Jan–26 “An Account of Egypt” from Herodotus’s Histories translated by G.C. Macauley (4XX BC)

 Herodotus was just trying to cover up the aliens.

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Jan–26 “An Account of Egypt” from Herodotus’s Histories translated by G.C. Macauley (4XX BC)

Summary: Herodotus explains how the pyramids were built, along with some other Egyptian history.

Commentary:    There's apparently a fair amount of debate about the original date of  Histories. It's cool how much scholarship is devoted to conspiracy theories, filling in weird gaps, etc. 

    Herodotus needs to work on his paragraph breaks. Some of them are over a page long (this might be an edition issue, I looked at some other editions/translations and they're more reasonable.) 

    I think we're overdue for more modern ancient Egyptian based pop culture. Greece and Rome have gotten plenty for years, and Marvel has done a passing job with Norse mythology. Ancient Egypt has... Stargate? The Mummy? Not really getting too far on either of those. I guess there's Moonknight. I wonder if all the backlash from that Gods of Egypt movie stopped things for a while.

    There's some interesting point of view stuff going on here. To us, Herodotus (and ancient Greece in general) are "exotic." To him, the Egyptians are as well. It's like reading English subtitles for a Spanish dub of a Korean movie or something. 

    I like all the random things I learn while reading these that aren't directly related to the readings. Today I learned that a fathom is six feet. I thought it was like a quarter mile.

    Overall, not a lot of deep thoughts on this one. It's kind of scattered, like it's just some guys random stories about cool stuff he saw/heard while on a trip.