Graeco-Egyptian Toponymy in Herodotus

The Herodotean Reception of the Egyptian Names of Thebes

Abstract

This article adds to the existing body of scholarship on Herodotus’ engagement with the Egyptian language by conducting a historical-linguistic analysis of Herodotus’ reception of the indigenous Egyptian toponyms for the city of Thebes. The first part of the article demonstrates that the Herodotean Νέη πόλις was a Greek rendering of Niw.t (one of the Egyptian endonyms for Thebes) with the addition of πόλις, the Greek word for ‘city’. The second part of the article provides a solution to the longstanding textual conundrum of Herodotus’ statement that, ‘in the old days, Thebes used to be called “Egypt”’ (2.15.3), by showing that Herodotus confused Tjamet (a common Egyptian endonym for Thebes) and Kemet (a common Egyptian endonym for Egypt), the pronunciations of which would have sounded extremely similar to a Greek native speaker.