Геродот и египетские жрецы (к вопросу об «отце истории» как «отце лжи»)

Abstract

Already in antiquity Herodotus was often accused of lies or/and plagiarism, and that trend is in existence even now. Such an approach to his work is not very fruitful, and the aim of this article is to demonstrate this thesis through a case-study. In his Egyptian logos (Book II) Herodotus constantly refers to Egyptian priests as his main source. There is an opinion that the historian never met Egyptian priests, and really he took his information from the work of his predecessor, Hecataeus of Miletus. The latter also took the information not from priests, but it was a product of his original considerations. So we have not two great historians but two great liars, and one of them (Herodotus) was in addition a plagiarist. In this article the author tries to show that the point of view cited above is absolutely incorrect. Herodotus, no doubt, met Egyptian priests and talked to them. They were hardly high-rank priests, but rather some kind of priestly guides. Surely their narration was strongly Hellenized and with a lot of purely Greek elements (stories of Helen, the Trojan War, etc,). But it is because such stories were addressed by Egyptians to Greek strangers, and ordered to satisfy their, specifically Greek, interests.