#bill manley

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Egyptologist Bill Manley of Glasgow on the “great historian Herodotos” and ancient Egypt- I

Bill Manley is a distinguished British Egyptologist, teaching at the University of Glasgow among many other important activities in the field of Egyptology.

 The truth is that, as it seems, Manley was unfortunate enough to have somehow as student the owner of the notorious tumblr blog with the title “F...k Herodotus”.

 I remind that the blog with this beautiful title has the full support of the other eminent scholars of the gang of tumblr egyptologists.

Bill Manley has also written the Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt (1996), a work which contains several references to Herodotus (or Herodotos, as Manley spells the name of the great Greek, I would say more accurately than the spelling “Herodotus” which has prevailed in English). 

As we will see, his evaluation of Herodotus is very different -to put it mildly- from those of the tumblr egyptologists and especially from that of his former student, who is the most fanatical among the anti-Herodotus “crusaders” on this site. 

In the excerpts from his Atlas which follow I will put in bold letters Manley’s references to Herodotus and some other passages particularly important for my point. I will also put in italics exerpts from Herodotus’ “Histories” quoted by Manley in his book.

After some preliminary remarks, Manley starts the Part I of his book (”The Origins of Egypt’) with the following paragraphs (pp 12-13):

“Until the advent of Egyptology, the principal sources for the study of Ancient Egypt were classical authors. The most influential has been the Greek Herodotos, whose Histories examined the relationship between Europe and the vast kingdoms of Asia and Africa. Of the former, the greatest in his time was Persia; of the latter, the greatest for many centuries had been Egypt. In the mid-5th century BC, Herodotos visited Egypt to see for himself a land and people whose customs and beliefs, he maintained, were the exact opposite of those found anywhere else. Even the wildlife -including sacred cats and bulls, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, the sacred ibis and the phoenix- was a unique mix of the exotic and fantastical. Another influential source was the Egyptian priest Manetho, who wrote a history of his country in Greek in the 3rd century BC in order to establish that his nation was the oldest on earth. It was Manetho who first divided the kings of Egypt into thirty dynasties, although it was not always easy to reconcile his arrangement with the evidence of earlier sources. His work has not survived, but excerpts -and possibly quotes- were preserved by later authors.

Influenced by these and other authors, Europe has long seen Egypt as a source of wisdom and power, and Egyptian images have been adopted by Europeans since the cult of Isis flourished in Imperial Rome; a continuous thread of influence can be traced from the obelisks of the emperor Hadrian to the pharaonic bee-motif used by the Bonaparte family...”

Manley concludes this paragraph with a reference to Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign -that he sees as the eventual result of this thread of influence of Egypt on the  European mind- and its importance for the birth of Egyptology. And he continues in a new paragraph:

“Nowadays texts are supplemented by insights gained from archaeological and scientific analysis. A picture has emerged of a country whose political and economic integrity was a constant source of strength, but whose geographic and cultural diversity has been obscured by an incomplete material record. In the past, for example, excavation has tended to concentrate on the well-preserved temples and tombs of the Nile valley, in  preference to settlement sites which lie awkwardly buried beneath modern towns. The wet, often waterlogged, Nile delta is a difficult archaeological challenge and has less often been studied, although excavations there confirm Herodotos’ observation that it was a region distinct from the valley in many ways. Another distortion in the record arises from the ancient understanding of the earth as “twin lands”- a balance of opposites expressed in many forms: the land of the rising and setting suns; the fertile fields and sterile desert: the lands of the living and the dead and so on. To express this awareness, two styles of architecture, art and writing were devised: one lively, creative and temporary; the other formal, traditional and enduring. For example, the largest of royal palaces were built mainly of mud-brick -eventually to crumble- whereas even the smallest religious shrine were built of stone. As a result our received images of Egypt are funerary and religious and -since the ability to write was an indication of power- a typical Egyptian as transmitted into modrn perception is likely to have been an elite male corpse!”

Manley’s next reference to Herodotus is in page 18 of his Atlas. This time he starts the section of the Part I devoted to the Egyptian environment with the following famous passage from Herodotus’ “Histories” (2.35,2) :

“Not only is the Egyptian climate peculiar to that country, and the Nile different in the way it behaves from rivers elsewhere, but the manners and customs of the Egyptian themselves seem to be the opposite of the typical practices of mankind.”

