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4.
But as to human affairs, this was the account in which they all agreed: the Egyptians, they said, were the first men who reckoned by years and made the year consist of twelve divisions of the seasons. They discovered this from the stars (so they said). And their reckoning is, to my mind, a juster one than that of the Greeks; for the Greeks add an intercalary month every other year, so that the seasons agree; but the Egyptians, reckoning thirty days to each of the twelve months, add five days in every year over and above the total, and thus the completed circle of seasons is made to agree with the calendar.
[2]
Furthermore, the Egyptians (they said) first used the names of twelve gods1 (which the Greeks afterwards borrowed from them); and it was they who first assigned to the several gods their altars and images and temples, and first carved figures on stone. Most of this they showed me in fact to be the case. The first human king of Egypt, they said, was Min.
[3]
In his time all of Egypt except the Thebaic2 district was a marsh: all the country that we now see was then covered by water, north of lake Moeris,3 which is seven days' journey up the river from the sea.
1 There is much obscurity about the “Twelve Gods.” This only appears to be clear, that eight (or nine) gods form the first order of the Egyptian hierarchy, and that there are twelve of the second rank. See Hdt. 2.43, and Rawlinson's essay (ch. 3 in his Appendix to Book II.).
2 the southern part of Upper Egypt.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (24 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(1):
- Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus, 463
- Cross-references to this page
(4):
- Harper's, Menes
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CALENDA´RIUM
- Smith's Bio, Menes
- Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia, D.
- Cross-references in notes to this page
(1):
- M. Annaeus Lucanus, Pharsalia, Luc. 10.107
- Cross-references in notes from this page
(1):
- Herodotus, Histories, 2.43
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(17):
- LSJ, Θῆβαι
- LSJ, ἀνάπλοος
- LSJ, ἀπονέμ-ω
- LSJ, ἐγγλυ?́φ-ω
- LSJ, ἐμβόλ-ι^μος
- LSJ, ἐπάγω
- LSJ, ἐπεμ-βάλλω
- LSJ, ἐπωνυ^μ-ία
- LSJ, νομός
- LSJ, ὁμολογ-έω
- LSJ, παραγίγνομαι
- LSJ, περίειμι
- LSJ, σφεῖς
- LSJ, τρι^α_κονθ-ήμερος
- LSJ, ὑπερέχω
- LSJ, ὥρα
- LSJ, ζῷον
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