1. See, for example: II.113.2, 122.3, 138.4, and 141.6.
2. For example: "In the Greek language, Bubastis is Artemis" (² d¢ BoÊbastiw katå ÑEllãda gl´ssan §st‹ ÖArtemiw), II.137.5; "Osiris, who they say is Dionysus" (ÉOs€riow, tÚn dØ DiÒnuson e‰nai l°gousi) II.42.2. See also Table 1 in the appendix to this paper for a summary of the comparisons.
3. The Egyptian deity to whom Herodotus refers when mentioning Heracles is uncertain. De Sélincourt suggests this may be Khons, the son of Amun and Mut at Thebes (Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Books, 1972, 146, note 1).
4. Herodotus II.42.4-5
5. épÚ toÊtou krioprÒsvpon toË DiÚw t galma poieËsi AÞgÊptioi, Literally: "Because of this, the Egyptians make a ram-headed statue of Zeus."
6. AmoËn går AÞgÊptioi kal°ousi tÚn D€a. Literally: "…for the Egyptians call Zeus Amun."
7. Obviously, we can speculate that the identification of the chief god of Egypt during the Late Period with the king of the Olympian gods is more than a mere coincidence and this may have been a serious contributing factor.
8. Linforth, Ivan M. Greek Gods and Foreign Gods in Herodotus. University of California Publications in Classical Philology 9.1 (1926): 9.
9. Ibid. 10
10. II.41.2
11. Legend has it that Zeus took the young Io, an Argive priestess of Hera, as his mistress. To spare Io from his wife’s suspicion and jealousy, Zeus transformed the girl into a beautifully white cow. Io wandered in her new form across Greece and into Asia and finally came to Egypt, where she bore Epaphus, the son of Zeus. Io resumed her human form and came to be worshipped in Egypt under the name Isis (Shaw, Ian. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 232).
12. The Egyptian statue of Isis to which Herodotus is referring, however, is likely a New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 BCE) or later representation, at which point Isis is syncretized with the cow goddess of fertility and sexuality, Hathor. Hathor commonly displays bovine characteristics, while Isis only adopts the cow horns and solar disk crown of Hathor (ibid. 142; c.f. fig. 1).
13. Isis is usually equated with Demeter in Herodotus (c.f. II.59.2), but enjoys an identification with many different Greek and Roman goddesses well into the Christian era (Grimal, Pierre. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Trans. A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996, 238).
14. II.50.2
15. II.4.2. The "twelve" and "eight gods" make several appearances in Herodotus second book. These generations of gods show up in both Greek and Egyptian traditions, but there is little correlation between the two traditions into which generation certain gods are placed; see also Herodotus II.7.2, 43.1, 43.4, 46.2, and 145.1 in the appendix to this paper; Griffiths, J. Gwyn. "The Orders of Gods in Greece and Egypt (According to Herodotus)." JHS 75 (1955): 21-3.
16. Linforth 18
17. Ibid. 19
18. ka‹ diÒti AÞgÊptioi oÎte Poseid°vnow oÎte DioskoÊrvn tå oÈnÒmata fas‹ eÞd°nai, oÈd° sfi yeo‹ oðtoi §n to›si êlloisi yeo›si époded°xatai (Herodotus II.43.2).
19. C.f. note 4 above.
20. Herodotus II.29.6-7
21. C.f. note 14 above.
22. The prehistoric inhabitants of Greece. "Herodotus tells us that the earliest name that Greece bore was Pelasg€a, and ascribes a Pelasgic origin to some of the Greek peoples, as the Arcadians, Athenians, Aeolians, etc. (cf. Herod.i. 146; vii. 94, 95; viii. 44). He draws a definite distinction between the Pelasgi and the Hellenes proper, as being different in both race and language (i. 56, 58)" (Peck, Harry Thurston. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. The Perseus Project. http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aid%3Dpelasgi. May 29, 2002). Herodotus claims on the Pelasgi seem not entirely invalid, as "[m]odern scholars, in general, regard the Pelasgi as a prehistoric people, probably non-Aryan in their racial affinities, and possibly to be identified with the same branch as the Etruscans. … To them are usually ascribed certain religious cults, which are in their origin non-Hellenic" (ibid.)
