Naucratis
Encyclopedia
Naucratis or Naukratis, loosely translated as "(the city that wields) power over ships" (Piemro in Egyptian
, now Kom Gieif), was a city of Ancient Egypt
, on the Canopic
branch of the Nile
river, 45 mi (72 km) SE of the open sea and the later capital of Ptolemaic Egypt
, Alexandria
. It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek colony
in Egypt; acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture.
The modern site of the city has become an archaeological find of the highest significance and the source of not only many beautiful objects of art now gracing the museums of the world but also an important source of some of the earliest Greek writing in existence, provided by the inscriptions on its pottery.
in Egypt dates back at least to Mycenaean
times and more likely even further back into the proto-Greek Minoan
age. This history is strictly one of commerce as no permanent Greek settlements have been found of these cultures to date.
After the collapse of Mycenaean Greek civilization and the ensuing Greek dark ages
(c1100 - 750 BC) a "renaissance" of Greek culture flourished in the 7th century BC
and with it came renewed contact with the East and its two great river civilizations of Mesopotamia
and the Nile.
The first report of Greeks in 7th century BC Egypt is a story in the Histories
of Herodotus
of Ionian
and Carian
pirates
forced by storm to land on or near the Nile Delta
. It relates the plight of the Saite Pharaoh Psammetichus I
(Psamtik) (c. 664-610) of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt
overthrown and in desperation, seeking the advice of the Oracle
of Leto
at Buto
who cryptically advises him to enlist the aid of "brazen men" who would "come from the sea." Inspired upon seeing the bronze armor of the shipwrecked pirates, he offers them rewards in return for their aid in his campaign of return to power. Upon the success of this endeavor he makes good on his word and bestows on the mercenaries two parcels of land, "camps" (στρατόπεδα) on either side of the Pelusian branch of the Nile.
Apries
(Wahibre, reigned 589-570 BC) led the descendants of this mercenary army made up of 30,000 Carians and Ionians against a former general turned rebel by the name of Amasis. Although fighting valiantly they suffered defeat and Amasis II
became Pharaoh (reigned 570-526 BC). Amasis shut down the "camps" and moved the Greek soldiers to Memphis
where they were employed "to guard him against the native Egyptians
."
Herodotus: "Amasis was partial to the Greeks, and among other favors which he granted them, gave to such as liked to settle in Egypt the city of Naucratis for their residence." Notice that he says "gave the city (polis)" which seems to indicate the existence (now born out by archaeological evidence) of a "city" already there. This older city, settlement more likely, was no doubt small and inhabited by a mix of native Egyptians, Greeks and possibly even Phoenicians. Thus it seems the city was turned over to the Greeks, "chartered", in the years immediately following 570 BC.
Amasis indeed converted Naucratis into a major treaty-port and commercial link with the west. This was done most likely as a means to contain the Greeks and concentrate their activities in one place under his control. It became not the colony of any particular city-state but an emporion (trading post) similar to Al Mina
, the largest market port of north Syria
.
According to Herodotus the walled shrine known as the Hellenion was a co-operative enterprise financed by nine eastern Greek cities:
, and finally David George Hogarth
, in 1899 and 1903.
The archaeological focus fell into two areas of northern and southern quarters. Found farthest south was a large Egyptian storehouse or treasury (A on sketch at right - originally identified by Petrie as the "great temenos
") and just north of that a Greek mudbrick Temple of Aphrodite roughly 14m. x 8m. (curiously not mentioned in Herodotus' list.) Directly east of this temple was unearthed a small factory for faience scarab seals.
In the northern section were found several temple ruins (E: Temple of Hera, F: Temple of Apollo & G: Temple of Dioscuri) including what may be Herodotus' Hellenion discovered by Hogarth in 1899 (directly east of F.) "None of the votive pottery found here need have arrived earlier than the reign of Amasis, so it may well be that the Hellenion was founded as the result of his reorganization of the status of Naucratis, while the independent sanctuaries... are of the earlier years of the town."
