Plinivs - Vol. 7 Ch. 47 - Pyramis

[MangaDex]

 

[bocchi]

I wonder, Will He try to kill Poppaea?

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Cool stuff as always in the tl note. Thanks.

 

[tastes]

Ah, I know where they are! The Faiyum, right below the Nile delta and straight south of Giza. They deviated quite a lot from Alexandria. That means the village where they received the message from Felix's wife must have been very far carthage. Guess the river some chapters ago was one of modern Tunisia's

Also, the faiyum should be ripe with roman outposts. The region was the breadbasket of Egypt and the eastern territories of Rome during that time, thanks to the Ptolemys greatly investing in Agrarian infrastructure centuries before.

The TL also made a mistake: That's not Amenenhat III's pyramid depicted there, but Unas' Pyramid. Probably a mistake on the artists part, since the 3000 rooms of Pliny and Herodotodus are most likely a reference to the tombs in the Saqqara / Giza necropolis, which is over 10 times larger than any other mortuary complex.

 

[Jaytop]

The TL also made a mistake: That's not Amenenhat III's pyramid depicted there, but Unas' Pyramid. Probably a mistake on the artists part, since the 3000 rooms of Pliny and Herodotodus are most likely a reference to the tombs in the Saqqara / Giza necropolis, which is over 10 times larger than any other mortuary complex.

I'm not an expert in pyramids, but from what I found, Amenenhat III pyramid, (which is also named Hawara's pyramid) is the pyramid that Herodotus mentioned in his book. The one who identified it is an Egyptologist named Flinders Petrie who explored it in 1888-1889. You can read on page 4 of his book "Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe" which you can find here :

The labyrinth, though usually supposed to be near the entrance to the Fayum, has been by some assigned to the further side of the Birket el Kurun ; but the statement of Strabo, who visited the place, is so very explicit and clear that it seems impossible to set it aside. He states that after proceeding about 30 or 40 stadia from the first sailing into the canal he reached the labyrinth ; and, again, that Arsinoe was about 100 stadia further on. It is thus evident that the labyrinth lay between the entrance to the Fayum and Arsinoe, or Crocodilopolis, the capital ; and Herodotos also states that it was a little above Lake Moiris, and near the city named from the crocodiles. This shows that it cannot have been on the further side of this oasis. By all authors it is described as being close to a pyramid, and the only pyramid anywhere between the mouth of the canal and Arsinoe is that of Hawara. This does not exactly agree to the distance given by Strabo, as it is 55 stadia in place of 40 from the mouth, and only 80 stadia by the canal to Arsinoe in place of 100. Hence Strabo's distances would put the site two or three miles to the east, or nearer the mouth of the canal ; but as, after walking several times along the canal between Hawara and Illahun, I could not find any trace of a building or a pyramid except at these two termini, it seems evident that there is no other site but Hawara at which we can look for the labyrinth.

And after this paragraph, he's wondering whether the remains of Hawara holds up to the description of the labyrinth in ancient texts (like the one I put at the end of this chapter were Herodotus says that "even if you put together all the temples of the Greeks, it would still be inferior to the labyrinth"). On page 5, he concludes :

"In short, all of the temples on the east of Thebes, and one of the largest on the west bank, might be placed together in the one area of the ruins at Hawara. Here we certainly have a site worthy of the renown which the labyrinth acquired."

It doesn't really prove much, but that's also what the wikipedia page of the place says :

The huge mortuary temple that originally stood adjacent to this pyramid is believed to have formed the basis of the complex of buildings with galleries and courtyards called the "Labyrinth" by Herodotus; this building was also mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. (There is no historicity to the assertion of Diodorus Siculus that this was the model for the labyrinth of Crete that Greeks imagined housed the Minotaur.)

To be honest, I originally only looked up this site which is a pretty cool site with descriptions of (I guess?) every pyramid in Egypt. Since Amenenhat III page says :

The courtyard to this pyramid is believed to be the site of the famous labyrinth , which is described by Herodotus (Histories II, 148), Strabo (Geographica, XVII, 1, 37) and Pliny (Nat. Hist. XXXXVI , 19).

and I didn't look much further. So at least now I have a better explanation of why they chose to draw this pyramid in particular.


edit : also found this cool vid that goes more in depth about it

 

[tastes]

I worded my post a tad unclearly: Your reading of the text in the tl pages is on point, I just noticed the photo of the pyramids on bottom-left had Unus' pyramid pointed out as Amenhotep's.

As for the location of the labyrinth: I see my mistake: It makes sense the temple complex in Faizun would still be mostly intact during Herotodus' time. Since they mostly disappeared I didn't account for it's existence as a landmark and ran with the closest possiblity, which (afaik) is the Giza complex' large number of Mastabas, each with an inner chamber. Enough to make someone thing there's a whole laberynth below. My bad! I mostly know Pyramids from building them in Impression Games' Pharaoh lol.

Thanks for the vid, i'll check it out!

 

[Jaytop]

I see, I didn't really understand your point at first. Although I'm just wondering, why do you think the picture I used is from Una's pyramid and not Amenemhet? I used this picture because of the website I linked on my previous post and because there's a similar one on the french wikipedia page of the pyramid but I can't find similar ones from Una's pyramid.