Ancient text
The History of Herodotus, Volume 1
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Called the Father of History, and also the Father of Lies by critics. Herodotus asked Egyptian priests, Persian nobles and Scythian traders what they remembered, and wrote it all down. Books I to V.
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Why we can share it: Project Gutenberg record: 'Copyright Status: Public domain in the USA.' Translator G. C. Macaulay (1852-1915) died 1915; PG preparer's note says text was prepared from an 1890 Macmillan edition.
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EventSolon and the priests of SaisAn aged Egyptian priest told the Athenian lawmaker Solon that Greeks are children with no old men among them. He said the world has been wrecked by fire and flood many times, and Egypt kept the records. Plato is the only source for this meeting. What did the priest say really happened to Phaethon?PersonManethoEvery Egyptology textbook divides the pharaohs into thirty dynasties, and that scheme comes from a book nobody has read in full for well over a thousand years. Manetho, an Egyptian priest writing in Greek around 280 BCE, began with ages of gods and demigods. How do scholars rebuild a lost book from scraps?
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