More recently American archaeologists W. Coulson and A. Leonard founded "The Naucratis Project" in 1977 carrying out surveys in 1977-1978 and further surveys and excavations to the south of the site from 1980 - 1982 (under the auspices of the American Research Center in Egypt.)http://www.arce.org/aboutarce/aboutarce.html Unfortunately they found the original northern sanctuary section submerged under a lake formed by the risen water table and roughly 15 meters deep. This part of the site remains under water today making further work there difficult if not impossible.
Their assessment of the approach taken and methods used by their predecessors was less than complementary. "Unfortunately, much of the emphasis of the early excavators was placed on these religious structures at the expense of the commercial and domestic quarters. Consequently our knowledge of the mercantile character of ancient Naukratis - the very facet of its early history that made it so exceptional - has suffered greatly. Furthermore, the later historical sequences, such as the Hellenistic and Roman periods, were almost totally neglected."
Also discouraging to them was the destruction wrought by the local populace on the site. "Already in Petrie's day about a third of the halfmile
by quarter-mile site of Naukratis had been dug away by the local farmers for use as high-phosphate fertilizer (sebakh) in their fields" and "In the intervening 100 years or so, the sebakhin have totally destroyed this eastern portion of the site."
The barrier of the high water table made it impossible for them to find anything older than the Ptolmaic era. They agreed with Hogarth that the "great temenos" of Petrie was actually an Egyptian building and that indeed the entire south section of the town appeared to be non-Greek.
Overall most of the finds were vases (some whole, most fragmentary) used as votives in the temples, but also stone statuettes and scarab seals. These are scattered to museums and collections around the world, the earlier material largely brought to Britain (mostly in the British Museum) and the later to the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria.
armor and tactics, and also possessing invaluable naval expertise.
Naucratis soon became a profound source of inspiration to the Greeks by re-exposing them to the wonders of Egyptian architecture and sculpture lost to them since the Bronze Age
. Egyptian artifacts soon began their flow along the Greek trade routes finding their way into the homes and workshops of the Ionian Greek world and, via Aegina, the city-states of mainland Greece. Although Greek art and ideas in turn came back the other way their absorption into a largely xenophobic
Egyptian culture was strictly minimal.
Although Herodotus claimed that geometry
(γεωμετρία) was first known in Egypt and then passed into Greece it is now generally accepted by scholars that what the Greeks learned were more like "surveying techniques" and hardly deserve the designation "geometry" in the sense of a purely intellectual mathematical practice. Indeed Greeks like Thales
were already accomplished geometricians before their travel to Egypt and very likely Herodotus assumed that because the Egyptian γεωμετρία was older, the Greeks must have got it from there.
In terms of our modern understanding of the Greeks, and in particular the early use of their nascent Greek alphabet
, the finds of Naucratis have turned out to be foundational. "The inscriptions on the pottery have yielded what Mr. Ernest Gardner considers - apparently on firm grounds - to be the oldest Ionic inscriptions, as well as some in the Korinthian, Melian, and Lesbian alphabets." Of particular interest are the several examples of an evolutionary variation from the original Phoenician alphabet
ic script. Much has also been learned by comparing these alphabets with the forms they assumed a century later, forms that were destined to become universal across the Hellenic world.
Naucratis was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt's most important harbor in antiquity until the rise of Alexandria and the shifting of the Nile led to its decline.
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
, now Kom Gieif), was a city of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, on the Canopic
Canopus, Egypt
Canopus was an Ancient Egyptian coastal town, located in the Nile Delta. Its site is in the eastern outskirts of modern-day Alexandria, around 25 kilometres from the centre of that city....
branch of the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
river, 45 mi (72 km) SE of the open sea and the later capital of Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to...
, Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
. It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek colony
Colonies in antiquity
Colonies in antiquity were city-states founded from a mother-city—its "metropolis"—, not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained often close, and took specific forms...
in Egypt; acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture.
The modern site of the city has become an archaeological find of the highest significance and the source of not only many beautiful objects of art now gracing the museums of the world but also an important source of some of the earliest Greek writing in existence, provided by the inscriptions on its pottery.
