La geografía de Egipto en Diodoro de Sicilia

This paper attempts to show that the geographical chapters concerning Egypt in the first book of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca are not to be explained, as it is usually done, from the viewpoint of an ethnographical utopia, but from that of the encomium of a country, recognized as such in ancient handbooks of Rhetoric. It also attempts to point out that the ultimate responsibility of these chapters must be ascribed to Diodorus himself, who has described the geography of Egypt in Book I in an encomiastic way quite coherent with the role that it plays in the following books of his Bibliotheca