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Mehmandoost tower/ Damghan/ Iran

Photo: sadegh miri

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Palestinians react to news of a ceasefire deal, Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 15 January, 2025. Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

Source: https://www.article19.org/resources/israel-gaza-ceasefire-must-be-first-step-towards-accountability/

The ceasefire is fragile, but it is sure that it is a defeat for the Israeli far right today in power and a big step forward toward the end of the nightmare for the Palestinian population of Gaza. The prospect of the release of about a thousand Palestinians imprisoned by the Israeli occupation apparatus and of the Israeli hostages of Hamas is also something very positive.

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According to an ancient legend, the major Greek philosopher and religious figure Empedocles of Acragas (he died ca 430 BCE) threw himself into Etna. According to another, later legend, this time of Roman Catholic origin, the soul of Holy Roman-German emperor and king of Sicily Frederic II Hohenstaufen (stupor mundi -"the Wonder of the world"- and the great enemy of several popes, who died in 1250) was precipitated after his death into Etna by the devil...

mt etna, july 2024

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"Did Herodotus go on any choral courses?

Answer by Sheila Murnaghan

We know too little about Herodotus’ biography, and especially about his early life in Halicarnassus, to say for sure whether he himself participated in choruses. But we do know that learning the necessary skills of singing and dancing and then exhibiting them in choral performances was an essential part of growing up for elite men and women throughout the classical Greek world.  Writing about a century after Herodotus, the philosopher Plato has a character in one of his dialogues define “the uneducated man” as one “without choral training or experience” (Laws 2.654a).  The chorus was a central institution of civic and religious life, through which cities showcased their resources, honored their gods and heroes, reinforced social coherence and order, and defined their relations with other cities.  Choral performances by young people were widespread, and often had the function of putting the young women and men of a community on display as they came of age and became eligible for marriage or military service.

In Athens, the city for which we have the most evidence, we know, for example, that every year at the Great Dionysia, the major festival in honor of Dionysus, ten choruses of fifty boys (one from each of the tribes into which the population was divided) along with ten choruses of fifty men, would compete in performing dithyrambs, song-dances in which traditional myths were retold.  Those boys would have already had regular lessons in lyre-playing, singing, and dancing, and they prepared for their performances by living together for a period of several months, supported by a rich citizen, eating special food, and being trained by musicians, choreographers, and often the poet who had composed the work.  This training was designed not only to produce a successful performance but to inculcate the discipline, self-restraint, stamina, and teamwork necessary for citizenship in a well-functioning community.  While we don’t know what happened along these lines in Halicarnassus, that city clearly had its own traditions of performed poetry, since a relative of Herodotus, Panyassis, was a celebrated epic poet.       

Whatever his personal history, when Herodotus began to spend time in Athens, he associated there with men who themselves had extensive choral experience, and he was able to attend performances of the spectacular specialized form of choral poetry that had developed there: tragedy, in which choruses interacted with actors who were impersonating characters in myth and acting out their stories.  Tragedy was a high profile, influential artform, and its impact on Herodotus can be seen in the way he draws on the themes and story-telling techniques of tragedy in his portrayal of prominent individuals in the Histories.  One small bit of evidence suggests that he was a personal friend of Sophocles, the tragedian whose works seem to be most closely echoed by Herodotus and who himself alludes to several passages from the Histories in his plays. The first and second century CE writer Plutarch claims that Sophocles wrote a poem that began “Sophocles wrote a song for Herodotus/ when he was fifty-five . . .” (Plutarch, Moralia 785c).  This song would most likely have been sung at a symposium, a party for elite men at which participants also reperformed parts of choral songs they had been trained to present.

The cultural importance of the chorus is reflected in various references that pop up throughout the Histories.  One of the first stories Herodotus tells is about the celebrity poet Arion, the legendary inventor of the dithyramb and the first to train choruses to perform it, who was miraculously rescued by dolphins when he was captured by pirates and thrown overboard (1.23-24).  The political significance of choruses is indicated by a story about Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon.  When he got into a war against Argos, Cleisthenes arranged for tragedy-like choral laments that were being performed for the Argive hero Adrastus (who had a shrine in Sicyon) to be put on in honor of Dionysus instead (5.67). 

Some of the choral performances of Herodotus’ own day come into the Histories because they were thought to commemorate historical events.  So Herodotus describes how on the island of Aegina choruses of women sang abusive songs before two statues of gods that the Aeginetans had once stolen from their enemies (5.83).  And he tells how an ongoing choral performance on the island of Samos originated in a remarkable episode.  Some Corinthians had landed on the island with 300 boys from Corcyra who were on their way to being castrated as a form of political revenge on their families.  The Samians tried to protect the boys, but their Corinthian minders kept them under control and cut off their provisions.  So the Samians instituted a festival, in which boys and girls danced by with baskets full of sesame and honey snacks, which the Corcyrean boys snatched up (3.48).

