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Hecataeus of Abdera

Hecataeus of Abdera

c. 360 BCEc. 290 BCE · Alexandria

Hecataeus of Abdera (late 4th-early 3rd century BCE) was a Greek historian and philosopher active in the early Ptolemaic period in Egypt. He wrote a work on Egypt that idealized its institutions and influenced later Greek ethnography, and he is also reported to have written about the Jewish people, making him an important early Greek source on both subjects. His works survive only in fragments and later quotations.

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AlexandriaEgypt

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About Alexandria

Alexandria (al-Iskandariyya) is the great Mediterranean port-city of northern Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and a leading centre of learning in antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (642) it remained a major commercial and scholarly hub; the Shadhili Sufi Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) took his nisba from the city, and the modernist reformer Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was active in Egypt's intellectual life there and in Cairo.

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Hecataeus of Abdera’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Hecataeus of Abdera’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)