ing 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