Finally, one memorable anecdote, also involving Cleisthenes of Sicyon, illustrates in reverse the definitive role of appropriately disciplined singing and dancing in a young man’s social standing and prospects for success.  One of the events in a competition to decide who would marry Cleisthenes’ daughter was after-dinner singing.  The leading contender, Hippoclides, from a prominent Athenian family, got drunk, started to dance, jumped up on a table, and performed wild movements, finally exposing himself by standing on his head and waving his legs in the air.  That was the end of his chances.  As Cleisthenes put it, “you have danced away your marriage,” which led to a famous response: “Hippoclides doesn’t care” (6.129).  

Further Reading:

Luis Calero, 2018. “Training a Chorus in Ancient Greece,” Gilgameš 2: 15-27.

Helen H. Bacon, 1994. “The Chorus in Greek Life and Drama,“ Arion 3: 6-24.

Deborah T. Steiner, 2021.  Choral Constructions in Greek Culture: The Idea of the Chorus in the Poetry, Art and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press."

From the site of Herodotus Helpline.

Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennsylvania, Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek

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Gobi Desert Mongolia Sources: 1, 2, 3

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Carl A. Huffman (editor) A History of Pythagoreanism, Cambridge University Press, 2014

"This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance."

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Some remarks on Herodotus and tumblr Egyptology (1/Herodotus has nothing to do with the story about the supposed use of puppetry on the statues of the gods in the ancient Egyptian oracles)

I will write some remarks on some weird things on Herodotus that appeared in a popular Egyptological blog on this site, not with any intention of polemics or out of personal enmity, but just for the sake of truth.

1/ So, there was some weeks ago on this Egyptological blog a discussion about a video on Defunctland, which claimed that Egyptian priests made puppets out of the statues of the gods and spoke to people through them. This claim of the video is wrong and the owner of the Egyptological blog very correctly dismissed it, because if the Egyptian oracles used among other means of divination the movements of the statues of some gods as they were carried in procession (usually on a barque), this had nothing to do with puppetry.

However, out of confusion in her interaction with another user (@kaiyonohime ), the owner of the same Egyptological blog believed that the source of the wrong claim on the Egyptian priests and use of puppetry on the statues of the gods of the video on Defunctland was Herodotus. As a result, she took (again) Herodotus as target, on the basis of his supposed biases and unreliability.

But all this is totally wrong, because very simply Herodotus does not write anything about some use of puppetry on the statues of the gods as a method of divination or rather of manipulation of the people by the Egyptian priests. Herodotus has absolutely nothing to do with this story! More generally, Herodotus does not see the ancient Egyptian religion as a fraud, on the contrary he respects it, he believes that he finds in it the origins of the ancient Greek religion, and he praises the piety of the ancient Egyptians and especially the piety of the ancient Egyptian priests. All this can be verified very easily, as reliable translations of Herodotus' Histories are available on the net.

On the other hand, Herodotus describes the use of puppetry in a religious context in ancient Egypt (2.48 of Histories, on the use of ithyphallic marionettes of Osiris of a height of about one and a half feet during the feasts of this god). But again this has absolutely nothing to do with divination or with the gods speaking to the people, as these marionettes were carried by Egyptian women, who simply sang praises to Osiris (the Egyptian Dionysus for Herodotus), following a flute-player.

What is for me more important is that this story proves that some tumblr egyptologists love to hate Herodotus without having even bothered to read him! This is bad as a scholarly practice, this is also bad when one runs a blog with some popularity, because its readers receive in this way flawed and misleading information. Of course this practice is almost a pattern among tumblr egyptologists, as some years ago another person of the same circle (the individual with the "Fuck Herodotus" blog title and...merchandise!) had presented as "proof" of Herodotus' unreliability his supposed "report" that the ancient Egyptians used to cover their servants in honey as means of protection (obviously protection of the masters) from flies. But again this story has absolutely nothing to do with Herodotus! It is in fact an ancient Egyptian tale about Pharaoh Pepi II of the Old Kingdom, who for historical reasons had a rather bad reputation in posterity.