Obviously Manley’s text on the Egytptian environment starts with the Nile, and the author has the following to say about Herodotus, after a decription of the annual flood of the great river :

“When the water receded, it left a silty soil, which was the literal basis for Herodotos’ celebrated remark that Egypt is given as a gift of the river.”

In page 36, which belongs to the Part II of Manley’s Atlas, a Part with as subject the Middle Kingdom, we find a reference to Herodotus’ opinion that the “Labyrinth” was the greatest wonder of Egypt.

The next reference to Herodotus is in page 110 of Manley’s Atlas, in the beginning of the Part V of his work (”The Late Period”). 

Manley begins this Part again with a quote from Herodotus (3.1,4-5), this time on the Persian version of the proximate cause of the invasion and conquest of Egypt by the Persian king Cambyses in 525 BC:

“ When Cambyses chanced to call (Nitetis) by her father’s name, she replied: “My lord, do you not realize that Amasis has cheated you? He dressed me in attractive clothes and sent me to you as if I was his own daughter- but I most certainly am not! I am the daughter of Apries, the master he killed when he led the Egyptians in rebellion against him.” According to the Persian account, these words -and the issue of the quarrel they exposed- brought upon Egypt the wrath of Cambyses, son of Cyrus.”

But very important is also the text of Manley from the same page, on the change in the sources of our knowledge of Egypt which comes with the advent of Psamtek (Psammitichus) I and the beginning of the Late Period of the ancient Egyptian history. 

This is, moreover, a text very eloquent on how Manley sees Herodotus :

[The history of Egypt in the years 664-323 BC]...is also a history which has a different “flavour’ to that of earlier eras because new types of source material are available. The great historian, Herodotos, noted that the influx of Greeks during and after the reign of Psamtek I (664-610 BC) was a watershed in the European understanding of pharaonic Egypt. The Egyptians themselves saw the world in terms of their divine pharaoh, his endeavours on behalf of the gods, and in turn their support of him; Greek merchants and  mercenaries settled in Egypt, however, traded stories with their kinfolk about kings and queens, treachery, murder, and warfare. Therefore, we can elaborate Late Period history with the kind of personality-based gossip so appealing to European minds, but which is simply not available for earlier eras. Moreover, events in the Late Period can be closely compared with the annals of the kings of Assyria and Babylon, the biographical stories of classical Greek authors, and the narratives of the Old Testament, and so can be appreciated from a wider perspective than just that of the Egyptian royal record. As a further benefit, for much of this period dates can be determined to an accuracy of within a year or two on the basis of foreign synchronisms.” 

In the same Part of his book, Manley begins the section having as subject the Saite monarchy (p. 120) again with a quote from Herodotus’ “Histories” (2.177,1), this time on Pharaoh Amasis II (570-526 BCE), the most important ruler of the Saite dynasty after its founder Psamtek I, although he was in fact just a usurper:

“ It is said that the reign of Amasis was a time of exceptional material prosperity for Egypt: the river gave its wealth to the land, and the land to the people.” 

And Manley in his main text stresses again how important was the advent of Psamtek I for the relations between Egypt and Europe, invoking the authority of Herodotus:

“Greek tradition maintained that Ionian and Carian mercenaries had helped Psamtek to victory, and, according to Herodotos, his reign was a watershed in relations between Egypt and Europe.”

The next reference to Herodotus in Manley’s Atlas is in the page 124, the first of the section of his book on the Nubian legacy of the 25th Dynasty and therefore on the very important topic of the relation between Egypt and Nubia. Manley chooses once more to start this section of his book with a quote from Herodotus” “Histories” (2.29):

“South of Elephantine the country is inhabited by Ethiopians...After fourty days’ journey on land, there is another boat of twelve days to reach a great city named Meroe, said to be the capital city of the Ethiopians. The people there worship only Zeus and Dionysus amongst the gods, but hold them in the highest honour. There is an oracle of Zeus there, and they go to war following its decrees, learning from it both the time and the purpose of their various expeditions.”

