Homeric ideas about the Nile (12th-8th centuries BC)
Where does one find bliss after death?
The Iliad and The Odyssey epics provide us with many Homeric conceptions of the afterlife in the eyes of its heroes. Many of them are bleak and hopeless in nature. In Book 11, Achilles laments that he chose a long, nameless existence after death for a short life of fame. Other allusions to the afterworld similarly view the afterlife as a sad fall away from flesh-and-blood existence.
However, another character in The Odyssey, the sea god and/or old man Proteus, feels relief that his afterlife will be carefree in the fields of Elysium, along with Menelaus. Some scholars suggest that the contrast between Proteus’ idea of his afterlife and that of Achilles shows a non-Greek origin of Elysium. Specifically, Egypt.
After death on the Nile
Many Egyptian religious concepts and practices left their mark on Bronze Age Greece from pan-Eastern Mediterranean exchange (along with the Near East). Some may have survived into classical Greece in the form of mystery cults. A few of them include the “heavenly river flowing through the Field of Reeds”, a flying ferry transporting deceased pharaohs, and a backward-facing helmsman. Homer, or at least Homeric-era bards (12th-8th centuries BC), likely knew of the famed annual flooding of the Nile. However, they disagree on the source of flooding, depending on their experience and ability to discover Egypt and the land south.
The natural form of the Egyptian afterlife was an idealized Nile River in the heavens, and its idyllic banks, the Field of Reeds or Offerings. The rich and royalty paid for their own fleet of scaled-boats to help transport them along this heavenly river. One of the most well-known examples of this is the discovery of Pharoah Tutankhamun‘s fleet of 35 miniature boats. These boats looked like vessels made for functional and recreational activities in life.
We must all sail after we die
Without adequate water-faring vessels, one could drown. Drowning (in the river or sea) had enormous meaning in Egyptian contexts. Drowning represented crossing a fine line between mortality and godliness best left to fate, and not exploited, intentionally or by accident. New Kingdom Egyptians who discovered relatives drowned in the Nile refrained from touching them. They let special Nile priests handle them. Drowned victims consumed by crocodiles were also left alone.
Where is the “heaven-fed river”?
Some scholars argue that the phrase “διιπετέος ποταμοῖο” (diipetéos potamoīo) in Book 11 of The Odyssey translates as “fallen from Zeus”, and “swollen from (heaven-fed) rain”. However, there are at least 4 arguments which counter this interpretation. The second word, “ποταμοῖο”, unambiguously means river. It’s the first word, “διιπετέος”, which undergoes scrutiny. First, using the prefix “διι-” in διιπετέος to indicate “from Zeus” (genitive) is unconventional among Ancient Greek dialectal declensions. Second, “-πετέος” likely doesn’t derive from the verb πίπτω (píptō – to fall).
Third, the earliest post-Homeric occurrences of “διιπετέος” mean “translucent”, a far cry from “fallen from Zeus”. However, heavenly bodies and objects do carry connotations of purity, and therefore translucence. Fourth, The Iliad and Odyssey together feature 3 named rivers described as “διιπετέος ποταμοῖο”, one being the Nile. But we know the Nile is starved of precipitation. This is true, at least for the last 2,000 km of the river’s course in Egypt, which itself wasn’t yet fully discovered by the Greeks.
A river flying in the sky?
Other scholars have discovered other meanings for “διιπετέος”, which include “falling through”, “flying through”, and “flying through the sky“. We will focus on this interpretation of Homeric poetry, which describes the Nile as “a river flying through the sky”. Other Greek myths, and comparisons to Sanskrit texts, show that flying things (rivers, thunderbolts, etc.) are expectable. Some have tried to argue that a “flying river” is just one of many theoretical Indo-European motifs, such as the “Twins”.
However, if Sanskrit myths ever described a river as “flying”, it would’ve been the great Indus, far out of reach of any Homeric Greek explorers. Another possibility for identifying the “sky-flying river” lies in Egypt. Myceneaen Greece (the era epicized by Homeric bards) had substantial contact with Egypt during Akhenaten’s Amarna period. The Nile River and its floods were so famous that many cultures simply referred to it as “the river” or “innudation” (in reference to the Nile’s legendary annual flooding).
Everything on earth is in heaven
A New Kingdom hymn to the sun, composed in the reign of Amenhotep IV Akhenaten, reveals an important Egyptian belief about the Nile. The river had a heavenly counterpart, a perfect mirror in the sky. The watery river on earth sprung from the underworld for Egypt. In contrast, the heavenly river graciously sustained all foreign peoples. During the day, this “celestial river” was the sun god Ra’s ecliptic path. At night, it was the Milky Way. In addition, Homeric scholiasts were aware of this Egyptian belief about the Nile’s heavenly mirror.
The Ancient Greeks at times also viewed rivers as flowing through the sky. Sometimes, they even personified them (e.g. Spercheius, another river mentioned by name). Others went further, and ascribed them to residences near Olympus. In light of this, the idea that “διιπετέος ποταμοῖο” (diipetéos potamoīo) is an allusion to the “celestial Nile”, and a stand-in for Egypt itself, remains a considerable one.
This celestial Nile would’ve naturally been flooded by the heavens. Whether the Greeks and/or Egyptians extrapolated this belief to suppose the Nile on Earth was also flooded by Heaven is unclear. The Egyptians certainly attributed the Nile’s flooding to many gods. In any case, the Homeric Greeks had clearly discovered the Nile’s spectacular, annual summer flooding long before more prominent classical figures like Herodotus.