Background
Archaeological evidence suggests that the history of the ancient GreeksAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
in Egypt dates back at least to Mycenaean
Mycenaean Greece
Mycenaean Greece was a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites...
times and more likely even further back into the proto-Greek Minoan
Minoan civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...
age. This history is strictly one of commerce as no permanent Greek settlements have been found of these cultures to date.
After the collapse of Mycenaean Greek civilization and the ensuing Greek dark ages
Greek Dark Ages
The Greek Dark Age or Ages also known as Geometric or Homeric Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th...
(c1100 - 750 BC) a "renaissance" of Greek culture flourished in the 7th century BC
7th century BC
The 7th century BC started the first day of 700 BC and ended the last day of 601 BC.The Assyrian Empire continued to dominate the Near East during this century, exercising formidable power over neighbors like Babylon and Egypt. In the last two decades of the century, however, the empire began to...
and with it came renewed contact with the East and its two great river civilizations of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
and the Nile.
Histories (Herodotus)
The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that...
of Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
of Ionian
Ionians
The Ionians were one of the four major tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided...
and Carian
Carians
The Carians were the ancient inhabitants of Caria in southwest Anatolia.-Historical accounts:It is not clear when the Carians enter into history. The definition is dependent on corresponding Caria and the Carians to the "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" mentioned in the Hittite records...
pirates
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
forced by storm to land on or near the Nile Delta
Nile Delta
The Nile Delta is the delta formed in Northern Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east, it covers some 240 km of Mediterranean coastline—and is a rich...
. It relates the plight of the Saite Pharaoh Psammetichus I
Psammetichus I
Psamtik I , was the first of three kings of that name of the Saite, or Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. His prenomen, Wah-Ib-Re, means "Constant [is the] Heart [of] Re." The story in Herodotus of the Dodecarchy and the rise of Psamtik is fanciful...
(Psamtik) (c. 664-610) of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt
Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt
The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC . The Dynasty's reign The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (also written Dynasty XXVI or Dynasty 26) was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC...
overthrown and in desperation, seeking the advice of the Oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
of Leto
Leto
In Greek mythology, Leto is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus...
at Buto
Buto
Buto , Butus , or Butosus, , now Tell al-Fara'in near the city of Desouk , was an ancient city located 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. The city stood on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, near its mouth, and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake...
who cryptically advises him to enlist the aid of "brazen men" who would "come from the sea." Inspired upon seeing the bronze armor of the shipwrecked pirates, he offers them rewards in return for their aid in his campaign of return to power. Upon the success of this endeavor he makes good on his word and bestows on the mercenaries two parcels of land, "camps" (στρατόπεδα) on either side of the Pelusian branch of the Nile.
Literary
In 570 BC the PharaohPharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
Apries
Apries
Apries is the name by which Herodotus and Diodorus designate Wahibre Haaibre, Ουαφρης , a pharaoh of Egypt , the fourth king of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. He was equated with the Waphres of Manetho, who correctly records that he reigned for 19 years...
(Wahibre, reigned 589-570 BC) led the descendants of this mercenary army made up of 30,000 Carians and Ionians against a former general turned rebel by the name of Amasis. Although fighting valiantly they suffered defeat and Amasis II
Amasis II
Amasis II or Ahmose II was a pharaoh of the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt, the successor of Apries at Sais. He was the last great ruler of Egypt before the Persian conquest.-Life:...
became Pharaoh (reigned 570-526 BC). Amasis shut down the "camps" and moved the Greek soldiers to Memphis
Memphis, Egypt
Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Helwan, south of Cairo.According to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh Menes around 3000 BC. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an...
where they were employed "to guard him against the native Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...
."
Herodotus: "Amasis was partial to the Greeks, and among other favors which he granted them, gave to such as liked to settle in Egypt the city of Naucratis for their residence." Notice that he says "gave the city (polis)" which seems to indicate the existence (now born out by archaeological evidence) of a "city" already there. This older city, settlement more likely, was no doubt small and inhabited by a mix of native Egyptians, Greeks and possibly even Phoenicians. Thus it seems the city was turned over to the Greeks, "chartered", in the years immediately following 570 BC.
