrain Antiochus II to marry Berenike Syra. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993), 126, regard the marriage to Berenike Syra as a deliberate component of Seleucid foreign policy willingly negotiated by Antiochus. In either case, it would have been stipulated by Ptolemy II that Antiochus’ heir would be a child born by the Egyptian princess and not by his repudiated wife, Laodike. See further Seibert (1967), 80. (5) Justin 26.3.3–6; Catull. 66. 25–8. The reference to this event in Catullus’ version of Callimachus’ poem does not survive in the Greek original. It must be conceded that the political situation in Cyrene throughout this period is difficult to track, and that any reconstruction is necessarily highly speculative; for the problems of the period, see Laronde (1987), 380–1. Whatever the reality of the situation in Cyrene, the focus here is on the emergence of Berenike as a political contender in the post-Megas period. (6) Plut. Phil. 1.4; Plb. 10.22.3. Two legislative reformers, Ekdelos and Demophanes, reportedly took over the direction of the country to preserve the ‘freedom of Cyrene’.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt (7) Occasional attempts have been made to argue away this problematic gap in time by placing the marriage at a date closer to 249 BCE (see Criscuolo (2003) ) but there is almost no evidence for this. (8) Tarn (1913), 449–51. (9) Mahaffy (1895), 491. (10) The Egyptian use of the word ‘sister’ (snt) to denote several of a range of females with close family ties, including wife, still poses problems for determining the kinship, if any, between a pharaoh and his wife and may well have misled the Ptolemies into believing that brother–sister marriage was a Pharaonic tradition. For an excellent overview of the royal practice, with full citations and bibliography, see Ager (2005) and (2006). (11) Ogden (1999), 73–80. (12) White (1898), 254–5. She sees the expectation that the Egyptian heir will marry a sister as so compelling that a betrothal to Berenike would, in effect, avoid marking Euergetes as a favoured heir, and assigns changes in the formulae used for him in public documents to his fluctuating status with regard to this marriage and his possible succession. (13) Hazzard (2000), 115. (14) Justin 27.1; Polyaenus 8.50. For the chronology of these events connected with the outbreak of the Third Syrian War, see West (1985); Hauben (1990); Odgen (1999); 80–1, 127–32; and Hölbl (2001), 48. (15) Callimachus, fr.110 Pf., Hyginus, Astron. 2.24; Schol. Arat. 146. (16) Gutzwiller (1992), 361. See also Gelzer (1982), 13–30; Hauben (1983), 120; Koenen (1993); Selden (1998); Stephens (2003). (17) See Gutzwiller (1992) and Koenen (1993) 89–113. (18) See Davis and Kraay (1973), pls. 25, 28. (19) See Bianchi (1988), 172–4; Walker and Higgs (2001), 46, 49; Ashton (2003), 82. (20) FGrH 160; tr. Austin (1981), 364. (21) Justin 27.1, Polyaenus 8.50. (22) See Ogden (1999), 129–31. (23) Bevan (1902), 201–2. Page 23 of 25

The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt (24) See Koenen (1993), 52–3. For the dating of the cult, see Bingen (2007), 38–9 n. 21. (25) On Euergetes sharing honours with Berenike, see Hazzard (2000), 112–13. (26) See especially Thompson (1973). (27) Gutzwiller (1992), 368. Significant, also, is Gutzwiller’s emphasis on the poem’s representation of a female perspective and that, although it serves dynastic purposes, the depiction ‘is predicated upon the queen’s own interests and experiences as a woman’, 384. (28) The bibliography on the use of both Isis and Aphrodite by Hellenistic queens, and Arsinoe II in particular, is extensive, but see especially Witt (1971); Thompson (1973); Heyob (1975); Pomeroy (1984), 28–40; Carney (2000), 219– 24; Gutzwiller (1992). (29) See Hazzard (2000), 115. (30) Selden (1998), 326–51. (31) For a general discussion of the nature of the goddess, see Lesko (1999), 81– 129. For more specific aspects of the goddess, see Allam (1963), Pinch (1993), Roberts (1995). For a detailed discussion of the multiple manifestations of Egyptian gods, see especially Hornung (1982). (32) On these titles and others, see Troy (1986), 53–72. (33) Selden (1998) passim. Selden’s excellent collection of Egyptian texts has much relevance for the Ptolemies’ cross-cultural ideological programme. They are eloquent testimony to the wide range of Egyptian cultural narratives upon which Callimachus and the Ptolemies drew. (34) See Selden (1998), 387. (35) Roberts (1995), 16. (36) On the sexual aspect of Hathor, see Antelme and Rossini (1999). (37) Troy (1986), 53–72, 126–30; Robins (1993), 23–5. For the goddess’s crowns and headgear, and their relationship to the human queen, see Green (1992). (38) Cairo CG 22186. (39) Bernard (1969), I.116. (40) Quaegebeur (1988), 52.

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The Hathoric Model of Queenship in Early Ptolemaic Egypt (41) For a thorough examination of the iconography and religious interpretation of the Edfu reliefs, see Baum (2007). (42) Cairo MS 204 (unpublished). (43) For Hathor’s connection to Byblos, see Lesko (1999), 97–9. (44) For a full discussion of this important festival and bibliography, see Watterson (1998). (45) On the ritual, see Baum (2007), with figs. 61–9. (46) For hair and wigs in Egyptian culture, see especially Fletcher (1994), Fletcher (1995), Robins (1999), Fletcher (2005). (47) See Selden (1998), 346, Posener (1986), 111–17. (48) See Tale of the Two Brothers, P. D’Orbiney = P. Brit.Mus.10183; Lichtheim (1976), 205. See further Hollis (2008), 94–7. (49) Selden (1998), 346–7. (50) Bianchi (1988), 172–4; Walker and Higgs (2001), 46, 49. (51) Llewellyn-Jones (2003), 121–54. (52) Macurdy (1932), 231, and Hazzard (2000), 110–15. (53) From Thebes (TT.130). See Roberts (1995), 9, and Scheil (1894), 549.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Virtual History Egyptian Style The Isolationist Concept of the Potter’s Oracle and its Alternative Ivan A. Ladynin

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords The paper deals with the ideological, religious, and historical aspects of the Potter’s Oracle. Other Greco-Egyptian sources (the Manetho tradition, the story of Nectanebo, and the figure of Alexander in the early Alexandrian prototype of the Romance of Alexander) allow us to discern in the Late Egyptian historiography the concept of long historical cycles ending with the disruption of order in Egypt and its eventual restoration by the agency of a great kingfounder. Thus, in the Potter’s Oracle the Macedonian rule in Egypt is a disaster ending a historical cycle and the eventual legitimate king originates from the Sun and is appointed by Isis as a new king-founder. Symptomatically, this concept of historical cycles can be given various messages in different versions: for Manetho contacts with the world outside Egypt are no good, and isolation is the best way to run foreign affairs (probably, because Egypt is not strong enough to achieve something better while a defeat by foreigners costs it too much); on the contrary, the concept of Alexander, son of Nectanebo, as a ‘new Sesonchosis’ implies that Egypt’s expansion and supremacy in the world is something natural. The Potter’s Oracle is, in fact, ultra-isolationist; and the comparison of these sources reveals a variety of ‘virtual histories’ shaped from standard elements and from the same matrix of the concept of long cycles. Keywords:   oracles, Egypt, apocalypse, Greece, Ptolemy

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Virtual History Egyptian Style The Greek text known as the Potter’s Oracle was first treated as a reflection of the Egyptian tradition more than a century ago; however, it was not until the publication by Lüdwig Koenen,1 that thorough study of it really started. So far this study has been performed mostly by Koenen himself, and the results were summarized in his contribution to a monograph on the Ancient Egyptian apocalyptic.2 This publication confirms the attribution of the text to the second century BCE.: the mention of ‘the one from the unholy’ (αὐτὸς ἐξ τῶν ἀνοσίων), coming from Ethiopia and fortifying himself in ‘a city’ (allegedly Panopolis; P2, I. 18–203) is thought to allude to the Upper Egyptian uprising of Harsiesis in 131– 129 BCE.; and this seems to be the terminus ante quem of the text,4 and gives a rather accurate chronological and historical setting of the disasters described in it. The other recognizable details of considerable importance are the mention of a king from Syria (P2, I.16: καὶ καθήξηι δὲ ἐκ Συρίας; P3, (p.164) I.30: καὶ καθήξει δ’ ἐκ Συρίας βασιλεύς), who came to Egypt before the Ethiopian and must definitely be Antiochus IV,5 and some things pertaining to the notorious city of ‘Typhonians’ near the sea, i.e. Alexandria. For the first time it is mentioned in the text as ‘the city being built’ (P3, I.2: τὴν κτιζομένην πόλιν), which is a faithful translation of the Egyptian r(ɜ)-ᶜ-ḳd(y)t—‘Building’— transcribed into Greek as Ῥακώτις.6 The use of this term takes the reader of the text to the earliest history of Alexandria, which is justified by its context in the Oracle: the text speaks here about the one who ‘will rule Egypt moving to the city being built’ (P3, I.1–2: ἄρξει δὲ τῆς Αἰγύπτου εἰσβὰς εἰς τὴν κτιζομένην πόλιν), i.e. undoubtedly Ptolemy Soter who made Alexandria his capital c.312 BCE.7 The move of an alien ruler to this city is the start of Egypt’s disasters; after this the Oracle says that this city ‘moulding gods anew will create for itself its own idol’ (P3, I.2–3:…πόλιν, ἥτις τοὺς θεοὺς ἐκ καινοῦ χωνεύσασα ἴδιον πλάσμα ἑαυτῇι ποιήσει), which probably alludes to the creation of Sarapis’ cult.8

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Virtual History Egyptian Style At the end of the Oracle the statues of gods brought to the ‘city’ are prophesied to come back to Egypt, when its disasters will be over (P2, II.34–5; P3, II.57–8); and this implies that these images had once been brought to the ‘city’ by its founders the ‘Typhonians’. The aim of this initial act must have been twofold: on the one hand, it seems to parallel the intention of the Persians to deprive Egyptians of their mediators in contact with their gods by abducting their statues as far as Asia.9 On the other hand, probably even the Persians had in mind as well to reinforce themselves by acquiring access to deities through these statues: symptomatically, such an intention is ascribed in the Bentresh Stela (perhaps, inspired by these Persian confiscations)10 to the ruler of Bakhtan trying to keep with him the healing statue of an (p.165) Egyptian deity.11 However, we know of an episode in the Ptolemaic period, which might have resembled the Persian confiscations of statues: Ptolemy III Euergetes concentrated the Egyptian sculptures of the Middle and New Kingdoms in his newly built Serapea at Alexandria and Canopus.12 Such an enterprise was not unprecedented and could be compared to Amenemhat III’s building of the Labyrinth with its numerous chapels of local Egyptian gods;13 but undertaken by Euergetes, who was the first Ptolemy to face an Egyptian rebellion,14 it could be comparable in the propaganda of his native opponents to earlier Persian actions. Though not mentioned directly, the abduction of the Egyptian divine images to Alexandria might be implied in the phrase of the Oracle about ‘moulding gods anew’ and the description of reprisals against temples that follows it (P3, I.5–6). Hence, according to all these recognizable features, the beginning of disasters described in the Oracle falls in the period from Soter to Euergetes; their peak is the second half of the second century BCE; and their end is still in the future.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style The chronological setting of the potter’s prophesying is not less exact than that of the events he depicted. The identity of the ‘potter’ and the reason for him to bear this designation is a separate question, better to be avoided at present.15 His prophecy takes place in the temple of Isis and Osiris in the king’s presence, and the priests suspect him at first of being mad and blasphemous (P1, 7–11). Hence his prophecy has to become and to be, in due course, defined in the colophon of the text as ἀπολογία (P2, II.54). The potter starts his speech by saying that: ‘he has been sent at the command of Hermes to the Island’ (P1, 12: ἀλλ’] εἰπόντος Ἑρμοῦ ἀποσταεὶς εἶναι [εἰς τὴν νῆσον) and succeeds in convincing the king about it. The king in the text is named Amenophis and is undoubtedly the hero of the story about the Egyptian lepers and the second invasion of the Jerusalemite Hyksos into Egypt narrated by Manetho and Chaeremon of Alexandria,16 (p.166) i.e. a figure familiar for the GrecoEgyptian historiography.17 The court magician of this king was his namesake, Amenophis son of Paapis,18 a figure whose prototype is undoubtedly the historical Amenhote son of Hapu, the minister of Amenhotep III. However, I do not agree with the view of D. Redford that the well-known ‘leprosy’ is a replica of the ‘disease’, i.e. plague, seemingly mentioned in the Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun19 and that the entire story of Amenophis is reminiscent of the Amarna time only.20 One should bear in mind that the Amenophis of the lepers’ story is placed by Manetho after Harmesses Miamun who reigned 66 years and 2 months (Jos. C.Ap. I.15. §97) and/or Rampses who reigned 66 years (id. I. 26. §231), both of these figures obviously being replicas of the historical Ramesses II. Thus, the story of Amenophis falls rather towards the end of the 19th dynasty, close to the end of a long historical cycle, which coincides with the second tomos of Manetho and includes his dynasties 12 to 19.21

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Virtual History Egyptian Style In some of its kernel elements the story of Amenophis and the lepers resembles the Potter’s Oracle rather strongly. In order to become able to see gods (Jos. C.Ap. I. 26. §232: θεῶν γενέσθαι θεατήν) the king takes the advice of the son of Paapis to expel the ‘impure’ lepers to stone-quarries; however, in due course the magician gets scared of the gods’ revenge for this iniquity and lets the pharaoh know that in future the lepers will be allied with some foreign foes and seize Egypt for thirteen years. This prediction by the magician is attested by Manetho (Jos. C.Ap. §236) but not by Chaeremon: the fear of the gods’ revenge comes to the magician suddenly, probably as a revelation; he fails to deliver his prediction to the king personally, but leaves it in writing before committing suicide. Similar details are (p.167) found in the Potter’s Oracle: the potter’s ability to deliver prophecies is obviously due to divine revelation, and after delivering them (though not in writing but orally) he expires (P2, II.49–50). The contents of predictions by the son of Paapis and by the potter are similar: they both foretell a period of alien control over Egypt; in both cases its base is an enclave at the north of the country near the sea (the former Hyksos metropolis of Avaris in the story of Amenophis and the lepers and the notorious ‘city’ of the Potter’s Oracle, which is explicitly called the ‘city-at-the-sea’ in the context of returning the gods’ images to Memphis).22 In both situations the king takes the prediction seriously: in the story of the lepers he sets them free on getting the prediction of his magician (and, ironically, grants to them Avaris, from which they will invade Egypt allied with the Hyksos); in the Potter’s Oracle though he does not try to prevent trouble as far as we know (perhaps he is simply unable to do it), he has the deceased potter buried in state and his prophecy placed in writing (P2, IV. 51–2).

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Virtual History Egyptian Style Curiously some of the points where the story of Amenophis and the lepers differs from the Potter’s Oracle are at the same time points of similarity between the latter text and the Middle Egyptian Prophecy of Neferty that describes the calamities of the First Intermediate Period and its outcome.23 Like Amenophis in the Potter’s Oracle (and unlike this king in the story of lepers), king Snofru in the Prophecy of Neferty does not seem to be personally responsible for the coming disasters; and he can also do nothing to prevent them except having their description written down (P.SPb. 1116B rec., 15–16). The Asiatic invasion into Egypt is alluded to at the start of the Prophecy of Neferty (id. 19–20; cf. 32–3) but it is not the only, nor the major reason, for the coming disasters, in which their natural aspects (like the decrease of the Nile inundation and, strangely, of the solar radiance: resp. id. 26–8, 53–4) are emphasized; so also the Potter’s Oracle (P2, I.1–2, 6; P3, I.13–14, 17–18). One of the calamities in the Potter’s Oracle is unparalleled in the Prophecy of Neferty, namely that under the Typhonian rule no king of Egypt would acquire the ‘divine victory’ (θείαν νίκην) over enemies (P3, I.8). This point is quite important, and it has rather more New than Middle Egyptian inspiration: its closest parallel is the statement in Tutankhamun’s Restoration Stela (p.168) about the lack of gods’ help for the Egyptian military under Akhenaten: ‘If an army was sent to Phoenicia to extend the borders of Egypt, it had no success at all’.24 However, this motif, though important enough, as we will see, is not developed at any length in the text. To continue with the comparison of the Oracle to the story of Amenophis and the lepers, in the latter text it is worth noticing that Egypt was saved from the alien domination by an effort of its rulers: Manetho ascribed this effort to Amenophis and his son Sethos-Ramesses (Jos. C.Ap. I. 26. §245) and Chaeremon to Amenophis’ son alone (id. I. 33. §292=FGrH. 618F1). Contrary to that, the Prophecy of Neferty and the Potter’s Oracle seem to feature no actual saviour of Egypt: the disasters of the country are shown as something inevitable, that has just to take its time and pass; after this a new legitimate ruler will come, and his advent will restore order more or less automatically. In the Prophecy of Neferty this idea is conveyed by the manner in which the description of disasters adjoins the prediction about the advent of Ameni/Amenemhat I accompanied by inaugural rituals that actually restore order without even involving the king’s other activities;25 the Potter’s Oracle reproduced the same idea by saying that first the ‘belt-wearers’ ruling Egypt will destroy themselves due to their evil nature as ‘Typhonians’ (P2, I.28; P3, III.49–50); then the Egyptian gods will leave Alexandria for Memphis (P2, I.28–9; P3, 50–2); and only after that the legitimate king originating from the Sun and appointed by Isis will come (P2, II.40: εὐμενὴς ὑπάρχων ἀπὸ Ἡλίου παραγένηται βασιλεύς…καθιστάμενος ὑπὸ θεᾶς μεγίστης; cf. P3, III.65). Finally, if the son of Paapis predicts the coming of the lepers’ dominion in the reign of Amenophis himself, both Neferty and the potter say nothing about the timing of the disasters to come: for the kings that listen to them these events lie in the indefinite future. Page 6 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style These distinctions taken into account, one can say that the story of the lepers and the Potter’s Oracle are parallel novelettes put in the same historical setting of the reign of Amenophis (we have already said that historically this setting must have corresponded to the end of the 19th dynasty). One of these parallels foretells a coming disaster caused directly by Amenophis’ iniquity; the other speaks of a distant prospect, for which none of the Egyptian rulers seems to blame. The (p.169) major and, as it seems, the sole guilt for this epoch of disasters is placed on the alien invaders denoted as ‘Typhonians’.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style One is entitled to ask if the meaning and the message of this term has been sufficiently explored. It seems to be applied not only to Greeks and Macedonians of Alexandria who are called ‘belt-wearers’ (οἱ ζωνοφόροι) in the Oracle26 but to the entire mass of non-Egyptians present in the world (perhaps to the ‘unholy’ Ethiopian kinsmen of Harsiesis): the prediction ‘The “belt-wearers” will destroy themselves being Typhonians’ (P2, I.13–14: ἑαυτοὺς δ’ οἱ ζωνοφόροι ἀνελοῦσιν ὄντες Τυφώνιοι; cf. P3, I.26–7; P2, I.27–8; P3, III.49–50) indicates quite definitely that the latter term is wider than the former and includes it. Since the Potter’s Oracle began to be studied the word ‘Typhonians’ itself has aroused next to no questions or desires for a better explanation: ‘Typhon’ is a well-known Greek equivalent of the Egyptian name ‘Seth’,27 and the ‘bad guys’ seem to be associated with this prince of evil with good reason.28 However, at least two good parallels to this term may be found in early Hellenistic hieroglyphic texts. The Egyptian word ̮fty (‘adversary’) is well-attested in the meaning of ‘god’s enemy’ (Wb. III, 276.15); in fact it has parallels in the Potter’s Oracle in the terms ‘impious’ (P2, I.15–16: πόλλους καταστρέψει αὐτῶν ἀσεβεῖς ὄντας; P3, I. 29: καταστρέψει [σὐν τοῖ]ς ποριζομένοις ἀσεβεῖς ὄντας) and “unholy” (αὐτὸς ἐκ τῶν ἀνοσίων; for Harsiesis, see above) also applied to foreign foes. The so-called Book of the Victory over Seth (Urk. VI, 1–59), entitled ‘The ritual for causing the downfall of Seth and his followers’ (Urk. VI, 5: nt-ᶜn s̮r Stš ḥnᶜ smyw.f), which goes back to the late Pharaonic and the early Hellenistic time29 is intended for a ritual expulsion of Seth and his aides, who are denoted throughout this text as ‘enemies’ and are thought to personify foreign foes invading Egypt.30 A similar use of the term ‘enemy’ is found in the Satrap Stela: this text contains an account about the Pharaoh Khababash who ruled Egypt in the interlude between Artaxerxes III and Darius III, and the name of Artaxerxes in (p.170) it (Ḫšryš or Ḫšryšɜ; Ladynin (2005) ) is repeatedly preceded by the word ̮fty (Urk. II, 17.3, 17.12, 18.4). The use of this word in respect of Egypt’s foreign foes identified with Seth and especially with his followers makes a neat analogy to the term of ‘Typhonians’ in the Potter’s Oracle and provides for it a definite mythological context. According to a number of religious texts, Seth and those who assisted him (his ‘followers’-smyw in the title of the magic book) were banished after their defeat by Horus from Egypt to the surrounding ‘deserts’-h˘ɜswt (i.e. Urk. VI, 13. 5–8): it was probably believed that up to that moment gods and mankind were concentrated inside Egypt and the world outside it acquired its population exactly due to the banishment of Seth. Following this idea, all the residents of the ‘deserts’, i.e. foreign countries, outside Egypt are the descendants of Seth/ Typhon, which justifies their designation ‘Typhonians’ perfectly well.31 We have already said that the Potter’s Oracle does not explain the domination of ‘Typhonians’ over Egypt by vengeance of the gods for someone’s iniquity, nor does it specify any reason for their appearance in the country. Most probably, the reason seemed to the author of the text to be the same as in the Book of the Victory over Seth, i.e. the mere aspiration of the brethren of Seth to get hold of Page 8 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style what their eponymous leader lost in the mythological past. We have seen what ‘Typhonian’ rule brought to Egypt according to the Oracle: the abduction of the gods’ images to the ‘city-at-the-sea’, the alien control of Egyptian cults, the lack of ‘divine victory’ with the rulers of Egypt of foreign descent, and especially the natural disasters. These latter troubles are especially significant: the natural processes providing for the subsistence of humans were thought by the Egyptians to be (p.171) a recompense for the ritual performed in the temples on behalf of a legitimate pharaoh (theoretically, by himself).32 The Admonitions of Ipuwer explain the calamities of the First Intermediate Period by the fact that the king who was responsible for the ritual and the maintenance of order neglected his duties and committed iniquities (p.Leid. I.344 recto, 12.12–13.2); hence the gods merely rejected the ritual he performed and did not recompense it with benefactions. The same logic would explain Egyptian failures at war: a military success was normally ascribed by Egyptian ideology not so much to the competent command of a king as to his ability to evoke irrational terror in his enemies, due to his divine descent and the protection of the gods.33 Probably, this is exactly what the Potter’s Oracle denotes as ‘divine victory’; and it comes to be an important criterion of a king’s legitimacy, as seen from the Restoration Stela (its lines quoted above deny implicitly this ability to Akhenaten, evidently due to his misdoings in the religious domain) and, much more neatly, from the Piankhy’s Stela (the king’s pre-eminence in legitimacy and divine protection over Egyptian princes is stressed in denoting him ‘a ruler, who is feared by those greater than he [is]’; l. 1: ḥḳɜ snḏ n.f wrw r.f; cf. the rest of the text and especially l. 15). Thus, the words of the Potter’s Oracle about the absence of ‘divine victory’ with any king of Egypt under ‘Typhonians’ are very significant: they presume there were rulers at that time who positioned themselves as legitimate pharaohs ‘eligible’ for having a ‘divine victory’; but they would not achieve it, probably because the gods rejected their ritual. The lack of ‘divine victory’ must have been postulated in the Oracle in the first place for the Ptolemies—but, perhaps, also for the Egyptian dynasts who tried to oppose them (like Harmachis/Harwennefer and Anchmachis/Anchwennefer in the late third to early second centuries BCE: Pestman (1995)): we have already seen that no individual terrestrial ruler would be able to overthrow ‘Typhonian’ domination, according to the Potter’s Oracle. Actually, something similar is seen in the account of the Satrap Stela concerning Khababash: when that pharaoh came to Lower Egypt he had already found it free of the Persians, and the priests of Buto told him that the liberator of their region was not a human ruler but the god Horus himself (Urk. II, 16.17–18.11). In the same way, the first assault on ‘Typhonian’ rule before (p.172) Antiochus—probably, the uprising in the Thebaid in the late third to early second centuries—is associated in the Oracle with the decision of Hephaistos (i.e. Ptah) to return to his home city of Memphis.34 After that decision of Hephaistos the ‘belt-wearers’ start to exterminate themselves for the first time; and the same impetus of the god’s

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Virtual History Egyptian Style decision probably preceded their ultimate downfall and the return of deities to their places. The Potter’s Oracle names the foreign lords and foes of Egypt as expressly ‘Greeks’ on one occasion (P3, II.33); however, in spite of this and of the definitely Ptolemaic allusions of this text, there is no reason to define it as anti-Greek or anti-Macedonian (cf. Johnson (1984) ).35 Its message is much larger than that: this composition is (p.173) xenophobic to all the peoples around Egypt, who are its enemies simply because of their nature, probably due to their ‘Typhonian’ descent. The ‘Typhonian’ domination is presented in the Oracle as a great danger, which reduces not just ordinary humans and kings but even the gods of Egypt to a state of helplessness. In view of this xenophobia the motive of the ‘divine victory’ granted to the legitimate pharaoh, though present in the Oracle, seems at the same time somewhat irrelevant to its concept: the statement that in this time of trouble the ‘divine victory’ is not given to anyone means probably that even an Egyptian ruler cannot be granted it to defeat the ‘Typhonians’; however, for the time after their downfall and the coming of a new legitimate king the Oracle predicts the recommencement of normal natural processes (P2, II.43–9; P3, IV.72–6) but says absolutely nothing of Egyptian activities abroad. In a way, this also bears a similarity to the Prophecy of Neferty, which does not portray Ameni/Amenemhat I as a great conqueror. However, since that time military successes had become a very important element in Egyptian royal propaganda; and its failure to feature in the activities of the much-awaited legitimate king in the Potter’s Oracle must have some cause. Probably, any contact with the ‘Typhonian’ world outside Egypt is simply felt too dangerous to be allowed at any length, even if it is a matter of subjugating this world to Egyptian power. In fact, much the same conclusion can be drawn from the story of Amenophis and the lepers: symptomatically, Manetho, who gave it in the most detailed version, confined the entire expansion of Egypt outside its boundaries to a short episode in the reign of Sesostris (p.174) (Waddell (1980), frags. 34– 6) and totally “forgot” about it for the period of the historical 18th to 19th dynasties!

