Ancient Greek and Egyptian Interactions | Hacker News Reader

Ancient Greek and Egyptian Interactions

blog.oup.com

64 pointsdiodorus12 comments

>“You Greeks are children.” That’s what an Egyptian priest is supposed to have said to a visiting Greek in the 6th century BC.

I don't know what the need is to be vague. According to Plato, this was said to Solon immediately preceding the story of Atlantis.

"Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore." http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

There is pretty good evidence that the two cultures influenced each other in waves. Egyptian culture was a lot more stable earlier and records some Greek history even before the greeks do in terms of greek settlement under the Acropolis going back way further than documented evidence.

The Atlantis myth actually comes from Egypt to Greece- and much of Greek early knowledge of themselves comes from Egyptian historians.

Later after the conquest by Alexander (surrender) the influence on Egypt is fairly massive. If you ever get a chance visit the temple of Hathor north of Thebes.

One of the most "intact" temples still standing and huge Greek influences. Was just there in January and had to ninja in with Military escort as Egypt is a bit unstable now.

A fun blog post that leaves out many other fun connections to today. Even the word we use, "Egypt" is the Greek name (Aígyptos) for the place known as al Misr. And the demotic language was just that: demotic is a Greek adjective that just means the colloquial language of the people (demos) as opposed to the hieratic (priestly) speech or Received English. Saying it is called demotic as if he'd written "those smalltalk programs were written in a language known as object-oriented"

It's really fascinating how much opression/occupation literature there apparently was, given that in western literature they are often the conquerors (before the 1940s, Godwin's law would have referenced Napoleon; before him it would have been -- Pharaoh). I hadn't realized how much turnover there was, but I suppose in 3000 years there's time for a lot to happen.

Another fascinating connection is between Egypt/Ur/Babylon et al and the pre-Aryan Indus culture. It appears likely that writing spread from the fertile crescent to India via trade, as it did to the Phoenicians and thence to Greece and to us.

Note that Hermes Trismegistus is a local syncretism rather than a full equivalent as the article implies.

Interesting article. The Ancient Greeks, were from what I understand, very open about how (most of) their culture was essentially handed to them by the Egyptians via the trading colonies the Greeks, who were a seafaring people, kept at the Egyptian shores.

Do you have a reference for this? While Greece was strongly influenced by the cultures of the Near East and Egypt, it entirely misstates the situation to say that "most of their culture was handed to them." Edit - Walter Burkert has an excellent, short book on this - The Orientalizing Revolution

At least in the specific case of Herodotus, in his Histories, he has several theories about Greek customs borrowed from other cultures. He also has a relatively open mind about different cultures having customs that are better. For example, he talks at one point how he thinks the Persians (who were often enemies with different city states) have a good custom of raising young children (males) separate from the parents until a certain age so if they should die it is less of a hardship.

Herodotus was fantastic because he was the first historian, but he is seriously lacking as a historian if you judge him by modern standards. That doesn't detract from him as a great man and an intellectual pioneer, but it does mean we should be skeptical of his theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus#Egypt

For sure, everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt. I was just giving an example of a specific Greek who had some of the ideas the OP was requesting.

I disagree with this. While the Greeks speculated that Egypt might be the origin of some of their culture, they were a) distinct and b) tended to be a pseudo-mystical predecessor to the greeks. Kind of how we look at the greeks with western culture, but centered around egyptian religion.

The article has a glaring omission. The Minoans were trading regularly with Egypt millenia ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization

Good read!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com