R eviews
PH IRO ZE V A SU N IA , The Gift o f the Nile: H ellenizing Egypt from
Aeschylus to Alexander (B erkeley and Los A ngeles: U niversity o f
C alifornia Press, 2001); xiv plus 346; 8 b/w photographs; ISBN 0-52022820-0, $45.00.
Recent decades have w itnessed num erous studies w hich deal with
G reek, m ostly A thenian, attitudes to foreigners and the extent to w hich
such attitudes com prise a G reek self-definition through the construction
o f an Other.
This fruitful area o f investigation has led to many
im portant insights about ideology and self-representation within G reek
— again, m ostly C lassical A thenian — culture itself. W hile the study o f
the O ther in G reek thought often involves the ‘B arbarian’ in G reek texts,
V asunia’s book is the first o f its kind in m aking G reek attitudes to Egypt
its central subject. Indeed, V asunia (hereafter V) is quite right to
em phasise the im portance o f such a topic, given the w idely attested
fascination Egypt held for G reek w riters across a range o f periods and
genres. V ’s project consciously differs from that o f M artin B ernal’s
Black Athena in not attem pting to argue that G reek culture is purely
derivative o f A fro-A siatic cultures. Rather, V aim s to show how G reek
responses to Egypt are purely about G reek self-affirm ation and
ethnocentrism (p. 31).
Tragic, historiographical, philosophical and
rhetorical texts all com e under V ’s purview , and, even though he
acknow ledges the large num ber o f depictions o f Egyptians in G reek art,
his study is essentially logocentric, with only very b rief discussion o f
relevant visual m aterial. In any event, this book is a notable addition to
w hat has becom e a burgeoning field not only in C lassics but other areas
o f the hum anities w hich seek to exam ine W estern attitudes to nonW estem cultures.
V ’s book is part o f a series called ‘Classics and Contem porary
T h o u g ht’ and his m ostly post-colonial and, at tim es, post-m odernist
approach to his subject show s him to be au fa it with much theorising in
contem porary cultural criticism . The insights o f M arx, Freud, Foucault,
Said, Derrida and Lacan, am ongst others are periodically invoked,
som etim es to telling effect. This approach enables V to m ake a num ber
o f stim ulating and genuinely interesting insights into the texts he
discusses, but, at the sam e tim e, has the effect o f m aking much o f his
work doctrinaire and reductive. For although he claim s to challenge the
sim plistic binarism o f ‘S elf versus O th er', V continually denounces
75
R eviews
G reek accounts o f Egypt — from those o f A eschylus to Isocrates — as
hopelessly ethnocentric, im perialist and pernicious. It is true, o f course,
then as now , that every account o f a different culture will include
ethnocentric biases that will often say m ore about the investigator than
the subject — and V ’s approach, so heavily-inform ed by m odem theory,
is particularly susceptible to this pitfall. Yet the biases in the range o f
G reek texts that V discusses exist on varying levels and com e with
varying nuances. The m oralistic condem nation V m etes out to one
G reek author after another, then, not only begins to grate pretty quickly,
but neglects elem ents in the texts and G reek culture o f the tim e that
deserved fuller consideration.
C hapter 1 deals w ith A eschylus’ Suppliants and E uripides’ Helen in
w hich Egyptians feature m ore fully than in any other extant G reek
dram a. In the A eschylean play V sees a stereotyping depiction o f the
Egyptian suitors as lecherous, tyrannical barbarians (pp. 38ff), w hose
black skin is repulsive to the D anaids who prefer death to m arriage to
these men. N ot much to disagree with here, but the D anaids do not have
an ‘erotic preference’ for H ades, as V claim s (p. 52), and the kind o f
erotic nexus he attem pts to build around the blackness o f Hades and the
Egyptians, and the D anaids’ resistance to m arriage (p. 47ft) is not
convincing. A lso V dow nplays the fact that the view s about Egyptians
com e m ostly from a chorus o f young w om en w ho need not reflect any
norm ative view o f A eschylus and his contem poraries. T hese w omen
detest the idea o f m arriage in general, not ju st to Egyptians, as V
acknow ledges (p. 55), and this w ould fly in the face o f the role ordained
for w om en by the polis o f A eschylus’ day. The rest o f the trilogy would
also undercut aspects o f the attitude o f the D anaids: firstly by reference
to the m urder o f the Egyptian husbands and subsequent punishm ent in
the underw orld, and secondly in the likelihood that A phrodite herself
cham pions the decision o f H yperm nestra, to spare her Egyptian husband
(Aesch. fr. 44). As part o f such a trilogy, the Suppliants is not a sim ple
endorsem ent o f Egyptian-bashing. V ’s attem pt to see another G reek
equation o f Egypt with despotism and death in E uripides’ Helen
culm inates in the Freudian suggestion that the lechery o f the Egyptian
Theoclym enos for H elen enacts G reek m ale desires or fantasies w hich
are ostensibly m ade the preserve o f the barbarian O ther (p. 73) — an
interesting but inevitably speculative idea.
