Herodotus in Egypt

Paper Summary:

This paper considers the problematic nature of a traveler's view of a foreign culture and society and, in particular, the ancient Greek traveler, Herodotus's, view of ancient Egypt. The paper looks at the reliability of Herodotus's sources, how his recordings of Egyptian history and culture differ from what has been written in other texts, and what cultural biases Herodotus might hold as an observer.

From the Paper:

"Travelogues as sources of accurate history are problematic. By definition, they are written by outsiders rather than insiders to a particular land, culture and time. Travel writing even in our historical present, has a notorious unreliability as sources of data. They are filtered through the point of view of someone who, even if he or she is conversant in the language of the region, is not always equally fluent in the culture, and must rely upon the point of view of those selected by the ruling regime. For instance, the voices of the ?Work Songs from Ancient Egypt: Voices of Ordinary Men and Women,? as chronicled in Chapter 12 of Bailkey are entirely absent, as these voices of the hands, backs, and sweat that the great pyramids were constructed by were not part of the exposure of the historian. Perhaps they might not have been as interesting, to Herodotus, as the great visions of the pyramids themselves, given that the Greek Herodotus himself was part of a culture that accepted slavery as a necessity."

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