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Virtual History Egyptian Style Incidentally, the Potter’s Oracle is not the only representation of Macedonian rule in the Late Egyptian tradition that is connected in some way with the story of Amenophis. Alongside it there is another story which belongs to a different historical setting but, according to a number of scholars, shows common features with the story of Amenophis in its structure and logic. This is the tradition about the last native pharaoh Nectanebo and his son and avenger Alexander, which is extant in the so-called Dream of Nectanebo36 and the Romance of Alexander.37 Its similarities with the tradition about Amenophis is especially clear in the case of Chaeremon’s version: according to Chaeremon, the calamities of Amenophis and his country started after he destroyed a temple of Isis during a war and the goddess reproached him for this in a dream (Jos. C.Ap. I.33, § 289). The Dream of Nectanebo recounts that this pharaoh neglected to provide the temple of Onuris at Sebennytos with hieroglyphic inscriptions (III. 5–9); in a dream he saw the god Onuris telling Isis about this injury (II. 6 ff.). The Romance of Alexander, when telling the story of Nectanebo (Hist. Alex. Magni, rec. α, I.1–14), ascribes to this king no iniquity before the gods but depicts him as a selfish and cunning person capable of fraud (he prefers to repel enemies by magic rather than by an honest fight; when escaping from Egypt he takes with him his country’s treasury; he does not hesitate to use his magic abilities to seduce the Macedonian queen; etc.). The gods’ anger fell on him when he learnt about a new foreign menace against his country and tried to oppose it, as usual, with a magic procedure of sinking wax images of enemy ships; on seeing that these ships bound for his country were piloted by Egyptian gods he wasted no time in leaving Egypt (id. 2–3). After his flight the Egyptians were given the prediction by ‘the invisible god of Sinopa’, i.e. Sarapis: ‘The strong, valliant and aged king (and) ruler who has fled will return in due time rejuvenated, casting off his elderly appearance, having circled the universe, to the land of Egypt, granting us the submission of (p.175) (our) foes’ (id. 3.4–5).38 This prediction came true after some years with the advent of Alexander and his victories over the Persians: when he entered Egypt not only did the realization of the oracle become obvious (id. 34.3–5) but local priests saluted him on his way through Egyptian towns as a ‘rejuvenated Sesonchosis, the ruler of the world’ (id. 34.2);39 and, later on, his triumphs in Asia were acclaimed with the words: ‘Egypt reigns again!’ (Hist. Alex. Magni, rec. γ, II. 27.3).40

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Virtual History Egyptian Style P. Fraser and L. Török have noticed that Diodorus’ account of Nectanebo’s flight to Ethiopia from the Persians (Diod. XVI, 51.2) corresponds to the flight of the king Amenophis from his foes in the same direction according to Manetho and Chaeremon.41 In seems, however, that the similarity between the traditions about the two rulers is a matter of their ideas and structure rather than of real facts: both Amenophis, according to Chaeremon, and Nectanebo are punished with a foreign invasion for a transgression concerning a temple; in both cases this invasion comes shortly after their misdeed and initiates a limited time span of foreign domination in Egypt; later on this dominion is overthrown by the son of the expelled king, who comes to Egypt partly as his avenger and partly as his ‘rejuvenator’ (in Manetho’s version of the story about lepers and the Hyksos, Amenophis simply comes to liberate Egypt together with his son: Jos. C.Ap. I. 27. § 251). We have seen that the connection of the Potter’s Oracle with the story of Amenophis is different: it merely develops the theme of an apocalyptic prediction taking place at the court of this king. However, if it is compared to the Potter’s Oracle, the story of Nectanebo and Alexander might be said to provide a positive alternative to it in presenting the advent of Macedonian rule in Egypt. That it was intended to make Alexander into a legitimate pharaoh of native Egyptian descent is clear; and in this respect it resembles another legitimating legend about Cambyses being born or married to the Egyptian princess Nitetis, daughter of Apries.42 (p.176) Now we would like to turn attention to another feature of this story: to its presenting Alexander as a great conqueror and, in this capacity, a ‘new Sesonchosis’, i.e. a repetition of the great Pharaoh of the past who possessed the entire world. Translating this motif about Alexander into the tradition of the Romance is impossible without the fiction of his Egyptian origin (in fact they are intertwined in the prediction of Sarapis about the advent of Alexander as ‘rejuvenated Nectanebo’); and this makes of the story as a whole a conceptual alternative to the isolationism of the Potter’s Oracle.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style That ‘Sesonchosis’ in the Romance of Alexander is the name of a worldconqueror to whom Alexander is repeatedly compared is clear from its context, including the epithet κοσμοκράτωρ following it.43 This name is applied to a warrior-king also in three papyrus fragments of Hellenistic fiction (the so-called Romance of Sesonchosis) where the military feats of this king’s youth are described among other things.44 The use of this name by Manetho will be discussed later; however, what seems really critical for the present discussion is its earliest appearance presumably in two fragments of Dicaearchus in the late fourth century BCE.45 We accept the view that codex (p.177) Laurentianus containing these names is the authentic copy of the scholia which influenced its other medieval copies46 and that the name-form ‘Sesonchosis’ in it goes back to the original text of Dicaearchus.47 The fragments of Dicaearchus portray Sesonchosis as the direct successor of the mythological god-kings, who, in this capacity, became a founder of human laws and skills (like horse-riding); incidentally, his position as the ‘king after Horus, son of Isis and Osiris’ strongly resembles the topos of the ‘time of Horus’ in Ancient Egyptian texts (see our n. 31 above) and probably displays authentic Egyptian influence. Dicaearchus’ fragments in this scholium definitely show the use of this name in the context of the founding activities of its bearer; however, the first phrase of the scholium and the information taken by the scholiast from other authors (Theopompus and Herodotus) equate the founder-king Sesonchosis with the famous Egyptian warrior-king Sesostris and ascribe to him the conquest of Asia and a greater part of Europe (practically world-domination). As for the name-form ‘Sesonchosis’, it is certainly very similar to the name of Shoshenq: in fact, Manetho’s tradition uses it in varied forms to denote both Shoshenq I (Waddell (1980), frags. 61a–b: Σεσώγχωσις, Sesonchosis; frag. 60: Σεσώγχις) and Senwosret I (frags. 34–6: Σεσόγχοσις, Sesonchosis). That this form of the name goes back to the name of Sheshonq I seems most probable; the reason to transfer it to Senwosret I as well would be that both of these kings were founders of important dynasties and, in fact, inaugurators of great epochs in Egyptian history (the second millennium BCE coinciding largely with the first tomos of Manetho’s Aegyptiaka48 and the Late Period which is covered in its third tomos). Manetho is likely to have applied the name-form “Sesonchosis” to the founder of the 12th dynasty in order to distinguish him from the warrior-king Senwosret III/Sesostris appearing in the middle of it; but to choose to use this name (p.178) he must have already had in mind its association for a Greekreading audience with the founding activities of an Egyptian king. We have observed this association in Dicaearchus; one might be entitled to ask whether this writer had already equated under this name the king-founder and the kingwarrior, as the scholiast eventually did.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style To answer this question one should take into account that Dicaearchus was a Peripatetic and a direct pupil of Aristotle. Incidentally, Aristotle wrote about the great founder and legislator of Egypt, whom he named Sesostris, presuming his identity with the warrior.49 We do not accept the idea of A. Ivantchik that Dicaearchus should have necessarily used the same form of the ruler’s name as his teacher did (stronger Egyptian influence felt from his allusion to ‘the time of Horus’ might have led him to use what he thought was its more authentic form, as his contemporary Hecataeus of Abdera actually did).50 However, Dicaearchus must have known about the identity of the two rulers—founder and warrior— from the writings of his teacher. A combination of these qualities in one image (with more emphasis on the military sphere though than on his role as founder and without presuming direct succession from the gods) is found in Diodorus’ account of Sesoosis (another form of the same personality’s name) which goes back to Hecataeus of Abdera, who wrote, like Dicaearchus, in the late fourth century BCE.51 Last but not least, the scholiast indicated only three sources for his information; two of them—Herodotus and Theopompus—know nothing of the great king’s founding activities and definitely name him ‘Sesostris’. The scholiast did not use other sources (why would he not have mentioned them explicitly?), and he was not likely to draw on the specific Greco-Egyptian tradition, like the works of Manetho, where the name form ‘Sesonchosis’ could be expected, for the sources he refers to belong to the Classical mainstream. In this case the only source for him to derive not only the evidence on the founder-king Sesonchosis but also his equation to the warrior Sesostris is Dicaearchus. The conclusion to be drawn is that the image of the great Egyptian king—founder and warrior, whose activities fell immediately after the epoch of gods—penetrated into the Greek Classical tradition by the last third of the fourth century BCE. It should also be noticed that this image (p.179) appears to be interpolated exactly at the place that initially belonged, according to Herodotus (II.4, 99–100), to Min/ Menes and was retained in some of its versions after him.52 Egyptologists do not doubt that the Classical evidence for Menes, whether his place in history is real or fictional, comes from Egyptian inspiration;53 so it would be natural to suppose the same for such a radical correction of this evidence as the total replacement of Menes by Sesostris/Sesonchosis.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style This supposition becomes stronger if we consider the message of Alexander’s being described as ‘the new Sesonchosis’. It must have been intended to show that at the very start of history the world was organized by a great ruler, who not only established order inside Egypt but also conquered and unified the foreign countries around it (this notion is especially seen in the replicas of this topos by Hecataeus/Diodorus, according to whom Sesoosis organized the exploitation of the subdued territories).54 Thus, the unification under Egyptian control was seen as the initial condition of the world, similar to the natural harmony and social order inside Egypt. The eventual loss of world dominion to other peoples—to Scythians already under Sesonchosis/Sesostris, and then to Assyrians, Medians, and Persians, according to the fictitious construction first hinted at by Megasthenes in the early third century BCE.55—seems therefore to have been considered a distortion of this initial order. So, when describing Alexander as ‘rejuvenated Sesonchosis, the ruler of the world’ and showing that his feats inspire the exclamation ‘Egypt reigns again!’, the Romance of Alexander implied that its hero restored with his deeds the norm that is appropriate to the world. The position thus granted to Alexander is similar to that of Ameni/Amenemhat I in the Prophecy of Neferty and of the unnamed legitimate king of the Potter’s Oracle. As we said, these figures do not seem to stop or eliminate chaos in a proper sense of the word; but they are extremely important as the restorers of order after the period of chaos is over. However, both of these texts confine the activities of these ‘saviour-kings’ to the limits of Egypt. This is expected for the Prophecy of Neferty in the early second millennium BCE, which was concerned with the cessation of chaos within the borders of Egypt; and the absence of external activities on the part of the future legitimate (p.180) king in the Potter’s Oracle is in keeping with its general isolationist trend. The image of Alexander as a ‘new Sesonchosis’, whose reconstructive activities are all connected with defeat of the foreign foes of Egypt and its expansion, is another thing entirely. In fact the opposition between these two images of kings restoring the norm results from the difference of opinions as to the initial norm itself: in the construct that inspired the Romance of Alexander it is the entire world unified and organized by an Egyptian king—but in the Potter’s Oracle it is merely Egypt, its life regulated within its boundaries and well-guarded from foreign menace.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style This difference of opinions on the norm correlates with the difference between the basic historical schemes of Egyptian history which underlie the story of Nectanebo and Alexander and the Potter’s Oracle. In a way both of these fictions define the place of the Hellenistic period within the totality of Egyptian history. The topos of Alexander as a ‘new Sesonchosis’ implies that Egyptian history is confined to one big cycle, which was started by the real Sesonchosis and ended by the king who would repeat his deeds. The Potter’s Oracle is embedded in the setting of Amenophis’ story and in the scheme to which it belongs and which is best presented by Manetho. In this scheme the history of Egypt falls into three big periods coinciding with the tomoi of his work; each of these periods is a cycle with a catastrophic disaster and a restoration of order at its end. The disastrous time of Amenophis, with the second invasion of the Hyksos allied with the Egyptian lepers, seems to be a logical ending to the long period of the 12th to 19th dynasties forming Manetho’s second tomos; incidentally, his first tomos ends with the mention of Amenemmes placed after the 11th dynasty (Waddell (1980), frags. 31–32a–b), i.e. Amenemhat I/Ameni of the Prophecy of Neferty (thus, the first cycle of Egyptian history ended for Manetho much as for modern scholars, with the disasters of the First Intermediate Period). The pair of Nectanebo and Alexander, outside the context of the latter’s comparison with Sesonchosis, takes in the third tomos of Manetho and its historical cycle, a position totally symmetrical to that of Amenophis and his son in the second tomos; in that case the Second Persian Domination would have been the disaster ending the third cycle of Egyptian history56 and Alexander, quite logically, (p. 181) the third and the last ‘saviour-king’. It is known that the so-called 31st dynasty including the last Persian kings before Alexander is a late interpolation in the Manethonian kings’ list:57 in this case Manetho’s third tomos must have really ended with the figures of Nectanebo and Alexander, certainly, not as father and son but as a chain of succession connecting Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt. However, in the Potter’s Oracle the final disaster of what must be the third Manethonian cycle is the Greco-Macedonian conquest itself: its description combines the features of both the first and the second big disasters of the Egyptian past—the motive of chaos in the Middle Egyptian Prophecy of Neferty and the invasion of unholy foreigners in the story of Amenophis. Obviously enough, such an outcome of the third cycle of Egyptian history is juxtaposed to the positive image of the Macedonian time (presented in the figure of Alexander) both in the Manethonian scheme and in the story of the Romance.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style The computer and internet technologies of our age have introduced the phenomenon of what is called ‘virtual reality’. It seems that the Egyptian propagandist historiography was in a way a technique to construct a ‘virtual reality’ of its own: it had at its disposal a framework of the cyclic historical concept that could be ‘filled in’ with a number of topoi. Their recombination made it possible to create a number of ‘virtual histories’ of Egypt, each of them less or more different from the real historical timeline and intended to convey a specific ideological message. One example of that sort—the single big cycle of ‘initial’ and ‘new’ Sesonchosis—is in fact too meaningful to have been inspired just by the propaganda of Alexander’s Egyptian collaborators; besides, the topos of Sesonchosis as the successor of the god-kings, which makes sense only as its cornerstone, is recorded early enough to indicate that it has been worked out well before Alexander. One should consider the possibility of its emergence as the propagandist background of an Egyptian counter-offensive against the empires of the Near East in the pre-Macedonian era; and the only known attempt of this kind would possibly bring us to the reign of Tachos.58 As for the Potter’s Oracle, I hope to have demonstrated here that not only its message but also the devices used to convey it are modelled closely on this ‘virtual reality’ of the cycles of Egyptian history. (p.182) Abbreviations P.Leid. I.344 recto A. H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Leipzig 1909) PSI Papiri greci e latini. Pubblicazioni della Società Italiana per la ricerca dei papiri greci e latini in Egitto (Firenze 1912– ) P.SPb. 1116A W. S. Golénischeff, Les papyrus hiératiques nos. 1115, 1116A et B de l’Ermitage impérial à St. Petersbourg (St. Petersbourg 1913), 1–4, tabl. 9–14, A–C (the Teaching for Merikare) P.SPb. 1116B recto W. Helck, Die Prophezeiung des Nfr.tj [Kleine Ägyptische Texte 2] (Wiesbaden 1992) Bibliography Bibliography references: Arnold, D. (1997), ‘Royal Cult Complexes of the Old and Middle Kingdom’, in B. E. Shafer (ed.), Temples of Ancient Egypt (Cairo), 31–85. Arnold, D. (1999), Temples of the Last Pharaohs (New York—Oxford).

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Virtual History Egyptian Style Beckerath, J. von (1997), Chronologie der pharaonischen Ägypten [Münchener Ägyptologische Studien 46] (Mainz am Rhein). Bell, B. (1971), ‘The Dark Ages in Ancient History, I. The First Dark Age in Egypt’, American Journal of Archaeology 75, 1–26. Berlev, O. D. (1984), ‘Drevneyshee opisaniye sozial’noy organizazii Egipta (The Most Ancient Description of Egypt’s Social Organization)’, in Problemy sozial’nych otnosheniy I form zavisimosti na drevnem Vostoke (The Problems of Social Relations and Forms of Dependence in the Ancient Orient) (Moscow), 26– 34 (in Russian). Blumenthal, E. (1982), ‘Die Prophezeiung des Neferti’, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 109, 1–27. Bonneau, D. (1971), Le fisc et le Nil. Incidences des irrégularités de la crue du Nil sur la fiscalité foncière dans l’Égypte grecque et romaine [Publications de l’Institut de droit romain de l’Université de Paris: Nouv. sér. 2] (Paris). Briant, P. (1996), Histoire de l’empire perse. De Cyrus à Alexandre (Paris). Burstein, S. M. (1992), ‘Hecataeus of Abdera’s History of Egypt’, in: J. H. Johnson (ed.), Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond [Studies in the Ancient Oriental Civilizations 51] (Chicago), 45–9. Burstein, S. M. (1996), ‘Images of Egypt in Greek historiography’, in A. Loprieno (ed.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms [Probleme der Ägyptologie 10] (Leiden), 591–604. (p.183) Clarysse, W. (1991), ‘The City of the Girdle-Wearers and a New Demotic Document’, Enchoria 18, 177–8. Dandamayev, M., and Lukonin, V. (1980), Kultura i economika drevnego Irana (Culture and Economy of Ancient Iran) (Moscow) (in Russian). Demidchik, A. E. (2005), Bezymyannaya piramida: Gosudarstvennaya doktrina drevneegipetskoy Gerakleopolskoy monarchii (Nameless Pyramid: The State Doctrine of the Ancient Egyptian Heracleopolitan Monarchy) (St. Petersburg) (in Russian). Derchain, P. (1962), ‘Le rôle du roi d’Égypte dans le maintien de l’ordre cosmique’, in Le Pouvoir et le Sacré [Annales du Centre d’Étude des Religions 1] (Brussels), 61–73.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style Fortenbaugh, W. W., and Schütrupf, E. (eds.), (2001) Dicaearchus of Messana: Text, Translation and Discussion [Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 10] (New Brunswick, N. J). Fraser, P. M. (1972), Ptolemaic Alexandria, I–III (Oxford). Gauger, J.-D. (2002), ‘Der “Traum des Nektanebos”—die griechische Fassung’, in A. Blasius and B. U. Schipper, (eds.), Apokalyptik und Ägypten: Eine kritische Analyse der relevanten Texte aus dem griechisch-römischen Ägypten [Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 107] (Leuven/Paris/Sterling, Va.), 189–220. Gozzoli, R. B. (2006), The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt during the First Millennium B.C. (ca. 1070 – 180). Trends and Perspectives [Golden House Publications Egyptology 5], (London). Grimal, N.-C. (1986), Les termes de la propagande royale égyptienne de la XIX dynastie à la conquête d’Alexandre [Études sur la propagande royale égyptienne 4; Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Nouvelle Série 6] (Paris). Hölbl, G. (2001), A History of the Ptolemaic Empire (London/New York). Ivantchik, A. I. (1999), ‘Die griechische Pseudo-Historie: Der Pharao Sesostris und der skytho-ägyptische Krieg’, Historia 48, 395–441. Jacoby, F. (1923–58), Die Fragmente der griechischer Historiker, I–III (Berlin/ Leiden). Jasnow, R. (1997), ‘The Greek Alexander Romance and Demotic Egyptian Literature’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56, 95–103. Johnson, J. H. (1984), ‘Is the Demotic Chronicle an Anti-Greek Tract?’, in H. J. Thissen and K.-Th. Zauzich (eds.), Grammata Demotica. Festschrift für Erich Lüddeckens zum 15. Juni 1983 (Würzburg). Kerkeslager, A. (1998), ‘The Apology of Potter: A Translation of the Potter’s Oracle’, in I. Shirun-Grumach (ed.), Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology [Ägypten und Alten Testament 40] (Wiesbaden), 67–79. Koenen, L. (1968), Die Prophezeiungen des Töpfers’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 2, 178–209. (p.184) Koenen, L. (2002), ‘Die Apologie des Töpfers an König Amenophis oder das Töpferorakel’, in A. Blasius, and B. U. Schipper (eds.), Apokalyptik und Ägypten: Eine kritische Analyse der relevanten Texte aus dem griechischrömischen Ägypten [Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 107] (Leuven/Paris/Sterling, Va.), 139–87. Page 19 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style Ladynin, I. A. (2005), ‘ “Adversary Hšryš3”: His Name And Deeds According To The Satrap Stela’, Chronique d’Égypte 80, 87–113. Ladynin, I. A. (2007), ‘Two Instances of the Satrap Stela: Tokens of the GrecoEgyptian Linguistic and Cultural Interrelation at the Start of Hellenism?’, in P. Kousoulis and K. Magliveras (eds.), Moving Across Borders: Foreign Relations, Religion and Cultural Interactions in the Ancient Mediterranean [Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta 159] (Leuven/Paris/Dudley, Mass.), 337–4. Ladynin, I. A. (2008), rev. R. Gozzoli, The Writing of History in Ancient Egypt during the First Millennium B.C.’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 94, 329–32. Lloyd, A. B. (1982), ‘Nationalist Propaganda in Ptolemaic Egypt’, Historia 31, 33– 55. Lloyd, A. B. (1988), ‘Manetho and the Thirty-First Dynasty’, in J. Baines, T. G. H. James, A. Leahy, A. F. Shore (eds.), Pyramid Studies and Other Essays Presented to I. E. S. Edwards [EES Occasional Publications 7] (London), 154–60. Montet, P. (1957), La géographie de l’Égypte ancienne, Première partie: Tomehou. La Basse Égypte (Paris). Morenz, S. (1975), ‘Traditionen um Menes’, in Religion und Geschichte des alten Ägypten: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Cologne/Vienna), 162–72. Morschauser, S. N. (1988), ‘Using History: Reflections on the Bentresh Stela’, Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 15, 203–23. Murray, O. (1970), ‘Hecataeus of Abdera and Pharaonic Kingship’, JEA 56, 141– 71. O’Sullivan, J. N. (1984), ‘The Sesonchosis Romance’, ZPE 56, 39–44. Pestman, P. W. (1995), ‘Haronnophris and Chaonnophris: Two Indigenous Pharaohs in Ptolemaic Egypt (205–186 B.C.)’, in Hundred-Gated Thebes [Papyrologia lugduno-batava 27] (Leiden, New York, Cologne), 101–37. Pfeiffer, S. (2004), Das Dekret von Kanopos (238 v. Chr.). Kommentar und historische Auswertung eines dreisprachigen Synodaldekretes der ägyptischen Priester zu Ehren Ptolemaios’ III. und seiner Familie [Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete: Beiheft 18] (Leipzig). Posener, G. (1956), Littérature et politique dans l’Égypte de la XIIe dynastie [Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études 307] (Paris). Quaegebeur, J. (1984), ‘Rakotis’, in W. Helck, E. Otto, W. Westendorf (eds.), Lexikon der Ägyptologie, V (Wiesbaden), 90–1.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style (p.185) Redford, D. B. (1970), ‘The Hyksos Invasion in History and Tradition’, Orientalia 39, 1–51. Redford, D. B. (1984), Akhenaten: The Heretic King (Princeton). Redford, D. B. (1986), Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History [Society of the Studies of Egyptian Antiquities’ Publication 4], (Mississauga). Sandy, G. N. (1989), ‘Sesonchosis’, in B. F. Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London). Schwartz, J. (1949), ‘Les conquérants perses et la littérature égyptienne’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 48, 65–80. Thissen, H. J. (1996), ‘ΚΜΗΦ—Ein verkannter Gott’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 112, 153–60. Török, L. (1986), Der meroitische Staat 1. Untersuchungen und Urkunden zur Geschichte des Sudan im Altertum [Meroitica 9] (Berlin). Trigger, B., Kemp, B., O’Connor, D., and Lloyd, A. B. (1983), Ancient Egypt: A Social History (Cambridge). Veïsse, A.-E. (2004), Les ‘révoltes égyptiennes’. Recherches sur les troubles intérieurs en Égypte du règne de Ptolémée III à la conquête romaine [Studia Hellenistica 41], (Leuven/Paris/Dudley, Mass.). te Velde, H. (1967), Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of his Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion (Leiden). Waddell, W. G. (1980), (tr.), Manetho, Aegyptiaca [Loeb Classical Library 350] (Cambridge, Mass./London). Wehrli, F. (1967), Die Schule des Aristoteles. 1. Dikaiarchos (Basel/Stuttgart). Wendel, C. (1935), Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera (Berlin). Wilcken, U. (1897), ‘Zur ägyptisch-hellenistischen Litteratur’, in Aegyptiaca: Festschrift für Georg Ebers zum 1. März 1897 (Leipzig), 142–52. Wilcken, U. (1927), Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit I: Papyri aus Unterägypten (Leipzig/Berlin). Winnicki, J. K. (1994), ‘Carrying Off and Bringing Home the Statues of the Gods: On the Aspect of the Religious Policy of the Ptolemies Towards the Egyptians’, Journal of Juristic Papyrology 24, 149–90. (p.186) Notes: Page 21 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style (1) Koenen (1968); original publication: Wilcken (1897); see, incidentally, a handy English translation based on this publication: Kerkeslager 1998. (2) Koenen (2002). (3) We will for convenience keep to the designations of the papyri with the text that were introduced by L. Koenen: P1 = P. Graf, G.29787, second century BCE; P2 = P. Rainer, G.19813, third century BCE; P3 = P.Oxy. 22.2332, late third century BCE; (Koenen (1968), 193). (4) Koenen (2002), 156, comm. 50; 169–70. (5) Koenen (2002), 156, comm. 48. For the Sixth Syrian War and the partial occupation of Egypt by Antiochus IV, see Hölbl (2001), 144–8. (6) Wb. II, 403.5; cf. Urk. II, 14.16; Montet (1957), 72; Quaegebeur (1984), 90–1 —with references to the occurrences of the name in Egyptian texts. (7) Ladynin (2007), 350, n. 45; the fact that the name r(ɜ)-ᶜ-ḳd(y)t is used in the well-known Satrap Stela in reference to this very event is a mere coincidence; but this coincidence should be called significant. (8) Koenen (2002), 152, comm. 26; see on the introduction of the cult: Hölbl (2001), 99–101. (9) We know that the Ptolemaic rulers were repeatedly glorified for returning these sacred objects to Egypt: Winnicki (1994); see on the aim of this Persian reprisal: Dandamayev, Lukonin (1980), 343; Ladynin (2005), 104–5, n. 50. (10) Morschauser (1988), 216–19. (11) See on the text: Gozzoli (2006), 240–7, with numerous references. (12) Arnold (1999), 162–3. (13) Arnold (1997), 80–1. (14) Veïsse (2004), 3–5. (15) See on its alleged relation to Khnum: Koenen (1968), 184; Lloyd (1982), 50; Kerkeslager (1998), 68, n. 7. (16) Manetho: Jos. C.Ap. I. 26. §§232–51 = Waddell (1980), frag. 54; Chaeremon: Jos. C.Ap. I. 33. §§ 288–92 = Jacoby 1923–58: 618. F.1; cf. Burstein (1996), 601–2. (17) See on this story: Gozzoli (2006), 215–24; cf. an ‘apocalyptic’ fragment PSI 982 with anti-Judaic features linked to the tradition of the Potter’s Oracle as P4 by L. Koenen (2002), 148, 163–4, 183 ff.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style (18) Jos. C.Ap. I. 26. §232: ὁμωνύμῳ μὲν αὐτῷ Ἀμενώφει πατρὸς δὲ Παάπιος ὄντι. (19) Urk. II, 2027. 11. The Egyptian mnt in this context certainly denotes not a real epidemic disease but a fatal misbalance in Egypt’s relations to deities due to Akhenaten’s stopping the temple offerings (cf. mnt at the Teaching for Merikare, P.SPb.1116A, l. 143, and the Prophecies of Neferty, l. 38, 54); see now Demidchik (2005), 44–9; Ladynin (2008), 331. (20) Redford (1970), 47, (1986), 179; Gozzoli (2006), 218. (21) The exact ending of that cycle for Manetho was the reign of the ‘king’ Thuoris contemporary with the Trojan war, i.e. exactly the reign of Tauseret at the very end of the 19th dynasty: Waddell (1980), frags. 55–6; Beckerath (1997), 106; cf. a strange negligence of this personality by R. Gozzoli (2006), 158, n. 12. (22) P2, II.35: ἥ τε παραθαλάσσιος πόλις; P3, II.58–9: ἥ τε παραθάλασσιος πόλις; cf. Koenen (2002), 159, comm. 61. (23) Koenen (2002), 172–9; cf. Posener (1956), 21–60. (24) Urk. IV, 2027. 13–14: ir hɜb [.tw mš]ꜥᶜ r Ḏɜh[y] r swsh tɜšw K.mt n hpr.n rwdt.sn nb (25) Blumenthal (1982), 26. (26) Cf. for the Demotic prototype of the term, probably applied to GrecoMacedonian administrators of Ptolemaic Egypt: Clarysse (1991), 177ff., as referred to by L. Koenen (2002), 155–6, comm. 46. (27) e.g. Plut. De Is. et Os. 49, 62; te Velde (1967), 3 et al. (28) See on the term ‘Typhonians’ in the Potter’s Oracle: te Velde (1967), 145–6. (29) It is known in two copies—pLouvre 3129 and pBM 10252, the latter bearing the datings of Year 17 of Nectanebo I and Year 11 of Alexander IV. (30) Cf. Redford (1986), 279.