The Nile as seen by Herodotus (5th century BC)
Herodotus’ wider intellectual background
Herodotus hailed from Halicarnassus, and wrote in an Ionian (eastern) dialect of Greek. Like other personas of Ionian intellectualism, he took interest in gathering eclectic ensembles of tales, events, phenomena for research. More importantly, the Ionian and pre-Socratic schools reduced direct supernatural/divine causation of the wonders of the natural world (thaumas). Amidst all these fantasies about the outer world, Herodotus was one of many figures who supplied firsthand evidence for locals about areas previously shrouded in myths.
Herodotus “invents peer-reviewed science” on the Nile’s origins
In the time since Homer, at least dozens of prominent Greek thinkers attempted to tackle the origin of the Nile floods, and the Nile itself. Some hypothesized the “etesian winds” (annual winds blowing south in the Mediterranean summer) blocked the Nile from entering the sea, therefore causing it to swell (Thales). Herodotus didn’t take this seriously; he and others observed that the Nile flooded with or without these winds. In addition, he noted that other, weaker rivers in Syria and Africa also flowing contrary to major winds failed to demonstrate similar flooding.
Herodotus regarded a second hypothesis as even more preposterous: a global ocean current periodically floods the Nile (Hecataeus). He also denied a third hypothesis: melting snow causes the Nile’s floods (Anaxagoras). He remarked that this was superficially the most plausible hypothesis, if not for (what he thought were) facts of Egyptian geography and climate. The south is much hotter than the north, so there can’t be snow. (Anaxagoras turned out to be the “most correct”; snow and rain initiate the Nile’s headwaters deep in the central African highlands).
Where did Herodotus think the Nile came from?
Of course, Herodotus then offered his own 2 cents of discovery on the origin of the Nile’s floods. It might be surprising that his theory doesn’t address the flooding of the Nile at all. In short, the sun, which he strangely calls a god, equally draws water to itself from all rivers. However, because the Nile doesn’t experience rainfall as much as other rivers, the Nile naturally dries up more during the fall.
His theory is as questionable as others, not just with modern information, but from his own critiques of others. Namely, why does his theory not hold water for all other empirically observable examples? Diodorus Siculus poses this very complaint later in the 1st century BC.
Herodotus and the Egyptian locals
To be sure, Herodotus consulted many Egyptian locals and learned priests on what they thought was the cause of the annual Nile flood in summer, as we might deem to be necessary and proper today. However, he refused to settle on the many native explanations which simply pointed to one or many of the Egyptian gods as an end all be all. In fact, he was dismayed at what he perceived to be the ignorance and indifference shown by “Egyptians, Africans, and Greeks”. He also bemoans “being put on” by a scribe at the Temple of Athena in Sais, Egypt who claimed to have discovered the Nile’s source.
Ptolemy’s ideas on the Nile (1st-2nd century AD)
At the center of the world
Claudius Ptolemy (1st-2nd century AD) is the next major figure in our review. His birthplace and home was Alexandria, Egypt. By now, Egypt had been under Hellenistic influence for nearly 3 centuries. The Greek-built, cosmopolitan capital city of Alexandria had risen to a position of foremost prominence. It dominated in culture, commerce, and knowledge throughout the known world. It retained this position when Rome conquered it at the onset of the Empire, though not without concessions.
Ptolemy’s synthesis of knowledge and theories on the Nile, and on geography in general, remained the staple of European geographic knowledge until the Age of Exploration (and into the 16th century). Modern scholars know him for, among many things, putting the idea of the Mountains of the Moon into focus as the contemporary hypothetical origin of the Nile. Despite the name, it isn’t clear whether Ptolemy truly regarded the Nile’s origin as extraterrestrial.
Where on Earth were the “Mountains of the Moon”?
The name Mountains of the Moon became an ersatz for the true mountain range, wherever it lay, which wouldn’t be fully discovered from the European perspective until the 19th century. The Nile’s origins have long been solved, but where Ptolemy himself may have located the Mountains of the Moon is still a mystery.
Later scholars copied facsimiles of his maps until many of the transliterated foreign names of geographic features became muddled. In the 13th to 14th centuries, Byzantine scholar Maximus Planoudis discovered Geography again, though without illustration (Geography was never illustrated by Ptolemy, whose innovative cartography was applied elsewhere). Many of the “Ptolemaic” maps we have today are likely from Planoudis, and their storage in the Vatican.
Miscommunication at least 3 times
A little before Ptolemy, a work titled Periplus Maris Erythraei by an unknown author (possibly Arrianus, a Greek-speaking native Egyptian). It helps us study the growing Greco-Roman geographic knowledge of Eastern Africa, all the way to India. It also revealed important information about the conditions of eastern Africa: there was substantial tribal movement and technological transfer from the hinterland to the eastern coast, around the same time Diogenes was blown off course along the eastern African coast. In addition, locales along the eastern coast of Africa used to have many more lakes and rivers.
Conclusion
This means that Ptolemy’s identification of the Mountains of the Moon in both the eastern African coast and the hinterland can be partially justified. The eastern African locals who had recently migrated from the hinterland to the coast, another area with large lakes, “failed to communicate” to Diogenes which lake-system and mountains they were speaking of as the source of the Nile, their original hinterland home or the eastern coast. Ptolemy, as the 3rd party receiver of such information (counting from Diogenes), may have felt the need to include both.
But we also shouldn’t assume that Ptolemy was necessarily concerned about exact locations all the time. If anything, despite modern attempts to discover the Mountains of the Moon at Mt. Kilemenjaro or Ruwenzori, they were metaphysical in Ptolemy’s mind from the start.
Works Cited
