This marble life-sized bust of Herodotus is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts him as an older man with a bushy beard that is parted in the middle. A Museum placard indicates that this is a 2nd century AD copy of a 4th century BC bronze Greek original. It was found in Benha in lower Egypt.
Wikipedia (
visit link) has a photo of this same sculpture and informs us:
"Herodotus... was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) and lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484–425 BC). He has been called "The Father of History" (first conferred by Cicero), as well as "The Father of Lies" (first conferred by Voltaire). He was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent, and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. The Histories—his masterpiece and the only work he is known to have produced—is a record of his "inquiry" (or ?st???a historía, a word that passed into Latin and acquired its modern meaning of "history"), being an investigation of the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars and including a wealth of geographical and ethnographical information. Although some of his stories were fanciful and others inaccurate, he claimed he was reporting only what had been told to him. Little is known of his personal history...
As a historian, Herodotus was sarcastically referred as the father of lies for "quoting eyewitnesses about things they could have never seen, inventing and manipulating factual material." Ancient historians who followed Herodotus preferred an element of show to accuracy and fairness, aiming to give pleasure with “exciting events, great dramas, bizarre exotica.”
Although the factual accuracy of the works of Herodotus is defended by some, others regard his works as being unreliable as a historical source. Fehling writes of "a problem recognized by everybody", namely that much of what Herodotus tells us cannot be taken at face value.
The accuracy of the works of Herodotus have been criticized since his own era. Sparks writes that "In antiquity, Herodotus had acquired the reputation of being unreliable, biased, parsimonious in his praise of heroes, and mendacious". His ancient critics included Cicero, Aristotle, Josephus and Plutarch. Cicero (On the Laws I.5) said the works of Herodotus were full of legends or “fables”, and Harpocration wrote a book on "the lies of Herodotus". Duris of Samos called Herodotus a myth-monger. Voltaire described Herodotus as both "the father of history" and the "father of lies", and Hartog more recently also called him "The father of all liars".
The reliability of Herodotus is particularly criticized when writing about Egypt. Alan B. Lloyd states that as a historical document, the writings of Herodotus are seriously defective, and that he was working from "inadequate sources". Nielsen writes that: "Though we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of Herodotus having been in Egypt, it must be said that his narrative bears little witness to it." Fehling states that Herodotus never traveled up the Nile River, and that almost everything he says about Egypt and Ethiopia is doubtful.[53][54] About the claim of Herodotus that the Pharaoh Sesostris campaigned in Europe, and that he left a colony in Colchia, Fehling states that "there is not the slightest bit of history behind the whole story". Fehling concludes that the works of Herodotus are intended as fiction. Depew and Obbink concur that much of the content of the works of Herodotus are literary devices.
In contrast, many scholars (Aubin, Heeren, Davidson, Diop, Poe, Welsby, Celenko, Volney, Montet, Bernal, Jackson, DuBois, Strabo), ancient and modern, routinely cite Herodotus in their works on the Nile Valley. Some of these scholars (Welsby, Heeren, Aubin, Diop, etc.) explicitly mention the reliability of Herodotus' work on the Nile Valley and demonstrate corroboration of Herodotus' writings by modern scholars. Welsby said that "archaeology graphically confirms some of Herodotus' observations." A.H.L. Heeren (1838) quoted Herodotus throughout his work and provided corroboration by scholars of his day regarding several passages (source of the Nile, location of Meroe, etc.). To further his work on the Egyptians and Assyrians, Aubin uses Herodotus' accounts in various passages and defends Herodotus' position against modern scholars. Aubin said Herodotus was "the author of the first important narrative history of the world" and that Herodotus "visited Egypt." Diop provides several examples (the inundations of the Nile) that he claims support his view that Herodotus was "quite scrupulous, objective, scientific for his time." Diop claims that Herodotus "always distinguishes carefully between what he has seen and what he has been told." Diop also claims that Strabo corroborated Herodotus' ideas about the Black Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians.
Herodotus claimed to have visited Babylon. The absence of any mention of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in his work has attracted further attacks on his credibility. In response Dalley has proposed that the Hanging Gardens may have been in Ninevah rather than in Babylon."