<HTML>Take a look at the geography of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is limited to the Aegean, and not particularly great either in the Odyssey. Both books were brought together by Homer around 400 years after the fall of Troy, and written down in their present form around 500 BC (correct me if I am wrong, Garrett). They are perfect examples of oral traditions and it is very much speculation that a kind called Menelaus existed in the form in the Iliad, let alone whether he travelled to Egypt.
As Herodotus was the first Greek to write down a history of his travels in the breadth he did, I am not surprised to find him to have written the first Greek account. Greeks were preoccupied with their own culture and considered non-Greeks to be "barbarians". They had their own monumnets and events to write about rather than bothering to write about a foreign land's monuments.
Mike.</HTML>