23. II.50.2
24. Herodotus II.43.2
25. yÊousi d¢ ²l€ƒ te ka‹ selÆnú ka‹ gª ka‹ pur‹ ka‹ Ïdati ka‹ én°moisi. toÊtoisi m¢n dØ yÊousi moÊnoisi érx°yen (I.131.2-3; emphasis mine).
26. II.28.1
27. For example: "…not all Egyptians worship the same gods–the only two to be universally worshipped are Isis and Osiris, who, they say, is Dionysus" (II.42.2); "Horus is the Apollo, Osiris the Dionysus, of the Greeks" (II.144.2).
28. Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Trans. John Raffan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, 161-4.
29. Shaw 213
30. Ibid. 214
31. Ibid. 215
32. Grimal 139
33. Adapted from Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride in Spence, Lewis. Egypt: Myths and Legends. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1915, 66-70. The number of pieces into which Set tore Osiris varies from fourteen in Plutarch’s account to 42 elsewhere, corresponding to the number of nome provinces in Ancient Egypt (Shaw 214).
34. According to the Egyptian tradition, Horus was born after the murder of Osiris, while Plutarch curiously already mentions him before this point.
35. Shaw 214
36. A few Late Period (712-332 BCE) so-called miniature "corn mummies" have been found encased in Ptah-Sokar-Osiris statues. These anthropomorphic mixtures of soil and grain were wrapped in linen bandages and given a royal sceptre, crown, and erect phallus to resemble the first mummy, Osiris. Since "corn mummies" were not placed in tombs, they seem not to have been funerary objects like the Osiris beds, but may have had some ritualistic function in the mystery cults of Osiris (Shaw 72).
37. "I am not anxious to repeat what I was told about the Egyptian religion, apart from the mere names of their deities, for I do not think that any one nation known much more about such things than any other" (Herodotus II.3.2).
38. II.48.2-49.1
39. Burkert 166, 277
40. Ibid. 297
41. The Titans first boil the pieces of Dionysus’s body and then roast them on skewers. The taboo order in which they prepare the sacrificial meal (boiling, then roasting) is opposite to the customary and permitted order of roasting and then boiling sacrificial meat (Detienne, Marcel. Dionysos Slain. Trans. Mireille Mueller and Leonard Mueller. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, 74ff.)
42. The anthropogony is not found in the Rhapsodic Theogony of the Orphic mystery cult, but occurs elsewhere in Greek tradition; c.f. Burkert 463, n. 15).
43. Shaw 72
44. Divine dismemberment and sacrifice as a cosmogenic or anthropogenic force is prevalent throughout the religious traditions of Indo-European cultures; see Lincoln, Bruce. Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 167ff.
45. Xenocrates Fr. 20. (Heinze) referring to Plato’s Phaedo 62b; Plato Cratylus 400c, Laws 701b-c; Pindar Fr. 133.1; see also Burkert 298 for a summary of the evidence.
46. Burkert 298 on Herodotus II.144, 156. We have already seen, however, that Herodotus desires not to relate the myths and religion of Egypt beyond the mere names of the gods, unless he is compelled to do so on account of his story ("tå d' ín §pimnhsy°v aÈt´n, ÍpÚ toË lÒgou §janagkazÒmenow §pimnhsyÆsomai" (II.3.2); c.f. note 37 above).
47. II.49.2-3
48. Masson, Olivier. "Quelques Bronzes Égyptiens à Inscription Gracque." Revue d’Egyptologie 29 (1977), pl. 3.
49. Ibid. 57
50. PÊyermÒw me ¹ N°lvnow ¢lÊsato t°w ’Esiw êgalma; the use of the first person so as to make the statue, itself, speak to the reader is common in the tradition of Greek votive inscriptions.
