Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aegyptus.
The gallery
The Danaides Killing Their Husbands
Unknown (French illuminator), 15th century
BnF Français 874 (fol. 170v) stages the wedding-night massacre of Aegyptus' fifty sons — the bridegrooms cut down in their beds by Danaus' daughters. The miniature is the visual afterlife of Aegyptus' claim: his line dies in Argos so that Danaus' may rule.
Plate with Hypermnestra Watching Lynceus Take Her Father's Crown
Francesco Xanto Avelli, 1537
Xanto's maiolica plate (Walters Art Museum 48.1324) shows Lynceus — Aegyptus' sole surviving son — seizing Danaus' crown while Hypermnestra looks on. The Urbino workshop turns the myth's aftermath into tableware: the one son who escaped the knives and avenged his brothers.
The Danaides in Hell
Nicolas Bertin, c. 1700–1715
Bertin's underworld canvas shows the Danaids at their leaking vessels — eternal labour for murdering Aegyptus' sons on their wedding night. The French baroque scene keeps Aegyptus present as the bereaved twin: his fifty heirs become the crime that fills Tartarus with water that never stays.
In music & on stage
In play
The Suppliants
Aeschylus
Aeschylus keeps Aegyptus offstage but present: his sons pursue the Danaids to Argos, and the king's will is the force the suppliants flee.
Aegyptus
The eponymous twin of Danaus — king of Egypt whose fifty sons chase the fifty Danaids — remains the other half of the Argive foundation myth.
Danaïdes
The murdered sons of Aegyptus haunt the Danaid story: their wedding night becomes the underworld's leaking jars, and his name survives in their crime.