Moreover, what is really surprising is that in both cases I have brought indirectly (via other users who happen to be their friends) to the attention of these tumblr egyptologists the fact that the claims they made or reproduced about what Herodotus would have reported (on puppetry on statues as technique of manipulation by the priests and on servants coated in honey in ancient Egypt) were demonstrably wrong and that Herodotus never wrote such things...but they did not bother to make any correction! So much love from their part for the accurate references to historical sources and for the sound principles of their criticism!

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This is a good and nuanced article on Herodotus and burial in ancient Egypt, written by Joshua J. Mark. The topic is important because, as the eminent Egyptologist and Classicist Alan B. Lloyd puts it, "Herodotus' description is the most informative account of mummification in any ancient language..." (D. Asheri-A. B. Lloyd-A. Corcella "A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV", p. 299-300).

Now, perhaps Mark's claim that Herodotus "was fully aware of the religious beliefs of other cultures but chose to suggest them rather than try to explain a subject which was, and still is, considered deeply personal" is somehow anachronistic.

Moreover, I don't think that Herodotus was informed about all the subtleties of the ancient Egyptian concept of the human soul. But of course he was fully aware of the central place of Osiris in the ancient Egyptian beliefs about the destiny of the dead and he must also have had some knowledge of the role that played for the ancient Egyptians a proper mummification as physical basis for a blessed afterlife.

Very probably Herodotus refuses to say anything specific about the importance of the mummification for the afterlife (besides a hint to Osiris, whose name, however, he refuses to pronounce in this context), because he was Greek and in the Greece of his time the promise of a blessed afterlife was usually closely linked to the different "mysteries", above all those of Dionysus and Demeter, about which there was generally a ban on the dislosure of their content. This explanation on the basis of a "Greek taboo" is proposed by several scholars for Herodotus' reticence to elaborate about Osiris (whom he sees as the Egyptian Dionysus) in various places of Book II.

But I think that Mark too is right when he stresses that Herodotus refrains from any explicit reference to the spiritual aspect of mummification for the Egyptians because there is a more general reticence in him to talk about the divine (beyond what is strictly necessary for the description of cults and customs). As Herodotus explains in 2.3,2 "I have no desire to relate what I heard about matters concerning the [Egyptian] gods, other their names alone, since I believe that all people understand these things equally. But when my discussion forces me to mention these things, I shall do so." Alan B. Lloyd comments on this passage "i. e. all men have equal lack of knowledge of them" (the gods).

Herodotus on Burial in Egypt

Herodotus’ section of his Histories on burial in ancient Egypt (Book II.85-90) is an accurate description of Egyptian mummification, but he purposefully omits the spiritual significance of embalming in keeping with his commitment to refrain from discussing the religious beliefs of other cultures. The spiritual aspect of embalming, however, was central to the practice and is addressed indirectly.

Sarcophagus of Kha (Detail)

Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

This is not to say that Herodotus’ account is wrong, only that it may seem incomplete as he clearly explains how embalming was practiced during the Late Period of Ancient Egypt (525-323 BCE), but not the reason for it. Embalming was intimately associated with Egyptian religion, which Herodotus seems to avoid addressing for his own reasons. Herodotus (l. c. 484-425/413 BCE) makes his policy on religious discussions clear, however, earlier in Book II when he deals with the sacred aspect of animals in Egypt:

All the animals in Egypt are regarded as sacred. Some are domesticated, and others are not, but if I were to explain why some animals are allowed to roam free, as sacred creatures, my account would be bound to discuss issues pertaining to the gods, and I am doing my best to avoid relating such things. It is only when I have had no choice that I have touched on them already.

(II.65)

Herodotus actually addresses religious issues frequently throughout his Histories as in the case of Croesus (I.47-91), Cyrus (I.124-126), Persian religious customs (I.131), Themistocles’ speech to the Athenians (VIII.109), earlier in his discussion of the Egyptians (II.36-37) and elsewhere. When he claims to be avoiding religious issues, then, what he means is he will discuss practices and events relating to the gods but will not comment on their spiritual significance, though he sometimes slips and does this as well.

It is possible, as some have claimed, that he simply did not understand the religious significance of embalming to the Egyptians, but it is far more likely that he omits commentary for any number of reasons including the personal nature of religious belief and how a discussion of Egyptian beliefs might affect how his audience received the culture. His passage on Egyptian burial is in keeping with his tendency to emphasize positive aspects of a culture he wants his Greek audience to either admire (Egyptians) or understand better (Persians) in the same way he advances a negative narrative concerning those he does not seem to care for (Lydians).