Amasis indeed converted Naucratis into a major treaty-port and commercial link with the west. This was done most likely as a means to contain the Greeks and concentrate their activities in one place under his control. It became not the colony of any particular city-state but an emporion (trading post) similar to Al Mina
Al Mina
Al-Mina is the modern name given by Leonard Woolley to an ancient trading post on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, in the estuary of the Orontes, near present-day Samandag in Turkey's province of Hatay....
, the largest market port of north Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
.
According to Herodotus the walled shrine known as the Hellenion was a co-operative enterprise financed by nine eastern Greek cities:
- Four Ionian:ChiosChiosChios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
, Klazomenai, TeosTeosTeos or Teo was a maritime city of Ionia, on a peninsula between Chytrium and Myonnesus, colonized by Orchomenian Minyans, Ionians, and Boeotians. The city is situated on a low hilly narrow strip of land connecting two larger areas of land . Teos ranked among twelve cities comprising the Ionian...
and PhocaeaPhocaeaPhocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...
. - Four Dorian: RhodesRhodesRhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...
, HalicarnassusHalicarnassusHalicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...
, KnidosKnidosKnidos or Cnidus is an ancient settlement located in Turkey. It was an ancient Greek city of Caria, part of the Dorian Hexapolis. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus, now known as Gulf of Gökova. By the fourth century BC, Knidos was located...
and PhaselisPhaselisPhaselis is an ancient Lycian city in the province of Antalya in Turkey. It is located between the Bey Mountains and the forests of Olympos National Park, 16 km west of the touristic town of Kemer and on the 57th kilometre of the Antalya–Kumluca highway...
. - One AeolianAeoliansThe Aeolians were one of the four major ancient Greek tribes comprising Ancient Greeks. Their name derives from Aeolus, the mythical ancestor of the Aeolic branch and son of Hellen, the mythical patriarch of the Greek nation...
: MytileneMytileneMytilene is a town and a former municipality on the island of Lesbos, North Aegean, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Lesbos, of which it is a municipal unit. It is the capital of the island of Lesbos. Mytilene, whose name is pre-Greek, is built on the...
.- MiletusMiletusMiletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
, SamosSamos IslandSamos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...
and AeginaAeginaAegina is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, from Athens. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. During ancient times, Aegina was a rival to Athens, the great sea power of the era.-Municipality:The municipality...
had their own separate sanctuaries. Thus the natives of at least twelve Greek city-states worked in a collaboration that was not only rare but proved to be lasting.
- Miletus
Archaeology
The site was discovered by W.M.F. Petrie who dug there in 1884-5. He was followed by E.A. GardenerErnest Arthur Gardner
Ernest Arthur Gardner was an English archaeologist.Ernest Arthur Gardner was educated at the City of London school and Caius College, Cambridge...
, and finally David George Hogarth
David George Hogarth
David George Hogarth was a British archaeologist and scholar associated with T. E. Lawrence and Arthur Evans.-Archaeological career:...
, in 1899 and 1903.
Temenos
Temenos is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct: The Pythian race-course is called a temenos, the sacred valley of the Nile is the ...
") and just north of that a Greek mudbrick Temple of Aphrodite roughly 14m. x 8m. (curiously not mentioned in Herodotus' list.) Directly east of this temple was unearthed a small factory for faience scarab seals.
In the northern section were found several temple ruins (E: Temple of Hera, F: Temple of Apollo & G: Temple of Dioscuri) including what may be Herodotus' Hellenion discovered by Hogarth in 1899 (directly east of F.) "None of the votive pottery found here need have arrived earlier than the reign of Amasis, so it may well be that the Hellenion was founded as the result of his reorganization of the status of Naucratis, while the independent sanctuaries... are of the earlier years of the town."
More recently American archaeologists W. Coulson and A. Leonard founded "The Naucratis Project" in 1977 carrying out surveys in 1977-1978 and further surveys and excavations to the south of the site from 1980 - 1982 (under the auspices of the American Research Center in Egypt.)http://www.arce.org/aboutarce/aboutarce.html Unfortunately they found the original northern sanctuary section submerged under a lake formed by the risen water table and roughly 15 meters deep. This part of the site remains under water today making further work there difficult if not impossible.