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Virtual History Egyptian Style (31) An allusion to this idea is a legend about Typhon’s giving birth to the eponymous ancestors of Jews Hierosolymos and Judaeus: Plut. De Is. et Os., 31; cf. Tac. Hist. V.2; one should bear in mind that the Hyksos, whose association with Seth was notorious (te Velde (1967), 121), were presented in Late Egyptian historiography as a root of the Jewish people that penetrated Palestine after their expulsion from Egypt; see Manetho: Jos. C.Ap. I.14. § 90; id. 15. § 94; etc. The legend about the origin of Jewish eponyms preserved by the Classical sources is definitely an extrapolation of the Hyksos reminiscence of the mythological past. That such extrapolation was possible seems to support an ingenious interpretation proposed by A. Demidchik for a passage of the Teaching for Merikare: ‘he (the Asiatic) has been fighting ever since the time of Horus’ (P.SPb. 1116A, 93: iw.f ḥr ᶜḥɜ dr rk H.r); this phrase might be a direct allusion to the expulsion of Seth and his associates from Egypt by Horus after their defeat in the contest of Osiris’ heritage (Demidchik (2005), 134–5; cf. the mention of ‘the time of Horus’ in the Admonitions of Ipuwer: pLeid. I.344 recto. 1.7). (32) e.g. Derchain (1962). (33) Grimal (1986), IV 18:1. (34) P2, I.12–13: ταῦτα ἔσται γάρ, ἐπεὶ ὁ μέγας θεὸς Ἥφαιστος ἐβουλήθη εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀνελθεῖν; cf. P3, I.25–6, naming this deity Μῆφις, a variation to the name of another demiurge-god Kmephis/Knephis or Agathos Daimon prophesied to return to Memphis after the ultimate downfall of the ‘Typhonians’—P2, II.36; P3, III.60; Koenen (2002), 155, comm. 45, 159, comm. 62, 165–6; cf. Thissen (1996). (35) A. Lloyd once posited that ‘there is no doubt that the original [of the Potter’s Oracle] was indeed composed in some form of Egyptian, probably Demotic’ (1982), 50 and n. 55); and in due course this issue was considered by L. Koenen (in a portion of his study entitled ‘Ist die Apologie eine Übersetzung aus dem Ägyptischen?’ (2002), 180–3). Perhaps, raising this issue is merely flogging a dead horse. As to the literary genre and the topoi of the Potter’s Oracle its nearest analogy is undoubtedly the Prophecy of Neferty, which is indeed Egyptian—but Middle Egyptian! This text and, perhaps, other descriptions of the First Intermediate Period were probably reread in the Hellenistic period; a token of this is, for instance, a likely comparison of the disastrous years of the mid-240s BCE. under Ptolemy III Euergetes (see on the low Nile floods of this time: Bonneau (1971), 129, nn. 614, 223; Pfeiffer (2004), 226–8) to the First Intermediate Period in the Canopus Decree: ‘…when on one occasion the rise of the river was insufficient and all the inhabitants of the country were terrified at what had happened and remembered the disaster that occurred under some of those reigning before, under whom it happened that the residents of the country suffered from a deficit of water’; OGIS I. 56, l.13: τοῦ τε ποταμοῦ ποτε ἐλλιπέστερον ἀναβάντος καὶ πάντων τῶν ἐν τῆι χώραι Page 24 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style καταπεπληγμένων ἐπὶ τῶι συμβεβηκότι καὶ ἐνθυμουμένων τὴν γεγενημένην καταφθορὰν ἐπί τινων τῶν πρότερον βεβασιλευκότων, ἐφ’ ὧν συνέβη ἀβροχίαις περιπεπτωκέναι τοὺς τὴν χώραν κατοικοῦντας…; Urk. II. 130.5–11: isk rf ̮pr rnpt n ᶜp(y) nḏs m hɜw.sn wn ᶜn̮w nbwt nw Bɜḳt ib.sn ḳsn ḥr ̮pr isk m s̮n hft shɜw.sn ̮ryt ̮pr ̮ntt m rk nsww tpyw-ᶜᶜ iw ̮pr s̮n ᶜp(y) nḏs n imiw tɜ-mry m hɜw.sn; for the text, including its Demotic version (that we do not feel competent to discuss) see Pfeiffer (2004), 93–5). An impetus to believe that this piece of the Canopus Decree alludes to the First Intermediate Period is twofold. On the one hand, there is a definite reference in it to an epoch of the past with repeated deficient floods, while in the late 3rd–early 2nd millennia BCE, this not merely became an acute problem—(Bell (1971); Trigger et al. (1983), 180)—but was perceived as a token of a cosmic imbalance (as featured specifically in the Prophecy of Neferty; see our references above) and, undoubtedly, came to define for that epoch. On the other hand, the words/ ‘those reigning before’ might be a roundabout allusion to the responsibility of those rulers (symptomatically, not defined simply as ‘kings’, as it would have been appropriate in the case of their indisputed legitimacy) for the hardships of that time, which also resembles the situation of the First Intermediate Period (cf. the explicit accusations of Ipuwer in his Admonitions against the king of his time: PLeid. I.344 recto, 12.12–13.2). These motifs were preserved in literary works in Middle Egyptian but by the Ptolemaic era these could not inspire new compositions in the same language, which had ceased being spoken long before and was by now a written medium only. Thus, there would not be much difference, whether the text of the Potter’s Oracle, with its Middle Egyptian inspiration, were to be created originally in literary Demotic (to be translated into Greek in due course) or in Greek. The latter option was perhaps even easier due to a considerable discrepancy in genres and topics between the classical Middle Egyptian and the late Demotic literary traditions, while Greek was certainly fluent among members of the Egyptian elite at that time and, certainly, flexible enough to convey any message and to give shape to an imitation of any non-Hellenic cultural phenomenon. (36) P.Leid. I. 396 = Wilcken (1927), no. 81; Gauger (2002). (37) Cf. for many references Jasnow (1997). (38) Αἴγυπτον ὁ φυγὼν κραταιὸς ἄλκιμος πρέσβυς βασιλεὺς δυνάστης ἥξει μετὰ χρόνον νέος, τὸ γηραλέον ἀποβαλὼν τύπων εἶδος, κόσμον κυκλεύσας, ἐπὶ τὸ Αἰγύπτου πεδίον, ἐχθρῶν ὑποταγὴν διδοὺς ἡμῖν. (39) ὑπαντῶντες δὲ τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ κατὰ πᾶσαν πόλιν οἱ προφῆται τοὺς ἰδίους θεοὺς κομίζοντες ἀνηγόρευον αὐτὸν νέον Σεσόγχωσιν κοσμοκράτορα. (40) εὐφημοῦντες δὲ καὶ χαίροντες καὶ “πάλιν ἄρχει Αἴγυπτος” ἔλεγον. (41) Fraser (1972), I, 508–9; II, 952, n. 34; Török (1986), 43 f.; and a number of his other publications. Page 25 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style (42) See on sources and discussion: Briant (1996), 60, 913. (43) Cf. Hist. Alex. Magni, rec. α, I. 33.6, III. 17.17; id. 24: Alexander meeting Sesonchosis in a cave in Ethiopia ‘where the gods reside’ and learning from him that he had superseded his exploits; id. 34.5. (44) O’Sullivan (1984). (45) Wehrli (1967), frags. 57b; Fortenbaugh et al. (2001), frags. 58–9: ‘Sesonchosis, the king of the whole of Egypt after Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, attacking Asia subdued all of it, as well as most of Europe. There is more detailed information about him in Herodotus. Theopompus in the third (book) calls him Sesostris. Herodotus adds that whenever he subjugated someone in war he put stelae (to tell) how he won; if they surrendered (to him) he put on the stelae the female genitals (as) a symbol of weakness (cf. Herod. II. 102). Dicaearchus (Wehrli frag. 57a; Fortenbaugh et al. (2001), frag. 58) in the first (book) of ‘The Life of Hellas’ (calls him) Sesonchosis and says that he established laws that no one should leave the paternal craft, for he assumed that this was the origin of greed, and that he was the first man to discover mounting horses; others (say) that Oros (Horus) (did this), not Sesonchosis… …And Dicaearchus (Wehrli frag. 58 Fortenbaugh et al. (2001), frag. 59) (says) in the first (book) that Sesonchosis became king after (H)orus, son of Isis and Osiris…’ (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. IV. 272‑4: Σεσόγχωσις Αἰγύπτου πάσης βασιλεὺς μετὰ Ὧωρον τὸν Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος παῖδα τὴν μὲν Ἀσίαν ὁρμήσας πᾶσαν κατεστρέψατο, ὁμοίως καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς Εὐρώπης. ἀκριβέστερον δὲ ἔστι τὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ παρὰ Ἡροδότῳ. Θεόπομπος δὲ ἐν γʹΣέσωστριν αὐτὸν καλεῖ. Ἡρόδοτος δὲ προστίθησν, ὅτι, εἰ μέν τινας πολέμῳ κατέστρεψεν, στήλας ἐτίθει πῶς ἐνίκησεν· εἰ δὲ παρεχώρουν, γυναικεῖον ταῖς στήλαις αἰδοῖον προσετίθει σύμβολον τῆς μαλακίας. Δικαίαρχος δὲ ἐν αʹ Ἑλλάδος βίου Σεσόγχωσιν καὶ νόμους [αὐτὸν] θεῖναι λέγει, ὥστε μηδένα καταλιπεῖν τὴν πατρῴαν τέχνην· τοῦτο γὰρ ὑπολαμβάνειν ἀρχὴν εἶναι πλεονεξίας. καὶ πρῶτόν φησιν αὐτὸν εὑρηκέναι ἵππων ἄνθρωπον ἐπιβαίνειν· οἱ δὲ ταῦτα τὸν Ὡωρον, οὐ τὸν Σεσόγχωσιν…Δικαίαρχος δὲ ἐν αʹ μετὰ τὸν Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος Ὡωρον βασιλέα γεγονέναι Σεσόγχωσιν… (46) Wendel (1935), x. (47) Wehrli (1967), 59; see contra: Murray (1970), 170–1; Ivantchik (1999), 417. (48) The outstanding Russian Egyptologist Oleg Berlev pointed out (unfortunately, very briefly and only in a Russian publication) that the activities of Senwosret I as a social reformer must have been replicated by the image of the great founder-king (of which we are presently speaking) in the writings of Herodotus (which is not quite true, except for Herod. II. 108–9), Dicaearchus, and Diodorus (Berlev (1984), 33; he omitted Aristotle). (49) Pol. VII, 9. 1–5 1329b; Meteorol. I, 14. 352b. Page 26 of 27

Virtual History Egyptian Style (50) Burstein (1992), 48. (51) Diod, I. 83–4; Hecataeus probably belongs in the 310s: Murray (1970), 144ff.; Burstein (1992). (52) Sometimes much later: Diod. I, 45; Pliny, NH VII, 56/193; Ael. De nat.anim. XI, 10. (53) e.g. Morenz (1975). (54) Diod. I, 54.11, 55.10. (55) Ivantchik (1999), 422ff. (56) Schwartz (1949). (57) Lloyd (1988). (58) Briant (1996), 682–5; 1019–20.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Reading Parallels between Ancient Egyptian and Greek Works of Literature Nikolaos Lazaridis

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses a number of textual and linguistic parallels identified in Ancient Egyptian and Greek literary works, arguing that the historical interpretation of such parallels differs depending on (a) their typology and (b) the textual and historico-cultural contexts to which they belong. It uses examples, some well known, others original, drawn from a variety of literary works, ranging from Egyptian narratives and instructions to Greek novels and gnomic anthologies. By presenting and examining such parallels, the chapter aims to identify the most significant factors which must be considered by scholars before considering literary parallels between two ancient cultures and interpreting them as signs for historical contact. Keywords:   literature, Greek, Egypt, influence, borrowing, interaction, parallel

Introduction The path leading from ancient Egypt to ancient Greece and vice versa was welltrodden. This was the very path Minoan Cretan delegations walked on the onset of pre-Classical Greek culture, followed by Herodotus, Plato, and Alexander the Great, among others. In this essay I aim at examining potential fruits of this ongoing communication between these two civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean, and especially the way one can pick and taste such fruits from the field of literature.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations The status and extent of interaction between Egyptian and Greek literatures has remained for many years a fashionable topic among Egyptologists and among Classicists. Most of these scholars, however, have not defined in their studies what they consider to constitute a parallel between the Egyptian and Greek bodies of literary material. Such is the case, for instance, with the late Miriam Lichtheim’s work on Demotic wisdom or with Jennifer Houser-Wegner’s doctoral dissertation, which reviewed Lichtheim’s conclusions on international parallels to Egyptian sayings.1 (p.188) The same applies to Classicists. Thus, for instance, the major study of Martin West on Oriental influences on Greek literature and culture, The East Face of Helicon, includes neither a definition nor a theoretical discussion of what is the nature of the transcultural parallels identified. The closest to an attempt of such a discussion is West’s observations on the status and interpretation of loanwords between different cultures; among other things, he observes: Individual items in isolation prove little. If we speak of tycoons, or of running amok, that is not evidence of significant Japanese or Malay influence on British culture (though it does reflect the fact that we have had dealings with the Far East). If, on the other hand, one can find some dozens of words coming from the same language or area of the world, that can only be the consequence of comparatively close and sustained contact.2 In the course of my work on ancient literary parallels, I have observed that the absence of definitions in comparative scholarly works often results in treating a number of different types of parallel equally as adequate evidence for cultural interaction between Egypt and Greece. But is it fair to ignore the distinction between different types of parallel literary material? Do all such different parallels reflect the same type and degree of interaction? In order to answer such questions, one must first identify and consider the factors influencing the status and extent of interaction between various bodies of literary material, with respect to their form and genre, as well as to their wider context of production and circulation. In the heart of Figure 8.1 stands the identified parallel. The type of each parallel can be discerned on the basis of its form (identified as a word, a metaphor, a syntactic construction, a theme, a style, etc.) and its relationship with the surrounding material and with the work as a whole. Thus, by taking a closer look at the identified parallel and its immediate context, one may be able to (p.189)

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations determine the manner in which, semantically and stylistically, it fits the contents and language of the work containing it, whether it stands out as an isolated case, or whether it recurs in an identical or a variant form within the same work. An example of an isolated, exotic parallel is the mythical motif of a god’s castration as an act of Creation in Hesiod’s Theogony, probably borrowed from oriental mythological sources, such as the Hittite Myth of Kumarbi or the Egyptian Book

Fig. 8.1. Factors influencing literary interaction and the evaluation of literary parallels

of the Dead.3

The second zone of factors revolves around the works containing the parallel and their nature. Hence, in this case one must consider and compare the general features of these works (authorship, audience, purpose, structure, style, etc.), as well as examine their potential or proven circulation during their time of production or after. Thus, sketching out the profile of the author, for instance, may help determine potential contacts with foreign literature and other influences. Such is the case, for example, with Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, whose educational background has suggested readings of, and borrowings from, Greek philosophers and literary writers.4 Also, the language and style of writing in the works in question may point towards possible international influences. Such evidence has been used to prove, for example, the Oriental style of writing in Hesiod’s Works and Days (a parallel that will be discussed again (p.190) below), resembling works of Egyptian and Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature.5 The next zone includes information about the historical profile of the genre of the works in question, in addition to their relationship with other national or international genres and their role in the development of literary traditions. Hence, forms of epic writing in the Classical world and the Orient, for instance, have been compared resulting in the identification of a number of possible parallels between the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey.6 Furthermore, various generic features of the works containing identified parallels can point towards wide circulation, as is the case with popular wisdom. Within the framework of popular wisdom, scholars have, for example, proved the relationship and interaction between the various versions of animal fables found in Aesopic compilations and the Aramaic story of Ahiqar.7

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations The final zone of factors to be considered is the social, political, economic, and cultural setting, or wider context, of this interaction; whether, that is, the various relations between the peoples who composed and used the literary material in question were strong enough to suggest potential interaction on a cultural level.8 In search of a fertile setting for cultural interaction, one must look out for traces of bilingualism and its products, such as literary or other translations,9 or for an emergence of some cultural phenomenon that cannot be linked to any local antecedents.10 This was, to a great extent, for example, the case in interaction between Egyptians and Greeks who lived in Greco-Roman Egypt and in the wider Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean region. The traces of their interaction were imprinted on a multitude of cultural activities,11 including bilingual writing and education (e.g. see the (p.191) bilingual ostraca of Narmouthis)12 and translation of one another’s texts (e.g. the Greek translation of the Demotic Myth of the Sun’s Eye).13 In addition, during the Hellenistic and Roman eras a number of originally Egyptian cultural practices were adopted by Greeks and vice versa, leading to the emergence of exotic cultural phenomena in both cases (see, for instance, Egyptian mummification practised by Greeks or Greek iconography adopted by Egyptian painters).14

The Examples In the light of these factors influencing the evaluation of literary parallels, I may now proceed in analysing seven pairs of Egyptian and Greek instances of literary writing that scholars have compared, identifying a variety of parallels. These include the comparisons of: (1) the account of the Battle of Qadesh with the Iliad; (2) New Kingdom love poems with Sappho’s poetry; (3) the Myth of the Sun’s Eye with Aesopic fables; (4) the Stories of Setne Khamwas with the Odyssey; (5a) Instruction texts with Hesiod’s Works and Days; and (5b) the structure, themes, and wording of Egyptian and Greek sayings. 1. The Battle of Qadesh & The Iliad

The Egyptian account of the battle of Qadesh, fought during the fifth regnal year of Ramesses II (c.1274), survives in two versions: a dry record of events (known also as the ‘bulletin’) and a more literary version (known also as the ‘poem’).15 In addition to both being inscribed side by side on walls of major temples founded or restored (p.192) by Ramesses II (such as his temples in Abydos and Abu Simbel), the literary version of the account circulated also separately on hieratic papyri.16 The passage considered here comes from this literary version of the Egyptian account and an extract of this reads:17

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations His Majesty spoke: ‘ “What is this, father Amun? Is it right for a father to ignore his son? Are my deeds a matter for you to ignore? Do I not walk and stand at your word? I have not neglected an order you gave.…I call to you, my father Amun, I am among a host of strangers. All countries are arrayed against me, I am alone and there’s none with me!…I know Amun helps me more than a million troops…O Amun, I have not transgressed your command!” Now though I prayed in the distant foreign land, my voice resounded in Southern On. I found Amun came as I called out to him, he gave me his hand and I rejoiced. He called from behind as if close by: “Forward, I am with you, I, your father, my hand is with you.’” (lines 92– 128) In this passage Ramesses II, in the midst of the battlefield, calls out to the god Amun, his divine father, expressing his frustration and disappointment, since Amun had not helped Ramesses up to that moment, although he knew Ramesses had found himself at a dead end, surrounded by enemy troops. As a consequence, Amun replies to Ramesses, confirming that he would now aid him. Such a direct, dramatic dialogue on the battlefield between a pharaoh and a god has no previous antecedents in Egyptian literature, but it probably influenced later historical writing, as evident, for instance, in Merneptah’s poetical stela.18 This extraordinary (by Egyptian literary standards) literary device used here can be compared with a common device in the Homeric epics, in which the fighting heroes often addressed, under similarly grave circumstances, members of the Greek pantheon. This is the case, for instance, with Achilles invoking his divine mother to help him, when he was trapped in the waters of the divine river Scamander:19 (p.193) …and the river was ever tiring his knees with its violent flow beneath, and was snatching away the ground from under his feet. Then the son of Peleus uttered a bitter cry looking up to the broad heaven: ‘Father Zeus, how is it that no one of the gods takes it on him in my piteous flight to save me from the river? After that let me suffer what I may. No other of the heavenly gods is so much to blame, but only my dear mother, who deceived me with false words…’ So he spoke, and quickly Poseidon and Athena came up and stood by his side, and they were in form to mortal men, and they took his hand in theirs and gave assurance in words. (Iliad 21.270–76 and 284–6) Furthermore, in Homer the gods frequently intervened in military developments, changing the course of events. This is, for example, the case of Athene and Apollo intervening in the duel between Achilles and Hector:

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations He spoke and poised his spear and hurled it, but Athena with a breath turned it back from glorious Achilles, breathing out lightly; and it came back to noble Hector and fell there before his feet. But Achilles leapt on him furiously, eager to slay him, crying a terrible cry. But Apollo snatched up Hector very easily, as god can, and shrouded him in thick mist. (Iliad 20.438–44) In both the Battle of Qadesh and the Homeric passages gods may intervene in war and they may be invoked to help humans. In the latter case gods are invoked by their human sons, who may address them in anger, criticizing freely their decisions and action. The instance from the Battle of Qadesh is uncommon in Egyptian literature, while the Homeric instances quoted here illustrate a very common device used in Greek epic writing (not only by Homer, but also by other epic poets, such as Hesiod or Apollonius). Moreover, access to the Divine in the case of the Egyptian text is granted only to the Pharaoh, who was considered by that time to be semi-, if not wholly, divine himself, while in Homer gods interacted with a number of mortals, regardless of whether these mortals were related to the gods or not. Thus here one may identify a similar, but not identical, use of a literary device. In general, if our dates are correct, the Egyptian text is earlier than the Iliad and thus it was more likely the source influencing the Iliad rather than the other way around. However, although there were a considerable number of references to Egypt made in the Odyssey, no apparent direct influences on the language and the modes of literary (p.194) expression from Egyptian writings can be identified in the Homeric poems.20 Therefore, the literary device in question must be taken as an isolated case within these works and cannot be indicative of influence. In addition, this case belongs to a historical period (i.e. New Kingdom Egypt and Mycenaean Greece), for which one finds evidence mainly for commercial ties: imports and exports of small-scale goods through the interaction of tradesmen which suggests little about the exchange of literary motifs and ideas.21 Now, if our dates are completely wrong and the Homeric epics were circulating orally earlier than the recording of the battle of Qadesh, influence would be probable from Homer over Egypt, given the popularity of the epics, evident from later dates, and the way they have influenced the writing of ancient literature inside and outside Greece.22 Even in this case, however, the study of context would treat this point of comparison as a weak, isolated parallel, given that no other apparent similarities between the Homeric epics and the Ramesside account can be identified.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Instead, one could consider this example as a trace of indirect interaction, vaguely defined in terms of genre rather than specific works. In other words, one could suggest that this common literary device could be a generic feature of the genre of epic writing, linking Egyptian historico-literary narratives, such as the Battle of Qadesh and the aforementioned poetical stela of Merneptah, to the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh and to Classical epic writing. Hence, one may say in this case that the Oriental and Greek epic narrative traditions would have been interacting. 2. Love Poems & Sappho’s poetry

The second example in this essay involves a comparison of the corpus of Egyptian love poetry (c.1700–1500 BCE) with Sappho’s poems (p.195) (seventh century BCE), a task earlier undertaken by A.-A. Maravelia.23 In Maravelia’s articles it is pointed out that the two corpora mainly share common imagery and common cultural references. An instance of the former is:24 …and I will lay down my limbs on soft cushions…

(Sappho fr. 46) compared with He finds a bed covered with sheets of fine linen, a beautiful girl is with them.