In his section on burial in Egypt, then, he stays close to the actual practice in the interests of informing his readers on funerary rites but omits the deeper meaning as it might have offended the Greeks’ own understanding of death, burial, and the afterlife. A reflection on the structure of the chapters in his burial passage, however, suggests he knew the spiritual significance of his topic and did address it, only obliquely.

Book of the Dead (detail)

Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

Spiritual Significance of Mummification

The Egyptian understanding of the soul was far more complex than the Greek. The Egyptians understood the soul as being comprised of nine aspects:

Khat was the physical body.

Ka was one’s double-form.

Ba was a human-headed bird aspect, which could speed between the earth and the heavens.

Shuyet was the shadow self.

Akh was the immortal, transformed self.

Sahu and Sechem were aspects of the Akh.

Ab was the heart, the source of good and evil.

Ren was one’s secret name.

After death, the ka and ba needed to be able to recognize the khat in order to travel from the other realm to the tomb to receive the prayer offerings and sustenance that enabled their continued existence, and comfort, in the afterlife. The deceased needed to be remembered by the living in order for their akh to remain vibrant in the paradise of the Field of Reeds and the deceased needed to be shown proper respect upon their departure from earth for the same reason. Mummification and an elaborate sarcophagus in the image of the deceased were thought to provide for the soul in this.

Egyptian Mummy

Justin Chay (CC BY-NC-SA)

The practice of mummification also served as a cleansing ritual, purifying the body of the sins of life in preparation for the soul’s journey to the Hall of Truth to stand in judgment before Osiris, Lord of the Dead, and the Forty-Two Judges. Scholar Jan Assmann explains:

Guilt, accusation, enmity, and so forth are treated as forms of impurity and decay – as, so to say, immaterial but harmful substances – that must be eliminated so as to transpose the deceased into a condition of purity that can withstand decay and dissolution. Vindication was moral mummification. When the embalmer’s work on the corpse was done, the priests took over and extended the work of purification and preservation to the entirety of the person. The Egyptian word for ‘mummy’ also meant 'worthy’ and 'aristocrat’. In this last stage of the mummification process, the deceased experiences the Judgment of the Dead and received the aristocratic status of a follower of Osiris in the Netherworld.

(Chapman, 81)

If the body of the deceased was not treated with the proper care, the soul might return to earth to haunt the living, causing all kinds of problems, until that wrong was righted. Scholar Sarah Lynn Chapman notes how the judgment of the soul in the afterlife was believed to begin during the embalming process when the sins of the righteous were removed with the organs that would have been tainted by those sins, thereby making the soul’s spiritual heart lighter and prepared for judgment; for the unrighteous, however, the embalming process would have been a torture as they were thought to cling to their sins and so the removal was a painful experience.

Continue reading…

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The mountain is silent,

The pine tree stands,

And the flowing stream —

No sound, no word.

Yi Hwang / Toegye (1501–1570)

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Bronze jar, Western Zhou Dynasty, 10th-9th century BC

from The Art Institute of Chicago

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I sincerely appreciate your help considering all the angles on Orphism, and have enjoyed reading about the Edmonds and Chrysanthou debate. I believe I am leaning towards the Chrysanthou side of that fence. Also, I have just recently heard that Marcuse described post-1945 Marxism as “Orphic”. I think the latter adjective was supposed to be opposed to the traditional characterization of Marxism as “Promethean”. Although I’m still not entirely sure what Orphic Marxism would consist of. I guess it would be a non-scientistic Marxism that does not affirm the existing given at the expense of “dead” traditions..? Wonder if you encountered this notion before…

Thank you again for your appreciation for any little help that I am able to offer.

Edmonds is an eminent specialist on Orphism, but I think that he goes too far with his "ultra-minimalist" approach on the Orphic movement. And his review of Chrysanthou's work was rather dismissive and aggressive.

No one believes today that there was in Late Archaic and Classical Greece some kind of Orphic "Church" with an Orphic "Bible". But I don't think that we could deny that an important Orphic movement existed back then, even if this movement was loose and there are many uncertainties surrounding it.

I think that we can admit safely that already in that time there existed a literature in poetic form attributed to the mythical charismatic personality of Orpheus (although doubts about the authenticity of the works ascribed to him appear very early), that the Orphic movement around this literature was in close connection with the Bacchic rites and mysteries, that the divine figure of Dionysus was central in it, that immortality and transmigration of the soul and the promise of a blessed afterlife on the basis of a special relationship or even identification of a part of the human soul with the divine played a major role in the Orphic literature and movement, that at least some Orphics adopted a partiular way of life as means of purification. Moreover, the identification by a major fifth century author like Herodotus of Dionysus with Osiris shows, I think, that the myth of the murder and resurrection of Dionysus played already an important role in the Bacchic rites and in the theological-soteriological speculations about him (the Bacchica and Orphica of Herodotus).

