Herodotus on queens and courtesans of Egypt

[This essay was originally published in Herodotus: Narrator, Scientist, Historian , ed. Ewen Bowie, 109–122. Trends in Classics 59. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018. It is published here with permission of de Gruyter. In this online edition, the original page numbers of the print edition will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{109|110}” indicates where p. 109 of the print edition ends and p. 110 begins.] [1]

In his History, 2.124–134, Herodotus refers to various different stories about the pyramids at Giza in Egypt. This essay centers on stories claiming that the builder of the third of the three main pyramids was a woman. In some of these stories, the woman is a queen, while in others she is a courtesan. As I hope to show, there is a logic to this duality, to be explained in terms of Egyptian traditions as mediated by Greeks.

I start with a story about a queen. This story is rejected as untrue by Herodotus, at 2.134–135, and his retelling of the story is so fragmentary that the status of the woman as queen needs to be reconstructed on the basis of references made by other authors to the same woman. In any case, the name of the woman in the story, as I will argue, shows that she is truly a queen of Egypt.

Her name in Greek is Rhodōpis. In the story about her as retold by Herodotus, 2.134–135, Rhodōpis was a most beautiful and alluring hetaira ‘courtesan’. [2] This Rhodōpis, according to the reportage of ‘some Greeks’ as opposed to others (metexeteroi . . . Hellēnōn), supposedly commissioned the building of the third {109|110} and smallest of the three main pyramids at Giza. [3] But Herodotus says that this reportage is incorrect, [4] and he prefers to accept an alternative version according to which it was the pharaoh Mukerinos who commissioned the building of this third pyramid. [5] The pharaohs who commissioned the first and the second of these pyramids, Herodotus goes on to say, were Kheops and Khephrēn. [6] As we know from Egyptian sources, the three pharaohs Kheops and Khephrēn and Mukerinos ruled during the Fourth Dynasty, dating from the third millennium BCE.

By contrast, as Herodotus emphasizes, the courtesan named Rhodōpis must have lived in a much later era, during the rule of the pharaoh Amasis. [7] As we know from both Egyptian and Greek sources, this pharaoh belongs in the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, and he lived in the sixth century BCE.

For the moment, I focus on two things that Herodotus says about this woman: first, her name was Rhodōpis in Greek, and, second, there were ‘other Greeks’—so, Greeks other than Herodotus—who believed that she built the third pyramid at Giza.

So, who were these ‘other Greeks’ who accepted the idea that Rhodōpis and not Mukerinos gets credit for the building of the third pyramid? I argue that the stand-in for these ‘other Greeks’ is Hecataeus of Miletus, a predecessor of Herodotus who dates from the sixth/fifth centuries BCE. [8] There is ample evidence to show that Herodotus often cites Hecataeus as his anonymous foil. [9] In this case, Herodotus may be criticizing Hecataeus for accepting the idea that Rhodōpis commissioned a pyramid to be built. [10]

But Herodotus agrees with his anonymous foil about one thing: that this Rhodōpis was a courtesan. Where they disagree is whether a courtesan could have afforded the cost of building of a pyramid. The anonymous foil of Herodotus apparently thought that Rhodōpis could really afford it, whereas Herodotus himself evidently disagreed. {110|111}

Before we consider further the reasoning of Herodotus and his anonymous foil in identifying Rhodōpis as a courtesan, however, let us consider from an Egyptian point of view the idea that a woman known in Greek as Rhodōpis could have commissioned the building of the third pyramid. Here I find it most relevant to highlight the meaning of the Greek form Rhodōpis, ‘the one with the rosy face’—or ‘the one with the rosy looks’. From an Egyptian point of view, as we will now see, such a meaning would be a perfect fit for at least one particular queen of Egypt.

