Appendix: Herodotus’s Egyptian Tales

Herodotus’s Mycerinus, whose misfortune and death stirred Matthew Arnold to write his very moving poem,^[1] has puzzled my students because of the seeming injustice of his situation. Though his uncle and father were cruel and impious monarchs, and though he was upright and god-fearing, it was Mycerinus who was punished with short life. Yet a careful investigation of the stories preceding his in Herodotus’s Book 2 will show that Mycerinus is no martyr figure; indeed, Herodotus has taken great care to enable us to understand the ways of the pagan gods and their pattern of justice in dealing with Mycerinus..

Mycerinus is the seventh king whom Herodotus mentions at any length once he has finished the ethnographic portion of his account of Egypt and has begun his history of the land proper (2.129 ff.).^[2] Sesostris, the first king of repute, extended the boundaries of the Egyptian Empire, devised a system of land distribution among all the natives of Egypt, and built a network of canals reticulating Egypt. The story of his achievements is a description of Egypt at its height (2.102 ff.), her empire is at its widest and her power at its peak.

The son of Sesostris, Pheros, does not win much glory in Herodotus. He is chiefly noted for his blindness and its cure (2.111). Angry at the Nile for an unusually high flood, he throws a spear at the water and is instantly smitten with blindness. In the eleventh year of his affliction, he receives word from an oracle that he will be cured if he washes his eyes with the urine of a woman who has been faithful to her husband and has never had sexual intercourse with another man (2.111). He tries washing his eyes with his wife’s urine, but it doesn’t work and he continues to be blind. He tries that of other women until—finally—he succeeds in finding the prescribed wash. He thereupon kills all the women except the one whose urine was found efficacious, whom he marries. The punishment of Pheros was, I think, not merely the blindness; the punishment was extended also to include the cure, for it could not have been very delightful to wash his eyes again and again—and again—with urine. The punishment is appropriate, for as Pheros had polluted water by throwing a spear into it, so too should his punishment consist of a foul water, a polluted water—urine.^[3]

The king after Pheros, Proteus, is chiefly notable for what happened in another part of the world during his reign (2.112 ff.). According to Herod­ otus, who at first glance would seem to digress here, Paris, having abducted Helen and now on his way to Troy, was driven by a storm to the shores of Egypt. Proteus, the Egyptian king, was outraged at Paris’s conduct and would not let Paris continue to conduct Helen all the way to Troy (2.113£). The Greeks, believing Helen to be in Asia, attacked Troy and demanded her back. Herodotus, however, affirms that the Trojans insisted truthfully that she was not there, “but the Greeks would not believe what they said—Divine Providence, as I think, so willing, that by their utter destruction it might be made evident to all men that when great wrongs are done, the gods will surely visit the wrongdoers with great punishments. Such, at least, is my view of the matter” (2.120).

Herodotus would not allow himself the luxury of so long a digression were it not directly related to the sequence of tales he is telling, and if it were not important for understanding the history of Egypt. If contemporary scholarship on Herodotus is unanimous about anything, it is about the relevance of the so-called digressions. What the essential importance of this story about Helen’s true whereabouts is I shall take up in a moment.

The next king, Proteus’ son, was Rhampsinitus (2.121 ff.). This king is famous for a bold theft that took place during his reign. Rhampsinitus had a large treasure house built in which to store his immense wealth-greater than that of his successors. The architect contrived to build a secret entrance (access by an easily moved boulder) to the storehouse so that he could enrich himself and his family. When the architect was dying, he told his sons about the treasure and the secret entrance. When he died, his sons secretly entered the treasure house and stole an abundance of riches. Later, when one son was caught in a trap, his brother cut off his head and escaped. King Rhampsinitus had the trunk of the dead brother exposed. The living brother rescued the body and insulted the soldiers who were guarding the body by shaving off half their beards. Rhampsinitus designed a trap for the thief by instructing his daughter to sleep with all comers after having first required them to tell her the wickedest and cleverest deeds they ever had committed. The thief, suspecting a trap, leaves the arm of a dead man in the daughter’s clutch and escapes, again proving his cleverness superior to that of the king. When Rhampsinitus hears of this success he promises the thief a free pardon and a great reward besides; when the thief comes forward, Rhampsinitus “greatly admiring him, and looking upon him as the most knowing of men, gave him his daughter in marriage.”

Until Rhampsinitus, Egypt was excellently governed. But Cheops, his successor, was wicked and cruel: he closed the temples, forbade sacrifice, and forced the citizens to labor constantly on his enormous pyramid (2.124). He was so wicked (2.126) he forced his daughter to prostitute herself in order to gain more treasure. Nevertheless, Cheops enjoyed a long reign of fifty years. Chephren, Cheops’ brother, came to the throne next. Herodotus does not tell about him at.length: he was every bit as bad as his brother; he built a large, though slightly smaller pyramid than did Cheops; and he reigned for fifty-six years.^[4]

Next comes Mycerinus, whose story cannot be understood apart from those of the kings who preceded him. Mycerinus disapproved of the conduct of his father, reopened the temples, allowed people to return to their own occupations, and allowed them to sacrifice to the gods. Of all the kings of Egypt he was the most just in deciding cases. Indeed, he would go so far as to pacify those dissatisfied with his sentences by offering a gift from his own purse.

