As For Charaxos, When After Redeeming Rhodopis He
Returned Back To Mytilene, Sappho In An Ode Violently Abused Him.
Of
Rhodopis then I shall say no more.
After Mykerinos the priests said Asychis became king of Egypt, and he
made for Hephaistos the temple gateway which is towards the sunrising,
by far the most beautiful and the largest of the gateways; for while
they all have figures carved upon them and innumerable ornaments of
building besides, this has them very much more than the rest. In this
king's reign they told me that, as the circulation of money was very
slow, a law was made for the Egyptians that a man might have that
money lent to him which he needed, by offering as security the dead
body of his father; and there was added moreover to this law another,
namely that he who lent the money should have a claim also to the
whole of the sepulchral chamber belonging to him who received it, and
that the man who offered that security should be subject to this
penalty, if he refused to pay back the debt, namely that neither the
man himself should be allowed to have burial, when he died, either in
that family burial-place or in any other, nor should he be allowed to
bury any of his kinsmen whom he lost by death. This king desiring to
surpass the kings of Egypt who had arisen before him left as a
memorial of himself a pyramid which he made of bricks and on it there
is an inscription carved in stone and saying thus: "Despise not me in
comparison with the pyramids of stone, seeing that I excel them as
much as Zeus excels the other gods; for with a pole they struck into
the lake, and whatever of the mud attached itself to the pole, this
they gathered up and made bricks, and in such manner they finished
me."
Such were the deeds which this king performed: and after him reigned a
blind man of the city of Anysis, whose name was Anysis. In his reign
the Ethiopians and Sabacos the king of the Ethiopians marched upon
Egypt with a great host of men; so this blind man departed, flying to
the fen-country, and the Ethiopian was king over Egypt for fifty
years, during which he performed deeds as follows: - whenever any man
of the Egyptians committed any transgression, he would never put him
to death, but he gave sentence upon each man according to the
greatness of the wrong-doing, appointing them to work at throwing up
an embankment before that city from whence each man came of those who
committed wrong. Thus the cities were made higher still than before;
for they were embanked first by those who dug the channels in the
reign of Sesostris, and then secondly in the reign of the Ethiopian,
and thus they were made very high: and while other cities in Egypt
also stood high, I think in the town at Bubastis especially the earth
was piled up.
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