Hecataeus of Abdera

c. 360 BCE–c. 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

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Herophilus of Chalcedon, Lycophron, Callimachus, Erasistratus of Ceos, Apollonius Rhodius

Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time

Timocharisscience

See other sages who lived in Alexandria→

In the same place & time

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

In the same tradition

Herophilus of Chalcedon, Lycophron, Callimachus, Erasistratus of Ceos, Apollonius Rhodius

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.