76
R eviews
In C hapters 2 and 3 V sees the portrayal o f Egyptian tyranny,
inversion o f nature and stagnation as the most prom inent them es in
H erodotus' fam ous account in book 2 o f his Histories. V not only
m akes H erodotus a part o f a discourse that m isreads Egyptian realities,
but he condem ns him in Foucaultian term s as the purveyor o f a panoptic
gaze. W hat alternative w as open to him is never m ade clear by V, who
reduces H erodotus to the early prototype o f the pith-helm eted Victorian
explorer casting an im perialistic eye on all he surveys (p. 101).
M oreover, V underplays the evident adm iration the historian had for
much in Egyptian culture and his w illingness to acknow ledge Greek
debt to Egyptian achievem ents (e.g. 2.35, 53, 148, etc.), w hich V
him self seem s w illing to concede to him, albeit cursorily (p. 245-6).
But, generally, H erodotus' accounts o f Egyptian architecture are,
according to V, underscored by an im putation o f despotism and tyranny
in that Egyptian rulers virtually enslave their people by com pelling them
to build vast tem ples and pyram ids (pp. 81-2; cf. 107-9, etc.). Two
im portant points need to be m ade here. Firstly, a charge against
Egyptian pharaohs does not constitute a charge against all things and
people Egyptian. Secondly, the G reeks were quite w illing to condem n
the presence o f tyranny am ongst their own people and did not fetishise it
as an all-too-eastem phenom enon, as V implies. It is significant that
when V cites A ristotle (Pol. 1313b) as further evidence o f G reek
hostility to Egyptian tyrants w ho exploit their people, he barely pauses
over the philosopher’s m entioning o f num erous G reek tyrants w ho do
exactly the sam e thing (p. 82 n. 12). V also discusses the Egyptian
w orld-view and ideology o f their architecture and claim s that royal
building projects w ere not m onum ents to pharaonic vanity, but rather
‘brought together a diverse group o f interconnected interests and
w orkers’ (p. 108). But the evidence for such a utopian building scheme
is not to be found in the quotes V adduces from secondary sources. N or
can it be sustained in the face o f inscriptions such as the one by Queen
H atshepsut w ho announces herself, in fine im perialist ethnocentric
fashion, as ruler o f all the world, having subjugated all foreign lands (p.
108 n. 59). Indeed, elsew here V him self refers to Egyptian m onum ents,
inter a i, as prom oting the Weltanschauung o f the dom inant elite (p.
177). This is, o f course, much m ore plausible, but further underlines
problem s in his overall treatm ent o f H erodotus’ account and V ’s own
attem pt to ‘rehabilitate’ the ideology behind the royal building
program m es.
77
R eviews
V ’s discussion o f Plato’s attitude to Egypt (Chs. 4 & 6) is rich and
com plex, but ultim ately V extracts from it the sam e conclusion as he
does w ith other authors treated in the book. Thus, the Platonic portrait o f
Egypt is self-serving, deceitful and w ilfully m isconstrued (esp. p. 244).
V m akes the idea o f w riting as a specifically Egyptian m edium —
associated with secrecy, deceit and despotism — a m ajor strand in
P lato ’s reception o f Egypt. To deal w ith the latter chapter first: V
focuses on the Timaeus and Critias and the story o f A tlantis, preserved
in the holy, secret archives o f the Egyptian priests o f Sai's. P lato ’s
m ission in these and other dialogues is to assert the superiority and
anteriority o f G reek — essentially A thenian — culture to that o f Egypt.
This he does by m aking Egypt preserve the story o f proto-A thens’
victory over the all-pow erful and sophisticated Atlantis; this account is
then passed on to Solon, and the rest is (A thenian) ‘h istory’. V argues,
therefore, that Plato uses Egypt as a source for G reek history and a place
o f transm ission o f G reek culture, w hich is then ultim ately returned to its
place o f origin by the venerable figure o f Solon. Such a grand Platonic
fiction, V then claim s, is m otivated by a G reek, or at least Platonic,
inferiority com plex in the face o f the genuine antiquity and profundity o f
Egyptian culture, w hose achievem ents are thus seen to be indebted to
G reece, rather than vice versa. This, in my view, is the m ost stim ulating
part o f V ’s book, and his reading here is a very attractive one, providing
m uch food for thought.