(P. Chester Beatty I, Ic.7) Common cultural references are illustrated by the choice of invoking goddesses of love: Ornate-throned immortal Aphrodite, wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I entreat you…

(Sappho fr. 1) Cypris and Nereids, grant that my brother return to me here unharmed…

(Sappho fr. 5,1–2 and 5,9–10) compared with I adore the Golden (Lady), I worship her majesty, I extol the Mistress of Heaven, I give adoration to Hathor…

(P. Chester Beatty I, Ia)

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Sappho’s literary echoes of images and words included in Egyptian love poems, as illustrated in these examples, constitute an instance of parallels with a slightly higher degree of probability for interaction than that characterizing the coupling of the Battle of Qadesh with Homer.25 The references to similar goddesses and to common erotic imagery, however, cannot stand as exotic borrowings from the Greek side, since the similar erotic themes treated in these poems (p.196) could be those dictating the use of such references to cultural aspects that were common in both civilizations. In terms of setting, in Late Period Egypt and Archaic Greece of the seventh century cultural interaction between these two civilizations was somewhat limited. This lack of a favourable setting for interaction has led scholars to suggest potential, but, I think, far-fetched, scenarios about the path the influence of Egyptian love poetry over Sappho followed. For instance, Maravelia’s suggestion is that the brother of Sappho had an Egyptian concubine who could have whispered extracts from her native love poetry in to her Greek lover’s ears!26 Although nothing is impossible, potential poetic parallels should not be based solely upon—inaccessible to the modern reader—bedroom stories. 3. The Myth of the Sun’s Eye & Aesopic fables

The third example involves a rendering of the same animal fable in Egyptian and in Greek.27 This is the famous fable of the mouse and the lion. The Greek text has survived in a late compilation of Aesopic fables by Babrius:28 A lion caught a mouse and was about to eat him…now he (i.e. the mouse) begged for life with words like these: ‘…a mouse is not a meal enough for you to taste with the edges of your lips. Come, I pray you, spare me. Perhaps some day, though small, I shall repay this favour.’ The beast laughed and let his suppliant live. But he himself before long fell in with youthful lovers of the chase, was taken captive in their net, made helpless, and bound fast…(the mouse) gnawing the sturdy rope with his tiny teeth, set the lion free. (fable no. 107) The Egyptian text comes from the aforementioned Myth of the Sun’s Eye, a long Demotic narrative the main copy of which (Pap. (p.197) Leiden I 384) is dated to the second century BCE and comes from Thebes:29 It happened that the lion was walking about…there strayed into his paw a mouse…it happened that he was about to crush him (when) the mouse said to him: ‘Do not (Dam) me, my lord, the lion! If you eat me you will not be sated…if you give me my breath (of life) as a gift, I shall give you your own breath (of life) as a gift’…the lion laughed at the mouse…now the lion fell into the pit…the mouse set his mouth to the fetters of the lion…and released the lion from his fetters. (18,11–18,35)

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations When one compares the two texts, one may observe that the renderings of the fable are slightly different in their choice of words and details. This could be due to linguistic differences and/or different versions of the fable.30 Interestingly enough, however, it must be noted that parts (if not the whole) of the Myth of the Sun’s Eye were translated a century later into Greek (see above). It is difficult, however, to say whether that Greek translation was the outcome of the actual momentum of interaction, involving a Greek writer translating an earlier Egyptian version of these fables. What can be said with certainty, however, despite the small differences observed in the two versions, is that in this case one finds oneself in the midst of a well-travelled ancient highway connecting fable traditions from as far as India to the ends of the ancient Mediterranean world. Thus, by the time of Hellenistic Egypt and Greece the name of Aesop had already become a legend, having entered a House of Tradition where Truth and Lie, History and Myth sat and drank together. The modern reader, stealing only glances over this jolly encounter, cannot be sure who was Aesop, or who was his Aramaic counterpart, Ahiqar.31 One cannot be sure whether these tales were originally composed in Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian, or Egyptian. Hence, in this case, although one can definitely sense a powerful interaction in this area of literary production, one cannot determine whether it only involved a Greek and an Egyptian side, or whether it was, what one would call nowadays, part of an international cultural heritage. (p.198) 4. The Stories of Setne Khamwas & The Odyssey

Returning to Homer, in the fourth example a passage from the Odyssey is compared to a passage from the Demotic Stories of Setne Khamwas, the main version of which survives on Pap. British Museum 604, dated to the Roman Period and coming from Thebes:32 Yes, and I saw Tantalus in bitter torment, standing in a pool, and the water came close to his chin. He was wild with thirst, but had no way to drink; for as often as the old man stooped down, eager to drink, so often would the water be swallowed up and vanish away…And trees, high and leafy, let hang their fruits from their tops…But as often as the old man would reach out toward these, to clutch them with his hands, the wind would toss them to the shadowy clouds. (Odyssey, 11.582–92) compared with:

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations ‘[They entered the fourth hall and Setne saw] people who were [plaiting ropes, while donkeys were chewing them up]. There were others whose provisions of water and bread were hanging above them. While they were trying to bring them down, other people were digging deep pits at their feet, in order to prevent them from getting hold of them. They entered the fifth hall and Setne saw noble spirits standing in rank. Those who were accused of crimes were standing at the door pleading, and the pivot of the door at the fifth hall was fixed in the right eye of a man who was pleading and lamenting loudly.’ (Setne II, 1,30–2,4) Here one may observe a reproduction of the literary topos of living men descending to the underworld, attested not only in Egyptian and Greek sources, but also in Mesopotamian literature, as in the Gilgamesh.33 By contrast to the Gilgamesh version of this topos, however, the reproduction here includes some significant similarities, such as the encounter of a number of chambers, where evil dead people are punished in comparable ways, details that are not included in the story narrated in the Gilgamesh. However, the narrative framework of this topos is different in these two works: Setne descends to the underworld with his father to show him that earthly riches do not make a difference after death, while Odysseus descends to Hades to seek advice. (p.199) Hence, one may speak in this case of exclusive interaction between Egyptian and Greek sources that does not, however, involve a faithful translation of the passage, but rather a modified reproduction. This literary topos with such details is not attested in earlier Egyptian writings. If one combines this with the fact that the Homeric Odyssey was a popular text taught in Greek schools in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, one may assume that the Egyptian scribe who composed Setne’s adventures would probably have heard, or even studied, the stories of Homer, very much as Dante did in medieval Italy, reproducing them in his Inferno.34 Given that the Greek literary topos is not reproduced word-by-word in the Egyptian text, it might have already been translated (and maybe even modified) in Egyptian before the scribe of the Stories of Setne Khamwas chose to use them in his work or it might have been this very scribe that first translated and modified them before incorporating them into his tale. 5. Wisdom Literature a. The Instruction of Hordedef & The Works and Days

Under the conventional umbrella of Wisdom Literature, several different types of parallels may be identified.35 Indeed, this is the field of ancient literature that has drawn the most attention in terms of comparative studies and theories of interaction.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations The first type of parallel that has been identified before by scholars is a parallel between genres involving common structures, styles, and themes. The best Greek representative of such networks of parallels is the aforementioned Works and Days of Hesiod, which has been compared to various Egyptian and Near Eastern wisdom texts (see n. 5 above). So, for instance, one may examine its text in the light of Egyptian Instructions, such as the Old Kingdom Instruction of Hordedef:36 (p.200) Cleanse yourself before your eyes. Beware of someone else cleansing you. When you prosper, may you found your household…Given that death humbles us, given that life exalts us, the house of death is for life. (Munich ostracon, 2–3) compared with: Do not get base gain. Base gain is as bad as ruin. Be friends with the friendly, and visit him who visits you. Give to the one who gives, but do not give to one who does not give. A man gives to the free-handed, but no one gives to the close-fisted. (Works and Days, 332–5) Here one may identify a similar series of loosely connected sayings and admonitions comprising the main body of the two works. The teachings delivered by the two passages apply to a wide variety of circumstances and consist of ethical and practical messages. In addition, both wisdom works name their addressee (in the case of the Instruction of Hordedef, his son Aou-ib-re, and in the case of Works and Days, Perses, probably the brother of Hesiod), hence creating a fictive didactic dialogue between a wise authorial voice and an addressee who needs the advice.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations In this case, the Egyptian work is much earlier than the Greek one, hence being the most likely source of influence. However, since the Instruction of Hordedef is placed at the beginning of a long and popular tradition of similar didactic writing in Egypt, a number of other Egyptian instructions (such as the New Kingdom Instruction of Amenemope or the Instruction of Ani) were also composed before 700 BCE, when the Hesiodic poems were probably composed.37 Therefore, since Hesiod’s Works and Days appears to be similar to a general form of composition shared by a number of Egyptian instructions, we can only speak of a tradition, rather than a specific work, influencing Hesiod. And since this tradition much resembled other wisdom traditions in the Ancient Near East,38 we could replace ‘Egyptian’ with ‘Oriental’ and thus speak of Oriental, rather than Egyptian, influences over Hesiod. This could very much be true, although the overall context of interaction during the Greek Archaic Period did not include high rates of spoken foreign languages in either Greece or the Orient (see above). Hence, the available evidence still does not (p.201) help us clearly visualize a potential Greek access to Oriental wisdom, being either orally or scripturally transmitted. b. Egyptian and Greek sayings

The rest of the examples examined here involve comparisons between sayings from Demotic Instructions and Greek wisdom collections, all circulating in the Mediterranean of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.39 The material brought together here is compared on the basis of (1) its form and style and (2) a combination of its form, style, and message. (1) šms pꜣ nt iw=f šms.ṱ=k ‘Serve the one who will serve you’ (Ankhsheshonqy 6/4) ≈ ἀεὶ τὸ λυποῦν ἐκδίωκε τοῦ βίου ‘Always chase away what is painful from life’ (Menandri Monostichoi 3) or nꜣ-ʽšꜣ rnn.t wsṱn r rnn.t n ʽfʽ ‘Greater is the wealth (of) generosity than the wealth of greed’ (Pap. Insinger 15/11) ≈ γυναῖκα θάπτειν κρεῖσσόν ἐστι ἢ γαμεῖν ‘Better is to bury a woman than to marry (one)’ (Menandri Monostichoi 115) (2) pꜣ nt pḥs n pḥs n ḥf ḫr snty.ṱ=f ḥr ḫsy nwḥ ‘He who is bitten of the bite of a snake, he is afraid of a coil (of) rope’ (Ankhsheshonqy 14/14) ≈ ὁ δηχθεὶς ὑπὸ ὄφεως καὶ τὸ σχοινίον φοβείται ‘He who is bitten by a snake fears even a rope’ (Byzantine Greek)40 or pꜣ nt pri n pꜣ ꜣsṱ ḫr sṱ=f s r-ir=fʽn ‘What comes out from the earth, it returns to it again’ (Pap. Insinger 30/6) ≈ γῆ πάντα τίκτει καὶ πάλιν κομίζεται ‘The earth gives birth to all (things) and takes (them) back again’ (Menandri Monostichoi 145)

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Under (1), the sayings involve the same types of structure: the first couple an imperative and the second couple a sentence with an (p.202) adjectival predicate in the comparative degree. These are just two from a multitude of types of structure shared between Egyptian and Greek compilations of wisdom writing. In fact, the same forms and styles are also found in most collections of universal wisdom.41 Hence, one may assume in this case that these formal and stylistic parallels are probably dictated by the very genre of wisdom writing and its generic features, rather than being an outcome of historical interaction between specific cultures in specific times. Under (2), the sayings convey the same messages in a very similar, but not identical, wording, including similar structure and style. The combination of these multi-levelled similarities may suggest that these sayings were indeed products of some kind of cultural interaction between Greek and Egyptian bodies of wisdom writing. With respect to the saying about the snake and the coil of rope, the imagery employed was unique and unattested in earlier Egyptian or Greek works. Hence we could take this saying as a product of Ptolemaic Egyptian or Greek wisdom that circulated among Hellenistic audiences. With regard to the saying describing life as an aller-retour journey from earth, it should be mentioned that this idea about life and death was popular in earlier or contemporary stages of Egyptian and Greek literature (as, for instance, in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts or in Euripides’ Suppliant Women).42 Thus, if there were an influence, one cannot determine when and how it occurred. Furthermore, given that the idea was well-rooted in the religious traditions of both cultures, it could be considered as a piece of popular wisdom that had developed in an independent but parallel manner. In general, in the case of the sayings here, yet again one comes across the favourable-for-interaction context of the Hellenistic and Roman world. In this historical period, as mentioned above, the mastery of foreign languages, though still limited if compared with modern standards, was not as uncommon as in the preceding ancient periods, thus making foreign cultures more accessible. In contrast to the observed formal and stylistic similarities under (1), which cannot stand alone as convincing proof for influence and interaction, the semantic parallels under (2) can be considered one’s (p.203) best chance for identifying influence between the wisdom traditions of Egypt and Greece.

Conclusions

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Thus we have identified seven different points of comparison within five different types of literary context. These are: (a) a similar literary device employed in descriptions of warfare (the Battle of Qadesh and the Iliad); (b) common literary imagery and common cultural references in love poetry (love poetry and Sappho); (c) the same extract from an anthology of popular stories reproduced in a different wording (the Myth of the Sun’s Eye and Aesop); (d) a similar literary topos employed in different types of literary context and with modified contents (the Stories of Setne Khamwas and the Odyssey); (e) didactic compositions of a similar form, treating similar types of theme (the Instruction of Hordedef and the Works and Days); f) similar types of structure employed in similar modes of literary expression (the Menandri Monostichoi and Demotic sayings); and finally; (g) similar modes of literary expression conveying similar messages in the same or in a slightly different wording (Greek and Demotic sayings). Given the obvious differences among these cases of parallel literary material, one should in no case consider all of them as equal signs for cultural interaction between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. For example, it is not possible to take both the case of the faithfully reproduced Aesopic fable in the Egyptian Myth of the Sun’s Eye and that of the formal similarities between Egyptian and Greek didactic compositions as equally strong signs for interaction. Overall, I hope I have shown through the study of these examples that each instance of parallel Egyptian and Greek literary material involves a number of factors, which, when brought together, draw, from their own individual angle, a different map of cultural interaction. Hence, this examination of literary similarities points towards a radical re-consideration of what can be defined as a literary parallel and what not, an essential requirement for any scholar who undertakes the difficult task of comparing intercultural phenomena and practices, such as that of ancient literary writing. (p.204) Bibliography Bibliography references: Adams, J. N., et al. (eds.) (2002), Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language Contact and the Written Word (Oxford). Alter, R. (1992), The World of Biblical Literature (New York). Antonaccio, C. (2003), ‘Hybridity and the Cultures within Greek Culture’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration (Cambridge), 57–74. Burkert, W. (1999), Da Omero ai Magi. La tradizione orientale nella cultura greca (Venice). Page 14 of 22

Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Burkert, W. (2004), Babylon-Memphis-Persepolis. Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge, Mass.). Campbell, D. A. (ed.) (1990), Greek Lyric I [Loeb Classical Library 142] (Cambridge, Mass./London). Chauveau, M. (1999), ‘Bilinguisme et Traductions’, in D. Valbelle and J. Leclant (eds.), Le Décret de Memphis: colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac à l’occasion de la célébration du bicentaire de la découverte de la Pierre de Rosette (Paris), 25–39. Crowley, J. L. (1989), The Aegean and the East: An Investigation into the Transference of Artistic Motifs between the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East in the Bronze Age (Jonsered). Daumas, F. (1952), Les moyens d’expression du grec et de l’égyptien comparés dans les décrets de Canope et de Memphis, [SASAE 16] (Cairo). de Cenival, F. (1988), Le mythe de l’œil du soleil [Demotische Studien 9] (Sommerhausen). Depauw, M. (1997), A Companion to Demotic Studies [Papyrologica Bruxellensia 28] (Brussels). de Polignac, F. (1992), ‘Influence extérieure ou évolution interne? L’innovation culturelle en Grèce géometrique et archaïque’, in G. Kopcke and I. Tokumaru (eds.), Greece between East and West: 10th–8th Centuries BC. Papers of the Meeting at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, March 15–16th, 1990 (Mainz), 114–27. Doxiadis, E. (1995), The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt (London). Drew Griffith, R. (2008), Mummy wheat: Egyptian influence on the Homeric view of the afterlife and the Eleusinian mysteries (Lanham). Fox, M. V. (1985), The Song of Songs and Egyptian Love Songs (Madison, Wis.). Frenkian, A. M. (1960), ‘L’épopée de Gilgames et les poèmes homériques’, Studia et Acta Orientalia 2, 89–105. Gallo, P. (1997), Ostraca demotici e ieratici dall’archivio bilingue di Narmouthis, vol. 2 (Pisa). Gammie, J. G., and Perdue, L. G. (eds.) (1990), The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake). (p.205) Gardiner, A. (1960), The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramses II (Oxford). Page 15 of 22

Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Goedicke, H. (1985), ‘The “Battle of Kadesh”: A Reassessment’, in H. Goedicke (ed.), Perspectives on the Battle of Kadesh (Baltimore, Md.), 77–121. Gresseth, G. K. (1975), ‘The Gilgamesh Epic and Homer’, Classical Journal 70, 1– 18. Griffith, F. Lkl. (1900), Stories of the High Priests of Memphis. The Sethon of Herodotus and the Demotic Tales of Khamwas (Oxford). Hallo, W. W. (ed.) (1997), The Context of Scripture, v. 1: The Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden/New York/Cologne). Helck, W. (1984), Die Lehre des Djedefhor und Die Lehres eines Vaters an seinen Sohn (Wiesbaden). Holzberg, N. (2001), Die antike Fabel: Eine Einführung, revised and improved (Darmstadt). Houser-Wegner, J. R. (2001), Cultural and Literary Continuity in the Demotic Instructions, unpub. PhD diss. Yale University. Jasnow, R. (1992), ‘Remarks on Continuity in Egyptian Literary Tradition’, in E. Teeter and J. A. Larson (eds.), Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente, [SAOC 58] (Chicago), 193–210. Jasnow, R. (forthcoming), ‘From Rakotis to Alexandria: Progress, Prospects, and Problems in the Study of Greco-Egyptian Literary Interaction’, in P. Kousoulis and N. Lazaridis (eds.), Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of Egyptologists (Leuven), forthcoming. Kitchen, K. A. (1977/8), ‘Proverbs and Wisdom Books of the Ancient Near East: The Factual History of a Literary Form’, Tyndale Bulletin 28, 69–114. Kitchen, K. A. (1979), Ramesside Inscriptions II: Historical and Biographical (Oxford ), 2–101. Kovacs, M. G. (1989), The Epic of Gilgamesh (Stanford). Lazaridis, N. (2007), Wisdom in Loose Form: The Language of Egyptian and Greek Proverbs in Collections from the Hellenistic and Roman Periods [Mnemosyne, Supplements 287] (Leiden). Lefebvre, G. (1923–4), Le tombeau de Petosiris, 3 vols. (Cairo). Lichtheim, M. (1976), Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 2: The New Kingdom (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London).

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Lichtheim, M. (1983), Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context: A Study of Demotic Instructions [OBO 52] (Freiburg, Schweiz, and Göttingen). Lichtheim, M. (1996), ‘Didactic Literature’, in A. Loprieno (ed.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms (Leiden/New York), 243–62. Lidov, L. (2002), ‘Sappho, Herodotus and the Hetaira’, Classical Philology 97, 203–37. Loprieno, A. (2005), ‘Egyptian love poetry and the Biblical Song of Songs’, in A. C. Hagedorn (ed.), Perspectives on the Song of Songs, [Beihefte zur (p.206) Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 346] (Berlin/New York), 105– 35. Luzzatto, M. J. (1992), ‘Grecia e vicino oriente: tracce della “storia d’Ahiqar” nella cultura greca tra VI a V secolo a.C.’, Quaderni di storia 18, 5–84. Maravelia, A. A. (2001a), ‘Sappho’s Poetry and Ancient Egyptian Love Poems: A Field of Comparative Interpretation, 1’, in D. Kalamakis et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the XIth International Conference of the F.I.E.C. (Athens), 527–38. Maravelia, A. A. (2001b), ‘Sappho’s Poetry and Ancient Egyptian Love Poems: A Field of Comparative Interpretation, 2’, in B. Werbart (ed.), Cultural Interactions in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age (3000–500 B.C.) (Oxford), 67–84. Mathieu, B. (1996), La poésie amoureuse de l’Égypte ancienne: Recherches sur un genre littéraire au Nouvel Empire (Cairo). Mee, C. (2008), ‘Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean and Beyond’, in C. W. Shelmerdine (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age (Cambridge), 362–86. Meltzer, E. S. (1974), ‘Egyptian Parallels for an Incident in Hesiod’s Theogony and an Episode in the Kumarbi Myth’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33, 154–7. Morschauser, S. (1985), ‘Observations on the Speeches of Ramesses II in the Literary Record of the Battle of Kadesh’, in H. Goedicke (ed.), Perspectives on the Battle of Kadesh (Baltimore, Md.) 123–206. Most, G. (2006), Hesiod v. 1, [Loeb Classical Library 57] (Cambridge, Mass./ London). Murray, A. T. (1995), Homer Odyssey Books 1–12, rev. G. E. Dimock, [Loeb Classical Library 104] (Cambridge, Mass./London).

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations Murray, A. T. (1999), Homer Iliad. Books 13–24, rev. W. F. Wyatt, [Loeb Classical Library 171] (Cambridge, Mass./London). Nieto Mesa, F. (2004), ‘Ilíada, VI, 146–149/Eclesiástico, XIV, 18–19: “toda carne envejece como heno…unas hojas nacen, y otras se caen” ’, Nova Tellus 22.2, 41– 9. Oettinger, N. (1992), ‘Achikars Weisheitssprüche im Licht älterer Fabeldichtung’, in N. Holzberg (ed.), Der Äsop-Roman: Motivgeschichte und Erzählstruktur, [Classica Monacensia 6] (Tübingen), 3–22. Ophel, A. (1985), ‘Lines 98–107 in the Kadesh Poem of Ramesses II’, in S. Israelit-Groll (ed.), Pharaonic Egypt, the Bible and Christianity (Jerusalem), 146– 56. Peremans, W. (1983), ‘La bilingualisme dans les relations gréco-égyptiennes sous les Lagides’, in E. van ’t Dack et al. (eds.), Egypt and the Hellenistic World. Proceedings of the International Colloqium Leuven, — 24–26 May 1982 [Studia Hellenistica 27] (Leuven), 253–80. (p.207) Perry, B. E. (ed.) (1965), Babrius and Phaedrus [Loeb Classical Library] (Cambridge, Mass./London). Pritchard, J. B. (ed.) (1969), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton). Ranston, H. (1918), ‘Ecclesiastes and Theognis’, The American Journal of Semitic Languages 34, 99–122. Ritner, R. K. (2007), ‘Cultural Exchanges between Egyptian and Greek Medicine’, in P. Kousoulis and K. Magliveras (eds.), Moving across Borders: Foreign Relations, Religion and Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean [OLA 159] (Leuven), 208–21. Spalinger, A. J. (2002), The Transformation of the Ancient Egyptian Narrative: P. Sallier III and the Battle of Kadesh [Göttinger Orientforschungen: IV. Reihe Ägypten 40] (Göttingen). Steiner, G. (1959), Der Sukzessionsmythos in Hesiods Theogonie und ihren orientalischen Parallelen, unpub. PhD diss., Hamburg. Thissen, H. J. (1992), Der verkommene Harfenspieler. Eine altägyptische Invektive (P. Wien KM 3877) [Demotische Studien 11] (Sommerhausen). Thissen, H. J. (1999), ‘Homerischer Einfluss im Inaros-Petubastis-Zyklus?’, Studien zur altägyptischer Kultur 27, 369–87.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations van Dongen, E. (2007), ‘Contacts between pre-classical Greece and the Near East in the context of cultural influences: an overview’, Oikumene 2, 13–48. Walcot, P. (1962), ‘Hesiod and the Didactic Literature of the Near East’, Revue des études grecques 75, 13–36. Walcot, P. (1966), Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff). West, M. L. (1978), Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford). West, M. L. (1997), The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford). West, S. (1969), ‘The Greek Version of the Legend of Tefnut’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 55, 161–83. Wilson, J. R. (1986), ‘The Gilgamesh Epic and the Iliad’, Échos du monde classique 30, 25–41. (p.208) Notes:

(1) Cf. Lichtheim (1983), Houser-Wegner (2001). A strong supporter of Greek influence on Egyptian literature is H. J. Thissen, as it appears in his study Der verkommene Harfenspieler (1992), or in his article ‘Homerischer Einfluss im Inaros-Petubastis-Zyklus?’ (1999). On the other hand, scholars such as R. Jasnow (as in his article ‘Remarks on Continuity in Egyptian Literary Tradition’ (1992) have argued against external influences on Egyptian literature. (2) M. West (1997), 12. Another Classicist who has worked on cultural interaction between Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt or the Near East is Walter Burkert. Burkert has published a number of studies on such GrecoOriental parallels in the realms of religion, literature, and mythology (see for instance (1999) and (2004)). In these studies Burkert has never attempted to define what he calls a parallel. (3) For this, see Steiner (1959); Meltzer (1974). (4) See Ranston (1918); Nieto Mesa (2004). (5) See Walcot (1962); Walcot (1966). (6) Cf. Frenkian (1960); Gresseth (1975); Wilson (1986). (7) Cf. Oettinger (1992) and his bibliography. (8) For a recent study on the value of studying the context to determine and evaluate ancient interaction, see van Dongen (2007). (9) For ancient cases of bilingualism, in general, see Adams et al. (eds.) (2002). Page 19 of 22

Different Parallels, Different Interpretations (10) In the case of material culture this question has been, for instance, raised regarding the emergence of new Greek pottery styles in various periods: cf. de Polignac (1992), Antonaccio (2003). (11) An overview of such exchanges in terms of writing culture is given in Jasnow (forthcoming); Ritner (2007). (12) On bilingualism and language contact in Greco-Roman Egypt, see Peremans (1983); Chauveau (1999). For the Narmouthis ostraca, see Gallo (1997) (nn. 34– 99). (13) S. West (1969). For a discussion of the original Egyptian text, see below. (14) For the former, see, for instance, the Greek and Roman owners of the famous Fayum portraits, such as Hermione and Demos (cf. Doxiadis (1995)), and for the latter, see, for example, the Greek style of the paintings in the tomb of Petosiris (Lefebvre (1923–4)). (15) For the literariness of this text, see Spalinger (2002), 347 ff.; Goedicke (1985); Morschauser (1985). (16) The text is edited in Kitchen (1979), 2–101 and is translated in Gardiner (1960); Lichtheim (1976), 62–72. (17) The passage is translated by the author, following the edition of Kitchen (1979). Part of the passage has been discussed in Ophel (1985). (18) Translated in Lichtheim (1976), 73–8. (19) The translation here follows the publication in Murray (1999). (20) Compare Burkert’s discussion of Oriental influences on Homer, which does not refer at all to Egyptian texts: (1999), 3 ff. See also the recently published theories of Egyptian influence on Homeric writing in Drew Griffith (2008), criticized in the author’s review of the book published in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.04.25. (21) M. West (1997), 609. On the contacts between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East of that period, see Crowley (1989); Mee (2008). (22) See, for instance, the sound arguments for Homeric influence over Demotic narratives in Thissen (1999). (23) In Marevelia (2001a), and (2001b). (24) The translation of the passages here follows those in Mathieu (1996), and Campbell (1990), 52ff.

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Different Parallels, Different Interpretations (25) Compare the identified parallels between Egyptian love poetry and the Biblical Song of Songs discussed in Loprieno (2005). (26) Maravelia (2001b), 80. The assumption that Sappho had a brother has been questioned in Lidov (2002) (this article was brought to my attention by A. Lardinois—personal communication). (27) For ancient animal fables, in general, see Perry (1965), xiff.; Holzberg (2001). (28) On Babrius and the circulation of his compilation, see Perry (1965), xlvii ff. The translation here follows that of Perry (1965), 137–9. (29) The details of the story and its circulation are discussed in Depauw (1997) 92–3. The translation here is the author’s and follows the publication in de Cenival (1988). (30) Differences in expressing the same ideas in Egyptian and Greek are discussed in Daumas (1952). (31) Cf. Luzzato (1992). (32) The translation of the Homeric passage follows that in Murray (1995), while the translation of the Egyptian text is the author’s and is based upon the publication in Griffith (1900). For the details of the Egyptian text, see Depauw (1997), 87–8. (33) Tablet IX onwards, according to Kovacs (1989). (34) Compare, for instance, the descriptions of the underworld in Canto 7. (35) One may even place the already discussed Aesopic fables under the umbrella of this large group of Classical and Oriental works first brought together by Biblical scholars, as, for example, in Alter (1992); Hallo (ed.) (1997). See also M. West (1978), 3–25. (36) The translation of the Egyptian text is the author’s and follows the publication in Helck (1984). Hesiod’s passage is translated after Most (2006). For the details of the Hesiodic poem, see West (1978), 25ff. For the details of the Instruction of Hordedef, see introduction in Helck (1984). (37) For the genre of Instruction in Egypt, see Lichtheim (1996). (38) For Near Eastern Wisdom Literature, see Kitchen (1977/8); Gammie and Perdue (eds.) (1990). (39) For details of the Instructions and collections mentioned here, see Lazaridis (2007), 18 ff. The translations of all the sayings are the author’s. Page 21 of 22

Different Parallels, Different Interpretations (40) This is identified in Lichtheim, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature, 28–29. (41) For examples of such universally shared characteristics, see Lazaridis (2007), chapters IV and V. (42) Cf. Pyramid Texts, Spell 225 and Eur. Suppl. 544–6.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Ian Moyer

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords The subject of this chapter is four Greek hymns by Isidorus (perhaps around 100 BCE) found inscribed on a gateway of the temple of the Egyptian goddess IsisHermouthis at Narmouthis/Medinet Madi in the Fayyum. Three of the hymns are to the goddess herself, the fourth is in praise of Amenemhat III/Porramanres, the founder of the temple. The chapter shows how four hymns mediate in different ways between a broader universalizing Greek perspective and a narrower more local Egyptian one, and it relates their specific cultural affinities to their spatial position in the temple. Keywords:   Isis, Hellenistic hymns, interaction, biculturalism, Fayyum, Porramanres, syncretism, hybridity

In the present era of globalization, diaspora, and transnational flows of people and ideas, old terms such as syncretism, creolization, and hybridity have been pressed into service to describe the vital and creative results of all kinds of human mixing.* These new and generally positive reappropriations have not always succeeded in cutting the tethers of less edifying etymologies anchored in the modern colonial and imperial past. Earlier pejorative views of syncretisms, hybrids, or creoles as impure or inauthentic, as well as implicit assumptions about the prior purity of the combined elements and relations of power between them have all contributed to a methodological unease with these terms. Some have advocated abandoning them completely.1

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple But at least for ‘syncretism’, scholarly disputes over the value of the term have provided a potentially productive path to rehabilitation. As Charles Stewart has argued, debates over whether syncretism has occurred, views on the process, and judgements of its results, are not extrinsic to the societies in which anthropologists or historians of religion have studied it: (p.210) Ultimately, the anthropology of syncretism is not concerned with pronouncing whether Buddhism, or any other religion, is or is not syncretic, but rather with studying the various arguments made for or against the notion of religious mixing. It should be concerned with competing discourses over mixture, whether syncretic or antisyncretic. Wherever syncretism occurs or has occurred, it is usually accompanied by a parallel discourse that might be termed metasyncretic: the commentary and registered perceptions of actors as to whether amalgamation has occurred, and whether this is good or bad. A strictly objectivist view could never be sufficient.2 An anthropology of syncretism, reconstituted on these terms, would investigate the positions, strategies, and discourses of various actors in a given social field, or in multiple overlapping fields, as they try to define religious ideas and practices as mixtures of different traditions—or not, as the case may be. Such a study of syncretism would also inquire into the ongoing conflicts and efforts at reconciliation between differing perspectives within or outside syncretic traditions. A similar approach can help to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear of ‘Greco-Egyptian’ syncretism.3 As students of ancient religious texts and other evidence, we find it useful to posit various analytical and descriptive categories of mixed traditions, but we would do well to ask whether any of our notions about ‘Greco-Egyptian’ phenomena correspond to the perceptions, distinctions, and discourses of the historical actors we study—in short, whether there is any evidence of the kind of metasyncretic discourse that Stewart describes.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple I propose to explore this question through a series of four hymns composed in Greek by a certain Isidorus and inscribed in the early first century BCE on the southernmost gates of the temple of Hermouthis and Isis in Narmouthis (modern Medinet Madi), a small town in the Fayyum region of Egypt.4 These texts have long been studied as part of a group of Hellenistic or ‘Greco-Egyptian’ Isis aretalogies, which all share a central divine subject and certain characteristic motifs related to her universality and benevolent power. The (p.211) hymns from Narmouthis, however, have even more to offer when read in their particular local context rather than in this universalizing generic frame, since they were the creations of a writer in the multi-ethnic, multilingual Ptolemaic Egyptian countryside who consciously mediated between differing literary and religious traditions. In his hymns, Isidorus positioned himself, his poetical discourse, his formal addressees, and the other referents of his discourse in this Fayyumic context—or rather, in its multiple contexts. Isidorus’ poetry was not determined solely by the generic expectations of Greco-Egyptian Isis hymns, but was the result of his own innovative practice within a range of poetical forms and styles as well as genres of discourse. Particularly important to interpreting these complexities of Isidorus’ hymns is what William F. Hanks has called the ‘indexical ground’ or the ‘deictic field’ of any discursive practice: the context of discourse that is embedded in linguistic expression itself through various pronouns, demonstratives, and other expressions that relate utterances to their speakers, addressees, other referents, and the place and time of occurrence.5 Though in three of his four creations Isidorus followed a well-established hymnic convention by addressing the goddess in the second person, other aspects of the indexical ground shift from hymn to hymn. In the fourth hymn, moreover, Isidorus no longer addresses the goddess but celebrates the founder of the temple at Narmouthis. In this hymn, his reference to himself and to his physical and literary milieu becomes more immediate and direct. As a series, the hymns elaborate a complex picture of overlapping and interrelating discursive contexts. The indexical ground also relates Isidorus’ discourse to a tangible, but no less complex, spatial context. The inscriptions were placed at the gates of the temple and arranged so that they flowed through them from the outside to within. From this liminal position, Isidorus engaged with widespread, universalizing ‘syncretic’ traditions but also with the traditions of a local Egyptian temple, a temple that had origins deep in the Pharaonic past, but that was now situated in a Ptolemaic present. These shifting positions reveal an author with an acute awareness of the multiple and sometimes conflicting frames of interpretation that can converge at one site around one ‘syncretic’ goddess.

