The Gift of the Nile
The Gift of the Nile: it is with this famous expression that Herodotus summarizes the beauty of a country that flourishes along the banks of the great river, drawing its wealth and strength from it. Herodotus stayed several months in Egypt, suffering the charm of a millenary and refined civilization of which he wanted to record every custom with precision. He went as far as the first cataract of the Nile, visiting the cities and markets, questioning the priests and scribes and those descendants of the Egyptians who had learned Greek from the Ionians.
With amiability and scrupulous competence, Herodotus talks about everything: oracles, sacrifices, cats, crocodiles, the phoenix, winged serpents, prophecies, medicine, embalming, fish, mosquitoes, labyrinths, the Nile and its floods, the gods, the sanctuaries, the priests, the wonders. On the one hand, the Egyptian civilization is for him the most ancient, religious and wise, the civilization that founded time and named the gods; on the other, it is the strangest one - where all things appear upside down compared to the Greek world. He is struck by some of their customs, such as keeping animals at home, shaving one's head and eyebrows as a sign of mourning, writing from right to left, circumcising males and abstaining from pork and the use of woolen clothing, preferring simple linen cloths and papyrus shoes.
Certainly the practice that most interests Herodotus is embalming with the funeral rites connected to it, of which he provides a detailed description. He also observes eating habits: at the basis of their diet he identifies a particular barley-based drink (beer), which replaces wine, dried fish, papyrus and "stones" similar to olives, perhaps dates. The flora and fauna of the country also fascinate him, who observes and records the "strange" creatures that populate the banks of the Nile: the crocodiles with "pig's eyes", the hippos with the "tail and voice of a horse", with whose thick epidermis spear shafts are obtained; river otters, ibises, snakes and the legendary phoenix. And again the delicate lotus flower, the river lilies, the slender papyrus used both in food and in clothing. Herodotus considers the dry air of these lands to be particularly healthy, where the absence of sudden climate changes guarantees the inhabitants a healthy constitution and constant and luxuriant growth for vegetation.
His ethnographic interest, however, pushes him to make comparisons and trace similarities between the Egyptians and the inhabitants of Colchis. He finds somatic analogies (the common dark color and frizzy hair) and linguistic analogies and observes the existence of common practices such as circumcision and linen processing. But it is above all the works of men that arouse his admiration: he reports to us of the three great pyramids of Cheops, Chefren and Menkaure, remaining amazed by their power and the immense work, in terms of human strength and time, required for their construction.