51. As the provenance is unknown, it is not impossible that the statue could have been dedicated at the Greek Temple of Aphrodite at Naukratis. We find similar mother and child votive figurines in the Temple of Aphrodite at Naukratis, but they are much cruder and of mixed Greco-Egyptian style. Such distinctly Egyptian examples of the Isis and Horus type, however, have not been found at Naurkratis, nor have any bronze votive offerings.
52. Masson 53-57, pl. 2.5.
53. Ibid. 62
54. Ibid. 61
55. Toi Panepi m’ én°stase SokÊdhw.
56. Shaw 35
57. Masson 62
58. III.28.2
59. Shaw 36
60. Shaw 72
61. Masson 61
62. For examinations of the material remains at Naukratis, see Coulson, William D. E. Ancient Naukratis. 1996; Coulson, William D. E. and Albert Leonard, Jr. Cities of the Delta, Part I: Naukratis. 1981; Hogarth, D. G., H. L. Lorimer, and C. C. Edgar. "Naukratis, 1903." JHS 25 (1905): 105-136; Möller, Astrid. Naukratis: Trade in Archaic Greece. 2000; Petrie, W. M. Flinders. Naukratis, Part I. The Egyptian Exploration Society. 1886; and Gardner, Sir Ernest. A. Naukratis, Part II. 1888.
63. Herodotus II.59.2. As is typical, Herodotus offers no explanation for equating Isis and Demeter, but the motherhood aspect of both goddesses is quite distinct, with Isis being the mother of Horus and Demeter the mother of Persephone. Both goddesses also share similar legends of wandering the land in search of their lost loved ones. Demeter wanders throughout the known world in search of her abducted daughter and Isis searches for the body (parts) of her husband and brother, Osiris. It should not be overlooked that Osiris, in the context of being identified with the Apis bull, would be considered the child of Isis (the "Mother of Apis"). Hence, the parallel between the myths of the two goddesses could be spun as a similar search by the mother for her defiled (abducted/murdered) child. Io, too, who also seems to have shared an identification with Isis, underwent a similar ordeal in searching for her son, Ephaphus (Greek for Apis, according to Herodotus, II.153), who had been abducted at the orders of Hera (c.f. note 11 above).
64. Gardner, pl. XIV.7
65. Von Bissing disagrees with the possibility that this figurine is influenced by the Egyptian Isis with Horus type, stating that "every distinctive mark of Isis and Horos [sic] is missing, and that we have simply to do with a kurotrophos [nursing-mother]" (Bissing, F. W. von. "Naukratis." BSAA 39 (1951): 65).
66. Petrie 40-1 and pl. XIX.7-9; Coulson 143, fig. 54.18 and pl. XVII.4
67. Coulson 142
68. Pinch, Geraldine. "Childbirth and Female Figurines at Deir el-Medina and el-‘Amarna." Orientalia 52 (1983): 405-414.
69. Masson, pl. 4.
70. Ibid. 64; although the possible date around the end of the 5th century for this Osiris figure would place it at or after the end of the first Persian Dynasty, this is still significantly well before the arrival of Alexander (332 BCE) and the Ptolemies, when full-blown Greco-Egyptian religious syncretizations become commonplace.
71.
Zhn°w YeodÒto SelÆnhw êgalma §poiÆsato, di ankh.72. Linforth 13
73. Three out of four known Late Period Egyptian bronze votive statues bearing Greek inscriptions refer to the deity by a Greek name; see the appendix for an excerpt on a fourth bronze votive statue; see also Masson 53-67.
74. C.f. note 50 above.
75. II.3.2
76. Masson pl. 2.1-2.4.
77.
[Me]lãnyiÒw me an°yhke t´i Zhn‹ Yhba€vi ëkalma.78. Masson 54
79. II.7.2
80. II.43.1-2. Of course, one ought not place too much faith in the veracity Herodotus’ claims. "Heracles" is elsewhere said to be a mystical name given to him directly by the god Apollo or through the agency of the Pythian priestess (Grimal 193).
81. II.43.4
82. II.145.1