Here I focus on ancient reports about a queen named Nitōkris who ruled Egypt toward the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the late third millennium BCE. The dating and the naming of this queen originate from the Egyptian historian Manetho, who lived in the third century BCE. In a surviving paraphrase from the work of Manetho, who composed in Greek, we read these further details about Nitōkris the queen:

I translate xanthē for the moment here as ‘fair’, as in the English expression ‘fair-skinned’, but we are about see that the translation ‘blonde’ is likewise valid. According to the relevant paraphrase of Manetho by Eusebius in this context, the description of Nitōkris in the surviving Armenian translation of Eusebius’ original Greek wording is rendered in Latin as flava rubris genis ‘blonde with blushing cheeks’. These descriptions of Nitōkris correspond closely to the meaning of the Greek name Rhodōpis, ‘the one with the rosy face’—or ‘the one with the rosy looks’. A striking point of comparison is the portrayal of the sensuous Beroe, daughter of Aphrodite and Adonis, in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (42.75–78): the cheeks of this nymph are described as ‘having rosy looks [rhodoeidea]’ (77: ῥοδοειδέα) and showing a natural blush that needs no cosmetics simulating ‘the complexion [khrōs-] of a blonde [xanthē]’ (76: ξανθόχροϊ κόσμῳ).

Returning to the appearance of Nitōkris, I argue that the description of this queen by Manetho derives not from Greek literary allusions but from original {111|112} Egyptian traditions. Manetho describes Nitōkris as a blonde with blushing cheeks not because he thinks that this woman from the 6th Dynasty, dating back to the third millennium BCE, can somehow be compared to a woman named Rhodōpis who dates back only as far as the sixth century BCE. Instead, I argue that the appearance of Nitōkris as described by Manetho is a traditional Egyptian representation that becomes a model for describing, many centuries later, the appearance of a courtesan by way of renaming her as Rhodōpis, that is, as the one with the rosy looks.

In making this argument I highlight another Egyptian queen, even earlier than Nitōkris, who is likewise estheticized as a blonde. Painted on the west wall of the main room of a burial chamber at Giza is the image of Queen Hetep-heres II, whose head of hair is colored yellow, accompanied by her daughter, Queen Meresankh III (sometimes spelled Mersyankh), whose head of hair is by contrast colored black. The original excavator, the archaeologist George Reisner (1927), already interpreted the yellow coloring to stand for blonde hair. Here is the way he described the image of Queen Hetep-heres II: “her short hair is painted a bright yellow with fine red horizontal lines.” [12]

This archaeologist went on to say about Queen Hetep-heres II:

In more recent research, however, this formulation by Reisner has not generally been supported. It has been argued, for example, that the image of Queen Hetep-heres II shows her wearing a blond wig, and that she was not necessarily a natural blonde. [14]

What matters for the image, however, is not whether the queen was a natural blonde. What matters instead, I argue, is that she is represented as a notional blonde. And I offer the same argument in the case of a later queen like Nitōkris.

And what also matters is the pattern of mental association that links blond women with pyramids. [15] {112|113}

We have just seen, then, an Egyptian story about a fair-skinned and blond queen of Egypt who supposedly built the third pyramid at Giza. And we have also seen that the Greek name Rhodōpis ‘the one with the rosy face’—or ‘the one with the rosy looks’—fits the appearance of such a queen. But we have also seen that Herodotus and his anonymous foil, who was probably Hecataeus of Miletus, both link the name of Rhodōpis not with a queen but with a courtesan. According to the anonymous foil, as I have already noted, it was a courtesan named Rhodōpis who actually built the pyramid, whereas Herodotus rejects that particular detail in the story. But that same detail, about the building of the third pyramid by a courtesan known as Rhodōpis, is in fact independently attested in Greek sources other than the anonymous foil of Herodotus. I highlight as my primary example a version of the story that we find in Diodorus of Sicily (first century BCE) as paraphrased from the work of another Hecataeus (fourth century BCE: he is not the Hecataeus from Miletus):

Looking at the overall context of the text in which this passage is embedded, I note with great interest how the narration keeps stressing the diversity of Egyptian traditions regarding the historical circumstances that led to the building of the three great pyramids at Giza:

