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Chapter 2. Egypt and Scythia: The Pious and the Poetic Regimes
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Introduction In Herodotus’ narrative, Egypt and Scythia represent two opposing but parallel ways of life, the principles of which we will find combined in various ways by Herodotus’ Persians, Athenians, and Spartans. It is important, therefore, to consider Herodotus’ Egyptians and Scythians, as they are the two cultures whose complex syntheses are reflected in the ways of life of the Persians and the Greeks, the two great peoples whose war with another is recorded in the Histories. The Egyptians are the most “holy” people in the Histories, and as such can be regarded as Herodotus’ pious regime. Egypt, according to Herodotus, is the source for many of the religious practices of the Greeks and for important elements of Greek religious thought as well. From the Egyptians the Greeks learn how to serve their gods and to think about them as particular beings with individual identities. Herodotus gives content to the individuality grasped by the Egyptians and transmitted to the Greeks in his analysis of Egyptian customs. Here, Herodotus shows that to live a pious life means to be focused on the body and its purity, and therefore with the particular and private part of man. The Egyptians know the soul, but believe that human beings share this part of themselves with animals; thus, for the Egyptians what makes human beings unique in the world is not their soul but rather Chapter 2 Egypt and Scythia The Pious and the Poetic Regimes 23 their particular bodily form. Yet, since the body comes to be and passes away, the Egyptian emphasis on the eternal means a feeling of shame for the human and the worship of animals rather than themselves. Although animal bodies are also perishable rather than imperishable, that they are not human seems to be enough. Egyptian piety is concerned not simply with the body but also with the sexual duality of the body. For the Egyptians, women’s bodies are unclean and therefore more human and closer to the families that they form. Through circumcision, men’s bodies are made clean and share a closer proximity to the divine. Thus, for the Egyptians, gods are not only individual entities but masculine as well as feminine. Herodotus suggests that the Egyptians make a closer connection between the bodies of men and that which is divine, as opposed to the bodies of women, because they are a people who organize their whole way of life around the principle of rest. As such they tend to conceal and thus divinize the sexuality of men that, imitating the Nile, is feared as the source of all life. The sexuality of women, in contrast, is associated with the earth and rest and hence can be exposed and looked on directly. The Egyptian emphasis on stability and rest is also manifested by their great reverence for age and the past. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, are the greatest preservers of the past, both in memory and in written records. What belongs to the Egyptians, Herodotus suggests, is the ancestral. By looking only to the past and not the future, the Egyptians look only to what is determined and cannot change; the Egyptians regard themselves primarily as generated beings rather than as beings capable of generation themselves, and their identity as fundamentally given rather than open, a product of necessity rather than choice. The concern for holiness in Egypt, Herodotus indicates, mutes the concern for justice and leads to skepticism toward human wisdom. Moreover, Egyptian customs also have a powerful affect on the Egyptian manner of speech; Herodotus suggests that the emphasis on the body tends to turn the Egyptians into “liars,” as it were. On the level of speech, lying plays the same function as the body; both conceal the soul or the internal intentions of the speaker. For the Egyptians, words do not convey one unchanging meaning between speaker and listener but rather spawn an infinite variety of interpretations , the correct one only the speaker can know. To the Egyptians, the world presents itself as infinitely complex; the surface of things requires interpretation, but interpretation is impossible. Just as the true nature of their gods remains forever concealed at the beginning of time and behind animal form, the Egyptian soul remains concealed by their manner of speech; words do not reveal the truth. 24 Herodotus and the Philosophy of Empire [3.85.63.190] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:03 GMT) Egypt and Scythia 25 The Scythians, on the other hand, are Herodotus...