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Herodotus II, 28 on the Sources of the Nile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. A. Wainwright
G. A. Wainwright
Affiliation:
49 Stirling Road, Bournemouth
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Extract

The story of the sources of the Nile which Herodotus says the Scribe of the Sacred Treasures of Athene told him at Sais has been discussed many times, and nearly everything which can be said about it has been said. But the following points do not seem to have been made as yet.

The story that the sources or springs of the Nile are at Elephantine is absurd as it stands, as indeed Herodotus himself realised. Many suggestions have been put forward in explanation, primarily that the story is something theological or that it represents a very ancient tradition dating from the earliest times when the First Cataract was the Ultima Thule of Egypt. The flaw in such an explanation is that ‘from the earliest times’ the Nile's course south of the Cataract had been well known to the Egyptians. Cemeteries have been found in Nubia of the Egyptian predynastic and early dynastic times, and certainly from the Old Kingdom onwards armies and trading expeditions were commonly accustomed to go far up to the south. It was, therefore, well known to the Egyptians throughout history that the Nile did not rise at the First Cataract, but came from much farther south.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 73 , November 1953 , pp. 104 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1953

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References

1 For instance, Spiegelberg, , The Credibility of Herodotus' Account of Egypt in the Light of the Egyptian Monuments, p. 17.Google Scholar

2 These two mountains no doubt originate in the cliffs of the eastern and western deserts between which the Cataract rushes.

3 Budge, , The Book of the Dead (1898), Text, p. 380Google Scholar, ll. 4, 5, ch. cxlix. Cf. Translation, p. 272, which, however, differs in several minor respects from that given in note 8 infra.

4 Breasted, , Ancient Records of Egypt iii, § 171.Google Scholar In Ramesses II's time (1292–1225 B.C.) we have the bald statement ‘The Nile floweth from his cavern’, Gardiner, in Zeit. f. ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, xlii, pp. 26, 39.Google Scholar

5 Generally so accepted, but Sir Alan Gardiner does not feel quite certain that the name was not that of the mooring-place of the sacred boat of each nome or possibly even a canal (Ancient Egyptian Onomastica ii, pp. 163, 164, 166). However, this is only in passing, for he is not discussing this problem, but the very complicated one of ‘The Great River’.

6 Gauthier, , Dictionnaire des noms géographiques, v, p. 176Google Scholar; ii, p. 39; iv, pp. 188, 192.

7 Sethe, in Zeit. f. ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, xliv, p. 17.Google Scholar In Graeco-Roman times we again have mention of ‘The Upper Egyptian Nile, the Father of the Gods, in Bigah’, which is opposed to ‘The Lower Egyptian Nile, the Father of the Gods’, though the latter is given no locality (Junker, , Das Götterdekret über das Abaton, p. 61Google Scholar).

8 This division is not a late idea of Ptolemaic times, but without being so expressly stated goes back at least to the fourteenth century B.C. At that time it appears in Nu's statement just referred to. The whole passage reads: ‘There is this serpent belonging to them in the Two Caverns (qerti) of Elephantine at the gate of the Inundation-god. He cometh with water; he riseth up at that district of Kher-aha with his company of gods; Head of the inundation.’ Here we have Elephantine opposed to Kher-aḥa, which was a town a little up-river from Heliopolis and Cairo at the apex of the Delta.

9 Description de l'Égypte, État moderne, xv, pp. 442, 444. It is, of course, quite possible that the translator was influenced by a memory of Herodotus' story. None the less, the parallel is striking and, the expansion being a not unnatural one, it is hardly necessary to seek a further explanation. The French translation is not exact in a number of points.

10 Chélu, A., De l'Équateur à la Mediterranée: Le Nil, le Soudan, L'Égypte (Paris, 1891), p. 67.Google Scholar

11 Bruce, J., Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (4°, 1790) i, pp. 212–14.Google Scholar

12 Valentia, Viscount, Voyages & Travels (4°, 1809) iiGoogle Scholar, Chart of the Red Sea, Part 2, at the beginning of the book.

13 It was this belief in a Little Nile that throughout the centuries has so frightened the Egyptians that the King of Abyssinia might turn the Nile away from Egypt and ruin them. The fear about the Nile is still very much alive, and has led to great anxieties over the arrangements with the Sudan and Uganda about the Nile water.

14 Browne, W. G., Travels in Africa, Egypt & Syria (1799), p. 148.Google Scholar

15 Müller, C., Geographi Graeci Minoresi, p. 265Google Scholar, §11, where the text reads Neiloptolemaion, but see the note thereto sug gesting that this should read Neilopotamion. Further than this Schoff states that the text is Neilopotamion, (The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, p. 84Google Scholar note to § 11).

16 Reinaud, M., Géographie d'Aboulféda (Paris, 1848) ii, Pt. 1, p. 233Google Scholar = Reinaud, and Slane, MacGuckin de, Géographie d'Aboulféda, Texte arabe (Paris, 1840) p. 161Google Scholar, No. 14. The Arabic text reads ‘the Nile of Egypt’ once again, though the translation only gives it as the ‘véritable Nil’.

17 Maqrizi, , Description topographique et historique de l'Égypte(trans. Bouriant, U.), p. 160.Google Scholar

18 Reinisch, L., Der Dschäbärtidialekt d. Somalisprache, p. 2Google Scholar (Sitzungsber. K. Ak. Wiss; Phil.-hist. Klasse, cxlviii (Vienna, 1904), Abhandl. v).

18a The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1541–1543 (Bermudez' account), p. 131 (tr. Whiteway, R. S., Hakluyt, 1902).Google Scholar

19 Norden, F. L., Travels in Egypt & Nubia ii, p. 86.Google Scholar He, for instance, makes no mention of the counter-current.

20 Travels in Nubia, p. 6.

21 My winter on the Nile ii, p. 5 (The English Library, Heinemann and Balestier, Leipzig, 1891).

22 Apropos of this whirlpool Mr. Warner does not tell of this trader and his bowl, but of a pilgrim who lost his drinking-cup in the well Zemzem at Mecca and recovered it in the spring of el-Gebel in Syria.

23 No further explanation of these two names seems to have been put forth since the original qerti-Hapi and mu-Hapi ‘the caverns of Hapi (the Inundation)’ and ‘the water of Hapi’ (see Wiedmann, , Herodots Zweites Buch, p. 116Google Scholar). Indeed, it seems satisfactory.

24 It has often been published, for instance, Spiegelberg, op. cit., fig. 2, p. 18.