In fact, the version I just quoted, claiming that Rhodōpis gets credit for the third of the three main pyramids at Giza, is just the third of three Egyptian versions to be found in the text of Diodorus. According to the first version, also highlighted in the text, the three pyramids were built by three pharaohs whose names are spelled Khemmis and Kephrēn and Mukerinos. [18] These three pharaohs correspond to Kheops and Khephrēn and Mukerinos in the separate narrative of Herodotus. [19] So, in this version as also in the version reported by Herodotus, the third pyramid had been built by Mukerinos. But then the text of Diodorus goes on to record a radically different second version in which the three pharaohs who built the three pyramids were Armaios and Amōsis and Inarōs. [20] Finally, the text of Diodorus gives a third version of the story, and, in this one, the third of the three pyramids was collectively built by the nomarkhoi ‘nomarchs’ of Egypt for the sake of a courtesan named Rhodōpis, as we saw in the passage I already quoted from Diodorus. [21]

It is clear from this reportage that the story about a courtesan who built the third pyramid comes from a native Egyptian tradition, though this tradition is viewed here through the lens of the Greek language, since the name Rhodōpis is of course Greek. Still, the concept of Rhodōpis as the woman with the rosy looks is originally Egyptian. We have already seen that the same concept fits the queen Nitōkris, dating from the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE, who is said to have built the third pyramid: she too is a woman with rosy looks. But the question remains: why is such an Egyptian tradition about a fair-skinned blonde applied to a courtesan, not only to a queen? {114|115}

In the Egyptian chronology of pharaohs, as we saw from the documentation provided by Manetho, Nitōkris figures as a female pharaoh who built the third pyramid toward the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the late third millennium BCE. But this report as recorded by Manetho does not really contradict the other report, recorded not only by Herodotus but also by other sources such as Diodorus, according to which the third pyramid had been built by Mukerinos in the Fourth Dynasty, at an earlier point in the third millennium BCE. I say this because Mukerinos in the Fourth Dynasty had left unfinished the project of building the third pyramid, as we see in the report of Diodorus. [22] Here I take up the argumentation advanced by an Egyptologist, Christiane Coche-Zivie, who shows that Nitōkris in the Sixth Dynasty could have been given credit not only for finishing the project but also, by way of a deliberate stretch in the narrative, for having done it all herself. [23] We are still left, however, with a big problem here: how do we reconcile (1) the Egyptian story, as reported by Manetho, about the building of the third pyramid as a tomb for Nitōkris the queen and (2) the Egyptian story, as reported by Hecataeus by way of Diodorus, about the building of this same pyramid as a tomb for the courtesan Rhodōpis? In the case of Rhodōpis, the actual builders are the nomarchs of Egypt, who are the lovers of the courtesan: so, the courtesan herself is not the builder. In the case of Nitōkris, by contrast, she herself undertakes the project of building the pyramid.

We can find a solution to the problem, I argue, if we think of these two Egyptian traditions anthropologically in terms of myths that express the shifting dynamics of wealth, power, and prestige. From my lengthy experience in the study of ancient Greek myths, I have learned that their historical value is all too often ignored by modern researchers who fail to see them for what they really are, that is, as symbolic expressions of social realities. A telltale sign of such ignorance is the supercilious use of such vague terms as “legend” and “folklore” in referring to ancient Greek myths. Applying my experience to the study of ancient Egyptian myths, I argue that, here too, the stories we read about such figures as Nitōkris the queen and Rhodōpis the courtesan must not be dismissed as merely “legend” and “folklore.” Instead, we may view such stories as myths that explore the shifting social ideologies of pharaonic Egypt through the ages. {115|116}

Using the term “myth” in such a modified way, I now apply it to another story about the building of a pyramid. This time, the protagonist is not a queen or a courtesan but a princess. And, in this myth, the princess takes on the role of a courtesan. As we will see, performing the role of a courtesan mediates between the roles of princess and queen.

This other story is actually embedded in the History of Herodotus, at 2.126.1–2, where we read that the pharaoh Kheops, builder of the first and largest of the three pyramids at Giza, had a daughter whom he forced into prostitution, and that this daughter, using the proceeds that she earned as a prostitute, financed the building of a small pyramid for herself, situated in front of her father’s great pyramid.