(p.212) The Hymns and their Physical Context

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple The physical context in which the hymns are located and to which they refer is an essential aspect of the indexical ground of Isidorus’ discourse. The hymns on occasion do, in fact, refer directly to the ‘here’ of the temple and to its location in the Arsinoite nome of Ptolemaic Egypt. Equally important is the imagined ‘copresence’ of the reader as the poet recited his hymns to the goddess. As normally defined, co-presence involves a certain spatial proximity of verbal interactants and a level of mutual orientation,6 but in the hymns of Isidorus an imagined co-presence is possible because the written texts representing the discourse were fixed in the particular place to which they refer. The reader could, therefore, directly comprehend the indexical ground of Isidorus’ discourse and share in its orientation. While reading the hymns, moreover, visitors to the temple would have had to shift position slightly as they moved from one text to another, all the while oriented by the hymns to the physical space of the temple or to its divine inhabitants. It is essential, therefore, to read these hymns together with the physical context for which they were composed. The hymns were inscribed on the pilasters of a gateway to the southernmost forecourt of the temple of Hermouthis and Isis (see Figure 9.1). The innermost part of this temple was built almost 1800 years before Isidorus’ day under the pharaohs Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV of the 12th dynasty.7 This original temple was oriented on an axis that ran roughly south-south-east to north-northwest, so that the entrance to the sanctuary would be approached from the southsouth-east. Hieroglyphic inscriptions and images indicate that the original temple was dedicated to Renenutet, a goddess of the harvest, birth, and fortune. She shared the temple with her consort, Sobek, the crocodile-god prominent in the Fayyum who was also associated with fertility.8 In the Ptolemaic period, (p. 213)

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Renenutet usually appeared in Greek texts as Hermouthis or Thermouthis, and Sobek as Souchos or other variant forms of this name. At this temple, Sobek appeared under the Greek name Sokonopis.9 The 12th-dynasty temple underwent significant expansion and restoration in the Ptolemaic period. The additions included the outermost of the two hypostyle halls of the temple proper and most of the structures from that point southwards. These Fig. 9.1. Placement of the Hymns of consisted of a series of forecourts, Isidorus at the gates of the temple at gates, and vestibules that extend Medinet Madi (plan adapted from approximately 75m beyond the Vogliano 1937) outer hypostyle hall along the line of the main axis of the temple. Isidorus’ hymns were inscribed on the gates to the outermost vestibule in this series of preliminary spaces. Dual dedicatory inscriptions on the pillars date the construction of the forecourt to the 22nd year of the reign of Ptolemy IX Soter II, or 96 BCE. The hymns were probably inscribed on the gate of the forecourt not long after this date.10 A processional way flanked by sphinxes, and aligned (p.214) with the central axis of the temple, then proceeded from the outer gates toward the south-south-east. Toward the north or back of the 12th-dynasty sanctuary a ‘contra-temple’ dedicated to the goddess Isis was also added in the Ptolemaic period. The contra-temple, a tradition dating back to the New Kingdom in Egypt, was a shrine erected in close proximity to the sacred images located in the inner sanctum (usually at the back of the temple). These were often intended for the religious use of non-priests who were not permitted to enter the temple proper.11 In the Late Period of Egyptian history, traditional restrictions on access to sacred space continued and were perhaps given added physical emphasis by the elaboration of enclosing structures in temple architecture, so that the Ptolemaic Egyptian temple is sometimes imagined as an isolated, ‘Hermetically sealed’ world.12 On the other ḍhand, monumental pylons, forecourts, and processional ways had long provided points of partial or peripheral access to the temple for the broader populace, and these spatial and architectural practices continued into the Ptolemaic period.13 The gate of the vestibule at which Isidorus inscribed his hymns was part of this intermediate zone between the outside world and the ancient religious traditions within.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple The central axis of the temple complex, its series of portals and especially its outermost gate provided the architectural mise-en-scène for Isidorus’ hymns, but the hymns were also arranged on the posts of the gate in a manner that one commentator has described as ‘oddly asymmetrical’.14 Though there were two hymns on each post of the gate, the pairs of hymns were arranged differently. Hymn 1 (according to the conventional numbering) was on the south side of the western pier of the gate. An individual approaching the outer vestibule of the temple complex, would find it on the left pier directly facing him or her. Hymn 2 was adjacent to Hymn 1, but on the inside (p.215) or eastern surface of the same pier. Hymn 3 was on the opposite pier of the gate, also on the inside (in this case, the western) surface. So in addition to dividing the hymns by pilasters, Hymns 2 and 3 formed a pair that faced each other on either side of the entry to the vestibule. Hymn 4 was on the north side of the eastern pier, facing inwards toward the vestibule and the temple. The hymns on the gate’s pillars were also arranged according to their formal poetical characteristics. Each pillar bore one hymn in dactylic hexameters, and another in elegiac couplets. Hymns 1 and 3 were in hexameters, the typical convention for Greek hymns that went at least as far back as the earliest of the so-called Homeric hymns (seventh–sixth centuries BCE). Both of these hymns are 36 verses long, and followed by a brief prose subscription: ‘Isidorus wrote (this)’ (Ἰσίδωρος ἔγραψε). Hymns 2 and 4, on the other hand, are in elegiac couplets. This was a much more unusual verse form for hymnic compositions, although Isidorus may have had a significant model in the Alexandrian poet Callimachus, who composed his Hymn to Athena in the same meter.15 Chris Faraone has shown that in his elegiac hymns, Isidorus, like Callimachus, revived the archaic practice of arranging the verses into five-couplet stanzas.16 Hymn 2 consists of 3 stanzas (30 lines) and, like the other hymns, is followed by the simple subscription identifying the author. This hymn, however, is unique in having a further subscription: an elegiac couplet in which the author records the blessings he has received from the gods who have heard his hymns and prayers. Hymn 4, the longest of the hymns, has 4 stanzas (40 lines) and is also followed by Isidorus’ usual signature. The formal alternation of the hymns reinforces the spatial pairings described above: Hymns 1 and 2 on the western pillar were a hexametrical-elegiac pair, as were Hymns 2 and 3 facing one another on the interior surfaces of the pillars, and Hymns 3 and 4 on adjacent sides of the eastern pillar.

Isidorus at the Gates

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple The one constant through these formal and spatial shifts is the figure of Isidorus himself, the author of the hymns. But as I have mentioned, little is known about him beyond a few facts that can be gleaned from his (p.216) inscriptions. The name Isidorus is ostensibly Greek, even if it is derived from the name of the Egyptian goddess Isis. A Greek name, however, is not at all a reliable indication of Greek ethnicity, especially at this late point in the Ptolemaic period.17 Some scholars have suggested that he was an Egyptian, perhaps even an Egyptian priest,18 but the few references that Isidorus makes to himself tell us little more than that he was devoted to the divinities of the temple, and that he believed that they had granted him blessings in return for his prayers and hymns. Isidorus’ most explicit and significant autobiographical statement comes in the last lines of the last hymn (following the spatial sequence outlined above). There he claims to have investigated the history of the temple and its founder, to have translated his findings for the Greeks, and to have set them up as inscriptions (Hymn 4.37–40). Isidorus thus identified himself as an intermediary between the traditions of ancient Egypt and the Greeks, but on its own this statement does not clearly indicate whether he considered himself more at home in one language and its literary traditions or the other.19 To trace out more clearly Isidorus’ position on his literary, cultural, and religious affiliations, it will be productive to reconsider his final statement after passing through the shifting sequence of indexical grounds that his hymnic discourses create as he leads up to that point. In the hexametrical composition that first confronted any visitor passing through the gates of the temple’s outer vestibule, Isidorus addressed Hermouthis in the second person and invoked a particular vision of this goddess through a long series of descriptive phrases that defined the goddess as omnipotent and universal. He begins as follows: πλουτοδότι βασίλεια θεῶν, Ἑρμοῦθι ἄνασσα, παντοκράτειρα, τύχη ἀγαθή, μεγαλώνυμε Ἶσι, Δηοῖ ὑψίστη, ζωῆς εὑρέτρια πάσης… O wealth-giving queen of the gods, lady Hermouthis, Almighty, Agathe Tyche, Isis of the great name, Highest Deo, inventor of all life…20

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (p.217) The local goddess Hermouthis is here explicitly assimilated to the ‘Hellenistic’ Isis whose power and fame extended far beyond Egypt. And of the four hymns, this one most resembles other aretalogical compositions in Greek that celebrated the universal power of Isis and the many names under which she was known.21 In its discursive form, it is closer to those texts such as the invocation to Isis in P.Oxy. 1380 and the aretalogy of Maroneia that address the goddess in the second person,22 rather than the so-called Memphite Isis aretalogies in which the goddess reveals herself in a series of first-person selfpredications. The content, however, shares similarities with both groups.23 Isidorus addressed Hermouthis-Isis as the founder of civilized life, the creator of laws and agriculture (1.4–8), and also as the power behind the natural, fructifying rhythms of the Nile (Hymn 1.9–13): σοῦ τε χάριν συνέστηχ’ ὁ πόλος καὶ γαῖα ἅπασα καὶ πνοιαὶ ἀνέμων καὶ ἥλιος ὁ γλυκυφεγγής. σῆι δυνάμει Νείλου ποταμοὶ πληροῦνται ἅπαντες, ὥρηι ὀπωρινῆι, καὶ λαβρότατον χεῖθ’ ὕδωρ γαῖαν πᾶσαν ἔπι, ἵν’ ἀνέγλιπος καρπὸς ὑπάρχῃ. Because of you, heaven and the whole earth have their being; And the gusts of the winds and the sun its sweet light. By your power the channels of the Nile are filled, every one, in the late summer season, and the most turbulent water is poured On the whole land, so that produce may be unfailing.

Isidorus invokes and continually emphasizes the goddess as the object of his address with the partial anaphora, ‘Because of you…By your (p.218) power…’, but he describes her exalted power through simple predications concerning the heavens, the earth, the landscape—that is, place at the broadest level. Hermouthis-Isis is initially correlated with the entire natural world, but then the frame narrows as Isidorus connects the goddess to the Nile’s annual flood, the indispensible and determinant natural phenomenon of life in Egypt. In the subsequent lines (1.14–24), Isidorus repeats the pattern of a universal frame that becomes centred on Egypt—but this time in terms of human geography. The sequence begins with a typically Greek division between the Greeks and everyone else: ὅσσοι δὲ ζώουσι βροτοὶ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονι γαίηι, Θρᾷκες καὶ Ἕλληνες, καὶ ὅσσοι βάρβαροί εἰσι, οὔνομά σου τὸ καλόν, πολυτίμητον παρὰ πᾶσι, φωναῖσι φράζουσ’ ἰδίαις, ἰδίαι ἐνὶ πάτρηι. However many mortals live on the boundless earth, Thracians and Hellenes, and however many are barbarians, They all pronounce your beautiful name, much honored among all peoples,

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple In their own languages, and in their own native lands.

This totalizing dichotomy implies a Greek ‘we’ as the centre point of orientation for the discourse, but the novel inclusion of Thracians with the Hellenes suggests that Isidorus may have had in mind a Ptolemaic version of the dichotomy. At its height, the dynasty had Thracian connections through Arsinoe II (the former wife of Lysimachus). The Ptolemaic empire at that time extended to Thrace, and Thracians were among those soldiers of the Ptolemaic army settled as cleruchs in the Fayyum.24 In the next few lines, Isidorus centres his (p.219) discourse on Egypt much more clearly. He lists the various names by which Hermouthis-Isis is known in Syria, Lycia, Thrace, and Greece, and then declares that ‘Egyptians (call you) Thiouis, since you alone are all the other goddesses named by the nations’ (1.23–4: Αἰγύπτιοι δὲ Θιοῦιν, ὅτι μούνη εἶ σὺ ἅπασαι | αἱ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν ὀνομαζόμεναι θεαὶ ἄλλαι). The name Thiouis is actually more a divine epithet than a proper name; it transliterates into Greek the Egyptian tɜ wᶜ.t, ‘the one’, ‘the sole’, ‘the unique’. This was indeed an epithet of Isis in Egyptian texts, but Isidorus uses it in a novel way to explain a transcultural synthesis of divinities who are all subsumed under the one Egyptian goddess.25 Though ‘Egyptians’ are referred to in the third person like all the other ἔθνη, they take on a greater prominence as Isidorus demonstrates a basic competence in the Egyptian language by using the name Thiouis and then explaining to the goddess why his usage is correct. Since this explanation (at least within the logic of Isidorus’ hymn) could hardly have been news to the goddess, it functioned as a kind of phatic utterance through which Isidorus affiliated himself with Egyptians, their language, and their goddess, however cosmic and international her reach. This centring of Isidorus’ discourse on Egypt is reinforced by the spatial arrangement of references to the names of Isis among different peoples. They form a roughly circular itinerary starting with the Syrians in the east, moving north and west to the Lycians, and then on to the Thracians, before turning south and west to the Greeks, and finally returning to Egypt. Only after establishing Hermouthis-Isis in a universal context centred on Egypt does the poet refer to himself and to his discourse. (p.220) In a phrase reminiscent of the Homeric Hymns,26 he promises the goddess that he will never stop singing her praises (1.25–6): δεσπότι, οὐ λήξω μεγάλην δύναμίν σου ἀείδων, σώτειρ’ ἀθανάτη, πολυώνυμε, Ἶσι μεγίστη… Mistress, I shall not cease singing of your great power, Immortal savior, many-named, mightiest Isis…

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple In the verses that follow this explicit reference to his praise, Isidorus takes up the goddess’s epithet of ‘saviour’, and expatiates on this theme in relation to general categories of human suffering, but without connecting them to the contingent suffering of any particular person: Hermouthis-Isis saves cities and their inhabitants from war; she saves those who are in prison, those in pain or facing death, those wandering in foreign lands, or in danger at sea. ‘Therefore’, Isidorus implores the goddess, ‘hear my prayers, be merciful to me, and put an end to all my grief’. This may have been a genuine cri de cœur (who can say?), but in this relatively formal hymn, the rhetoric of the prayer is generic. Its appeal unfolds strictly within the logic of this hymnic genre of discourse: in exchange for praising the saving power of the goddess, Isidorus asks for her to save him. Isidorus, moreover, locates himself and his address to the goddess in no more precise a context than the wide world centred on Egypt that he has evoked through his description of the power and universality of Hermouthis-Isis. With the exception of the name Hermouthis, there is nothing in this first hymn that connects it to its immediate spatial or temporal context. The indexical ground is broad, diffuse, and minimally defined. But the ground shifts in the second hymn. As our putative reader moves to the adjacent text on the inner surface of the western pillar of the gate, Isidorus’ discourse becomes more localized, and the discursive context becomes more critical to the rhetoric of his appeal to the goddess. The form also switches from dactylic hexameters to elegiac couplets, which, as Chris Faraone has argued, are generically better (p.221) suited to his assumption of a more personal and urgent voice in this poem.27 Initially, he appears to resume his address from the previous hymn to Hermouthis-Isis as a goddess of agriculture and temporal salvation, but the scale of reference announced in the first couplet is less cosmic, and in the final lines of the first stanza Isidorus’ local milieu comes into focus: χαῖρε, Τύχη Ἀγαθή, μεγαλώνυμε Ἶσι μεγίστη, Ἑρμοῦθι· ἐπί σοι πᾶσα γέγηθε πόλις, ζωῆς καὶ καρπῶν εὑρέτρια, οἷσί τε πάντες τέρπονταί τε βροτοὶ σῶν χαρίτων ἕνεκα. ὅσσοι σοὶ εὔχονται ἐπ’ ἐμπορίην τε παρεῖναι, πλουτοῦσ’ εὐσεβέες εἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον· καὶ ὅσοι ἐν νούσοις θανατώδεσι μοίρῃ ἔχονται, σοὶ εὐξάμενοι ταχέως σῆς28 ζωῆς ἔτυχον. ὡς ἐτύμως ὁ ἀγαθὸς δαίμων, Σοκονῶπις κραταιός, σύνναος ναίει, πλουτοδότης ἀγαθός… Hail, Agathe Tyche, greatly renowned Isis, mightiest Hermouthis, in you every city rejoices. O discoverer of life and of crops wherein all mortals delight because of your blessings. All who pray to you to assist their commerce, Page 10 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple prosper in their piety forever; And all who are bound by fate in the grip of mortal illness, if they pray to you, quickly attain your life. How truly the Agathos Daimon, mighty Sokonopis dwells as your temple-mate, that goodly bestower of wealth…

By invoking Sokonopis as a σύνναος θεός, Isidorus refers to the divine pair inhabiting the local temple at Narmouthis: Sobek and the goddess Renenutet. As noted earlier, this couple is attested in the figural decorations and hieroglyphic inscriptions of the original 12th-dynasty temple. In the second stanza (ll. 11–20), however, Isidorus expands the pair into a triad by mentioning a son, Anchoes (Ἀγχόης). The root of the name is probably the Egyptian ‘nḫ life’, but the exact identity of this god is unclear, and he is not attested elsewhere.29 (p.222) Isidorus locates him in the heavens and identifies him with the rising sun (ll. 13– 14). In this respect, he could easily have assimilated Anchoes to Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, in order to reinforce the identification of Hermouthis with Isis. But the frame of reference is resolutely local here, and the universal Hermouthis-Isis of the first hymn scarcely appears. To the extent that Isidorus portrays the goddess as ‘syncretic’ at all, local and intra-Egyptian patterns of syncretism come to the fore: the re-configuration of a local pair into the triad pattern of divinities which was so widespread in Egypt;30 the identification of Hermouthis-Isis with Agathe Tyche and Sokonopis with Agathos Daimon, which refer to well-attested connections between Renenutet (Hermouthis) and Shaï, the Egyptian concept of fortune or fate;31 and, of course, the syncretism of a local goddess with Isis, the great transregional goddess of Egypt, is not solely a ‘Hellenistic’ phenomenon but one with a long history within Egypt.32 The latter assimilation was formalized in the local architecture through the addition of the contra-temple of Isis. Isidorus also directly addresses the triad of local divinities at Narmouthis for a brief moment. In the middle of the second stanza, the local triad of the temple becomes the collective addressee of the hymn, rather than Hermouthis-Isis alone: ‘All who wish to beget offspring, if they pray to you (ὑμῖν —the plural), obtain the blessing of children’ (ll.15–16).33 Through all these references, Isidorus constructs an indexical ground for his discourse that is much closer than the expansive world of the first hymn. This localized discursive context is not only spatial but also temporal. In the final two couplets of the second stanza, Isidorus juxtaposes the human desire for offspring to the natural cycles of fertility in Egypt: Νεῖλον χρυσορρόαν πείθουσ’ ἀνάγεις κατὰ [κ]αι[ρό]ν Αἰγύπτου ἐπὶ γ̣ῆν ἀνδράσιν εὐτερπίην. εὐανθεῖ τότε καρπὸς ἅπας καὶ πᾶσι μερίζ[εις], οἷσι θέλεις, ζωὴν παντοδαπῶν ἀγαθῶν. Persuading the gold-flowing Nile, you lead him at the right moment over the land of Egypt as a blessing for men. Page 11 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (p.223) Then all fruit flourishes, and you share it out to all whom you wish—a life of manifold good.

This shift to the Nile and the resumption of the second-person singular address to Hermouthis-Isis seems rather abrupt, unless one recalls that the crocodile god Sobek was often connected with the Nile flood (as Sobek-Hapy) and the name Sokonopis was sometimes written in Demotic in order to reflect that connection.34 The rising flood of the Nile comes at the right time (καιρός) because Hermouthis-Isis persuades her consort Sokonopis, and leads him over the land. Starting with his reference to the opportune moment of the flood and that happy time (‘then’—τότε) when the earth’s produce grows, Isidorus uses a series of temporal expressions and deictics to ground his own prayers for fertility in the rhythms of Egyptian agriculture, specifically at Narmouthis.35 In the third and final stanza of the hymn, the poet shifts from natural cycles to the socio-religious cycles of reciprocity that were enacted each year at the temple (lines 21–30): σῶν δώρων μνησθέντες, ὅσοις πλοῦτόν τ’ ἀνέδωκας καὶ χάριτας μεγάλας σάς τε ἔχειν δι’ ὅλου, τούτων σοι μοῖραν δεκάτην ἀπένειμαν παντες, χαίροντες κατ’ ἔτος σῆι τε πανηγυρίηι, εἶτα ἐδωρήσω περιτελλομένου ἐνιαυτοῦ αὐτοῖς μηνὶ Παχὼν πᾶσιν ἐς εὐφροσύνην. τερφθέντες δ’ εἰς οἶκόν τε πανηγυρίσαντες ἔβησαν εὐφήμως, πλήρεις τῆς παρὰ σοῦ τε τρυφῆς. σ̣ῶν δώρων κἀμοὶ μετάδος, Ἑρμοῦθι ἄνασσα, σῶι ἱκέτηι, ὄλβον καὶ ἅμα εὐτεκνίην. Remembering your gifts, those to whom you have given wealth and your great favors to possess forever, All set aside a tenth portion of these things for you, (p.224) rejoicing each year at your festival, Then as the year comes around you grant to them all to be of good cheer in the month of Pachon. Joyful after celebrating your festival, they go back to their homes with propitious words, filled with abundance from you. Grant a share of your gifts to me as well, Mistress Hermouthis, your suppliant: riches and also the blessing of children.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Isidorus describes a festival of Hermouthis-Isis in the Egyptian month of Pachon.36 The festival appears to have been a local celebration of the goddess’s beneficence that coincided with the end of the harvest season.37 Those with homes near enough came to bring a tithe of their produce to the goddess, gratefully returning to her a portion of what she had given them in a cycle that rolled on year after year. It is tempting to imagine the celebrants passing through the very gates on which the hymn was inscribed as they brought their offerings to the goddess each year. Evocative though it may be, this reference to the socio-religious temporality of Narmouthis and surrounds is not just local colour. The precise indexical ground of Isidorus’ discourse was essential to his rhetorical strategy. One could say that it was the ground he stood on in seeking blessings from the goddess. In the closing couplet of the hymn, Isidorus aligned his own prayers as a suppliant to the goddess (ἱκέτης) with the yearly cycle of her festival. He begins with the phrase ‘Grant a share of your gifts to me as well’, (σῶν δώρων κἀμοὶ μετάδος…) echoing the beginning of the third stanza (σῶν δώρων μνησθέντες…) and thereby connecting his request for wealth and children with the enduring local pattern of divine generosity and human gratitude he has just described. In this closing request, moreover, Isidorus addresses the goddess by her local name alone (Ἑρμοῦθι ἄνασσα). He apparently believed that his localized appeal was successful, since he later added a couplet after his signature, claiming that the gods—presumably the triad of Hermouthis, (p.225) Sokonopis, and Anchoes in the temple at Narmouthis—heard his prayers and hymns and granted him ‘kind favour’ in return.38 If the differing formal genres and discourses of the first and second hymns unfold on maps of distinct scale and orientation, the third hymn mixes characteristics of the previous two. Though a traditional hexametrical hymn like the first, it addresses the goddess with a more personal appeal, and also makes more direct reference to the local context than the first hymn. Both of these elements are especially apparent in the second half of the hymn. The hymn begins, however, with an invocation to Hermouthis-Isis as a universal queen of the gods (lines 1–4) that is very similar to the opening lines of the first hexametrical hymn:39 ὑψίστων μεδέουσα θεῶν, Ἑρμοῦθι ἄνασσα, Ἶσι ἁγνή, ἁγία, μεγάλη, μεγαλώνυμε Δηοῖ, σεμνοτάτη δώτειρ’ ἀγαθῶν μερόπεσσι ἅπασι εὐσεβέσιν μεγάλας χάριτας καὶ πλοῦτον ἔδωκας… O ruler of the highest gods, lady Hermouthis. Isis, pure, most sacred, great, Deo of the great name, Most hallowed bestower of good things, to all men who are pious you give great favors and wealth…

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Many of the same names and epithets appear in both invocations, but the third hymn treats the benevolence of Hermouthis-Isis as more contingent: the goddess grants her blessings to those who are pious (εὐσεβής), and particularly to those kings who are mindful of her.40 Rather than the divine queen of Hymn 1, who bestows civilization, justice, and agriculture on humanity directly, the blessings of Hermouthis-Isis are mediated through worldly representatives of an ideal kingship: ὅσσοι δὲ ζώουσι μακάρτατοι, ἄνδρες ἄριστοι, σκαπτροφόροι βασιλεῖς τε καὶ ὅσσοι κ̣οίρανοί̣ εἰσι, (p.226) οὗτοί σοι ἐπέχοντες ἀνσσουσ’ ἄχρι τε γήρω[ς], λαμπρὸν καὶ λιπαρὸν καταλείποντες πολὺν ὄ[λβον] υἱάσι θ’ υἱωνοῖσι καὶ ἀνδράσι τοῖσι μεταῦ[τις]. Whosoever live lives most blessed, the best of men: scepter-bearing kings and those who are rulers, These, if they attend to you, rule until old age, leaving shining and splendid wealth in abundance to their sons and grandsons, and to men who come after.

