Who would give up the Homeric legends, with their records of gods and supernatural heroes, for the realistic recitals of a Thucydides? Who would give up the myths of Greece for a record of actual wars and conquests? Fortunately we have not to make the choice; we may retain the one record to supplement and complete the other. So the historian should do with the early records of every people, wherever accessible.
Apart from the monuments of the Egyptians themselves, the oldest account of this people which has come down to us in profane literature is that given by Herodotus. This account has peculiar interest because it is given by an eye-witness. Herodotus travelled in Egypt some time about the beginning of the fifth century B.C., when Egypt was just being opened up to the foreigner. It does not appear that Herodotus knew the language of the country, and he was, therefore, necessarily debarred from attaining as intimate a knowledge of the people as might otherwise have been possible. It has been suspected also that the Egyptian priests amused themselves not a little in filling the mind of Herodotus with tales of very doubtful authenticity. But be that as it may, Herodotus had a keen eye, and he has left us vivid and interesting descriptions of the many marvels that he saw, some of which are here presented. In making these citations we shall not for the moment attempt the rôle of the critic, accepting rather the entertaining narrative just as it is given.
It will be obvious that in many points this narrative partakes of the ludicrous; yet even these portions of the tale have their value. What Herodotus tells us of the causes of the rises of the Nile, for example, is important as showing the attitude of Greek thought towards this singular phenomenon. The naïve recital in which Herodotus tells how the wind blows the sun from his course, serves in itself to give a clew, not to the mind of Herodotus alone, but to the minds of his contemporaries,—a clew which will be of the utmost value in aiding one to estimate the status of various historical reports that come to us from antiquity. But, on the other hand, what Herodotus has to tell us of his actual observations as to the land and the manners and customs of its people, is of the utmost importance as the contemporary record of a keen observer, and may be accepted, so far as it relates to the actual observations of the author, as historically accurate in the fullest modern sense of the word.
Next to the works of Herodotus, the amplest description of Egypt that has come down to us from antiquity is that of Diodorus the Sicilian. This author was a contemporary of Cæsar and Augustus. He wrote a very famous history of the world under the title of The Historical Library, in forty books, of which only about eleven have reached us intact.
It is not clear whether Diodorus, like Herodotus, visited Egypt in person, but he at least was familiar with all the knowledge and tradition of his time relating to that country. He lived several centuries later than Herodotus, when Egypt had long been the field of foreign invasion. Whatever the Greek and the Roman had been able to learn of Egyptian history was therefore accessible to him, and what he has to tell us of Egypt has the peculiar merit of epitomising practically all classical knowledge of the people of the Nile. Practically nothing more was added to the stock of Western knowledge regarding Egyptian history from his day till the nineteenth century. Certain statements which Diodorus accepted were indeed such as latter-day scepticism would instinctively reject, but, that qualification aside, the history of Egypt as Diodorus relates it was practically her history as known to the Western world until nineteenth century enterprise found the key to the Egyptian monuments. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Diodorus will have peculiar and lasting interest; but in addition to this, the narrative has intrinsic merits that render it well worthy of preservation.
It will be of the utmost interest here, at the very beginning, to compare and contrast his account of Egypt with that of Herodotus. If we shall find in it certain things, such as his account of the spontaneous generation of mice from the mud of the Nile, which seem to justify what has been quoted from the critics as to his credulity, we shall find, on the other hand, in his critical analysis of the different stories as to the origin of the Nile, and, in his finally correct choosing of a true explanation of the annual rise of that river, clear proof that he did possess and did sometimes utilise a keen critical judgment. Meantime it will be equally clear that he possessed, in no small degree, a capacity to write interesting history very different from the more arid records which make up some of his later annals.[a]
Let us turn, then, to the pages of Herodotus and listen to a classical account of the Nile.
In its more extensive inundations, the Nile does not overflow the Delta only, but part of that territory which is called Libyan, and sometimes the Arabian frontier, and extends about the space of two days’ journey on each side, speaking on an average. Of the nature of this river I could obtain no certain information, from the priests or from others. It was nevertheless my particular desire to know why the Nile, beginning at the summer solstice, continues gradually to rise for the space of one hundred days, after which for the same space it as gradually recedes, remaining throughout the winter, and till the return of the summer solstice, in its former low and quiescent state: but all my inquiries of the inhabitants proved ineffectual, and I was unable to learn why the Nile was thus distinguished in its properties from other streams. I was equally unsuccessful in my wishes to be informed why this river alone wafted no breeze from its surface.
Head-dress of a Queen of Ancient Egypt