Diodorus of Sicily and Egypt: Brief Notes on the First Book of Historical Library

Abstract

During Caesarian period Diodorus Siculus wrote, at the beginnings of his historical encyclopaedia, a book concerning the ancient Egypt; the main part of this book, dedicated to this region, doesn’t show a precise diodorean knowledge of troubled Roman Egypt because the author used as Hauptquelle the Aigyptiakà of Hecataeus of Abdera, lived at the end of the fourth century. This early work resents the Lagid political ideology of the first Greek ruler of ancient Egypt, i.e. Ptolemaeus of Lagos, who tried, according with part of the Egyptian priests, to propose and insert his kingdom into the millenary pharaonic civilization.