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Аннотация:The Motive of War between Egyptians and Scythians in the Graeco-Roman Tradition:
In Search of a Historical Backbone
Ivan A. Ladynin
The article deals with a well-attested topos of the Graeco-Roman tradition, i.e. the conquest of Scythia under the great king of Egyptian past (Sesostris, Sesoosis, Vesosis in the evidence of different authors) and the eventual defeat of Egyptians by the Scythians. The all-embracing view of this tradition was presented by Prof. Askold I. Ivanchik (Eine griechische Pseudo-Historie. Der Pharao Sesostris und der skytho-ägyptische Krieg // Historia. 1999. Bd. 48. S. 395-441); the aim of the present paper is to analyze its narrower, mostly earlier part (Herodotus, Theopompus, Dicaearchus, Megasthenes, Hecataeus of Abdera and Diodorus, the tradition of Pompeius Trogus derived from an earlier prototype). The analysis allows concluding that the motive of Egyptians’ being defeated by Scythians after an incursion to their country was rooted very deeply and probably known already to Herodotus’ Egyptian informers. A number of arguments leads to conclude that this topos might reflect contaminated reminiscences of the wars with Hittites under Ramesses II and the struggle with the “sea peoples” that followed them shortly enough. Another well-known reflection of this contamination is in fact Manetho’s story of the king Amenophis, Egyptian lepers and the second Hyksos invasion.