Ancient Egypt

[Kendall K. Down]

In the first book of his history, Diodorus Siculus deals with Egypt -
its history, geography and customs. in Chapter 77 of Book I he has this
to say:

==========
Pregnant women who had been condemned to death were not executed until
they had been delivered. The same law has also been enacted by many
Greek states, since they held it entirely unjust that the innocent
should suffer the same punishment as the guilty, that a penalty should
be exacted of two for only one transgression, and, further, that, since
the crime had been actuated by an evil intention, a being as yet without
intelligence should receive the same correction, and, what is the most
important consideration, that in view of the fact that the guilt had
been laid at the door of the pregnant mother it was by no means proper
that the child, who belongs to the father as well as to the mother,
should be despatched; for a man may properly consider judges who spare
the life of a murderer to be no worse than other judges who destroy that
which is guilty of no crime whatsoever.
==========

Unfortunately, with these Greek and Roman writers it is by no means
certain that what they wrote was actually so. In the first place their
sources of information were usually Egyptian priests, who seem to have
been as mendacious as modern Egyptian guides, willing to embroider truth
beyond recognition so as to cast their country in a good light.

However some of the writers used the supposed histories of other
countries to present what they felt was a superior form of government
for the emulation of their own government. A prime example of this sort
of didactic writing is the "Cyropaedia" by Xenophon, who claims to tell
about the upbringing of Cyrus, but in fact presents a completely
unrealistic and utterly utopian account of how things *ought* to be,
rather than how they actually were in either Greece or Persia.

The relevance of the above to our present discussion of abortion will
not, I trust, be lost.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down