The Old and the Restless: The Egyptians and the Scythians in Herodotus' Histories
On a historiographical level, if we look at all the ethnographic material in the Histories, it appears that Herodotus wishes the reader to view the world and its peoples in a sort of grid. Scythia and Egyptians are the extremes (in several ways) and other central cultures like the Greeks and Persians fall into place between them.
The Closure of Herodotus' Histories
On the other hand, during the past five or six decades a number of observations have accumulated to suggest that the ending of the Histories presents a paradox: While the book is open-ended as a strictly historical narrative, as a work of archaic art it is perfectly and unambiguously closed.