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.
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