In guaranteeing long life to the pious king and successful inheritance to his descendants, the goddess acts as the protector of legitimate kingship, one of the most prominent roles of Isis in Egyptian tradition.41 It is also a role that is entirely absent from the hymns and aretalogies of Isis that have been found outside of Egypt. Isis, in these texts, is a universal divine queen, but she does not support temporal kingship or any particular regime or form of polity42—that is, she appears exactly as she does in Isidorus’ first hymn. In the third hymn, by contrast, Isidorus evokes an ideal king of Egypt, who, with the help of the goddess, extends his power to Asia and Europe, and brings peace and prosperity: ὃν δέ κε φίλτατον ἔσκε ἀνάκτων ἡ βασίλε[ια], οὗτος καὶ Ἀσίας τε καὶ Εὐρώπης τε ἀν[ά]σσει, εἰρήνη τε ἄγων, καρποὶ βρίθουσιν ἐ̣π’ αὐτῶι παντοίων ἀγαθῶν, καρπόν τε φέροντες ἄρ[ισ]τ̣[ον]. ὅππου δὴ πόλεμοί τε ἀνδροκτασίαι τε μάλιστ[α], μυριάδων ὄχλων τε τὸ σὸν σθένος, ἡ δύνα[μίς σου], πλῆθος ἀπημαύρωσ’, ὀλίγοισι δὲ θάρσος ἔ[δωκε]. But he whom the queen holds dearest among kings, This one rules Asia and Europe, bringing peace; the harvests grow heavy for him, with all sorts of good things, bearing the b[est] fruit. And wherever there are wars and the slaughter of (p.227) countless throngs, your might, your power annihilates the multitude and g[ives] courage to the few.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Isidorus’ picture of peace and prosperity and expansive rule over Europe and Asia is difficult to reconcile with the much-diminished Ptolemaic kingdom of the early first century BCE with its dynastic struggles between Ptolemy IX Soter II and his brother, Ptolemy X Alexander. On the other hand, the anonymity of the ideal king was perhaps a discrete reference to the circumstances of Isidorus’ world, and a nostalgic glance backward to the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who oversaw the massive agricultural development of the Fayyum and also projected Ptolemaic power into both Europe and Asia.43 In any case, the kingship that Isidorus evokes locates his discourse in a particular political– religious system, and implicates his divine addressee in a contingent relationship of royal piety and benefaction to the land of Egypt. This relationship, in which the right actions of the king guarantee peace and prosperity, provides the rhetorical context for his appeal to the goddess. Immediately following his sketch of divine favour to the good king, Isidorus calls on the goddess to hear him as a suppliant (κλῦθι ἐμοῦ…ἱκέτου σου), wherever she may be. The subsequent lines cast about to all the far-off places where she may dwell. Isidorus begins with the cardinal directions, and then addresses the goddess as though she were on high, surveying the world below: ἤ που ἐς Λιβύην ἢ ἐς Νότον ἀμφιβέβηκα[ς], ἢ Βορέου πέρατα ναίεις ἡδυπνόου αἰεί, ἢ Εὔρου πνωιάς, ὅθι ἀντολαὶ ἠελίοιο, ἢ καὶ Ὄλυμπον ἵκανες ὅπου ρανίων[ες ἐν]ε[ισίν(?)], ἢ καὶ ἐν οὐρανῶι ὕψι μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι δικάζεις, ἢ καὶ ἠελίου ὠκυδρόμου ἅρματα βᾶσα, κόσμον ἅπαν διάγουσα, κατοπτεύουσα ἅπαντα ἔργ’ ἀνδρῶν ἀσεβῶν τε καὶ εὐσεβέων καθορῶσα. Whether you have journeyed around to Libya or to the South, Or you dwell at the limits of the North Wind, ever sweetly blowing, Or at the gusts of the East Wind, where are the risings of the sun, Or you have gone to Olympos, where the celestial ones are, (p.228) Or you pass judgments in heaven above with the immortals, Or you have mounted the chariot of the swift-driving sun, and are crossing over the world, gazing down and observing all the deeds of men, both impious and pious.

The geographical coordinates that Isidorus uses are, at first, centred on Egypt: Libya is the west, and the North Wind blows sweetly into Egypt with its cooling breath.44 Then in his address to the distant, roving goddess, Isidorus mentions places that would be familiar to anyone versed in Greek literary and mythical traditions: Mt. Olympos, the heavens, and the course of the sun’s chariot.45 The latter heights offer the goddess a vantage point from which she may view and judge the deeds of kings and men, and (he implies) dispense her favour accordingly.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple But, Isidorus points out, the far-off heavens are not the only such vantage point. In the final verses of this hexametrical hymn, he returns to the same palpable local context that he evoked in the elegiac hymn inscribed on the opposite gate post: εἰ δὲ καὶ ὧδε πάρει, ἰδίαν ἀρετὴν ἐφορῶσα, τερπομένη θύμασιν, λοιβαῖσί τε ἠδὲ θυηλαῖ[ς], ἀνδρῶν ναιόντων Σούχου νομὸν Ἀρσινοειτῶν παμφύλων ἐθνῶν, ὅσσοι κατ’ ἔτος τε πάρεισι εἰκάδι μηνὶ Παχὼν καὶ Θωὺθ δεκάτην σοι ἄγον[τ]ε[ς], καὶ Ἀγχόηι, Σοκονῶπι, θεοῖς {α} ἁγίοισιν, ἑορτήν. And if you are also present here, you behold private virtue, delighting in the sacrifices, libations, and offerings of the men who dwell in the nome of Souchos, the Arsinoïtes, peoples of all tribes, who each year are present on the twentieth of the month of Pachon and Thoth, bringing a tithe to you, and to Anchoes, and to Sokonopis, the sacred gods, during your festival.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (p.229) The deictic ὧδε ‘here’, emphatically indicates the goddess’s close presence. That presence is imagined in the time of the festival of the goddess, at which she judges not royal virtue, but the private virtue of the people of the Fayyum who remember her festival and bring their offerings to the temple. This image of the goddess evokes a contemporary judicial practice that took place in the approximate spatial context of the hymns. In the forecourts of temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, officials continued to conduct judicial oaths and hear petitions and cases at law just as they had in previous eras.46 Here at the outermost gates of the temple, Isidorus addresses the goddess as she judges the merit of the people of the Arsinoite nome. Isidorus’ shift from a distant goddess who passes judgement from on high to one who is at the temple during her festival puts the local populace in the presence of Hermouthis-Isis. These diverse people (παμφύλων ἐθνῶν) are located in the space of Egypt and the Ptolemaic state through a dual reference. Isidorus describes them as those who dwell in the nome of Souchos, harking back to earlier Egyptian names and to the predominance of the crocodile-god Sobek in the Fayyum. But they are also called Arsinoïtes, residents of the Arsinoite nome, one of the administrative districts of Ptolemaic Egypt. This was the usual designation of the nome in Greek and (less consistently) Demotic texts, ever since Ptolemy II renamed it following the death of his sister and wife Arsinoe II in 270 BCE.47 The name is the only explicit link to the ruling dynasty, but it does nevertheless connect the Ptolemies to the ideal kingship of earlier verses. Isidorus presumably counts himself among the Arsinoïtes, and (fortified by the image of their ‘private virtue’) he concludes his hymn with a personal appeal to Isis and to the great gods who dwell with her in her temple (μεγάλοι τε θεο σύνναοι ἅμ’ αὐτῆι), asking them to send him the healing god Paean.48 The rhetoric of this appeal parallels and recapitulates on a (p.230) smaller scale the virtue of the ‘most beloved’ king whom the goddess favoured in the first half of the poem. Through the alternations of scale in the third hymn, the universal and international goddess of the first hymn becomes the local Egyptian goddess of the second. While Isidorus addresses the goddess as Hermouthis at the end of his second hymn, he only addresses her as ‘Isis’ in his appeal to the goddess at the end of the third hymn. The distance of a transcendant Isis who is all goddesses to all peoples is overcome by placing her in a very particular location.49

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Isidorus’ fourth hymn, which is on the north side of the eastern pillar, facing inward toward the temple of Hermouthis-Isis, differs significantly from the previous three. It is often left out of discussion of the so-called ‘Isis aretalogies’, since it is not a hymn to Hermouthis-Isis at all, but a poem in praise of Amenemhat III (referred to as Porramanres), the builder of the original temple of Renenutet at Narmouthis. In contrast to the other hymns, Isidorus does not directly address the object of his praise. Rather, the hymn unfolds in a dialogical manner: Isidorus responds to an unknown interlocutor who inquires about the founder of the temple at the beginning of the first stanza and at the end of the third (4.1–2, 29–30). The poem also encapsulates a dialogue between languages and traditions. Isidorus explicitly cites Egyptian sources, written and oral, and claims to translate them for Greeks. Despite these departures, the hymn to Amenemhat III is a coherent part of the series of four texts Isidorus inscribed at the gates of the temple. He wrote the poem in Greek, and in elegiac couplets and stanzas. As in the second hymn, Isidorus uses this elegiac genre for a discourse that is very much embedded in the local context with which he appears to have a personal connection. The subject of the fourth hymn also resumes themes from the adjacent third hymn. Indeed, the third and fourth hymns constitute a kind of diptych on kingship. The distant, ideal king of the hexametrical hymn, perhaps a past Ptolemy who ruled over Asia and Europe, is juxtaposed to a native king of Egypt. Though temporally remote, this king is more clearly defined, and more present in the indexical ground of Isidorus’ discourse. This effect is in part created through (p.231) Isidorus’ repeated use of proximate deictics (ὅδε, οὗτος) in the fourth hymn to refer both to the temple and to the ancient king who built it.50 The temple was right there for the reader to see, and in the physical and spatial context at the temple and in the Fayyum, the repeated references to Amenemhat served as more than just references to an antecedent topic. The popularity of the cult of the pharaoh Amenemhat III in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods shows that his memory was very much alive in Isidorus’ day, and he also had a physical presence in various temple structures in the Fayyum.51 At Narmouthis, his image appeared in the decorations of the original Middle Kingdom temple; he is shown conducting the foundation rites, making offerings to the gods Renenutet and Sobek, and receiving benefactions from them in turn.52 Isidorus indicates the proximate physical context as soon as the poem begins (4.1–6): τίς τόδε ἁγνὸν ἔδειμ’ ἱερὸν Ἑρμοῦθι μεγίστηι; ποῖς θεὸς ἐμνήσθη πανιεροῦ μακάρων; ὡς αἰπὺν καὶ ἄδυτον ἐσημηώσατ’ Ὄλυμπον Δηοῖ ὑψίστηι Ἴσιδι θεσμοφόρωι, καὶ Ἀγχόηι υἱῶι καὶ δαίμονι ἀγαθῶι Σοκονῶπ[ι], ἀθανάτοις ὅρμον εὗρε δικαιότατον.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Who built this holy temple to greatest Hermouthis? What god remembered the all-holy place of the immortals? As a lofty Olympus he marked out the innermost sanctuary for highest Deo, Isis Thesmophorus, And for Anchoes the son and for the Agathos Daimon, Sokonopis, he devised a most just haven. Immartals all,

In the first line, a voice asks who built this temple, immediately orienting the discourse between Isidorus and his interlocutor toward the temple, and also to the as yet unknown founder. The temple is first identified as belonging to Hermouthis, but the picture is then (p.232) filled out with references to the syncretic side of the goddess (Deo, Isis Thesmophorus), and in a moment of poetic hyperbole the inner sanctuary is likened to Mt. Olympus.53 Isidorus also includes the other members of the local triad, Anchoes and Sokonopis, among the denizens of the temple. He thus encapsulates the local and the transcultural aspects of the site in the opening of the hymn. Isidorus’ response to the question ‘Who built this temple?’ is a story, the subject of which is introduced in the remainder of the first elegiac stanza (4.7–10): Αἰγύπτου τινά φασι γενέσθαι θεῖον ἄνακτα, ὃς πάσης χώρας κύριος ἐξεφάνη πλούσιον, εὐσεβέα, δυνάμει πάσηι τε μεγίστη̣[ι], ὃς κλέος καὶ ἀρετὴν ἔσχεν ἰσουράνιον. They say that there came to be a divine king of Egypt, who appeared as the lord of the entire land, wealthy, pious, and with the greatest universal power, who had glory and virtue equal to the heavens.

In the style of a Herodotean source citation, the brief narrative about the royal founder is introduced in reported speech: ‘They say…’. The indexical ground therefore includes not only Isidorus and the anonymous interlocutor, but other individuals who bear witness to the truthfulness of Isidorus’ account of the founder-king. Though Isidorus’ sources are at first anonymous, and suggest orally transmitted folk tale, he provides a much more specific citation at the end of the second stanza. His story is supported by ‘those who read the sacred letters…’ (οἱ τῶν ἱερῶν γράμμ’ ἀναλεξάμενοι), in other words, the priestly bearers of Egyptian literary tradition. This citation is important not just as an indication of the sources of Isidorus’ story about Amenemhat, but also because it documents the expected or intended reception of the reported speech54 (4.17– 20): δῆλον τοῦτ’ ἐστίν ὅτι ὄρνεα ἔκλυεν αὐτοῦ, ὡς οἱ τῶν ἱερῶν γράμμ’ ἀναλεξάμενοι (p.233) φάσκουσίν ποτε τοῦτον ἐπ̣ιστείλαντα κορώνην, σύν τε ἐπιστολίωι ἦλθε φέρουσα φάσιν· Page 19 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple This fact is clear: that birds listened to him, since those who read the sacred letters are always saying that this man once gave orders to a crow, and with a letter she went off, bearing his utterance.

Isidorus himself believes the truth of the Egyptian priests’ story, and expects that his unknown interlocutor will as well, since he makes it the basis of a claim about the ‘clear’ or ‘manifest’ powers of the ancient pharaoh. The incorporated speech thereby lends its authority to Isidorus’ own discourse. Since they are described as ‘readers of sacred letters’, his sources also derive their reliability from written texts. This textual tradition supports not only Isidorus’ discourse but also its graphic representation. In the closing couplets of the final stanza, he sets forth the process by which the inscribed text of his hymn came to be: he learned the traditions about king Amenemhat III, translated them into Greek, and inscribed them at the temple gates: ἀσφαλέως δὲ μαθών τε παρ’ ἀνδρῶν τῶν ἱστορούντῶν ταῦτα καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ πάντ’ ἀναγραψάμενος ἡρμήνηυσ’ Ἕλλησι θεοῦ δύναμίν τε ἄνακτος, ὡς βροτὸς οὐδέτερος ἔσχεν ἴσην δύναμιν. Having learned with certainty from men who conduct researches into these things, I myself also recorded everything in an inscription, having translated for Greeks the power of the divine king, since no other mortal possessed equal power.

In this discursive context and in such close physical proximity to the temple and its personnel, Isidorus’ gesture indicating the written form of his hymn invites comparison of his text with those written in ‘sacred letters’, and of his person with those who are versed in such traditions.55

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple This was not an entirely illusory rhetoric. The very story that Isidorus tells includes recognizable motifs that occurred in Egyptian narrative genres that circulated among the villages of the Fayyum, (p.234) villages whose caches of papyri have revealed a surprisingly active bilingual literary culture.56 The particular anecdote of the crow who carried messages appears in de natura animalium (6.7), written in the late second or early third century CE.57 According to Aelian, Egyptians told this story in relation to a tomb and funerary stela with which Amenemhat III (Mares)58 had honoured his crow at Crocodilopolis (i.e. the capital of the Arsinoite nome). A couple of fragmentary Demotic texts from Tebtunis attest to narrative literature connected with Amenemhat, although there is no mention of a crow.59 Nevertheless, the broader motif of Amenemhat’s ability to command not only the birds of the sky, but the earth, the sea, rivers, winds, the sun, and ‘all creatures that crawl on the earth’60 recalls the Demotic narrative of Setna Khaemuas, the son of Rameses the Great, and the magical powers he obtained through spells from a book of Thoth. The first spell gave him the power to ‘enchant heaven, the earth, the underworld, the mountains and the seas’, and also to ‘find out what all the birds of the heaven and all the reptiles [elsewhere, herds] will say’. The second spell gave him the ability to behold the sun-god with his divine ennead and the risings of the moon.61 The parallels between Setna’s powers over nature and those attributed to Amenemhat III are remarkably close, (p.235) and suggest that the story Isidorus told originally belonged to a well-attested genre of Demotic narratives about the magical powers of great figures from the Pharaonic past. In the third stanza of the hymn, Isidorus adduces other traditions that may have come from his Egyptian sources. He explains that the king’s magical abilities are the result of his ancestry; Amenemhat is the son of the god Sobek: οὐ γὰρ ἔην βροτὸς ἀνήρ, οὐδ’ ἐκ βρότου ᾖεν ἄνα[κτος], ἀλλὰ θεοῦ μεγάλου ἔκγονος ἀενάου, Σούχου παγκράτορος μεγάλου μεγάλου τε μεγίστου, δαίμονος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ υἱὸς ἄναξ ἐφάνη. For he was not a mortal man, nor was born of a mortal ki[ng] but he was the offspring of a great, everlasting god Souchos, the all powerful, the great, great and greatest; he appeared as the king and the son of Agathos Daimon.

This king’s divine paternity reflects a tradition inscribed in the temple itself. On the back wall of the central niche of the inner sanctuary, the divine pair of Renenutet and Sobek greet Amenemhat III as Sobek’s son.62 The grandiloquent phrases used to describe Sobek include the triple expression μεγάλου μεγάλου τε μεγίστου, a pattern of magnified praise that is well attested in Ptolemaic Egyptian texts (such as the archive of Ḥor), and is a forerunner of the Greek τρισμέγιστος.63

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Other expressions in Isidorus’ hymn also suggest that he was indeed conveying knowledge about Amenemhat that came from his (p.236) indigenous Egyptian context. In response to his interlocutor’s further questions about the identity of the founder of the temple, Isidorus elaborates on his human parentage and his name: οὔνομα δ’ ἦν ποταπὸν τούτωι; καὶ τίς τόδ’ ἔθηκε κοίρανος ἢ βασιλεὺς ἠὲ τίς ἀθανάτων; ὁ θρέψας Σεσοῶσις, ὃς οὐρανοῦ ἕσπερ’ ἀφεῖκται, οὔνομ’ ἔθηκε καλὸν ἡλίου εὐφεγγέος. ἑρμηνευσάμενοι δ’ Αἰγύπτιοι οὔνομα τούτου Π̣ορραμάνρην κλῄζουσι, τὸν μέγαν ἀθάνατον. Whatever was the name of this man? What king or prince established this? Or who among the Immortals? The one who raised him, Sesoösis, who has gone to the western heaven, gave him his beautiful name of the brilliant sun. But when the Egyptians translate the name of this man, they call him Porramanres, the great, the immortal.

Behind the transliteration Sesoösis lies a correct identification of Amenemhat’s human, historical father as one of the pharaohs named Senusret, also known in Herodotus’ Histories and elsewhere as Sesostris.64 The brief description of Sesoösis, however, alludes to none of the military conquests so widely discussed in Greek literature. Rather, it describes Amenemhat’s deceased father as having ‘gone to the western heaven’, translating the assimilation of the deceased to the setting sun as he enters the heavenly afterlife, and the general association of the West with the realm of the dead in Egyptian funerary beliefs.65 Sesoösis is also credited with giving Amenemhat his ‘beautiful name of the brilliant sun’. Of the ancient names in the fivefold titulary of a pharaoh, this most plausibly refers to Amenemhat’s nomen, which was introduced by the title ‘son of Ra’, and was indeed the name given to a king at birth, in this case by his father Senusret III. As Isidorus points out, however, the Egyptians called him Porramanres, a transliteration of ‘Pharaoh’ (Pr-ᶜɜ) + Maâ-Re, which is derived from Amenemhat’s throne name (Ny-Mɜᶜ(t)-Rᶜ). As (p.237) with other pharaohs, the throne name was indeed the one more commonly used by Egyptians.66 Together with the hymn’s narrative motifs, these expressions show that Isidorus was truly a poet of the Ptolemaic Fayyum, a writer who had at his disposal not only Greek verse genres and poetical language, but also local tales, religious lore, and even idioms and styles of expression.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple The hymn on the founder of the temple, then, is the most localized of Isidorus’ four hymns. Through the opening gesture of deixis in the first line, the indexical ground is explicitly and strongly oriented toward local topography and the temple at Narmouthis in particular. The discursive structure of the hymn, moreover, frames local traditions as both authoritative and at least partly inaccessible to Greeks. Isidorus openly states that he must translate and promote the subject of his hymn for outsiders unfamiliar with the local traditions. In these respects, the fourth hymn could be described as assuming a ‘nativist’ position. And yet, in terms of discourse and formal genre, this hymn is also the most hybrid, and most clearly reveals the novelty of Isidorus’ practice within the persistent structures or habitus of genres and literary traditions,67 both Greek and Egyptian.68 His use of the elegiac form is critical to this, since it both perpetuates and transforms a Greek poetical genre in the act of translating motifs and habits of expression that are ‘at home’ in Egyptian narrative genres. As Chris Faraone has convincingly argued, Isidorus, in his choice of elegiac form, followed the example of the great Alexandrian poet Callimachus, famed as one of the finest of all Greek elegists.69 (p.238) Callimachus’ Aetia, and especially the first two books, with their dialogical format, and their learned treatment of local religious traditions, provided Isidorus with a model that he could adapt to his own needs in presenting the local story behind the founder of the temple at Narmouthis.70 The difference, of course, is that the ultimate sources of the learning displayed in Isidorus’ text are not the Heliconian Muses, nor the poet’s own erudition, nor local Greek historians, but Egyptians and especially the readers of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Isidorus adapted the discursive structure of Callimachus’ aetiological elegy in order to integrate Egyptian literary voices. When read against the model of Callimachus’ Aetia, and indeed Callimachean poetics in general, the local and nativistic features of Isidorus’ hybrid poetry are even more striking. Callimachus’ work has been described, by Dan Selden, for example, as a poetry of displacement, conditioned by the migration of Greeks from diverse places to the multi-ethnic milieu of Alexandria. All homelands in this diasporic space are elsewhere, as are the multiple sources and referents of its poetry.71 This dislocation is central to the structure of the Aetia, which is framed in the first two books by Callimachus’ dream that he has been transported from his North African home to Mt. Helicon in Boeotia (central Greece) to converse with the Muses about other far-flung places in the Greek world.72 The discourse of Isidorus’ fourth hymn, by contrast, is firmly rooted in its locale; it is a poetry not of diaspora or dislocation, but of place.

(p.239) Conclusions

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple From the place articulated by Isidorus in his fourth hymn, and from the physical space in which the written text was inscribed, it was and is possible to look back at the three preceding hymns to the goddess Hermouthis-Isis. From this vantage point, one can see that Isidorus arranged for different literary and religious traditions to meet each other, coming and going at the gates of the temple. But it was not only differing traditions that met, it was also differing orientations to cultural mixture, syncretism, hybridity—whatever we wish to call it. In his first hymn, Isidorus addressed Hermouthis-Isis from a relatively unspecified position. The discourse is centred on the land of the Nile, but only inasmuch as the overtly syncretic Isis, who is all divinities to all peoples, has her true origin and identity in Egypt. In its metrical form and discursive pattern, the poem adopts the genre of the Homeric hymns, but it also incorporates aspects of the style and content of the Isis aretalogies in Greek. With the slight exception of the name Hermouthis, the discursive characteristics, content, and form that Isidorus chose for this hymn appear to assume an ‘international’ or at least trans-regional reader, who is versed in the forms and conventions of Greek literature, and perhaps familiar with the goddess Isis as she appeared in texts that circulated beyond Egypt. Were the inscribed text of the first hymn taken away from the temple gates, a reader, ancient or modern, would be hard pressed to return it to Narmouthis, or even to the Fayyum. The first hymn, in short, could not be further from the fourth. Taking into account their spatial arrangement, the two texts embody a meeting between a well-established and well-travelled syncretism that returns to Egypt only to be confronted by a newly discovered nativism, albeit in a translated and hybrid literary form. The second and third hymns, appropriately enough, form a middle ground. Both, in different ways, domesticate the transnational Isis into the local temple at Narmouthis and its traditions. In the second hymn, Isidorus’ strategy is not as overtly dialogical or aetiological as in its elegiac counterpart (the fourth), but he does describe local ritual practices, such as prayers for fertility and festival offerings, through which the multi-ethnic people of the Fayyum interacted with the great goddess Hermouthis-Isis and the divine family that shared her temple. In aligning the rhetoric (p.240) of his discourse with these practices, he embeds himself and the goddess in the local context. Isidorus returns to the more traditional hexametrical form in the third hymn, but the goddess to whom he addresses himself is less clearly transnational, and her beneficent role is mediated, in part, through Egyptian and possibly Ptolemaic structures of kingship. The rhetoric of Isidorus’ prayer relies on Isis’ support for the pious king, and also her support for the pious private individual who dutifully brings offerings to her temple. In both the second and third hymns, the indexical ground of Isidorus’ discourse is crucial to integrating the great goddess into the local world of Narmouthis.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple But where does Isidorus himelf stand? Do any of these shifting grounds represent Isidorus’ ‘true’ position? At first blush, the more emphatic selfreference in Isidorus’ fourth hymn, his explicit marshalling of Egyptian authorities within his own discourse, and the physical position of the hymn closer to the privileged space of the temple all suggest that Isidorus, whatever his ethnical or cultural background may have been, sided with the local and the native. On the other hand, this was not an oppositional ‘anti-syncretic’ stance. In each of the hymns to Hermouthis-Isis, Isidorus adopts a coherent rhetorical and discursive practice to persuade the goddess to bestow benefits on him. Rather than an opposition between ‘syncretic’ and ‘nativist’ positions, what stands out most is the complexity of Isidorus’ practice in mediating between both religious syncretism and nativism, and between the various discursive and literary genres through which he articulates those positions. Isidorus’ poetry, humble though it may be in comparison with the greats of Alexandrian literature, exhibits sophisticated local innovations that drew from both a persistent Greek literary habitus and also the Egyptian literary modes to which he had indirect access. From a religious perspective, Isidorus’ work is grounded in his specific situation at Narmouthis, but it also engages with diasporic and ‘mixed’ representations of his local divinity. His ‘syncretism’—both literary and religious—emerges as an ongoing and active process that not only reinscribes and perpetuates received traditions but is also capable of generating novel forms of practice. (p.241) Bibliography Bibliography references: Allam, S. (1991), ‘Egyptian Law Courts in Pharaonic and Hellenistic Times’, JEA 77: 109–27. Allen, J. P. (2000), Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs (Cambridge). Arnold, D. (1999), Temples of the Last Pharaohs (Oxford). Assmann, J. (1992), ‘Der Tempel der ägyptischen Spätzeit als Kanonisierung kultureller Identität’, in J. Osing and E. K. Nielsen (ed.) The Heritage of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honour of Erik Iversen [Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 13] (Copenhagen), 9–25. Bagnall, R. S., and Rathbone, D. W. (eds.) (2004), Egypt from Alexander to the Copts: An Archaeological and Historical Guide (London). Bernand, E. (1975–81), Recueil des inscriptions grecques du Fayoum, 3 vols. [Bibliothèque d’étude 79–80] (Leiden). Borgeaud, P., and Volokhine, Y. (2000), ‘La formation de la légende de Sarapis: une approche transculturelle’, ARG 2, 37–76. Page 25 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Brand, P. J. (2007), ‘Veils, Votives, and Marginalia: The Use of Sacred Space at Karnak and Luxor’, in, P. F. Dorman and B. M. Bryan (eds.), Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes [Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 61] (Chicago), 51–83. Bresciani, E. (1986), ‘Iconografia e culto di Premarres nel Fayum’, EVO 9, 49–58. Clarysse, W. (1985), ‘Greeks and Egyptians in the Ptolemaic Army and Administration’, Aegyptus 65, 57–66. Clarysse, W. (2009), The Name of the Fayum Province. The Fayum Project, K. U. Leuven 1998–2002 [cited 8 November 2009]. Available from . Clarysse, W., and Thompson, D. J. (2006), Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt, 2 vols. [Cambridge Classical Studies] (New York). Cribiore, R. (2001), Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton/Oxford). de Cenival, F. (1972), Les associations religieuses en Égypte d’après les documents démotiques (Cairo). Donadoni, S. (1947), ‘Testi geroglifici di Madinet Madi’, Orientalia 16, 333–52, 506–24. Dousa, T. (2002), ‘Imagining Isis: On Some Continuities and Discontinuities in the Image of Isis in Greek Isis Hymns and Demotic Texts’, in Acts of the Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies, Copenhagen, 23–27 August 1999, ed. K. Ryholt [Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 27] (Copenhagen), 149–84. (p.242) Dunand, F. (1973), ‘Le syncrétisme isiaque à la fin de l’époque hellénistique’, in Les syncrétismes dans les religions grecques et romaines: Colloque de Strasbourg (9–11 juin 1971) (Paris), 79–93. Fantuzzi, M., and Hunter, R. (2004), Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge). Faraone, C. A. (2012), ‘The Stanzaic Architecture of Isidorus, Hymns 2 and 4 (SEG 8.549 and 51)’, CQ 62, 618–32. Foufopoulos, J., and Litinas, N. (2005), ‘Crows and Ravens in the Mediterranean (the Nile Valley, Greece and Italy) as Presented in the Ancient and Modern Proverbial Literature’, BASP 42, 7–39. Fowden, G. (1986), The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge). Page 26 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Frankfurter, D. (1998), Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton). Giammarusti, A., and Bresciani, E. (2012), I templi di Medinet Madi nel Fayum (Pisa). Grandjean, Y. (1975) Une nouvelle arétalogie d’Isis à Maronée [Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain 49] (Leiden). Hanks, W. F. (1987), ‘Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice’, American Ethnologist 14 (4), 668–92. Hanks, W. F. (2000), Intertexts: Writings on Language, Utterance, and Context (Lanham, Md.). Hanks, W. F. (2005), ‘Explorations in the Deictic Field’, Current Anthropology 46, 191–220. Harder, R. (1944), Karpokrates von Chalkis und die memphitische Isispropaganda [Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. klasse 14] (Berlin). Hornung, E. (1982), Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, tr. J. Baines (Ithaca, NY). Johnson, J. H. (1983), ‘The Demotic Chronicle as a Statement of a Theory of Kingship’, Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 13, 61–76. Lesko, L. H. (1991), ‘Ancient Egyptian Cosmogonies and Cosmology’, in B. E. Shafer (ed.), Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice (Ithaca, NY), 88–122. Lewis, N. (1983), Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford). Lincoln, B. (2001), ‘Retiring Syncretism’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 27 (3) 453–9. Manning, J. G. (2003), Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Structure of Land Tenure. (Cambridge/New York). van Minnen, P. (1998), ‘Boorish or Bookish? Literature in Egyptian Villages in the Fayum in the Greco-Roman Period’, Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28, 99–184. (p.243) Monson, A. (2006), ‘Priests of Soknebtunis and Sokonopis: P. BM EA 10647’, JEA 92: 205–16.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Peremans, W. (1970), ‘Ethnies et classes dans l’Égypte Ptolémaïque’, in Recherches sur les structures sociales dans l’antiquité classique, Caen 25–26 avril 1969, ed. C. Nicolet. (Paris), 213–23. Quack, J. F. (2003), “Ich bin Isis, die Herrin der beiden Länder”: Versuch zum demotischen Hintergrund der memphitischen Isisaretalogie’, in Egypt—Temple of the Whole World. Studies in Honour of Jan Assmann, ed. S. Meyer, [Studies in the History of Religions 97] (Leiden), 319–65. Quack, J. F. (2004), ‘Sesostris. Ein Held und sein Name’, Sokar 9: 46–8. Quack, J. F. (2006/7), ‘Sokonopis als Gott und Mensch’, Enchoria 30, 75–87. Quack, J. F. (2009a), Einführung in die altägyptische Literaturgeschichte III: Die demotische und gräko-ägyptische Literatur, 2nd edn. (Berlin). Quack, J. F. (2009b), ‘Menetekel an der Wand? Zur Deutung der “Demotischen Chronik” ’, in M. Witte and J. F. Diehl (eds.) Orakel und Gebete: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Sprache der Religion in Ägypten, Vorderasien und Griechenland in hellenistischer Zeit (Tübingen), 23–51. Quaegebeur, J. (1975), Le dieu égyptien Shaï dans la religion et l’onomastique [Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 2] (Leuven). Quaegebeur, J. (1993), ‘La Justice à la porte des temples et le toponyme Premit’, in J.-M. Kruchten and C. Cannuyer (eds.), Individu, société et spiritualité dans l’Égypte pharaonique et Copte (Ath, Brussels, Mons), 201–20. Ray, J. D. (1976), The Archive of Ḥor (London). Selden, D. (1998), ‘Alibis’, Classical Antiquity 17, 299–412. Shaw, I., (ed.) (2000), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford). Simpson, W. K., Ritner, R. K., Wente, E. F. and Tobin, V. A. (2003), The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry (3rd edn.) (New Haven and London). Skeat, T. C., and Turner, E. G. (1968), ‘An Oracle of Hermes Trismegistos at Saqqara’, JEA 54, 199–208. Stewart, C. (1999), ‘Syncretism and its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture’, Diacritics 29 (3), 40–62. Stewart, C. (ed.) (2007), Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (Walnut Creek, Calif.).