I will continue in a Part II of this text with some observations and thoughts on what I have quoted from Bill Manley’s “Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt”.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

"Nowadays texts are supplemented by insights gained from archaeological and scientific analysis. A picture has emerged of a country whose political and economic integrity was a constant source of strength, but whose geographic and cultural diversity has been obscured by an incomplete material record. In the past, for example, excavation has tended to concentrate on the well-preserved temples and tombs of the Nile valley, in preference to settlement sites which lie awkwardly buried beneath modern towns. The wet, often waterlogged, Nile delta is a difficult archaeological challenge and has less often been studied, although excavations there confirm Herodotos’ observation that it was a region distinct from the valley in many ways. Another distortion in the record arises from the ancient understanding of the earth as “twin lands”- a balance of opposites expressed in many forms: the land of the rising and setting suns; the fertile fields and sterile desert: the lands of the living and the dead and so on. To express this awareness, two styles of architecture, art and writing were devised: one lively, creative and temporary; the other formal, traditional and enduring. For example, the largest of royal palaces were built mainly of mud-brick -eventually to crumble- whereas even the smallest religious shrine were built of stone. As a result our received images of Egypt are funerary and religious and -since the ability to write was an indication of power- a typical Egyptian as transmitted into modern perception is likely to have been an elite male corpse!”

Bill Manley The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt, 1996, pp. 12-13

Dr. Bill Manley is British Egyptologist, author of several books on ancient Egypt.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

The Egyptologist Bill Manley of Glasgow on the “great historian Herodotos” and Ancient Egypt-II

And now my observations and thoughts on the excerpts from Bill Manley’s Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt that I have quoted in the first part of my text and my comparison of what Manley says on Herodotus with what the tumblr egyptologists say on the same topic.

1/ First of all and most importantly, Herodotus is for Manley “the great historian” (op. cit, p. 110 - see also about another text of Manley, in which he uses exactly the same characterization of Herodotus as “great historian”, my post  https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/663027288517083136/the-egyptologist-bill-manley-on-cecil-torr ). 

Moreover, Manley explicitly approves some of Herodotus’ very important insights on Ancient Egypt, as it is the case with the famous quote from “Histories” about Egypt as “gift of the Nile”, or with Herodotus’ observations on the particularity of the Delta and with his assessment of the reign of Psammetichus I as a watershed for the knowledge of Egypt by the Greeks (and later by the other European peoples -see on all these points my Part I).

It is thus obvious that with Manley we are very far away from the totally negative evaluation and rejection of Herodotus by the tumblr egyptologists- or rather their anti-Herodotus rage (see for these attitudes of theirs my text https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/653271020690653184/on-herodotus-and-egypt-i-the-detractors ).

It is also clear once again that -contrary to what they pretend- the tumblr egyptologists do not express any consensus among the community of Egyptology with their anti-Herodotus obsessions, “crusades”, antics and rants.

  2/ Again contrary to what the tumblr egyptologist claim with unbelievable fanaticism, for Manley Herodotus is not at all the main source of distortions for Ancient Egypt nor an author having an “othering” or “racist” attitude toward the Egyptians (see on these claims and their refutation my text https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/653271093301411840/on-herodotus-and-egypt-iii-an-othering-racist).

  On the contrary, for Manley Herodotus is the initiator of a classical and European tradition which sees Egypt as “a source of power and wisdom” (op. cit., p. 12).

Moreover, what is very important is that for Manley the distortion exists in fact in the extant Egyptian material itself, because of the twin character of the Egyptian cuture. As Manley explains:

 ‘. Another distortion in the record arises from the ancient [Egyptian] understanding of the earth as “twin lands”- a balance of opposites expressed in many forms... two styles of architecture, art and writing were devised: one lively, creative and temporary; the other formal, traditional and enduring.... As a result our received images of Egypt are funerary and religious and -since the ability to write was an indication of power- a typical Egyptian as transmitted into modern perception is likely to have been an elite male corpse! “ (op. cit., p. 12-13)

This point of view is corroborated by what another eminent Egyptologist -Barry Kemp- says, more generally about ancient Egypt, but especially for the Late Period that Herodotus has described (Barry Kemp “Ancient Egypt-Anatomy of a Civilization”, Routledge 2007, second edition,  p. 371-the bold letters are mine):

“Perhaps more than ever, our picture of Egypt is as seen through the governing class, who enhanced their position by keeping to a style that everyone else had abandonned. In Chapter 3…I made the claim that, “for about a third of its history, Pharaonic Egypt was a country of two cultures”. Perhaps this is an over-bold assessment in terms of scale. But if one adds to the picture the Late Period, it looks more to an understatement both in scale and duration.”

Given these biases of the extant Egyptian material and records, the rejection of Herodotus by the tumblr egyptologists and their friends with the argument that one should not prefer what Herodotus says to what “the Egyptian themselves” say is totally unfounded. 

Not of course that what Herodotus says about Egypt should be accepted uncritically. 