Their assessment of the approach taken and methods used by their predecessors was less than complementary. "Unfortunately, much of the emphasis of the early excavators was placed on these religious structures at the expense of the commercial and domestic quarters. Consequently our knowledge of the mercantile character of ancient Naukratis - the very facet of its early history that made it so exceptional - has suffered greatly. Furthermore, the later historical sequences, such as the Hellenistic and Roman periods, were almost totally neglected."
Also discouraging to them was the destruction wrought by the local populace on the site. "Already in Petrie's day about a third of the halfmile
by quarter-mile site of Naukratis had been dug away by the local farmers for use as high-phosphate fertilizer (sebakh) in their fields" and "In the intervening 100 years or so, the sebakhin have totally destroyed this eastern portion of the site."
The barrier of the high water table made it impossible for them to find anything older than the Ptolmaic era. They agreed with Hogarth that the "great temenos" of Petrie was actually an Egyptian building and that indeed the entire south section of the town appeared to be non-Greek.
Overall most of the finds were vases (some whole, most fragmentary) used as votives in the temples, but also stone statuettes and scarab seals. These are scattered to museums and collections around the world, the earlier material largely brought to Britain (mostly in the British Museum) and the later to the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria.
Impact
The Egyptians supplied the Greeks with mostly grain but also linen and papyrus while the Greeks bartered mostly silver but also timber, olive oil and wine. Naukratis, and the associated Greek "forts" in the general delta area, as demonstrated by accounts given above, became a ready source of mercenary fighting men for the Saite pharaohs, men with superior hopliteHoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
armor and tactics, and also possessing invaluable naval expertise.
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
. Egyptian artifacts soon began their flow along the Greek trade routes finding their way into the homes and workshops of the Ionian Greek world and, via Aegina, the city-states of mainland Greece. Although Greek art and ideas in turn came back the other way their absorption into a largely xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
Egyptian culture was strictly minimal.
Although Herodotus claimed that geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
(γεωμετρία) was first known in Egypt and then passed into Greece it is now generally accepted by scholars that what the Greeks learned were more like "surveying techniques" and hardly deserve the designation "geometry" in the sense of a purely intellectual mathematical practice. Indeed Greeks like Thales
Thales
Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...
were already accomplished geometricians before their travel to Egypt and very likely Herodotus assumed that because the Egyptian γεωμετρία was older, the Greeks must have got it from there.
In terms of our modern understanding of the Greeks, and in particular the early use of their nascent Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, the finds of Naucratis have turned out to be foundational. "The inscriptions on the pottery have yielded what Mr. Ernest Gardner considers - apparently on firm grounds - to be the oldest Ionic inscriptions, as well as some in the Korinthian, Melian, and Lesbian alphabets." Of particular interest are the several examples of an evolutionary variation from the original Phoenician alphabet
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
ic script. Much has also been learned by comparing these alphabets with the forms they assumed a century later, forms that were destined to become universal across the Hellenic world.
Naucratis was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt's most important harbor in antiquity until the rise of Alexandria and the shifting of the Nile led to its decline.
Minor points of interest
- Herodotus tells us that the prostitutes of Naucratis were "peculiarly alluring" and relates the story of Charaxus, brother of the poet SapphoSapphoSappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
, who traveled to Naucratis to purchase (for a "vast sum") the freedom of one RhodopisRhodopis (hetaera)Rhodopis was a celebrated 6th-century BCE Greek hetaera, of Thracian origin. She is one of only two hetaerae mentioned by name in Herodotus's discussion of the profession ....
, a bewitchingly beautiful Thracian slave and courtesan. After obtaining her freedom, she set up a house of ill-repute, built up a thriving business and amassed a small fortune. As a measure of thanks she commissioned an expensive votive offering to the gods, eventually placed at DelphiDelphiDelphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...
and which could be seen still in the historian's day. - An Athenian cup found in one of the sanctuaries has a dedication inscribed from a worshipper named "Herodotus" and dates from the time the great historian was known to have visited there.