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καὶ ἄλλα answers to καὶ ὅδε ὁ μῦθος in next line. H.'s scornful attitude to his countrymen is characteristic; in this book we may compare cc. 2 (rationalization of story of Psammetichus), 16 (as to the boundaries of Egypt), 20-2 (as to the rise of the Nile), 134 (as to Rhodopis), 143 (as to the genealogy of Hecataeus). There is no need to suppose that he is borrowing here from Hecataeus, who expresses a similar view in his genealogies, cf. frag. 332 (F. H. G. i. 25) οἱ γὰρ Ἑλλήνων λόγοι πολλοί τε καὶ γελοῖοι. H. would be especially glad to reject a story attributing human sacrifices to Egypt. ὁ μῦθος. The story of Busiris, to which H. here refers, occurs first in Pherecydes (Fr. 33, F. H. G. i. 79), and was made by Euripides the subject of a satyric drama; it occurs frequently in classical writers. Busiris is really the name of a town (‘house of Osiris’), 59. 1, 61. 1. κατάρχοντο: i.e. by cutting the lock of hair.
H. seems right in denying that human sacrifices were performed in Egypt in his day; no exact representations of them have been found on the monuments, and the massacre of captives before a god after a victory is only a partial parallel. There are, however, traditions as to them in the past; cf. Diod. i. 88 (there were human sacrifices τὸ παλαιόν at the tomb of Osiris) and Porph. De Abstin. ii. 55 (Amosis put down the custom at Heliopolis). Manetho (in Plut. Is. et Os. 73) speaks of human sacrifices ‘in the dog-days’, but uses the past tense; cf. Frazer, G. B. ii. 255, for their meaning. More valuable evidence still is given by the figures of slaves (Ushabti ‘answerers’) found in the tombs of the wealthy. (For a fine collection of these in the Ashmolean cf. Guide, p. 87.) No doubt originally the slaves themselves were killed with their masters. Probably the ‘Nile bride’, a noble maiden, who is said to have been thrown into the Nile annually before the canals were opened (Maspero, i. 24 and n.), was a similar symbolic representation of an old custom.
εὐμένεια. H. fears that he may be thought to be depreciating the divine Heracles.
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