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H. is struck by the fact that he heard of no women in Egypt in positions like that of Hera's priestess at Argos, and he (as often) generalizes from a single point. But he himself knew that there were women in the temples, cf.i. 182. 5 n.; ii. 54. 1. He is quite wrong in his statement; two contrary instances may be quoted; women under the Old Empire especially devoted themselves to Neith and Hathor, while under the Saites, the ‘consort of Amon’ was the nominal ruler of Thebes.

Wiedemann has a more elaborate explanation. As the Egyptians called all the dead, men and women alike, ‘Osiris’, and made them male, he thinks that H. was told this, but misunderstood it, and, transferring it from the other world to the present one, supposed that no woman could appear before the gods as priestess. Wiedemann is very fond of charging H. with confusion; he seems to estimate the historian's capacity by his own.

τρέφειν κτλ. Sons at Athens were, as usually in Greece, required to care for their parents; a law of Solon fixed ἀτιμία as a penalty for neglecting this duty (Diog. Laert. i. 55). In Egypt the duty of seeing to a parent's grave was certainly imposed on sons; the law in c. 136 implies this. H. is supposed to be referring to the comparative independence of Egyptian women (B. M. G. p. 77), who were able to incur obligations on their own account; struck by this contrast to their dependent position in Greece, he states, in an exaggerated way, that daughters alone had duties to their parents. But this explanation seems very far-fetched.

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