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Stewart, C., and Shaw, R. (eds.) (1994), Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. (London/New York). Totti, M. (1985), Ausgewählte Texte der Isis- und Sarapis Religion [Subsidia Epigraphica 12] (Hildesheim). Vanderlip, V. F. (1972), The Four Greek Hymns of Isidorus and the Cult of Isis [American Studies in Papyrology 12] (Toronto). Vandier, J. (1952–78), Manuel d’archéologie égyptienne, 6 vols. (Paris). Vandoni, M. (1952), ‘Il tempio di Madînet Mâdi e gli inni di Isidoro’, Prolegomena: Documenti e Studi Storici e Filologici 2, 105–22. (p.244) te Velde, H. (1971), ‘Some Remarks on the Structure of Egyptian Divine Triads’, JEA 57, 80–6. Versnel, H. S. (1998), Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion (2nd edn.) Vol. 1: Ter Unus. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes. Three Studies in Henotheism [Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 6.1.] (Leiden). Vogliano, A. (1936), Primo rapporto degli scavi condotti dalla missione archeologica d’Egitto della R. Università di Milano nella zona di Madīnet Māḍī (campagna inverno e primavera 1935-XIII) (Milan). Vogliano, A. (1937), Secondo rapporto degli scavi condotti dalla missione archeologica d’Egitto della R. Università di Milano nella zona di Madīnet Māḍī (campagna inverno e primavera 1936–XIV) (Milan). Vogliano, A. (1938), ‘Rapporto preliminare della IVa campagna di scavo a Madīnet Māḍī (R. Università di Milano)’, ASAE 38, 533–49. Vogliano, A. (1939), ‘Rapporto preliminare della Va campagna di scavo a Madīnet Māḍī R. Università di Milano’ ASAE 39, 687–95, pls. CXXVI–CXXXI. Widmer, G. (2002), ‘Pharaoh Maâ-Rê, Pharaoh Amenemhat and Sesostris: three figures from Egypt’s past as seen in sources of the Greco-Roman period’, in Acts of the Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies, Copenhagen, 23–27 August 1999, ed. K. Ryholt [Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications 27] (Copenhagen), 377–93. Wilson, P. (1997), A Ptolemaic Lexikon: A Lexicographical Study of the Texts in the Temple of Edfu [Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 78] (Leuven). Youtie, H. C. (1970), ‘Callimachus in the tax rolls’, in Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology, ed. D. H. Samuel [American Studies in Papyrology 7] (Toronto), 545–51.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple Žabkar, L. V. (1988), Hymns to Isis in Her Temple at Philae (Hanover). Notes:

(*) A different version of this study on Isidorus will appear in ‘Proceedings of the Workshop on Religious Flows in the Roman Empire: the Expansion of Oriental Cults (Isis, Mithras, Iuppiter Dolichenus) from East to West and Back Again’, edited by J. F. Quack and C. Witschel. That version focuses more attention on the issues of transregional and local cultures and cultural flows. (1) For discussion of these terms and debates surrounding them, see Stewart and Shaw (1994), Stewart (1999), (2007). Lincoln (2001), for example, makes a wellreasoned case that ‘syncretism’ is unredeemable. (2) Stewart (1999), 58. See also Stewart and Shaw (1994). (3) And indeed, such an effort has already been made in the excellent study by Borgeaud and Volokhine (2000). (4) The important study of F. Dunand (1973) recognized the significance of Isidorus’ hymns for the study of syncretism, and took Isidorus’ first hymn as the starting point for an insightful discussion of the diversity of phenomena embraced under the term—including the Egyptian tradition of syncretic divinities that shaped later Greco-Roman syncretisms. (5) For definitions and detailed discussion, see Hanks (1987), 682–7 and (2005); other important studies are also collected in Hanks (2000). (6) Hanks (2000), 7–8; (2005), 193–4. (7) For details of the temple, see Vogliano (1936), (1937), (1938), (1939); Donadoni (1947); Vandoni (1952); convenient summaries may also be found in Vandier (1952–78), vol. II.2, pp. 619–20 (for the 12th-dynasty temple); Vanderlip (1972), 9–13; Bernand (1975–81), vol. 3, pp. 59–70; Arnold (1999), 159–60 (for the Ptolemaic additions); and Bagnall and Rathbone (2004), 143–6. See also now Giammarusti and Bresciani (2012). (8) The inscriptions of the 12th-dynasty temple, published by Donadoni (1947), consistently invoke the primary deities as Renenutet, the living goddess of Dja (Rnn-wt.t ᶜnḫ.t n.t Ḏɜ) and Sobek of Shedet (Sbk Šdt). Dja was the Egyptian name of Narmouthis at this early period. The later name means ‘Town of Hermouthis’. Shedet was the earlier name of Crocodilopolis. (9) The name is derived from Egyptian Sbk-m-ḥb ‘Sobek is in festival’. See Quack (2006/7). (10) IFayoum 2:158–9; for discussion, see Vanderlip (1972), 9–16, and Bernand (1975–81), vol. 3, p. 62. Page 30 of 37

Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (11) Brand (2007), 60–1. Frankfurter (1998), 52. (12) Assmann (1992), 11. (13) See the brief discussion of such architectural features in Arnold (1999), 277– 85. In the Ptolemaic period, there could be a cross-cultural dimension to these points of access—this is, for example, where trilingual decrees like the Rosetta stone would have been placed, as well as most Greek inscriptions, and certain types of late Ptolemaic sculpture that combined Egyptian and Greek elements. (14) The layout of the hymns is described by Vanderlip 1972, following Vogliano 1936, 27. Though Vanderlip’s account suggests a slight ambiguity in the account of Vogliano, the latter is relatively clear. In any case, I have confirmed the layout of the hymns with the help of photographs taken prior to their removal to the Alexandria Museum. These photographs, kindly shown to me by Robert Ritner, were in the collection of Henri Riad and preserved in the Chicago House archives at Luxor. I thank Prof. Ritner for allowing me to consult them during a seminar on the hymns of Isidorus in Ann Arbor. (15) Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004), 32. (16) Faraone (2012). (17) Peremans (1970), Clarysse (1985). Individuals with dual names (Greek and Egyptian) do occur as early as the third century, but the phenomenon is much more prominent in evidence from the second and first centuries BCE. (18) See e.g. Vandoni (1952), 107–8 who considered Isidorus an Egyptian as does Dunand (1973), 92; on the other hand, Fowden (1986), 49–50 considers him a Greek. (19) Though note Fowden (1986), 49–50, who argues that since Isidorus does not claim to be able to read Egyptian texts himself, he was probably not an Egyptian priest. On the other hand, Frankfurter (1998), 100, describes him as a priest. (20) Hymn 1.1–3. Translations are adapted from Vanderlip (1972), but adjusted when the sense and the occasionally archaic style of the English misrepresents the Greek.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (21) The most famous of these are the so-called Memphite group of inscriptions, i.e. the Kyme aretalogy (IKyme 41; IG XII Suppl. 14, pp. 98–9 RICIS) and four other partial versions: inscriptions from Thessaloniki (IG X(2).1.254 RICIS), Ios (IG XII Suppl. 14, p. 98 RICIS), and Cassandrea (RICIS 113/1201), along with a passage from Diodorus Siculus’ account of Egypt (1.27.3–4). Other important Isis aretalogies include the inscriptions from Andros (IG XII(5).739 RICIS 202/1801 and Maroneia (Grandjean (1975 RICIS 114/0202)) that are similar in content but differ in poetical and discursive form. The bibliography on these texts is enormous and cannot be cited in extenso, but some key studies are: Harder (1944), Žabkar (1988), Quack (2003). Brief overviews may be found in Grandjean (1975), 12–15; Fowden (1986), 46–8; Versnel (1998), 41–4; Dousa (2002), 149–51. (22) Though in Latin, Lucius’ prayers to Isis in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.2 and 11.25 could also be compared to these other second-person addresses. (23) Žabkar (1988), 137–40, focused on this hymn as a comparandum to other Greek and Latin aretalogies and to their precedents in Egyptian hymns. Various parallels are also adduced in the commentary on this hymn by Vanderlip (1972). (24) Vanderlip (1972), 27, notes that according to Alexandrian epitaphs, Thracians were the largest ethnic group in Ptolemaic armies after Greeks and Macedonians, and that Thrace had been part of the Ptolemaic empire under Ptolemy III and IV. Thracians (along with some other ethnic groups) in the Arsinoite nome in the third century BCE could and did enjoy privileged taxstatus as Hellenes (see Clarysse and Thompson (2006), 322, n. 11, and the examples in P. Count cited there (e.g. 26.110). There were perhaps also specific royal connections to Thrace and to the kingdom of Lysimachus that were relevant here: Arsinoe II (the sister and later queen of Ptolemy II) had been married to Lysimachus, and thus queen of Thrace; Ptolemy’s first marriage was to Arsinoe I (daughter of Lysimachus). Arsinoe II is, of course, the Arsinoe after whom the Arsinoite nome was named. (note also the mythical connection between Proteus and Thrace; like Arsinoe, he spent some time in Thrace before returning to his Egyptian home (Lycophron, Alexandra 115–27; note also the discussion of Posidippus 115 in Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004), 387–8 which makes a connection between Arsinoe II and Proteus.) [The dynasty also claimed descent from Dionysus, who was given a Thracian origin at times].

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (25) On the epithet Tɜ wᶜ.t applied to Isis and parallels in the archive of Ḥor and elsewhere, see Dousa (2002), 169–75, who points out that despite this linguistic connection, the epithet is not used in Egyptian texts in this ‘quasi- pantheistic’ or universal syncretic sense. This connotation of the concept of oneness or uniqueness seems to be much more prominent in the Greek hymns and texts. This is not, of course, to say that syncretism was alien to Egyptian religion; it was simply expressed in different ways. Vanderlip (1972), 96, contrasts the Memphite texts which ‘hide Isis’ syncretistic nature’ with Isidorus’ emphasis on syncretism through references to the multiple names under which the goddess is known. In this respect, Isidorus is again closer to the invocations in P.Oxy. 1380 and the Maroneia aretalogy. (26) Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004), 350. See, e.g., the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 177–8 (αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν οὐ λήξω ἑκηβόλον Ἀπόλλωνα | ὑμνέων ἀργυρότοξον ὃν ἠΰκομος τέκε Λητώ.), as well as the closing line of hymns to Demeter (III.495), Apollo (V.546), Hermes (XI.580), and Aphrodite (XIII.21, XV.6), etc.: αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς. See also the hymns to the Muses and Apollo (XVII.7), Hestia (XX.14), etc.: αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ὑμέων τε καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς. (27) Faraone (2012), 630. (28) Wilhelm reads {σ}ἧς. (29) Vandoni (1952), 117; Vanderlip (1972), 41–2. Anchoes is also mentioned at 3.33 and 4.5. (30) te Velde (1971); Hornung (1982), 218–19. (31) Vanderlip (1972), 4, 6, 20, 38, 94–5. See also Quaegebeur (1975), 122–43. (32) Dunand (1973). On Egyptian patterns of syncretism, see the brief overview in Hornung (1982), 91–9. (33) ὅσσοι δὴ ἐθέλουσι γονὴν παίδων τε ποιῆσαι, | εὐξάμενοι ὑμῖν εὐτεκνίης ἔτυχον. (34) See Monson (2006), 209, and Quack (2006/7). The latter points out that although the original form of the name transliterated in Greek as Σοκονῶπις was Sbk-m-ḥb ‘Sobek-in-festival’, the name was often written in Demotic as Sbk-Ḥᶜpy (Sobek-Hapy—i.e. Sobek as the Flood) or Sbk-(ỉn)-Ḥᶜpy (Sobek-in/of?-the Flood). Demotic scribes considered either etymology of the name Sokonopis possible. (35) κατὰ [κ]αι[ρό]ν is read κατὰ [ὥρας] by Hondius (SEG VIII), but these are similar temporal expressions. The others are: τότε (line 19); δι’ ὅλου (line 22); κατ’ ἔτος (line 24); εἶτα (line 25); περιτελλομένου ἐνιαυτοῦ (line 25); μηνὶ Παχὼν (line 26).

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (36) It is also possible to construe this passage as referring to two festivals (cf. the two festivals mentioned at the end of Hymn 3). In that case, the first two couplets of the hymn would refer to the festival of Hermouthis-Isis to which the people bring a tithe of their produce. The next two couplets would refer to another festival in the month of Pachon, at which the emphasis is on the goddess granting ‘good cheer’ to the people. (37) See Lewis (1983), 115–16, for a brief overview of the Egyptian agricultural cycle. A festival of Sokonopis is attested on 22 Pachon in Narmouthis on a papyrus dated 137 BCE (P.Cairo 30619; see de Cenival (1972), 94, pl. VII). (38) εὐχῶν ἠδ’ ὕμνων τε θεοὶ κλύοντες ἐμεῖο, | ἀνταπέδωκαν ἐμοὶ εὐθυμίαν χάριτα (lines 33–4 of the inscription). (39) Compare Hymn 1, lines 1–5: πλουτοδότι βασίλεια θεῶν, Ἑρμοῦθι ἄνασσα, | παντοκράτειρα, τύχη ἀγαθή, μεγαλώνυμε Ἶσι, | Δηοῖ ὑψίστη, ζωῆς εὑρέτρια πάσης, | παντοίων ἔργων ἐμέλησέ σοι, ὄφρ’ ἀναδοίης | ἀνθρώποισι βίον τε καὶ εὐνομίην τε ἅπασι…And also contrast the opening lines of Hymn 2 (see above). (40) This reverence echoes the piety and prayers of those who obtain the favour of Hermouthis-Isis in the opening stanza of the second hymn. (41) Compare the principles of legitimate kingship outlined in the Demotic Chronicle, as discussed by Johnson (1983). See also Quack 2009b. (42) Dousa (2002), 159–68, provides extensive background to the Egyptian pattern of Isis as patron and protector of legitimate kingship and explains the discontinuity between texts within and outside Egypt in terms of the differing geographical and political contexts. The first hymn of Isidorus is a significant and interesting exception to this general pattern. (43) For an overview of the development of the Fayyum under Ptolemy II, see Manning (2003), 99–125. (44) Vanderlip (1972), 55, notes an inscription at Edfu (VII 243b) that asks Renenutet to come in a ‘good north wind’. The north wind is also called sweet (nḏm) in another inscription (IV 126,2—see Wilson (1997), 453–4). Elsewhere, Hathor is called ‘the good north wind’ (mḥy.t nfr.t) who makes the field grow (VII 86, 15). For further parallels and discussion, see Vandoni (1952), 118. (45) This is not to say that these references were all incomprehensible from an Egyptian literary perspective. The heavens are a place for the gods in Egyptian texts, and Isis riding the chariot of the sun is not so dissimilar to Isis in the boat of the sun-god Re. See Vanderlip (1972), 55–7. (46) Quaegebeur (1993). Allam (1991), 111, n. 7.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (47) The name of the Fayyum from the Middle Kingdom onwards was tɜ-šy (the land of the lake) or tɜ-šy Sbk (the land of the lake of Sobek). In documentary Demotic texts up to the 2nd century BCE, the name became pɜ tš n pɜ-ym (the nome of the lake), but later the name pɜ tš n ɜrsynɜ (the nome of Arsinoe) was adopted. Nevertheless the old associations persisted. For a brief period during the invasion of Antiochus IV in 168 BCE, the nome was renamed Krokodilopolites. See Clarysse (1998–2002) [references there and elsewhere]. (48) Vanderlip (1972), 62–3, suggests that Paean here may represent a conflation of Imouthes-Apollo-Asclepius. (49) It is perhaps worth noting that in the closing lines of the first hymn, no name at all is given. The goddess is just ‘the one who has a powerful name’ (μεγαλοσθενὲς οὔνομ’ ἔχουσα). (50) Lines 1, 11, 19, 25, 29, 33. (51) Widmer (2002), 383, notes that the evidence of Isidorus’ fourth hymn appears to be unique, but Bernand 1975–81, vol. 3, p. 68 mentions a limestone bust found in a nearby habitation area that testifies to the cult of Amenemhat in Narmouthis. On the cult of Amenemhat III in the Faylum, see Widmer (2002) and Bresciani (1986). (52) Donadoni (1947). (53) This may refer to the raised level of the inner sanctuary of the temple as Vanderlip (1972), 66, points out. (54) Hanks (1987), 678–80 (= Hanks (2000), 147–9). (55) I owe this observation to Chris Faraone (2012), 629. (56) van Minnen (1998). (57) Aelian, de natura animalium 6.7: Ἐν τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ περὶ τὴν λίμνην τὴν καλουμένην Μοίριδος, ὅπου Κροκοδείλων πόλις, κορώνης τάφος δείκνυται, καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐκείνην Αἰγύπτιοί φασι. τῷ βασιλεῖ τῷ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων (Μάρης δὲ οὗτος ἐκαλεῖτο) ἦν κορώνης θρέμμα πάνυ ἥμερον, καὶ τῶν ἐπιστολῶν ἃς ἐβούλετό οἱ κομισθῆναί ποι θᾶττον ἐκόμιζεν αὕτη, καὶ ἐν ἀγγέλων ὠκίστη, καὶ ἀκούσασα ᾔδει ἔνθα ἰθῦναι χρὴ τὸ πτέρον, καὶ τίνα χρὴ παραδραμεῖν χῶρον, καὶ ὅπου ἥκουσαν ἁναπαύσασθαι. ἀνθ’ ὧν ἀποθανοῦσαν ὁ Μάρης ἐτίμησεν καὶ στήλῃ καὶ τάφῳ. This tradition of a crow that serves a king also recalls the story reported by Plutarch that crows led Alexander’s expedition through the desert to the Siwa Oasis (Life of Alexander 27.3). On traditions regarding crows and ravens in Egypt, see Foufopoulos and Litinas (2005), 10–17.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (58) On this and other variant derivatives of Amenemhat’s throne name (NyMɜᶜ(t)-Rᶜ), see Widmer (2002), 377–9. (59) P.Carlsberg 411 and 412, discussed by Widmer (2002), 387–93. (60) 4.11–16: τούτωι γὰρ καὶ γαῖα ὑπήκοος ἦν τε θάλασ[σ]α | καὶ ποταμῶν πάντων νάματα καλλιρρόων, | καὶ πνοιαὶ ἀνέμων καὶ ἥλιος, ὃς γλυκὺ φέγγος | ἀντέλλων φαίνει πᾶσιν ἀριπρεπέως. | καὶ πτηνῶν τε γένη ὁμοθυμαδὸν ἔκλυεν αὐτο[ῦ] | καὶ τάδ’ ἐπιστέλλων πάντα ἐπήκοα ἦν. 4.27–8: τοὔνεκα καὶ τῶι πάντα ἐπήκοα, ὅσσ’ ἐπὶ γαίηι | ἑρπετὰ καὶ πτηνῶν οὐρανίων τε γένη. (61) P.Cairo CG 30646, 3/12–14 (and elsewhere). For an English translation, see Ritner in Simpson et al. (2003), 456. Though this manuscript was from Thebes, texts with narratives of Setna and stories of other heroic figures such as Petese son of Petetum, Inaros and Naneferkasokar were found in the Fayyum town of Tebtunis (van Minnen (1998), 173–4; Quack 2009a, 40). (62) Donadoni (1947), 518–19, Vandoni (1952), 119. The tradition concerning the paternity of this pharaoh was restricted to the temple, as evidenced by the name Mɜᶜ-rᶜ-sɜ-Sbk/Μαρεσισοῦχος ‘Marres son of Sobek’ (Widmer (2002), 379). In relation to Isidorus’ claims regarding Amenemhat’s powers, it is also worth noting that in the temple’s hieroglyphic inscriptions and images, all the lands and all the mountains are given to the king by Sobek, Renenutet, and Anubis (Donadoni (1947), 341, 506–7, 512). Isidorus also identifies the maternal grandfather of Amenemhat as Zeus-Ammon: μητροπάτωρ τούτου δ’ ἐστὶν ζωῆς ὁ μερ[ιστής], | Ἄμμων, ὃς καὶ Ζεὺς Ἑλλάδος ἠδ’ Ἀσίας. ‘The maternal grandfather of this man is the dist[ributor] of life, | Ammon, who is also Zeus of Hellas and Asia.’ I have been unable to discover any explanation for this except perhaps the name Amenemhat (‘Amun in Front’) itself. (63) See e.g. Ḥor, Text 2 verso, line 15, Text 19 recto, line 5 (Ḏḥwty pɜ ᶜɜ pɜ ᶜɜ pɜ ᶜɜ) (with discussion in Ray (1976), 15, 19–20, 74, 77–8). See also the contemporary Greek ostracon from Saqqara with the phrase μεγίστου καὶ μεγίστου θεοῦ μεγάλου Ἑρμοῦ published by Skeat and Turner (1968). (64) For the varying transliterations of this figure’s name, see the discussion in Vanderlip (1972), 71; Quack (2004). (65) Noted in Vanderlip (1972), 72. For a brief discussion of Egyptian cosmology and the solar symbolism of funerary beliefs, see Lesko (1991), 117–21. (66) Brief overview of the titulary in Shaw (2000), 8–9; conveniently, Allen (2000), 64–6, uses the example of Amenemhat III in his discussion of the pharaoh’s five names.