But what he narrates/describes may supplement the extant Egyptian records and anyway it should not be dissmissed out of hand as “fabrication” and “lie”, as some do without any justification. 

This is clear for instance in the case of the Egyptian barge baris, of which there was no mention in the Egyptian extant record, until its description by Herodotus has been confirmed by recent archaeological findings (see https://archaeologicalnews.tumblr.com/post/183562235817/nile-shipwreck-discovery-proves-herodotus-right ).

The same is true with the much more important for the Egyptian culture process of mumification, for which Herodotus is a fundamental source, given the fact that there is no extant Egyptian source describing this process (see on this topic an interview of the Egyptologist Salima Ikram on  https://href.li/?https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mummy/ikram.html ).

3/ Again on the argument of the tumblr egyptologists and of some of their friends that we should listen exclusively to what “the Egyptian themselves say” and not to what a foreigner like Herodotus writes about Egypt, a comparison of approaches and mentalities would be enlightening.

I say this because Manley not only approves Herodotus’ assessment that with the beginning of the Saite Period there is a better knowledge of Egypt because of the opening of the country to foreigners, but, moreover, he stresses the importance of the fact that the Egyptian sources from this period can be supplemented and assessed with recourse to what non-Egyptian sources (Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek) narrate about Egypt. As he puts it (op. cit., p. 110  -the bold letters are mine):

‘Moreover, events in the Late Period can be closely compared with the annals of the kings of Assyria and Babylon, the biographical stories of classical Greek authors, and the narratives of the Old Testament, and so can be appreciated from a wider perspective than just that of the Egyptian royal record. As a further benefit, for much of this period dates can be determined to an accuracy of within a year or two on the basis of foreign synchronisms.”

So, for the tumblr egyptologists what foreigners like Herodotus say about Egypt should be rejected ipso facto and we should listen exclusively to what “the Egyptians themselves” say to us (obviously as interpreted by the tumblr egyptologists...), whereas for Manley what non-Egyptian sources say about Egypt may be very useful as a corrective to the partiality and biases of the Egyptian record and may enrich our knowledge of ancient Egypt. 

I leave to my readers the conclusions from this comparison...

4/ For some reasons beyond my grasp the tumblr egyptologists have claimed that Late Period Egypt (664- 323 BCE) that Herodotus has described would not be culturally Egyptian (see on these outrageous claims     https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/655318656323125248/sacred-animals-in-ancient-egypt).

Manley stresses of course the specificity of Late Period Egypt, characterized for him by an intense effort of response to foreign threats and challenges and by an opening of the country to foreigners (op. cit, pp. 120-123)  . 

But it is clear that for Manley (as it is the case with all serious Egyptologists) Late Period Egypt, with all its specificities, IS STILL culturally Egyptian.

5/ According to the tumblr egyptologist who happened to be Manley’s student and has as title of her blog the beautiful slogan “Fuck Herodotus”, Manley would have said in his lectures at Glasgow that the Egyptian priest-historian of the 3th century BCE Manetho had to “link all the egyptian gods to the greek ones because he was writing for a greek audience, who were too stupid and arrogant to grasp anything outside of their own culture” (see for the reference my older post https://aboutanancientenquiry.tumblr.com/post/653271020690653184/on-herodotus-and-egypt-i-the-detractors ).

I believe that these outrageous claims do not correspond to the reality and are, at best, the result of a total misunderstanding from the part of the tumblr egyptologist from Glasgow.

And this, first of all because Manley is without any doubt a serious and distinguished scholar. 

And no serious scholar would have characterized in front of students -not even as a joke- as “too stupid and arrogant to grasp anything outside of their own culture” a whole ancient nation and especially a nation with a foundational role for the Western civilization like the ancient Greeks. The use of such and worse characterizations is the “prerogative” only of the tumblr egyptologists and of other tumblr “scholars”. 

Moreover, such an explanation of Manetho’s motivations and purposes would be a very unscholarly understanding of how religious syncretism/assimilation worked in Antiquity and obviously Manley is of a level far above than that.

Secondly,  Manley writes in his Atlas (p. 12) that Manetho

 “...wrote a history of his country in Greek in the 3rd century BC in order to establish that his nation was the oldest on earth”. 

So, it is clear that for Manley Manetho has his own agenda in his effort to link the Greek gods to the Egyptian ones, which has nothing to do with some adaptation of the information about the Egyptian religion to the level of “stupidity” (!) of the Greeks.

