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1. See DANAUS.

2. See EGYPT.

 
 
Wikipedia: Aegyptus
Argive genealogy in Greek mythology
  • Inachus
    son of Oceanus and Tethys
  • Phoroneus and Io
    children of Inachus and Melia
  • Epaphus
    son of Io and Zeus
  • Lybia
    daughter of Epaphus and Memphis
  • Belus and Agenor
    sons of Lybia and Poseidon
  • Aegyptus and Danaus
    sons of Belus and Achiroe
  • Hypermnestra
    daughter of Danaus, mother of Abas
    grandmother of Proetus
  • Cadmus, Phoenix, Cilix and Europa
    children of Agenor and Telephassa
  • Polydorus, Agave, Autonoë, Ino and Semele
    children of Cadmus and Harmonia
  • Dionysus
    son of Semele and Zeus

In Greek mythology, Aígyptos, usually Latinized as Aegyptus, in Greek ("supine goat"), descendant of the heifer maiden, Io, and the river-god Nilus, was a king in Egypt.[1] Aegyptos was the son of Belus and Achiroe, and father of fifty sons who were all but one murdered by the fifty daughters of Aegyptus' twin brother, Danaus, eponym of the Danaans, a name for the Mycenaean Greeks.

A scholium on a line in Euripides, Hecuba 886, reverses these origins, placing the twin brothers at first in Argolis, whence Aegyptus was expelled and fled to the land that was named after him. In the more common version,[2] Aegyptus commanded that his fifty sons marry the fifty Danaides, and Danaus fled to Argos, ruled by Pelasgus or by Gelanor, whom Danaus replaced. When Aegyptus and his sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus relinquished them, to spare the Argives the pain of a battle; however, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night. Forty-nine followed through, but one, Hypermnestra refused, because her husband, Lynceus, honored her wish to remain a virgin. Danaus was angry with his disobedient daughter and threw her to the Argive courts. Aphrodite intervened and saved her. Lynceus later slew Danaus as revenge for the death of his brothers. Lynceus and Hypermnestra founded the lineage of Argive kings, a Danaan dynasty. In some versions of the legend, the Danaides were punished in the underworld by being forced to carry water through a jug with holes, or a sieve, so that the water always leaked out.

The story of Danaus and his daughters, and the reason for their flight from marriage, provided the theme of Aeschylus' The Supplicants.

The Aegyptus of Greek myth is not a genuinely Egyptian figure, but a figment of Egypt in the European imagination.

In the second or third century CE, Antoninus Liberalis[3] tells of another Aegyptos, who was a young man of Thessaly. He was the companion of Neophron, but the lover of Timandra, Neophron's mother; he became the victim of Neophron's revenge, when Neophron arranged a night-time substitution, so that Aegyptos committed involuntary incest with his mother, Bules. Zeus transformed Egyptos and Neophron into eagles and Timandra into a kite. Many of the transformations in Antoninus' prose compilation are found nowhere else, and some may simply be inventions of Antoninus; this story combines several themes of Hellenistic Romance. The placement of an Aegyptus in Thessaly is inexplicable.

Notes

  1. ^ Egypt took its name from his, according to folk etymology (see the article Copt); thus for Euripides, in his tragedy Helen, Aegyptus has become Egypt itself: "Proteus, while he lived, was King here, ruling the whole of Aigyptos from his palace on the island of Pharos."
  2. ^ According to pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 2.1.4-5.
  3. ^ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses, v.

References

  • Stewart, M. People, Places & Things: Aegyptus (1), Greek Mythology: From the Iliad to the Fall of the Last Tyrant. [1]
  • Jean Vertemont, Dictionnaire des mythologies indo-europeenes, 1997.

 
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Classical Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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