I went to the link you provided which was a listing of various articles. I looked at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2555535/replies?c=7
I found that we have already commented together on Sesostris and Colchis. What I had not noticed/remembered was that Sesostris had conquered the Parthians. I had noticed that the Parthian “queens” were buried with tall headresses that reminded me of the crowns of upper and lower Egypt. If they were conquered by Egypt, then that would make sense. Of course they might have heard that areas that submitted were not treated badly, and done the same. This could explain why they were so strong and successful in later years—adopted armaments and ruling methods, while strengthening themselves to fight better later, also not having all their young fighters killed. This is interesting given my curiosity about Crassus and Cassius and Roman history regarding the Parthians.
The Egyptians Herodotus talked with told him some good information (for example, why the Nile floods “out of season”; they told him several explanations which were not true, then the real one which he regarded as least likely) along with some other stuff which sounds decadent (like the inscriptions which were carved into the facing stones of the Great Pyramid — they’re gone now — gave the figures of how many onions were eaten by the construction crews), and not unlike the whoppers told by tour guides in most places to this day. Sesostris didn’t make it to Colchis, apparently no other pharaoh did either, and the stories about him had become conflated among his Egyptian sources.
OTOH, Herodotus has been shown to be correct so many times, and was circumspect in the information he related (the example of the Nile flood above shows what I mean), that it would be rash at best to brush him off.
IMHO there’s a low-level form of insanity that persists about Herodotus right up to this minute, and that consists of blanket claims as to his unreliability. He included disclaimers, such as, I didn’t see this with my own eyes, but only heard of it from others who had traveled there, and one of these tales had to do with some oddball practice in some Persian Empire backwater (he traveled in the Persian Empire, which may be why Plutarch badmouthed him). This story was widely doubted, and yet archaeology confirmed the practice not many years ago — but the news story I saw about it said “Herodotus, wrong again”. Whomever wrote that was a lying jackass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesostris
http://www.livius.org/source-content/herodotus-on-sesostris-reliefs/
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/herodotus/sesostris.htm