Moreover, Manley proposes a complex and balanced assessment of the interaction between Egyptians and Greeks in the period of the Greek rule over Egypt (op. cit., pp. 128-129) and of its negative and positive aspects.

This assessment has again nothing to do with the unbelievable things that his former student reports, either totally misunderstanding or distorting what she has heard from Manley on the relation between Egyptians and Greeks (and of course the possibility of a total fabrication of this story by her should not be excluded, given the fanaticism and unscholarly mentality of this group of people). 

I leave again the conclusions from this last part of my text to my readers...

[aboutanancientenquiry]

The Egyptologist Bill Manley on Cecil Torr, Flinders Petrie, and “the great historian” Herodotus

The excerpt which follows is from Bill Manley’s article “Cecil Torr, Flinders Petrie and the Chronology Question”, available on https://repositorio.uam.es/bitstream/handle/10486/13604/63755_17.pdf?sequence=1 .

Manley is a distinguished British Egyptologist of the University of Glasgow. For more information on the very interesting subject of the quarrel between Torr and Petrie I refer to Manley’s article in the link that I give above. 

I remind here only that Petrie was the most eminent British Egyptologist of his time, but he is at the same time infamous for his racialist and White supremacist views on ancient Egypt and not only.

And now the excerpt from Manley’s article (the bold letters are mine):

“Torr is far from alone in rejecting the assumption that a chronology corresponding to reality is a prerequisite for writing about the past. Heavyweight support for his position comes from Herodotus, for example in the following remark about Greek settlement in Egypt in the 26 Dynasty:

 Because of our regular contact with these settlers in Egypt, the first foreigners to settle there, we Greeks have an accurate knowledge of Egyptian history beginning with king Psammetichus and ever since...

According to Herodotus, we can understand Egypt in historical terms from the 26  Dynasty onwards because from that time there are European sources to rely on. Before then we must rely on non-European sources, and so history, as we understand it, becomes more problematic. Of course, this was no impediment to Herodotus' writing, and he is frequently criticised by modem scholars precisely because his account of Egyptian history before the time of Psammetichus (Psamtek 1, 664-610 B.C) does not seem to embody a chronology that corresponds to reality,,. If we are to be fair to the great historian, we must recognise that for hirn absolute chronology per se was not a necessary prerequisite to writing about the past. Many cultures indeed have been, or still are, able to understand the past without recourse to an absolute chronology. In our own culture, palaeontologists accept that new data de sui generis may distort the chronology within which they work, whilst astronomers do not even agree about the concept of time let alone chronology.”

It is clear from the excerpt above that Manley sees Herodotus as “heavyweight” and “great historian”. 

My only critical remark is that Manley over-emphasizes the distinction between European and non-European in Herodotus’work in a way which seems anachronistic. Herodotus may use occasionally the Europe/Asia distinction, but Europe does not represent for him some kind of cultural unity and of shared identity, understood in contrast with and opposition to Asia. These are later categories of thought. On the contrary, Herodotus thinks in terms of the distinction between Greeks and “barbarians” (I remind here that the term barbarian is not used by Herodotus in a pejorative way).

What Herodotus says in the excerpt quoted by Manley is simply that the presence of Ionian Greeks and Carians in Egypt during the reign of Psammetichus I gave to the Greeks a source of accurate knowledge for the Egyptian history of the Saite Period. And this because Herodotus, despite his deep respect for the antiquity of Egypt and the Egyptian knowledge of the past, was as it seems aware of the problematic character of what his Egyptian sources (mostly priests as intermediated by interpreters) had told him concerning the history of Egypt before the Saite Period. I add here the clarification that the Ionians were one of the major Greek “tribes” and most of them were established in Asia Minor, whereas the Carians were a non-Greek people of SW Asia Minor (moreover, a people with close contacts with Halicarnassus, Herodotus’ birthplace). 

I think, moreover, that the question of the organization of time in Herodotus’ “Histories” is a very important one and I will make soon a post specifically devoted to it.

But I repeat that the most important for me here is that it is beyond doubt that an eminent contemporary Egyptologist sees Herodotus as “great historian” and “heavyweight”, a thing which is another proof that the “f..k.Herodotus” campaign of some tumblr egyptologists and self-proclaimed authorities does not represent of course any scholarly consensus.

More on Manley and Herodotus in some days...

[theneesh-blog]

Visit Original Link

Nightmares For A Week - Under The Wait

>http://myspace.com/nightmaresforaweek