Despite his goodness, an oracle came to him declaring that he would live only six years and die in the seventh. Mycerinus angrily reproached the oracle: his father and uncle had shut up the temples, he protested, ignored the gods, killed many innocent people, and yet enjoyed long life; he, a pious man, was doomed to die soon. The oracle responded that Egypt had been fated to suffer 150 years of affliction, that the two preceding kings had understood this and he had not.

Mycerinus then had lamps lit every night, and he feasted and enjoyed himself day and· night unceasingly, visiting all the agreeable resorts. His wish was to prove the oracle false by turning nights into days and so living twelve years instead of six. He left a pyramid, too, but one much smaller than those of the others.

What shall we make of Mycerinus? Clearly he was punished on account of his piety-for the curse on Egypt. That Egypt should suffer made his piety impiety: by behaving justly and allowing sacrifices he was violating the curse and displeasing the gods. For this he was to be punished. As soon as Mycerinus learned of and understood the curse, he gave himself to continuous feasting. In doing so he neglected the affairs of Egypt, no longer adjudicated cases or sacrificed to the gods. Herodotus is careful to report that he gave himself to such feasting unceasingly. On the one hand, by attempting, after a fashion, to cheat the oracle by turning six years to twelve, Mycerinus was similarly behaving impiously: to cheat fate is certainly impious. On the other hand, such behavior would render him in compliance with the curse. Thus, according to the pattern, his impiety would have been piety and would undoubtedly have met the approval of the gods. It would be fitting therefore for him to lengthen his life, and this he did, in a manner of speaking, by living twelve years in the space of six.

As is clear, the story of Mycerinus contains a neat inversion of piety and impiety. What hitherto was pious became impious, and what was impious became pious. The story has a charming completeness about it, as Mycerinus is first punished for his impiety by shortness of life, then rewarded for his impiety (which is now piety, because it is in keeping with the curse) by lengthened life-even if it is only figuratively lengthened.

The question is, though, what is this curse? Why should Egypt suffer so many years? Is the curse appropriate, or are the gods unjust?

To answer these questions, we must recall the story that came just before the reigns of Cheops and Chephren, the first bad kings. That story was about Rhampsinitus and the clever thief. There a man had committed monstrous crimes against the state: he had robbed the treasure house of the king, humiliated the king’s soldiers, and foiled the attempts of the king to bring about justice for the crime. Worst of all, the king, after all these great wrongs were done, pardoned and rewarded—rewarded!—the criminal!

Rhampsinitus, we recall, was the king who followed Proteus, and the chief lesson we derived from Proteus’s reign was the one drawn from the Trojan War, which took place during that reign-that when great wrongs are done, the gods visit great punishments. If anyone ought to have learned that lesson it was.Rhampsinitus, who had the panorama of the Trojan War and the total destruction of Tray before him. The great wrong of abduction led to the destruction of a people. By his wanton pardon of the clever thief, by rewarding what he ought to have punished, Rhampsinitus was showing that he did not understand that lesson. He was, after all, overthrowing all principles of justice. Therefore, if we take into account the sequence of stories, Egypt ought to suffer a great punishment. Whether or not it is fair for the common people to suffer need not concern us; it is, alas, a fact of human life that whole nations suffer for the follies of their rulers.

That punishment for Rhampsinitus’s rewarding where he should have punished was the 150-year curse on Egypt. The punishment was exactly and exquisitely appropriate. For where Rhampsinitus had turned morality upside-down by rewarding what he should have punished, so did the gods. The gods rewarded Cheops and Chephren for their impiety and injustice; Mycerinus they punished for his piety and justice. The great wrong to Egypt had been an inversion of morality; the punishment was a curse that gave divine authority to that inversion. Before, we had observed an aptness in the gods’ punishment of Pheros, for as he had polluted water so he was punished with polluted water. Here too the same kind of aptness applies.

Cheops and Chephren understood this inversion of morality while Mycerinus did not. The first two were piously impious and were rewarded with long life in this world and happiness in the next, for they had great pyramids.^[5] Their earthly longevity, moreover, is the more striking since Cheops and Chephren were brothers and their cumulative reign 106 years. Mycerinus, impiously pious, received his due: shortness of life and a small pyramid. (Of course, one might wonder, given Herodotus’s oft-repeated statement about how death is preferable to life, whether Herodotus thought Mycerinus’s early death a punishment or a reward.)

In an earlier section of the Egyptian book (2.35), Herodotus had observed that Egypt is full of many wonders and that the people, in most of their manners and customs, are opposite most of mankind. In the sequence of stories that I have discussed, it is possible to see how some of that contrariness resulted in divine nemesis: the endorsement by the gods of that unhappy perversity.

Can we see in this sequence of Egyptian tales some veiled hints and recommendations for Athens? Given Herodotus’s sojourn in and affection for Athens, is it not likely that he wished to give her some advice, some­ thing he might not be able to do directly since he was a foreigner, but surely something he could do by the examples in his History? Like the Egypt of these tales, Athens is at its height. Can he be suggesting that she not commit great wrongs lest she suffer great punishments? Is it possible that there be criticism of Athenian imperial—and imperious—behavior?