Now, it seems that there existed at least two early Orphic traditions (South Italian and Athenian/Eleusinian), each one with somehow different sensibilities, but also a tendency of "lumpen" Orphism (the one decried as charlatanism in Plato's Republic and in other ancient texts). Moreover, as I said above, many other important uncertainties about early Orphism remain, especially concerning the content of early Orphic poetry, the origin of its central ideas of immortality and transmigration of the soul, the exact place of Orphism in the history of the broader Bachhic and mysteries movement, its exact relationship with Pythagorianism, and the specifics of the early Orphic theogony and cosmogony. But I don't think that this multiplicity in the early Orphic movement and the important uncertainties about it make doubtful any of the main lines concerning early Orphism that I have described in the previous paragraph.

I have read some years ago Marcuse's most important work ("One-Dimensional Man"), but he wasn't a major influence on me. It is the first time I hear about his notion of "Orphic Marxism" and I cannot say anything about it, besides that I find it paradoxical.

Btw, I have just finished the book of Charles H. Kahn on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Great work, especially concerning the relationship between Pythagorianism and Platonism and the influence of Pythagoras' figure until Kepler. Read it if you have time! It includes a few very interesting pages on Pythagoras and Orphism (although this is not one of its main themes) and some pages on the first "Perennialists" in history (Neopythagorean thinkers of Late Antiquity who believed -rather unhistorically- in the existence of an ancient univeral wisdom, which would have been the source of Pythagoras' and Plato's philosophy)! It is also interesting that there is a debate of a "maximalist' and a "minimalist" school in the case of Pythagoras too: for the "minimalists" Pythagoras was just a religious figure and founder of a religious sect and the philosohical and scientifc achievements attributed to him were creations of later members of his school, whereas for the "maximalists" Pythagoras was not only a religious innovator and teacher, but also an important philosopher and proto-scientist (although of course many of the things for which he was credited in Late Antiquity were the work of thinkers inspired by him). Kahn himself is a moderate "maximalist", although he believes that few things can be said with certainty about the historical Pythagoras. Pity, however, that Kahn does not write anything in his book about the Islamic Neopythagoreanism of the Brethren of Purity (late 9th or 10th century CE).

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Cosmetic or perfume jar (aryballos) in the form of a hedghog, Egypt, 6th-5th century BC

from The Walters Art Museum

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Wanted: A Date with Herodotus (or Herodotus and chronology)

Oliver R. Baker "Wanted: A Date with Herodotus", Athens Journal of History 2022, 8: 1-19

Abstract

Herodotus comes down to us as the father of history and his fifth-century work, the Histories, is recognized as the first in an entirely new literary genre. But mid-fifth century historiography is missing one of the most convenient of supranational tools—a reliable dating grid, or calendar—and Herodotus simply must make do as best he can without one. Although it was first suggested by a sixth-century Scythian monk, the axis of time along the now familiar BC/AD system is of comparatively recent adoption. Partly because of bitter doctrinal disputes over when Jesus of Nazareth was born—this system is never widely accepted until a seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar suggests that Anno Domini year one is just a convenient convention and by no means an agreement. When reading Herodotus today, particularly in an annotated edition in translation providing scholarly estimates of the Julian dates for the events under discussion, it is only too easy to be blissfully unaware of the author’s extreme dating handicap.

The whole paper can be found on:

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Happy 2025, with an end to the current wars and with success in all the struggles against oppression and misery in the world!

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Aphrodite

Figurine of Aphrodite, East Greek, Hellenistic Period, late 3rd century BC, terrcotta, 23.2 cm

Museum of Fine Arts Boston Inv. 97.356

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The World According to Herodotus-2

And here is another reconstruction of Herodotus' world (source: https://www.myoldmaps.com/maps-from-antiquity-6200-bc/109-herodotus/109-herodotus.pdf )

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The World According to Herodotus

Description: A map of the world as it was known to the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484–425 BC). The map shows the extent of Europe, Asia, and Africa known to the Greeks, including the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the mountain systems in northern Africa, central Anatolia, Alps, and Caucasus, the rivers Nile, Danube, Tanais (Don), and Indus, the territories of Scythia, Thrace, India, Media, Persia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya, and the cities of Athens, Sardis, Carthage, Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, and Susa.

Source: H. G. Wells, The Outline of History (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1921) 287

Source: https://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/3600/3605/3605.htm