So, we see here a third variation on the theme of building a pyramid. In the first case, we saw that the pyramid is meant for a queen named Nitōkris. Then, in the second case, it is meant for a courtesan named Rhodōpis. And here, in the third case, it is meant for an unnamed princess.

Thus Herodotus, who denies that the third pyramid was built for a courtesan named Rhodōpis, nevertheless affirms that a small pyramid next to the first pyramid was actually built for the daughter of a pharaoh.

And there is also a related context elsewhere in the History of Herodotus, at 2.100.1–4, where the historian tells about the building of a grand hall by Nitōkris the queen, who takes vengeance on the killers of her brother by destroying them inside this hall, thus transforming her building into a tomb. As one commentator has remarked, “Thus even in the History, Nitocris [Nitōkris] builds something like a pyramid.” [24]

In the story as actually retold by Herodotus, at 2.134–135, there did in fact exist a beautiful hetaira or ‘courtesan’ named Rhodōpis. And, yes, once upon a time she lived in Egypt. But when did she live? For Herodotus, the lifetime of Rhodōpis was far removed from the era when the pyramids at Giza were built, and, besides, {116|117} she could not even have afforded the cost of building a pyramid. And, as we are about to see, this Rhodōpis was not even Egyptian.

Before we go any further, I need to repeat four pieces of information:

1. Herodotus does not believe the reportage of ‘some Greeks’ as opposed to others (metexeteroi … Hellēnōn)—Greeks who claim that Rhodōpis commissioned the building of the third and smallest of the three pyramids at Giza. [25] Herodotus says that this reportage is incorrect, [26] and he prefers to accept an alternative version, according to which it was the pharaoh Mukerinos who commissioned the building of this third pyramid. [27]
2. The pharaohs who commissioned the first and the second of these pyramids were reportedly Kheops and Khephrēn. [28]
3. As we know from Egyptian sources, the three pharaohs Kheops and Khephrēn and Mukerinos ruled during the Fourth Dynasty, dating from the third millennium BCE.
4. By contrast, as Herodotus says, the courtesan named Rhodōpis must have lived in a much later era, during the rule of the pharaoh Amasis. [29] As we know from both Egyptian and Greek sources, this pharaoh belongs in the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, and he lived in the sixth century BCE.

And now I introduce a fifth and most decisive piece of information. According to the story as reported by Herodotus, at 2.134–135, the courtesan Rhodōpis was not even Egyptian: rather, she was a Thracian by birth, and she had once been a slave of a man from the island state of Samos named Iadmōn; further, another slave owned by this Samian man Iadmōn was Aesop, described as a logopoios—the word is sometimes translated as ‘maker of prose’. [30]

In reconstructing this nexus of relationships, Herodotus relies in part on his investigation of various traditions concerning the death of Aesop at Delphi, observing that a grandson of Iadmōn, also named Iadmōn, once received from the Delphians a blood-price as a compensation for their having killed Aesop, who was the former slave of Iadmon the grandfather. [31] But how did Rhodōpis, who, like Aesop, had been a slave of the elder Iadmōn, wind up in Egypt? According to Herodotus, the man who brought her there as a slave was not the elder Iadmōn {117|118} but another Samian, named Xanthēs. [32] We know from other sources, including Aristotle’s Constitution of the Samians, that the ownership of Aesop as slave was transferred from someone called Xanthos the Samian to another Samian, called Idmōn. [33] In terms of these narratives, I infer that this Xanthos the Samian is a multiform of Xanthēs the Samian (as he is called by Herodotus), while Idmōn the Samian is a multiform of Iadmōn the Samian (again, as he is called by Herodotus). And I infer further that Xanthēs was the second owner of Rhodōpis as slave and that Iadmōn was the first owner, while, conversely, the multiform Xanthos was the first owner of Aesop and the multiform Idmōn was the second owner. According to one story, the beautiful Rhodōpis and the ugly Aesop had once been lovers. This story is transmitted by Pliny the Elder. In this version, she is acknowledged as the builder of the third pyramid at Giza:

That said, let us continue with the version of story as told by Herodotus, at 2.134–135. Once she arrived in Egypt, Rhodōpis ‘worked’ as a sex-slave but later won her freedom from slavery when she was ransomed for a hefty sum of money by a man from Mytilene, which was then the foremost city of Lesbos, and this man happened to be Kharaxos, a brother of Sappho the mousopoios or ‘maker of songs’. [34] Now a free woman but continuing to make a living as a courtesan in Egypt, Rhodōpis became very wealthy, since she was so ‘sexually irresistible’, ep-aphroditos, [35] and she eventually gave away one tenth of her amassed wealth by sending iron spits (used for the roasting of sacrificial beef) as an offering to the {118|119} temple of Apollo at Delphi. [36] So, in the version of the story as reported by Herodotus, Rhodōpis was wealthy enough to make such an offering, but certainly not so wealthy as to be able to finance the building of the third pyramid at Giza.

Only now in the narrative does Herodotus point out the place in Egypt where Rhodōpis was making her living: it was in the city of Naucratis, a Greek enclave in Egypt, and this enclave was famous for its hetairai ‘courtesans’: they were so ep-aphroditoi ‘sexually irresistible’, as Herodotus puts it. [37] Eventually, Rhodōpis became kleinē ‘famed in song’, and that is how all Greeks came to know her name, Rhodōpis. [38] In a later period, Herodotus adds, there was another hetaira ‘courtesan’ who became almost as aoidimos ‘songworthy’ as Rhodōpis had been throughout the Greek-speaking world (ana tēn Hellada): she was a woman named Arkhidikē, but even this courtesan was not as peri-leskhēneutos ‘talked-about in men’s clubs’ as was Rhodōpis. As we know from a variety of other narratives, a leskhē ‘men’s club’ is considered to be an ideal venue for performances of song and poetry. [39]

Having thus highlighted the widespread fame of Rhodōpis in the song culture of the ancient Greek world, Herodotus now proceeds to wind up this part of his story by returning, in ring composition, to the relationship between this sexually irresistible woman and the man who paid for her freedom, Kharaxos of Mytilene, brother of Sappho. This man, as the lover of Rhodōpis, figures in the songs of Sappho, who sings of his relationship disapprovingly. [40] That is what Herodotus reports, evidently linking what he says about the fame of Rhodōpis throughout the Greek-speaking world with the songs once sung by Sappho herself about the love-affair of her errant brother with this sexually irresistible courtesan. A nearly complete text of one of these songs has now come to light, and the editio princeps has been published by Dirk Obbink. [41] In Sappho’s songs, however, as some ancient readers report, the name of the courtesan was not Rhodōpis but Dōrikha. [42] {119|120}

On the basis of what we have seen so far, I have reconstructed an Egyptian story that tells about a beautiful queen named Nitōkris, renowned for her fair complexion, who gets credit—one way or another—for the building of the third pyramid at Giza. But we are left with another big problem: how are we to account for the naming of this Egyptian woman Nitōkris as Rhodōpis in the Greek language? Granted, the naming is apt, since the Greek form Rhodōpis means ‘she with the rosy looks’, as we have already seen, and thus the Greek renaming of Nitōkris as Rhodōpis actually matches the primary aspect of this woman’s beauty as described in terms of the Egyptian tradition preserved by Manetho: ‘she was fair [xanthē] in complexion [khroia].’ [43] But the question remains: how did Nitōkris get a Greek name that translates, as it were, a description of her appearance as reported in Egyptian traditions?

