3513660160

124

1 E S EDWARDS

their dresses, exposing thcir hrcasts, while the men girded up their loins. It is easy to imagine copyists, unable to understand this strange Egyptian custom, falling into the trap of correcting what they thought to be an error in the original text and using the same prefix twice. The fact that ktt- is the morę common may simply be due to its coming first, where it was the true reading.

Insofar as Herodotus was alluding to men, he may have bcen describing a custom which was no morę common in his time (c. 450 B.C.) than it was in the time of the New Kingdom³⁵, but it would be just the kind of uncxpected featurc which would strike the eye of a stranger. It was never specifically a sign of mourning, nor was it intcnded to expose a part of the body which would normally be covered by clothing. It may, however, have acquired a limited association with certain occupations. In that case it would be a kind of uniform ^3t>, a distinctive dress worn not only when members of a professional body were performing dutics which rcquired freedom of movement, but also at other times. It would cxplain why, in the tomb scenes, only some of the małe mourners are shown with their skirts folded double, while others leave their skirts unfolded.

Looking again at the passage in Herodotus, it is noticeable that he does not say that the men put mud on their faces and heads³" or bared their breasts like the women, bul merely that they also lamented (lit. beat their breasts) with garments girt (cicpo)0cv oi uvópeę, iu7rioviai 87ieęcopevoi Kai oótoi). The men and the women lamented and girded their clothes, but there is nothing in the text to require that the method of girding should be identical, though it would be a natural assumption if the evidence of the Egyptian representations were not available to disprove it. Diodorus, who visited Egypt some four centuries after Herodotus, does not differentiate between the customs of the two scxes in his description of a royal funeral³⁸, but he is speaking of times gonc by, therefore from hearsay and not as an eyewitness. He may well have misunderstood the passage in Herodotus, whom he accuses of being guilty of «casual inventions»^3q, but whom we know to be morę trustworthy than Diodorus. In this case Herodotus could certainly have been rather morę explicit, bul he has not, so its appears, been w^ell served by his copyists. What he w^rrote w^fas too laconic for them to understand.

³⁵    Vandicr, Manuel, V. p. 445, n. 6, points out that wc arc poorly informed on everyday life in Egypt in the time of Herodotus.

³⁶    Bonnct, o.c., p. 58-9, regards it as a uniform occasionally worn by army officers and some lowcr ranks as well as by officials.

³⁷    Ncverthelcss the men are shown going through the motions of putting dust on their heads and faces. and a relief in Moscow (sec n. 17 above) represents one of the małe mourners bending down to pick up the dust. as alrcady mentioncd on p. 121 above.

³⁸ Book l, 72: «With garments of fine linen girt round (ncpie^oxrpevot) beneath their breasts, and their heads daubed over with mud. men and women together walkcd about in companics of 200 or 300» W.G. Waddell, Universily of Egypt, Bulletin of the Faculty of Ans, 1, Part 2. p. 190).

³⁹    Ibidem. 69.