ABSTRACT
Herodotus’ Book Two references an Egyptian, rationalizing version of the myth of Helen revealing motifs already attested in Stesichorus, but diverging from Cyclic epic (Cypria). Here is another Trojan War, different from that in epic or Attic tragedy. Euripides’ Helen revives this ‘Egyptian version’. Such coincidences and divergences testify to early recirculation of mythos between Egypt and Greece and raises questions about the Egyptian milieu in which myths circulated so fluidly undergoing transformations in light of local myth, cult, and folkways. Ethno-cultural boundaries are established in Herodotus only to be subjected to complication or even subversion.