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Isidorus at the Gates of the Temple (67) In this formulation, I am continuing to pursue the insights revealed in W. F. Hanks’s analysis of novel discourse genres in sixteenth-century colonial Maya society as ‘part of the emergence of new, hybrid forms of action’ (Hanks (1987) = Hanks (2000), 133–64). (68) By identifiying and labelling these traditions, I am by no means asserting that each was entirely separate, unchanging, essential, or culturally ‘pure’. But despite the fact that change and mixture are, to a greater or lesser degree in different historical circumstances, an existential condition of ‘culture’, socially constructed differences (of ethnicity, class, etc.) often entail the persistence and even maintenance of differentiated cultural fields. The phenomena of these differentiated fields include, for example, persistent patterns of language and script, and the generic expectations of discourse and written literature. (69) Faraone (2012). On Callimachus’ reputation as an elegist, note Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004), 44. (70) A second-century BCE papyrus containing parts of the proemium to book 3 of the Aetia was found in the Fayyum town of Magdola (Lille, Université P. 76 d + 78 a-c + 79 + 82 + 84; Mertens-Pack 0207.3). Though they come from the second century CE, it is worth noting that fragments of Callimachus’ Aetia were discovered at Karanis (van Minnen (1998), 123–4; note also the famous article by Youtie (1970)). At Tebtunis, there were discovered fragments of Callimachus’ Diegeseis (P. Mil. Vogl. I 18, first to second centuries CE) along with elegiac distichs possibly by Callimachus on papyri that date from the third to second century BCE (Studi Calderini-Paribeni 2, 127; Marcotte M-P 236; see van Minnen (1998), 156). Cribiore (2001), 201–2, notes that Callimachus played a role in more advanced levels of instruction by grammarians. (71) Selden (1998). (72) Fr. 3–4; see the discussion in Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004), 44–5. Even if the process of collecting, sorting, and judging the various aitia constitutes a centripetal process of revising and reinventing a canon of traditions, Callimachus’ language, themes, and narratives, are informed by Selden’s ‘order of the alibi’. When Egyptian mythical and cultural elements occur, they tend to converge and cohabit with Greek forms in stories and motifs that can be read from multiple vantage points or as variant traditions.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction

Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300 Ian Rutherford

Print publication date: 2016 Print ISBN-13: 9780199656127 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2016 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.001.0001

Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Steve Vinson

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656127.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This paper compares the portrayal of women in the Greek Romance of the Roman Empire and in Demotic Egyptian literature. It focuses on two types of women: first, ‘good women’, female heroines cast as supporters of their lovers or husbands (a pattern which may owe something to the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris); and secondly ‘bad women’ who act against female figures. The presence of both types of women in the two literary traditions may, it is suggested, be evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the Greek Romance is in some respects indebted to Egyptian sources. Keywords:   narrative, magician, Setne, fiction, women

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction With this contribution, I would like to consider the intersection of three related literary-historical problems: (1) that of the roots of the Greek novel; (2) that of the existence and nature of the relationship, if any, between the Egyptian prose tradition (not only in Demotic, but extending back into the Pharaonic tradition); and (3) the reason for the conspicuous thematization of femininity and female characters in the Greek novel and in the Egyptian prose fiction tradition. In my opinion, on the Egyptian side, at least, non-mythological tales featuring active and prominent female characters have clear roots in the mythology of Isis and Osiris. As food for thought, I would like to suggest that, if it were to be accepted that there is any sort of ‘genetic’ relationship between the Egyptian and Greek traditions, then this might suggest the possibility of something like a ‘unified field’ theory that harmonizes aspects of the hermeneutic theory of the Greek novel advanced by Reinhold Merkelbach (namely, that Greek novels are fundamentally informed by the structure and characterizations of myth, most especially the myth-complex of Isis and Osiris) with the historical argument advanced in the 1950s by the Egyptologist John Barns (that the Greek novel’s roots extend, at least in part, into the Egyptian tradition of prose storytelling). As a heuristic device, I will discuss here what I take to be the religious preoccupations of the Demotic ‘First Tale of Setne Khaemwas’, and to explore this in comparison both with earlier Egyptian literature and with the Egyptianizing and religious content of Greek novels, most especially Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. More specifically, (p.246) I will emphasize a comparison of the roles of females in ‘First Setne’ and in the Aithiopika. This may be a useful approach, since (1) the interest that much Greek novelistic fiction evinces in its heroines is exactly the feature of the corpus that has suggested to scholars like Merkelbach that the Greek corpus comprises allegories of the Isis–Osiris myth complex; and (2) the religious interests of the ‘First Setne’ author are particularly evident in the tale’s treatment of its female characters, which resonates strongly with mythology surrounding Isis in both her capacity as sister-spouse of the Underworld-god Osiris, and as one manifestation of the Eye of the Sun, the complex of female divinities who are daughters and defenders of the Sun-god Reʿ. My basic position is that, if it is plausible to think that Egyptian prose stories like those represented in the Demotic narrative corpus are in any way ancestral to the Greek novel, then it is no less plausible that these tales, although on the surface not overtly religious and certainly not intended for any cultic purpose, might nevertheless have contributed some mythological ‘genes’ to the Greek-language tales that they inspired, via their own narratological relationship with the Egyptian mythological tradition.

Egyptian Impact on Greek Fiction

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Reinhold Merkelbach, of course, did not limit himself to the proposition that there was a mythical background to the plots of Greek novels. Rather, for him, the novels were programmatically conceived as something analogous to romans à clef, written principally for the benefit and use of initiates of Greco-Roman mystery cults, for whom alone the novels would have been fully comprehensible.1 Thus framed, Merkelbach’s thesis has not enjoyed wide acceptance, although a general relationship, or at least resemblance, between the religious notions associated with ‘mystery’ cults—but not only with such cults—and major themes and/or aspects of the narrative structures of the Greek novels has often been acknowledged.2 Merkelbach was in general most impressed by the structural resonances between Greek novels and Egyptian mythology, particularly as (p.247) delivered by Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris,3 and in hymnic or other cultic literature. In the foreword to his most complete statement on the subject, he had this to say: Im Jahr 1954, von einer Ägyptenreise zurückgekehrt, behandelte ich im Seminar Appuleius; dabei wurde mir klar daß die Fabula von Psyche und Cupido ein Isistext ist. Gleich danach sah ich, daß die meisten griechischen Romane einen religiösen Hintergrund haben, was ja schon Karl Kerényi4 vermutet hatte. Isistexte sind die Romane des Xenophon von Ephesos und Achilleus Tatios sowie die Historia Apollonii regis Tyri.…Seitdem habe ich die griechisch-ägyptische Religion nach allen Seiten durchforscht; immer klarer ist mir geworden, daß die literarische Gattung des Romans religiösen Ursprungs ist.5 In principle, this general claim is not necessarily implausible. Certainly Greekreaders and Greek-writers in the Roman period had a plethora of sources on Egyptian mythology, particularly Isis mythology, at their disposal. These included not only paraphrases of Egyptian mythological tales like Isis and Osiris, but at least some actual translations of Egyptian mythological texts, as demonstrated by the existence of a second- or third-century CE Greek translation of the Demotic Tefnut ‘Eye-of-the-Sun’ myth.6 Merkelbach himself invoked Ramesside compositions like the ‘Blinding of Truth and Falsehood’ and the ‘Tale of Two Brothers’ to suggest a precedent for the ‘Verschlüsselung’ of Osirian mythology in a prose tale.7 But in the case of these stories, the ‘Verschlüsselung’ is in fact fairly transparent and the mythological/allegorical nature of the tales is completely obvious. In the case of the Greek novels, Merkelbach never really offered a compelling explanation for why, given the precedent of Greek versions of Egyptian explicitly mythological material—the texts of which could presumably have been used as they stood in cult, as has been supposed for their Egyptian prototypes8—Greek-writing prose authors should have chosen to transform the myths into allegorical love-stories set principally in this world.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Looking at the question from the Egyptian side, claims have often been made, especially since a short article by J. W. Barns in 1956, that (p.248) the Egyptian literary tradition, and most particularly the storytelling tradition reflected in Demotic prose tales like the Setne Khaemwas or Petubastis ‘cycles’, may be a source of some of the particular characteristics of Greek novels vis-à-vis their classical antecedents.9 This idea was endorsed by Reardon,10 and more recently Hägg has entertained the possibility that ‘even if Egyptian and other oriental literature is not directly imitated, its mere existence means both an inspiration and, perhaps still more, a liberation, which in due time results in the emergence of the new Greek genre’.11 And over the years, the general hypothesis of some sort of impact of Egyptian prose fiction on Greek prose literature of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods has grown in plausibility. The Egyptian origin of at least some aspects of the Alexander Romance traditions, long the object of speculation, was conclusively demonstrated by the publication of a Demotic parallel to the Greek ‘Dream of Nectanebo’ by Kim Ryholt in 1998.12 Greek-language anecdotes of some other legendary pharaohs have been shown to have real Egyptian roots with the publication of the Demotic ‘Pheros’ and ‘Sesostris’ fragments,13 which in turn suggests that still other allegedly Egyptian anecdotes or humorous tales known in Greek paraphrase, for example, the story of the ‘Treasure of Rhampsinitus’ (Herodotus 2.121), may well also be genuinely Egyptian.14 Barns, however, did not dwell particularly on the religious roots of the Egyptian prose tradition, and indeed, especially in the Demotic (p.249) tradition, obviously mythological tales are not especially common.15 Better represented are a rather wide variety of tales featuring heroic warrior-figures, magicians, kings, wise-men, or ordinary commoners.16 Gods can certainly figure in such stories, but human characters and their preoccupations are predominant by far, and in such tales, mythological resonances are far less obvious, even when present: to take just the case of ‘First Setne’, the strong plot and vivid characters that make the tale so interesting have, until only fairly recently, largely obscured the tale’s mythological background from modern scholarship.17 And others, like Reardon, who have been intrigued by the possibility of an Egyptian impact on Greek storytelling but wary of approaches like Merkelbach’s, have apparently likewise thought that the most likely Egyptian ‘gene’ in the ‘genome’ of the Greek novel would have been the ‘prose’ gene: i.e. the demonstrated priority of Egypt in constructing tales in prose rather than in poetry; and perhaps secondarily the use of certain general themes like ‘love’ and ‘travel’.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Perhaps Ian Rutherford’s contributions on the possible points of contact between the ‘Setne-Khaemwas’ tradition and the ‘Petubastis’ cycle, on the one side, and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, on the other, have done the most to argue for, and to trace, specific impacts of the Egyptian prose fictional tradition on the Greek novel in the narrower sense.18 For the most part, Rutherford appears to ascribe the connections to the sorts of general structural/narratological mutual influences that might be expected in a multicultural society, particularly one in which oral storytelling in both Egyptian and Greek may have been far more important than the surviving written evidence makes clear. However, while not directly confronting the central premises of Merkelbach’s theory of the Greek novel, he does suggest in ‘Kalasiris and Setne Khamwas’ that an interesting comparison with the (p.250) Aithiopika’s tale of Charikleia’s return to Aithiopia and therefore the Sun might be compared to the Greek/Demotic Tefnut legend, in which Tefnut strives to return from Nubia to reunite with her father, the Sungod Reʿ.19 Aside from Merkelbach, this appears to be one of the few attempts to integrate a discussion of the possible Egyptian origins of the Greek-novel tradition with a consideration of the religious imagery, structure, and characterizations in both Greek and Egyptian fiction.

Contemporary Interpretations of Women in the Greek Novel The comparatively active role of female characters in pursuing their own sexual destinies is a most interesting, distinguishing feature of the Greek novel, one which has been regularly noted, if not uniformly interpreted. For David Konstan, Greek novels are marked by ‘sexual symmetry’, in which the respective fates of the central female and male protagonists mirror one another: It is peculiar to the Greek novel, among ancient forms of love literature, that the protagonists are invariably a young boy and a young girl, both of free status and eligible for marriage, and each equally enamored of the other. This pattern of symmetrical or reciprocal love, in which the attraction is both mutual and between social equals, has a profound effect on the entire structure of the novel.20 Others, like Katharine Haynes, have gone beyond the notion of ‘sexual symmetry’ to the conclusion that female protagonists are typically dominant and the focus of interest: ‘(T)here is no exact “symmetry” as Konstan would have it.… In the case of the protagonists, it is the heroines who are stronger, and make the relationship work.’21 Haynes particularly sees Charikleia in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika as the dramatically dominant figure:

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction (I)t is fair to say that Charikleia functions as the driving force of the narrative in a way equaled by no other heroine, with the possible exception of Kallirhoe.…(T)he narrative is a tale of her nostos, and (p.251) she is given far more opportunities to take an active role in events…Charikleia’s superiority is obvious even at the moments of their [scil., her and of the hero Theagenes] triumph.22 A third position is that of Brigitte Egger, who has found the claims of feminine ‘superiority’ or even ‘symmetry’ in the novels overstated, even as she concedes that ‘(t)he spotlight of the narratives is indeed focused on the heroines in various ways, and the more interesting among them tend to outshine their male counterparts’.23 Our purpose here, however, is not to decide whether Greek-novel heroines are to be identified precisely as the equals, superiors, or inferiors of their male counterparts. What is interesting is the undoubted fact of their dramatic activity, their narrative centrality, and the question of how this might be explained. Critics like Konstan or Haynes have sought to explain this in terms of social or political facts that were dominant in the lives of the Greek-reading elites that were the novels’ audience. For Haynes Greek-readers (principally male!) subject to the fact of Roman imperial dominance might have identified with the novels’ heroines, and through them fantasized about the subversion or overthrow of the Romans’ rapacious imperium.24 For Konstan, the question is of course not to explain the fact of unusual female dramatic energy but rather to explain female– male ‘symmetry’. For him, the answer lies in part in changes in the nature both of the reality of family life in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and in the forms of public discourse about family life.25 And it lies in part in the Greek-readers’ loss of a secure sense of identity as a member of the Classical polis, with the fact of the Roman Empire at once widening the sphere of physical action for fictional tales, and throwing the male and female protagonists back on each other as the only secure anchor-points in an uncertain world.26 Sociological or political explanations such as these, however, while interesting and suggestive of productive directions for inquiry, do not integrate as much as one might hope the conspicuous thematization of the feminine in the novels with the novels’ undoubted religious preoccupations.

(p.252) Good and Bad Women

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction With this, we turn to the treatment of women in the Aithiopika and in ‘First Setne’. Just as the Greek novel strongly stresses feminine characters and romantic, mutual love, so too it has been pointed out more than once that, at least in a general way, the loving pair of Ihweret and Naneferkaptah in ‘First Setne’ bears comparison with the canonical protagonists of Greek novels.27 Indeed, the most striking literary aspect of ‘First Setne’ is precisely its emphasis on its principal female characters: Ihweret, the loving and loyal sister/wife of Naneferkaptah, and her alter-ego Tabubue, the seductress who induces Setne Khaemwas to permit the murder (only illusory!) of his own children in exchange for the promise (unfulfilled!) of a sexual encounter. Entirely exceptionally for a putatively non-mythological or non-religious Egyptian tale, the bulk of the preserved story is either told by, or about, its female characters. The embedded tale of Naneferkaptah, narrated by Ihweret, comprises 66 preserved lines (3.1– 4.25), which is not quite half of the entire preserved text of 139 lines. Of course some portion of the missing beginning of the papyrus (two columns, approximately 80 lines) would have been taken up with the beginning of Ihweret’s tale. And the narration of Setne’s encounter with Tabubue occupies another 32 lines (4.38–5.30). Of the two main female figures in the tale, Ihweret is unambiguously ‘good’, and the allusions to Isis in her character are unmistakable.28 Foremost among these is her dual sibling–spouse relationship with Naneferkaptah and her status as mother of their child Meribptah. In the tale as preserved, we first encounter Ihweret as a ghost in the tomb of her brother Naneferkaptah, reciting her sad story as Isis mourns by the body of Osiris. Her role in the embedded tale of Naneferkaptah is conspicuously active, extradiegetically as narrator of the story, and intradiegetically as a character who appears to take the initiative to select her brother as her future spouse, and (in the framing story) who defends him against the depredations of Setne. Also significant is her burial in Koptos (along with her son Meribptah), a site with important connections to Isis and Harpokrates (Horus-the-Child),29 as the tale itself repeatedly stresses. As speaker (p.253) and narrator, Ihweret is virtually unparalleled as a non-divine character in earlier Egyptian narrative.30 In pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian fiction, Isis’ role in the Ramesside ‘Contendings of Horus and Seth’ is the only example of a female character with a major speaking role, but even Isis in this tale does not enjoy the centrality of Ihweret in ‘First Setne’.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction That said, Ihweret’s character as active, saviour-spouse, is not entirely unprecedented in Egyptian non-cultic, fictional narrative. An interesting, earlier parallel can be found in the character of the Princess of Naharin in the nonreligious (or at least non-cultic) Ramesside ‘Tale of the Doomed Prince’. Already in 1956, Barns had pointed out thematic similarities between the ‘Doomed Prince’ and the canonical Greek novel, but he did not go so far as to point out the similarities between the Princess of Naharin to Ihweret in ‘First Setne’, or her resonances with the general Isis tradition.31 Consideration of the Princess, however, makes it likely that the characterization of Ihweret, and key elements of the narration in ‘First Setne’ of her relationship with Naneferkaptah, could belong to a tradition of tales of Isis-like saviour-females that extends back at least to the New Kingdom.32 Perhaps the most obvious extended motif connecting the Princess of Naharin to Ihweret is the fact that each chooses her own spouse and communicates her choice to her father the king through a servant-intermediary. In each case, the king at first reacts with anger at the proposition but, following cajoling from his daughter, finally embraces the match with enthusiasm. Another interesting parallel comes in Doomed Prince 6.12–13, in which the Princess threatens that, if not allowed to marry the Prince, ‘As Preʿ-Harakhty endures, if he is separated from me, I will not eat, I will not drink, (but) I will die at once!’ In ‘First Setne’ 3.38–9, Ihweret uses essentially the same words to describe her condition as her brother Naneferkaptah (p.254) returns to her at Koptos, after a six- (or seven-)day expedition to seize the Magic Book of Thoth from Thoth’s treasurehouse: (And thus) it was that he reached me: at the place where I [had been from the first, (still) sitting] above the waters of Koptos, not having drunk [or eaten], not having done anything at all, with the appearance of a person who had reached the Good House (i.e., the place of embalming).”33 Similar sentiments are to be found in Ramesside love poetry, in which a woman deprived of her lover can be seen to lose interest in food and drink, and to be like a dead woman;34 my view is that in all three cases, the image is intended to resonate with Isis’ despair at her separation from Osiris.35 And other motifs in the ‘Doomed Prince’ suggesting a more generalized connection to Isis–Osiris mythology or ritual include the following: • All three of the creatures that the Hathors suggest as possible instruments of the Prince’s doom—the Snake, Dog, and Crocodile— have Sethian resonances.36

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction • Following their marriage, the Princess stands guard by the Prince’s bed as he sleeps. In Osirian ritual texts, ‘sleep’ is a constant euphemism for ‘death’, and so it is not difficult to think of this tableau in parallel with Isis’ and other gods’ generalized role in standing watch over the body of the deceased Osiris.37 • In the night in which the Princess stands guard over the Prince, she destroys the attacking Snake by inducing it to drink beer and wine to the point of its passing out, and then hacking it to pieces. The Princess’s mutilation of the Snake of course resonates with (p.255) the ritual destruction of Apophis, and thereby with Solar mythology. But it can simultaneously be compared to Isis’ role in magical defence against poisonous snakes and other venomous creatures like scorpions. Perhaps the best-known example of this is the NewKingdom historiola ‘Isis and the Secret Name of Reʿ’, in which Isis cures Reʿ of a snake-bite—which she herself had contrived for him to suffer—in exchange for his sharing with her his secret name.38 Compare also a magical self-presentation of Isis, attested in both the 19th dynasty and in the Ptolemaic period, in which Isis proclaims her power to protect Horus from snakes, lions, and crocodiles—i.e. two of the three categories of creatures that are identified as the Prince’s potential enemies in the ‘Doomed Prince’.39 • As the preserved tale ends, the Prince, fleeing his suddenly traitorous Dog, is induced to cross a body of water along with a Crocodile. The status of the Crocodile is unclear. Some, not without reason, have seen the Crocodile in the ‘Doomed Prince’ as a saviourimage.40 But this ambiguity may well be deliberate, and if the prediction of the three Hathors is to be taken seriously, we should probably expect that the Crocodile turns on the Prince, as the Prince’s once-faithful Dog has already done. The absence of the Princess at this juncture might be compared with the scenario of a number of magical historiolae, in which the child Horus finds himself in extreme jeopardy—typically from a scorpion’s sting—during Isis’ absence. If so, then the ‘Doomed Prince’ may be resolved by a timely reappearance of the Princess, who saves the Prince from the clutches of the Crocodile, just as Isis in the scorpion spells returns just in time to rescue the afflicted Horus.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction • Such an ending would also resonate with the scenario in some magical historiolae attached to ‘water spells’, in which Isis can be invoked for protection of swimmers against crocodiles. For another literary evocation of Isis in this role, compare O DM (p.256) 1266 + O CGC 25218, 7–15 from the Ramesside Cairo Vase love-poem collection, in which Fox has proposed to see a single discrete composition he calls ‘The Crossing’. In this poem, a swimmer braves crocodile-infested waters to reach his beloved, whose ‘love’ is likewise compared to a ‘water spell’. Here too the mythological resonances are clear. Philippe Derchain has pointed out that the emergence of the swimmer from the water at the feet of his beloved evokes the rising of the Sun, sexually revivified by his daughter Hathor.41 A comparison with the myth of Isis recovering the body of Osiris from the Nile seems inescapable, all the more so in light of the poem’s image of the female greeting the male swimmer with a ‘red tilapia’ (wd dšr), which she will make ‘effective’ (mnḫ) in her ‘fingers’. The fish as phallic or otherwise-sexual symbol in Egypt is common; pace Fox and Matthieu.42 The image in ‘The Crossing’ can only refer to Isis’ role in the sexual revivification of the murdered Osiris, as a precedent for the female protagonist of the poem exciting the ardor of her lover. A particularly pertinent New Kingdom image is a wooden carving of a swimming nude girl who holds a tilapia in her extended arms.43 Compare also Isis’ use of her hand to masturbate Horus with ‘pleasure (ndḏm) cream’ in ‘Contendings of Horus and Seth’ 11.7-8, and the attested use of fish in Demotic magical/medical preparations intended for this very purpose.44 It therefore seems attractive to compare the potential threats faced by the ‘Doomed Prince’ with the mythological threats against which Isis defends Osiris and Horus, and therefore to read the Princess of Naharin as a specifically Isislike figure. Such a reading has the advantage of explaining the unusually active role that the Princess (p.257) takes in the tale. It offers parallels for her absence at the point when the Prince appears to face his greatest danger, and it also suggests a plausible happy ending for the story. But more important for us, it would place Ihweret’s character in ‘First Setne’ in the context of a centuriesold tradition, and suggest the possibility that there might have been many more such tales circulating in Egypt—fictional reworkings of the basic Isis–Osiris myth that narrated stories of active, saviour females who were instrumental in the defence and salvation of a male ‘hero’.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction If, then, Barns, Reardon, and Rutherford are correct that tales from the Egyptian tradition might have exerted an influence on the development of the Greek novel, we should look again at the proposition that the prototypical young couples of the Greek novel might indeed find their prototypes in Egypt’s Isis and Osiris, perhaps via Egyptian non-mythological tales like ‘First Setne’ whose characterizations and structures were themselves influenced by the myth of Isis and Osiris. And with this we turn to the Aithiopika’s Charikleia. Perhaps surprisingly, Merkelbach himself did not really consider the possibility of resonances between the Aithiopika specifically and Isis–Osiris mythology, preferring to see in the Aithiopika resonances of the (not strongly attested) cult of the Sun.45 Yet if mythical forebears for the Aithiopika’s young lovers are to be sought, it seems at least as promising to explore the resemblances between Charikleia and Isis, especially in light of Isis-like figures from Egyptian fiction like Ihweret and the Princess of Naharin. Certainly the opening scene of the novel presents Charikleia in a quintessentially Isis-linked tableau, mourning over the (apparently) dead body of Theagenes, while onlookers speculate that she might in fact be Isis.46 Like Ihweret and the Princess of Naharin, Charikleia chooses her own mate, and at different moments strives to persuade both her adoptive father Charikles and her newly discovered natural father Hydaspes, king of Aithiopia, to accept her choice. Similarly to Ihweret and the Princess of Naharin, for whom separation from their beloved entails the possibility of starvation and death, Charikleia falls ill and refuses to eat when kept away from Theagenes; only when the Egyptian Isis-priest Kalasiris contrives her elopement with Theagenes is she restored to health. Throughout the tale, it is Charikleia, rather (p.258) than Theagenes, who does the most to advance the two lovers’ interests. The establishment of Theagenes and Charikleia as, respectively, priest and priestess of the Sun and Moon at the novel’s end, might be compared to the standard associations of Sarapis with the Sun, and the (specifically Greek) association of Isis with the Moon.47 Finally, it is worth noting that although it would have been unacceptable to Heliodorus’ Greek audience for Theagenes and Charikleia to be revealed as brother and sister, they do occasionally present themselves as such for various tactical reasons.48 But if Charikleia in the Aithiopika shows interesting affinities with Ihweret of ‘First Setne’ or the Princess of Naharin in the ‘Doomed Prince’, the picture with respect to the ‘bad women’ in the Aithiopika and in ‘First Setne’ is less clear. In ‘First Setne’, the ‘bad woman’ is the temptress Tabubue, and she has indeed been compared to the ‘bad women’ of the Aithiopika—especially Rhodopis and Arsake.49 There are certainly some superficial similarities between Tabubue and, particularly, Rhodopis. Rhodopis initially appears to the Egyptian priest Kalasiris in a temple setting, just as Setne Khaemwas first encounters Tabubue upon the dromos of the Memphite temple of Ptah. Compare ‘First Setne’ 4.38–5.3:

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Sometime later, there came a day when Setne was walking about on the dromos of (the temple of) Ptah. (And at what) was it that he gazed, (but) at a certain extraordinarily, peerlessly beautiful [woman]! She was beautiful, wearing a quantity of jewelry with plenty of gold, with a number of young girls accompanying her, and with two staff-members of the household assigned to her. At the moment in which Setne saw her, he had no idea where he was. Setne called to his young servant, saying, ‘Do not delay to the place where this woman is; learn what is going on with her affairs.’ (p.259) The young servant did not delay to go the place where the woman was. He called out to a young maidservant who was walking behind her. He questioned her, saying, ‘What person is this?’ Said she to him, ‘It is Tabubue, the daughter of the priest of Bastet, Mistress of ꜤʿAnkh-Tawy. That she has come here is (expressly) to worship before Ptah, the great god.’ with Aithiopika 2.25, in which Kalasiris narrates his first encounter with Rhodopis (Morgan’s translation):50 A Thracian woman, in the full bloom of youth, second in beauty only to Charikleia, Rhodopis by name, was touring Egypt.…(O)ne day she came carousing into Memphis with every imaginable luxury and extravagance in her train. She was fully equipped for the sexual hunt: any man who crossed her path was trapped, for there was no escaping or resisting the net of sensuality that she trailed from her eyes. She became a frequent visitor to the temple of Isis where I was high priest, performing constant devotions to the goddess with hugely expensive sacrifices and dedications.

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Good and Bad Women in Egyptian and Greek Fiction Yet, while Rhodopis and Arsake are lethal, if cartoonish, villainesses, Tabubue’s ‘badness’ has typically been rather overrated. True enough, she appears to trap Setne into sacrificing the lives of his children for a brief sexual encounter; but this turns out to be illusory. The irony of the Setne–Tabubue episode stands in sharp contrast to Heliodorus’ moralizing and melodrama in the confrontations between his femmes fatales and their male prey, and the parallels between the Setne–Tabubue encounter and episodes taken from Classical and post-Classical comic literature are no less interesting than those taken from Heliodorus, particularly its lampooning of sexuality. For example: the motif of a temptress making repeated, escalating demands on her suitor, only to leave him frustrated, bears comparison with the scene between Myrrine and Kineseas in Aristophanes’ ‘Lysistrata’, ll. 837 ff. This scene, like the aftermath of the Tabubue encounter in ‘First Setne’, ends with pronounced emphasis on the frustrated lover’s penis. The image of Setne out-of-doors and naked invites comparison with the conclusion of pseudo-Lucian’s Lucius, or the Ass. As also in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, the ‘hero’ Lucius had been bewitched (transformed into an ass) in the course of an abortive effort to obtain forbidden magical knowledge. In pseudo-Lucian, Lucius—the enchantment worn off—calls on a (p. 260) woman with whom he had had sex while in donkey-form. The woman at first welcomes the opportunity, but throws the naked Lucius out of her house when she observes that he has completely reverted to human proportions in all anatomical details.51 Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing Classical (broadly defined) parallel for Tabubue is the randy Fotis from Apuleius’ Golden Ass. Similarly to Tabubue (‘She of the Shining One’), her name (probably) means ‘Light’ (