In Each Place There Is A Figure Of A Man Cut In The Rock, Of
Four Cubits And A Span
In height, holding in his right hand a spear
and in his left a bow and arrows, and the other
Equipment which he has
is similar to this, for it is both Egyptian and Ethiopian: and from
the one shoulder to the other across the breast runs an inscription
carved in sacred Egyptian characters, saying thus, "This land with my
shoulders I won for myself." But who he is and from whence, he does
not declare in these places, though in other places he had declared
this. Some of those who have seen these carvings conjecture that the
figure is that of Memnon, but herein they are very far from the truth.
As this Egyptian Sesostris was returning and bringing back many men of
the nations whose lands he had subdued, when he came (said the
priests) to Daphnai in the district of Pelusion on his journey home,
his brother to whom Sesostris had entrusted the charge of Egypt
invited him and with him his sons to a feast; and then he piled the
house round with brushwood and set it on fire: and Sesostris when he
discovered this forthwith took counsel with his wife, for he was
bringing with him (they said) his wife also; and she counselled him to
lay out upon the pyre two of his sons, which were six in number, and
so to make a bridge over the burning mass, and that they passing over
their bodies should thus escape. This, they said, Sesostris did, and
two of his sons were burnt to death in this manner, but the rest got
away safe with their father. Then Sesostris, having returned to Egypt
and having taken vengeance on his brother employed the multitude which
he had brought in of those who whose lands he had subdued, as follows:
- these were they drew the stones which in the reign of this king were
brought to the temple of Hephaistos, being of very good size; and also
these were compelled to dig all the channels which now are in Egypt;
and thus (having no such purpose) they caused Egypt, which before was
all fit for riding and driving, to be no longer fit for this from
thenceforth: for from that time forward Egypt, though it is plain
land, has become all unfit for riding and driving, and the cause has
been these channels, which are many and run in all directions. But the
reason why the king cut up the land was this, namely because those of
the Egyptians who had their cities not on the river but in the middle
of the country, being in want of water when the river went down from
them, found their drink brackish because they had it from wells. For
this reason Egypt was cut up: and they said that this king distributed
the land to all the Egyptians, giving an equal square portion to each
man, and from this he made his revenue, having appointed them to pay a
certain rent every year: and if the river should take away anything
from any man's portion, he would come to the king and declare that
which had happened, and the king used to send men to examine and to
find out by measurement how much less the piece of land had become, in
order that for the future the man might pay less, in proportion to the
rent appointed: and I think that thus the art of geometry was found
out and afterwards came into Hellas also. For as touching the sun-dial
and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day, they were learnt
by the Hellenes from the Babylonians. He moreover alone of all the
Egyptian kings had rule over Ethiopia; and he left as memorials of
himself in front of the temple of Hephaistos two stone statues of
thirty cubits each, representing himself and his wife, and others of
twenty cubits each representing his four sons: and long afterwards the
priest of Hephaistos refused to permit Dareios the Persian to set up a
statue of himself in front of them, saying that deeds had not been
done by him equal to those which were done by Sesostris the Egyptian;
for Sesostris had subdued other nations besides, not fewer than he,
and also the Scythians; but Dareios had not been able to conquer the
Scythians: wherefore it was not just that he should set up a statue in
front of those which Sesostris had dedicated, if he did not surpass
him in his deeds. Which speech, they say, Dareios took in good part.
Now after Sesostris had brought his life to an end, his son Pheros,
they told me, received in succession the kingdom, and he made no
warlike expedition, and moreover it chanced to him to become blind by
reason of the following accident: - when the river had come down in
flood rising to a height of eighteen cubits, higher than ever before
that time, and had gone over the fields, a wind fell upon it and the
river became agitated by waves: and this king (they say) moved by
presumptuous folly took a spear and cast it into the midst of the
eddies of the stream; and immediately upon this he had a disease of
the eyes and was by it made blind. For ten years then he was blind,
and in the eleventh year there came to him an oracle from the city of
Buto saying that the time of his punishment had expired, and that he
should see again if he washed his eyes with the water of a woman who
had accompanied with her own husband only and had not had knowledge of
other men: and first he made trial of his own wife, and then, as he
continued blind, he went on to try all the women in turn; and when he
had at least regained his sight he gathered together all the women of
whom he had made trial, excepting her by whose means he had regained
his sight, to one city which now is named Erythrabolos, and having
gathered them to this he consumed them all by fire, as well as the
city itself; but as for her by whose means he had regained his sight,
he had her himself to wife.
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