3513660158

123

SOMETHING WHICH HERODOTUS MAY HAYE SEEN

generally uniformly attired. but, whereas the women, in very many instances (though not in the relief here discussed), have bared their breasts and are thus easily distinguishable as mourners, the men lack normally any special feature in their clothing to indicate that they are in mouming²⁸. Ncvcrthcless, Herodotus, in his well-known dcscription of the mourning customs of the ancient Egyptians²⁹, does refer to a distinctive feature in the dress of both małe and female relatives of a deceased person, but it is rather tcrscly worded and a corruption may have occurred in the text.

Towards the end of his account, Herodotus remarks that the women «roam about the city lamenting, with their garments girt round them (ejieęcooneyai, var. (meęo)apevai) and their breasts showing; and the men too lament in their place, with garments girt likewise (erceęa)|ievoi, var. U7rr.ętopt;voi)»³⁰. The passage has caused difflculty to copyists. translators and commcntators, who have invariably adopted the same prefix (i.e. either erci or unó) with the verb ęcowupt in both its occurrcnces. WG. Waddell³¹ States «the form with the prefix erc- has morę MSS. authority.    would

mean ‘with their clothes girt on’ with a girdle, adcinctae: on- implies ‘girt up (high)'». Ph.-E. Legrand prefers erc- and translates the finał words «...les hommes aussi se frappent, le vetement fixe par une ceinturc»³². J. Enoch Powell³³ translates «with their loins girt Iow» in cach case. Ci. Rawlinson³⁴ offers an unimportant verbal

variation : «the women..., with their dress fastened by a band..... The men too

similarly begirt......».

While examples of female mourners with their dresses dctachcd from the shoulders and held by a girdle beneath the breasts are very numerous, there is no single instance on the Egyptian monuments of a man with his lunie draped from a girdle tied around his trunk. In fact, the only feature common to the two sexes is the similarity in their mourning gestures, to which Herodotus makes no reference. Since he was describing what hc saw with his own eyes, presumably in the region of Memphis, the monuments should provide an explanation and the obvious solution scems to be the skirt, sometimes worn by małe mourners, folded double and held in position by a girdle around the w'aist. This cxplanation would also account for the variant readings in the manuscripts of the prefix to ęcówupi. In the case of the women, whose dresses are «girdcd on», eit- would be preferable, though not essential, but ort- in the sense of «undcr» dcscribes far morę preeisely than en- the skirt doubled up and fastened under a girdle around the waist of the occasional małe mourner. In cffect the passage would mean that the women girded

²⁸    A rarc exception may be the so-called mourners’ sash. Sce N. de G. Davies. The Rock Tombs of Amarna, p. 17.

²⁹    II, 85.

³⁰    Thus translated by Godley. Herodotus (The Locb Classical Library) 1, p. 369.

³¹    Herodotus, II. p. 199.

³²    Hćrodotc. II. p. 120.

³³    Herodotus, I, p. 146.

^s* The History of Herodotus (Everyman*s Library). I. p. 154.