Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Greco-Latin writers didn't know what they were talking about, etc. My argumentum ad absurdum demolished that. Now you even do a reductio ad absurdum on yourself with "we should discard all the biological data we have on classic writers we have no confirmation traveled to Egypt."
Nobody's learning anything by seriously considering or debating the adsurd.
People could really learn about G-L Nile Valley relations in this thread. One way is to follow one methodology given 3X alread
quote:theLioness suggests:
first you look up Roman Egypt to see the dates when they were there. Then you look up the dates [the authors] lived
first you look up Roman Egypt to see the dates when the Romans were occupying Egypt. Then you [for example] look up the dates Ammaninus Marcellinius lived, who was a soldier and historian for the Romans
first you look up Roman Egypt to see the dates when the Romans were occupying Egypt. Then you look up the dates [an author] lived, who [served in what capacity, rank, office, or occupation] for the Romans
Done with debating absurd proposition. For obvious reasons, I prefer discussion to debate anyway. May or may not contribute primary text and art. They evince G-L common first hand knowledge of NV. That includes the light-dark cline from Delta to Sudd. Also the general changes in face and body build.
Herodotus described the typical Egyptian as black skinned and woolly* haired. That's what Oshun learned is a Herodotean exaggeration per Eurocentrism. Herodotus was making a point about Colchis in the southwest Caucasus. That the kingdom was founded by NV Africans.
Of course Herodotus was tripping. He followed Pindar's lead. He lied up a hoax to last 700 years among G-Ls. Add 4th cent CE Sophronius and St Jerome to the liars club. They confirm Pindar and Herodotus. In their time honey brown Colchis is The Second Aethiopia. Other Colchis lying G-Ls include Apollonius Rhodius, his scholiast, and Diodorus Siculus among others.
* BTW the Greek idea of woolly hair covers naps, kinks, curls, and frizz. By G-L notice, Colchian complexion went from dark brown to "yellow" over time. The soldiers married the local womens. Even the very first generation offspring lose NV mtDNA. Eventually even their autosomes become de-NVized. MSY remains NV in many. New locality specific subclades possibly develop. Though NV fathered, these new HGs aren't NV HGs. They'd just attest to NV patrilineal origins.
By St Jerome's and Sophronius' time the Colchidae could have had little NV genetics or osteo types. They went from dark brown to "yellow" in complexion. St Jerome and Sophronius call them the Second Aethiopia. Regardless of 19th century anthropology and 21st century population genetics factors. They did it by non-metric observation. Colchians still didn't look much like neighboring Caucasus peoples. Their overall bones and genomes probably did.
Herodotus is considered by many to be the first historian. Born in Halicarnassus around 490 BC, he visited Egypt during the Persian occupation (the twenty-seventh dynasty). The second volume of his "Histories" describes Egypt's geography and people and recounts a few semi-mythical stories about some pharaohs.
His detractors complain that he was merely a storyteller who repeated fantastical and unlikely tales with no basis in reality. Furthermore, his visit to Egypt was fairly brief, he could not speak Egyptian, and had no understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs or cursive script.
It is important, however, to remember that Herodotus was not trying to write history in the modern deconstructionist manner. He was simply describing what he saw and heard, and does not claim to have all the answers. Nevertheless, he was also criticised by other scholars of the ancient world. Plutarch wrote a set of essays called "Malice of Herodotus" and Manetho penned a (now lost) essay called "Against Herodotus".
His stories about the pharaohs are almost entirely hearsay, and should be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt, but they are entertaining. He claims that a priest read him a kings list which listed three hundred and thirty kings. Of those, eighteen were Ethiopian and one was a woman named Nitocris. Modern chronologies generally list only five Ethiopian Pharaohs, and what about Queen Regents such as Mereneith and the Female Pharaohs Sobekneferu and Hatshepsut?
To complicate matters, he does not use the Pharaoh's Egyptian names, making it difficult to be certain which king he is referring to. For example, according to Herodotus, Rhampsinitos was succeeded by Cheops. But, Rhampsinitos is thought to be the twentieth dynasty king Ramsess III and his successor could not have been Cheops (who was Khufu the fourth dynasty king who is credited with the construction of the Great Pyramid).