For an answer, I argue that we need to reconstruct the Egyptian traditions forward in time, all the way from the early era of the queen Nitōkris in the Sixth Dynasty, that is, in the third millennium BCE, up to the far later era of a courtesan named Rhodōpis who lived under the rule of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis in the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, in the sixth century BCE. Here it becomes essential to highlight a detail in the relevant narrative of Herodotus, at 2.134–135: according to this narrative, as we have already seen, Rhodōpis made her living as a courtesan in the city of Naucratis. This city, as we have also seen, was a Greek enclave in Egypt, and, I must now add, it had been created through the patronage of the pharaoh Amasis, whom Herodotus describes elsewhere as a philellēn ‘phil-Hellene’. [44] In the sixth century BCE, which was the era of Rhodōpis, this city Naucratis functioned as a grand emporium (emporion) consolidating the economic and political efforts of various Greek city-states, [45] and two of these member states were Mytilene, the most important city on the island of Lesbos, and the island-city of Samos. [46] As we have already seen, Mytilene was the city of Sappho’s brother Kharaxos, who was the lover of Rhodōpis, while Samos was the city of Iadmōn and Xanthēs, who had once been the slave-owners of this same Rhodōpis. {120|121}

It is in the cosmopolitan context of this Greek city Naucratis-in-Egypt, as it flourished during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis in the sixth century BCE, that we can finally come to terms with the kind of Greek-Egyptian cultural convergences that could lead to the translation of Nitōkris, as a concept, by way of a name like Rhodōpis. But I argue that the Thracian hetaira or ‘courtesan’ named Rhodōpis was not the model for this concept. Just the opposite, Rhodōpis was modeled on the courtesan or queen of pre-existing Egyptian traditions centering on the multivalent figure of Nitōkris.

That is why, even though the courtesan loved by Sappho’s brother was named Dōrikha in the songs of Sappho, she was renamed or even rethought as Rhodōpis in the narrative of Herodotus. True, the historian did not accept the identification of this Rhodōpis with the queen who built her own pyramid in the Egyptian traditions, but he still thought of such an exotic Rhodōpis as the model for the courtesan so dearly loved by Sappho’s brother. [47]

In the context of the Greek-Egyptian cultural syncretism that evolved in the city of Naucratis during the sixth century BCE, the place of origin for the Egyptian woman who somehow had a pyramid built for herself can actually get transferred to the Greek city of Naucratis. A shining example is the retelling of the story by Strabo, 17.1.33 C808. While describing the third pyramid at Giza, Strabo identifies this building as ‘the tomb of the courtesan [hetaira]’, and the text makes a reference here to the many erastai ‘lovers’ of this courtesan, all of whom contributed to the making of the pyramid. This reference corresponds to what we have read earlier in the text of Diodorus about the nomarchs of Egypt who were lovers of Rhodōpis, and, so far, we see once again a convergence of traditional Egyptian themes centering on the idea of a pyramid built for a courtesan. Moreover, the text of Strabo even links the courtesan buried in the third pyramid with the woman known as Dōrikha—that is what he calls her—who lived in Naucratis and who was loved by Sappho’s brother Kharaxos. But then the text of Strabo narrates a myth that shifts the focus from the many lovers of this courtesan to a single lover who will now have the power to make her a queen. In this myth as retold in the text of Strabo, Dōrikha is at this point rethought as Rhodōpis and {121|122} described as a young girl who lives in Naucratis. One fine day, this girl is taking a bath outdoors, quite naked, while her clothing is being guarded by her handmaidens, and then, all of a sudden, an eagle swoops down and carries away one of her sandals, flying all the way to Memphis where it drops the sandal into the lap of the pharaoh, who is rendering judgments in the courtyard outside the palace. The king so admires the shape of the sandal (it shows a rhuthmos that apparently conveys the beauty of the girl’s dance-steps) that he sends emissaries everywhere throughout Egypt in search of the woman to whom the sandal belongs. When Rhodōpis is finally found in Naucratis, she is brought to the pharaoh in Memphis. The king now makes Rhodōpis his queen and eventually provides for the pyramid that will house her body. So, once again, we have returned to the traditional variations on the theme of an Egyptian woman whose identity modulates from courtesan to princess to queen. [48]

We have seen two Greek signatures for this Egyptian woman. The first of these is her place of origin, which is the Greek city of Naucratis. And her second Greek signature is the name that tells about her irresistible sexuality. It is the Greek name Rhodōpis—a name that becomes for the Egyptian queen an eternal sign of her fair skin, her rosy complexion, her blond hair. Her story is the story of the blond ambition, as it were, of queens and courtesans in Egypt. {122|}