ABSTRACT
The “Egyptian priests” afford a very insecure foundation, not only for a study of Egyptian history, but also for a defense of the character of Herodotus for veracity, according to some ideas. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in the time of Augustus, mentions a long list of writers before Herodotus, among them Hecataeus, and says that they did not greatly differ from one another in subject or powers, some dealing with Greek, others with foreign history. The judgment of Egyptologists ought to be decisive, when they say that Herodotus did not and could not meet the priests taking the most favorable view of the case having met certain underlings, whom he mistook for priests. The rationalism, irony, and pervading persiflage of the story connected with King Proteus, and an evident synchronism with Greek legendary history, cannot be credited to Herodotus, who by his formal assent and prosy justification confesses that the story is not his own.
