HEAD OF RAMESES II.
CHAPTER V.
FROM SESOSTRIS TO SETHON.
I shall next mention king Sesostris. The priests said that he was the first who, setting out in ships of war from the Arabian Gulf, subdued those nations that dwell by the Red Sea.
There are also in Ionia two images of this king, carved on rocks, one on the way from Ephesia to Phocæa, the other from Sardis to Smyrna. In both places a man is carved, four cubits and a half high, holding a spear in his right hand, and a bow in his left, and the rest of his equipment in unison, for it is partly Egyptian and partly Ethiopian; from one shoulder to the other across the breast extend sacred Egyptian characters engraved, which have the following meaning: "I acquired this region by my own shoulders."
The priests tell a yarn of this Egyptian Sesostris, that returning and bringing with him many men from the nations whose territories he had subdued, when he arrived at the Pelusian Daphnæ, his brother, to whom he had committed the government of Egypt, invited him to an entertainment, and his sons with him, and caused wood to be piled up round the house and set on fire: but that Sesostris, being informed of this, immediately consulted with his wife, for he had taken his wife with him; she advised him to extend two of his six sons across the fire, and form a bridge over the burning mass, and that the rest should step on them and make their escape. Sesostris did so, and two of his sons were in this manner burned to death, but the rest, together with their father, were saved. Sesostris having returned to Egypt, and taken revenge on his brother, employed the multitude of prisoners whom he brought from the countries he had subdued in many remarkable works: these were the men who drew the huge stones which, in the time of this king, were conveyed to the temple of Vulcan; they, too, were compelled to dig all the canals now seen in Egypt; and thus by their involuntary labor made Egypt, which before was throughout practicable for horses and carriages, unfit for these purposes. But the king intersected the country with this network of canals for the reason that such of the Egyptians as occupied the inland cities, being in want of water when the river receded, were forced to use a brackish beverage unfit to drink, which they drew from wells. They said also that this king divided the country amongst all the Egyptians, giving an equal square allotment to each; and thence drew his revenues by requiring them to pay a fixed tax every year; if the river happened to take away a part of any one's allotment, he was to come to him and make known what had happened; whereupon the king sent persons to inspect and measure how much the land was diminished, that in future he might pay a proportionate part of the appointed tax. Land-measuring appears to me to have had its beginning from this act, and to have passed over into Greece; for the pole [12] and the sundial, and the division of the day into twelve parts, the Greeks learned from the Babylonians. This king was the only Egyptian that ever ruled over Ethiopia; he left as memorials in front of Vulcan's temple statues of stone: two of thirty cubits, of himself and his wife; and four, each of twenty cubits, of his sons. A long time after, the priest of Vulcan would not suffer Darius the Persian to place his statue before them, saying, "that deeds had not been achieved by him equal to those of Sesostris the Egyptian: for Sesostris had subdued other nations, not fewer than Darius had done, and the Scythians besides; but that Darius was not able to conquer the Scythians; wherefore it was not right for one who had not surpassed him in achievements to place his statue before his offerings." They relate, however, that Darius pardoned these observations.
BUST OF THOTHMES I.
After the death of Sesostris, his son Pheron succeeded to the kingdom; he undertook no military expedition, and happened to become blind through the following occurrence: the river having risen to a very great height for that time, eighteen cubits, it overflowed the fields, a storm of wind arose, and the river was tossed about in waves; whereupon they say that the king with great arrogance laid hold of a javelin, and threw it into the midst of the eddies of the river; and that immediately afterward he was seized with a pain in his eyes, and became blind. He continued blind for ten years; but in the eleventh, having escaped from this calamity, he dedicated offerings throughout all the celebrated temples, the most worthy of mention being two stone obelisks to the temple of the sun, each consisting of a single block of granite, and each a hundred cubits in length and eight cubits in breadth.