Herodotus, the gods of ancient Egypt.

Hello, this is Bertie, and I'm here with some more ancient history, based on the writings of Herodotus.

In the second book of his histories, he describes ancient Egypt, and in this episode I'm going to be talking about the Egyptian gods.

Herodotus gathered much of his information about

Egypt by talking to the scribes and priests in the temples who informed him about the country's

traditions and beliefs. He himself reckoned that no nation was more right about religion

than any other and that the Greeks had probably

imported most of their beliefs from Egypt. And he often gives the Egyptian gods Greek names.

For instance, he tells us that he spoke to the priests of Hephaestus in the Egyptian city of Memphis.

Hephaestus was the Greek name for the blacksmith god, who worked with metal, making divine swords,

armour, chains, and presumably horseshoes.

Actually, the Egyptian name for the chief god at Memphis was Patar.

Patar was also a worker god, the patron of craftsmen and architects and house builders.

Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt, was a hive of activity and trades, including building and

blacksmithing, and Herodotus naturally thought that their worker god, Patar, was the same as the Greek

worker god Hephaestus,

and he just uses that name to describe him.

And as an aside, the Greek name for Egypt, Iypta, actually contains the name Patar.

Igpta eventually became our word Egypt, and so to this day the country is the land of

Patar, though not a lot of people know that. Sometimes Herodotus is quite specific about linking

an Egyptian god to a Greek one. He says that the two gods that were considered very holy all over Egypt were Isis and

Osiris. And he adds, Osiris is called Dionysus in the Greek language. Dionysus, known as Bacchus in

...