M ore tendentious, how ever, is V ’s discussion o f especially the
Phaedrus, in w hich he claim s that Plato contrasts the antiquated
Egyptian records with the openness o f G reek culture w hose hallm ark is
orality and the ability to deal w ith the present. V essentially reproduces
D errida’s fam ous critique o f Plato’s orality-literacy dichotom y ( ‘La
Pharm acie de P laton’) and its im plications for subsequent w estern
m etaphysics (pp. 155ff). He then presents Egyptian hieroglyphics as
being able to transcend the problem s both o f this dichotom y and the
vexed issues concerning the referential capacities o f w ords, w hich V
sees at the heart o f the ‘G reek tradition’ (p. 174). There are many
difficulties here, not least o f w hich is V ’s glib identification o f
hieroglyphics as a virtually post-structuralist m edium (p. 173). With
such a cosy appropriation o f an ancient m eans o f com m unication, V
leaves him self open to charges o f anachronism and cultural
ethnocentrism that he so readily dishes out to the G reek authors in his
78
R eviews
book. M ore generally, V too often conflates Plato and the ‘G reek
tradition' — is there ju st one? — regarding concepts o f the efficacies o f
language and its relation to the truth. He w rites ‘... in the Greek
tradition, language stands in for som ething else, or is m im etic o f
som ething else, and truth is alw ays located in this som ething else,
w hether it is an essence, a Platonic Form (ιδ έ α ) or an A ristotelian Being
(ov)’ (p. 174). The difficulties raised by this statem ent can hardly even
begin to be tackled here, but suffice it here to say that V ignores the
range o f differing views held not only by Plato, but by figures like
Parm enides w ho posited no distinction betw een thought, language and
being (B 2, 3, 6 DK.). A sim ilar view was conceivably m aintained by
Protagoras and som e other Sophists (PI., Tht. 167a7-8), so that language
in fact is a prescriptive, not descriptive, phenom enon as treated by these
thinkers. C onversely, w e can cite G o rgias’ brilliant iconoclasm (B
3 .8 3 ff DK.; cf. MXG 979a-980b) that λ ό γ ο ς need have no relation to
anything outside itself, yet in its psychological grip on us is still a
δ υ ν ά σ τη ς μ έ γ α ς (Hei. 8). O ne could continue indefinitely with m ajor
counter-exam ples to V ’s claim about the ‘G reek tradition’, starting with
the great H om eric liar O dysseus, but the point here is that his dichotom y
betw een G reek and Egyptian attitudes to language and w riting grossly
oversim plifies the issues and w eakens this section as a whole.
To his credit, V casts a w ide net over the m aterial to include
discussion o f Isocrates’ Busiris — a w ork ostensibly in honour o f the
Egyptian king — and A lexander’s conquest and occupation o f Egypt. V
sees in the Busiris, a parody o f encom ia, and, rather than give a detailed
exegesis o f the text, his reading is largely inform ed by various theories
o f com edy and parody (esp. pp. 199-207). The by now predictable
upshot is that this text is yet another instance o f G reek xenophobia, this
tim e laced with pernicious hum our. V ’s account o f A lexander’s foray
into Egypt contains interesting points, especially in his em bracing o f
Egyptian culture. But when w e are told that the m ost form idable
w arrior-prince o f all tim e was prim arily m otivated to conquest by
H om er’s references to Egypt and the m ore recent G reek discourse he
had supposedly gleaned from H erodotus, Isocrates and Plato (pp. 253-6,
287, etc.), w e can be forgiven for thinking this is too much to believe.
L ikew ise, practical and strategic considerations are m ore likely to
underlie A lexander’s quest to discover the source o f the Nile, rather than
79
R eviews
a desire for a purely gratuitous exercise in colonialist exploration, as V
suggests (pp. 275-82).
I f I have m ostly focused on areas o f disagreem ent in this review ,
this is, firstly, because I think the issues V raises are indeed w orthy o f
fuller consideration and, secondly, to counter V ’s consistently polem ical
tenor and dism issive treatm ent o f his G reek sources. V ’s quest to find
the w orst or m ost capricious m otives in every G reek account o f Egypt
begs too m any questions and pays too little attention to trends in G reek
thought that have som e bearing on his inquiry. Not least am ong these is
the im portant debate developed by the Sophists — and found in
H erodotus (e.g. 3.38, etc.) — surrounding ν ό μ ο ς and φύσι,ς. Y et the
m ajor im plications o f this debate for ethnicity and cosm opolitanism
receive only the briefest m ention (p. 184 n. 3). W hile I found m uch to
disagree w ith in V ’s book, it should be noted that V has unearthed an
im portant topic and dealt w ith it in a rich and theoretically-inform ed
fashion, w hich will m ake it a useful starting point for further discussions
o f this and related issues. B ut if the G reeks o f the fifth and fourth
centuries BC fall short o f the tenets o f current ethnological theories, it
should also be noted that there is a w hole lot m ore to be said about them,
Patrick O ’Sullivan,
U niversity o f Canterbury
80