Posts: 42920 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
quote:AE online says: his visit to Egypt was fairly brief, he could not speak Egyptian, and had no understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs or cursive script.
.
But his eyes could see people.
Say I visited Sweden for even one minute. I don't know its languages or runes. I don't know its former kings' names and biographies. Nor do I need to.
I could still tell you they are white and "straight" haired. All I need for that is my eyes, just one of them.
Herodotus was more like a modern travelogue writer than an historian. He delivered his History of the Persian Wars to live audiences. Think the original History Channel meets Jerry Springer. The ancient Greeks even liked storytelling etc in their court trials.
Who are H's ancient detractors who disagree with him on the colour, hair, and penes of Egyptians, Aethiopians, and Colchians?
CLASSICS GRADUATE THESES & DISSERTATIONS The Audiences of Herodotus: the Influence of Performance on the Histories Ian Cody Oliver, University of Colorado at Boulder
Date of Award Spring 1-1-2017
Document Type Dissertation
Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department Classics
Abstract Scholars have long recognized that Herodotus wrote his Histories when literature was often researched, composed, and circulated by oral rather than written means. Like his contemporaries, Herodotus gave oral demonstrations of his expertise (in Greek, epideixeis) in widely diverse settings across Greece.
Most modern scholarship, however, treats Herodotus’ Histories as fundamentally unrelated to these performances, assuming instead that, in the Histories, Herodotus wrote for a single, broad, and Panhellenic readership.
My dissertation argues that significant portions of the Histories in fact follow Herodotus’ earlier oral performances closely—sometimes so closely that the original audience and historical context can be identified. In my dissertation, I analyze three Herodotean battle narratives (Plataea, Salamis, and Thermopylae) where anomalies in composition appear to reflect these narratives’ origins as oral epideixeis with specific original performance dates. In short, my proposed original performance dates match the compositional context of Greece in the mid-fifth century BCE better than the traditional ‘publication’ date two decades later.
If we recognize that Herodotus’ text reflects widely differing historical contexts, not only can we place Herodotus more satisfactorily in the oral culture of fifth-century Greece, we can also see how closely Herodotus engaged with the regional politics of his time.
My approach thus challenges entrenched assumptions about the composition of the Histories, significantly improving our current understanding of Herodotus’ personal bias, his historiographical method, and his intended audience.
Criticism of Herodotus’ work seems to have originated among Athenians who took exception to his account of the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) and, specifically, which families were due the most honor for the victory over the Persians. More serious criticism of his work has to do with the credibility of the accounts of his travels.
One example of this is his claim of fox-sized ants in Persia who spread gold dust when digging their mounds. This account has been rejected for centuries until, in 1984 CE, the French author and explorer Michel Peissel, confirmed that a fox-sized marmot in the Himalayas did indeed spread gold dust when digging and that accounts showed the animal had done so in antiquity as the villagers had a long history of gathering this dust.
Peissel also explains that the Persian word for `mountain ant’ was very close to their word for `marmot’ and so it was established that Herodotus was not making up his giant ants but, since he did not speak Persian and had to rely on translators, was the victim of a misunderstanding in translation. This same scenario could apply to other observations and claims found in Herodotus' histories, though certainly not all.
In the interests of telling a good story, Herodotus sometimes indulged in speculation and, at other times, repeated stories he had heard as though they were his own experiences.
Early Life & Travels
While little is known of the details of his life, it seems certain that he came from a wealthy, aristocratic family in Asia Minor who could afford to pay for his education. ... His ability to travel, seemingly at will, also argues for a man of some means. It is thought he served in the army as a Hoplite in that his descriptions of battle are quite precise and always told from the point of view of a foot soldier.
Herodotus' penchant for storytelling, & his obvious talent for it, have alarmed & annoyed critics since antiquity.
He moves fluidly through his work from culture to culture and is always most interested in telling a good story and less so with fact-checking the details of the tales he heard and repeats in his pages. It is this tendency of his, as noted, which has given rise to the centuries of criticism against him.
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic