The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Account of Egypt, by Herodotus

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Title: An Account of Egypt

Author: Herodotus

Translator: G. C. Macaulay

Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #2131]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPT ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny; David Widger

AN ACCOUNT OF EGYPT

By Herodotus

Translated By G. C. Macaulay

NOTE

HERODOTUS was born at Halicarnassus, on the southwest coast of Asia
Minor, in the early part of the fifth century, B. C. Of his life we know
almost nothing, except that he spent much of it traveling, to collect
the material for his writings, and that he finally settled down at
Thurii, in southern Italy, where his great work was composed. He died in
424 B. C.

The subject of the history of Herodotus is the struggle between the
Greeks and the barbarians, which he brings down to the battle of Mycale
in 479 B. C. The work, as we have it, is divided into nine books,
named after the nine Muses, but this division is probably due to the
Alexandrine grammarians. His information he gathered mainly from oral
sources, as he traveled through Asia Minor, down into Egypt, round
the Black Sea, and into various parts of Greece and the neighboring
countries. The chronological narrative halts from time to time to give
opportunity for descriptions of the country, the people, and their
customs and previous history; and the political account is constantly
varied by rare tales and wonders.

Among these descriptions of countries the most fascinating to the
modern, as it was to the ancient, reader is his account of the marvels
of the land of Egypt. From the priests at Memphis, Heliopolis, and the
Egyptian Thebes he learned what he reports of the size of the country,
the wonders of the Nile, the ceremonies of their religion, the
sacredness of their animals. He tells also of the strange ways of the
crocodile and of that marvelous bird, the Phoenix; of dress and funerals
and embalming; of the eating of lotos and papyrus; of the pyramids and
the great labyrinth; of their kings and queens and courtesans.

Yet Herodotus is not a mere teller of