HELEN IN EGYPT

By Epistate

Helen of Troy by Rossetti, wearing not-very-Greek dress!

Between the recent release of Wolfgang Petersen' s Troy movie and the upcoming Opet festival, HistoryWalkers have been abuzz with two major topics: the Trojan War and ancient Egypt. Let's put both of these subjects together and take a look at the ancient literary tradition known as the Helen in Egypt story.

We all know the version in which Helen, Queen of Sparta, is either abducted or seduced by Paris of Troy and is taken off to Troy with him. This causes a problem for an entire generation of Greek men because once upon a time in their youth they had all wanted to marry this Spartan sexpot themselves. Having sworn an oath to support Helen's husband, whoever he might turn out to be (each secretly hoping, of course, that he himself would be chosen as that husband), the former rivals were all bound to sail to Troy with Menelaus to recover his wandering wife.

Well, these bare facts are pretty much a "given" in the mythological record. But exactly what happened once Paris and Helen were on their way to Troy? According to the Helen in Egypt variant, they never got there. So if you've ever wondered why the Trojans didn't just give Helen back and end the war, maybe the answer is they couldn't do so because they'd never had her in the first place.

The oldest version of the Helen in Egypt variant is the "palinode" of the Sicilian lyric poet Stesichorus, c. 640-555 B.C.E. We only have a brief fragment from his poem, quoted by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus 243a (Plato also mentions the story of the palinode briefly in Republic 9.586c). According to the Phaedrus, Stesichorus addresses Helen directly:
That story is not true.
You never sailed in the benched ships.
You never went to the city of Troy.
The word "palin" means "again," so a "palinode" is a singing again, a recantation of an earlier poem. The story goes that Stesichorus had earlier composed a scathing indictment of Helen, a poem in which he attempted to bring her to justice and show how wicked she was. The gods blinded him for his insolence, but after he wrote the palinode and took it all back his sight was miraculously restored.

Herodotus. Image from CrystaLinks

The Helen in Egypt story is also mentioned by Herodotus, the "Father of History," c. 484-418 B.C.E. Herodotus's main purpose in his "History" is to explain the reasons for the tensions between the Persians and the Greeks, but he takes plenty of digressions along the way. He remarks that the clash between east and west goes all the way back to the Trojan War, which enables him to bring in some tidbits about the war with Troy. One of these is the fate of Helen. In Book 2, 113 ff, Herodotus explains how on his own trip through Egypt, the priests there told him that the guilty couple had been blown ashore in Egypt by an adverse wind and detained by the justice-loving King Proteus, who scolded Paris for stealing another man's wife and insisted on taking temporary custody of Helen... and all the Spartan wealth she had brought with her. Paris returned to Troy alone, but the Greek army wasn't far behind.

After the rape of Helen, a vast army of Greeks, wishing to render help to Menelaus, set sail for the Teucrian territory; on their arrival they disembarked, and formed their camp, after which they sent ambassadors to Ilium, of whom Menelaus was one. The embassy was received within the walls, and demanded the restoration of Helen with the treasures which [Paris] had carried off, and likewise required satisfaction for the wrong done. The Teucrians gave at once the answer in which they persisted ever afterwards, backing their assertions sometimes even with oaths, to wit, that neither Helen, nor the treasures claimed, were in their possession,- both the one and the other had remained, they said, in Egypt; and it was not just to come upon them for what Proteus, king of Egypt, was detaining. The Greeks, imagining that the Teucrians were merely laughing at them, laid siege to the town, and never rested until they finally took it. As, however, no Helen was found, and they were still told the same story, they at length believed in its truth, and despatched Menelaus to the court of Proteus. (trans. George Rawlinson)

Ooooops.

Perhaps the most elaborate--and certainly the funniest--version of the story is told in the Helen of Euripides, 480-406 B.C.E. Although it's a tragedy, this is one of those tragedies that has a happy ending and several comic touches, which was a genre Euripides handled especially well. The play begins with Helen patiently waiting for her husband to come collect her. Good King Proteus has died, and his lusty son wants (surprise!) to marry her, so she spends most of her time clinging to the altar for sanctuary. She explains in a soliloquy that she was innocently wandering outside the palace one day when Hermes showed up, wrapped her in a cloud, and whisked her away to Egypt. Imagine her surprise. It seems Hera was so cranky after Paris awarded the prize to Aphrodite in the famous "golden apple" beauty contest, she was determined that the war was going to take place no matter what!

Euripides. Image from Quotes

This story has a different twist, though: the vengeful Hera had sent a cloud likeness of Helen to Troy with Paris, and it's the cloud that the troops have retrieved, so everybody thinks they've got the real Helen and the gods have to wreck Menelaus's ship (there's always a shipwreck in this story!) to get him to come to Egypt.. Soon, the marooned Menelaus shows up, clad in an assortment of seaweed and miscellaneous ship's gear so ridiculous Aristophanes lampooned it in his Thesmophoriazusae the following year. The cloud-Helen disappears into thin air, the happy couple is reunited, and (hopefully) Menelaus takes a bath.
As an indictment against war in general, the Helen in Egypt story can be--and often has been--seen as a powerful statement. After all, what is the message in the end? The most famous and glorified war in history, and all those men fought and died... for an illusion. As Plato likens this struggle to the vain pursuit of pleasures in the Republic (Benjamin Jowett's translation), "they implant in the minds of fools insane desires of themselves; and they are fought about as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen at Troy, in ignorance of the truth."