Book 2
The girl did as her father told her, and the thief, learning why she was doing this, did as follows, wanting to get the better of the king by craft.
He cut the arm off a fresh corpse at the shoulder, and went to the king's daughter, carrying it under his cloak, and when asked the same question as the rest, he said that his most impious act had been when he had cut the head off his brother who was caught in a trap in the king's treasury; and his shrewdest, that after making the guards drunk he had cut down his brother's hanging body.
When she heard this, the princess grabbed for him; but in the darkness the thief let her have the arm of the corpse; and clutching it, she held on, believing that she had the arm of the other; but the thief, after giving it to her, was gone in a flash out the door.
When this also came to the king's ears, he was astonished at the man's ingenuity and daring, and in the end, he sent a proclamation to every town, promising the thief immunity and a great reward if he would come into the king's presence.
The thief trusted the king and came before him; Rhampsinitus was very admiring and gave him his daughter to marry on the grounds that he was the cleverest of men; for as the Egyptians (he said) surpassed all others in craft, so he surpassed the Egyptians.
They said that later this king went down alive to what the Greeks call Hades and there played dice with Demeter, and after winning some and losing some, came back with a gift from her of a golden hand towel.
From the descent of Rhampsinitus, when he came back, they said that the Egyptians celebrate a festival, which I know that they celebrate to this day, but whether this is why they celebrate, I cannot say.
On the day of the festival, the priests weave a cloth and bind it as a headband on the eyes of one of their number, whom they then lead, wearing the cloth, into a road that goes to the temple of Demeter; they themselves go back, but this priest with his eyes bandaged is guided (they say) by two wolvesJackals appear on Egyptian monuments, symbolizing Anubis, the guide of the dead. to Demeter's temple, a distance of three miles from the city, and led back again from the temple by the wolves to the same place.
These Egyptian stories are for the benefit of whoever believes such tales: my rule in this history is that I record what is said by all as I have heard it. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus are the rulers of the lower world. Isis and Osiris.
The Egyptians were the first who maintained the following doctrine, too, that the human soul is immortal, and at the death of the body enters into some other living thing then coming to birth; and after passing through all creatures of land, sea, and air, it enters once more into a human body at birth, a cycle which it completes in three thousand years.
There are Greeks who have used this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own; I know their names, but do not record them.
They said that Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt until the time of King Rhampsinitus was altogether well-governed and prospered greatly, but that Kheops, who was the next king, brought the people to utter misery. For first he closed all the temples, so that no one could sacrifice there; and next, he compelled all the Egyptians to work for him.
To some, he assigned the task of dragging stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), Africa Nile ; and after the stones were ferried across the river in boats, he organized others to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan.
They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten years the people wore themselves out building the road over which the stones were dragged, work which was in my opinion not much lighter at all than the building of the pyramidThe “Great Pyramid.”
(for the road is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and it is all of stone polished and carved with figures). The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand; these, the king meant to be burial-places for himself, and surrounded them with water, bringing in a channel from the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), Africa Nile .
The pyramid itself was twenty years in the making. Its base is square, each side eight hundred feet long, and its height is the same; the whole is of stone polished and most exactly fitted; there is no block of less than thirty feet in length.
This pyramid was made like stairs, which some call steps and others, tiers.
When this, its first form, was completed, the workmen used short wooden logs as levers to raise the rest of the stonesThat is, the stones which were to fill up the angles of the steps, and make the side of the pyramid a smooth inclined plane. The Pyramids built by Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus respectively are the pyramids of +Giza [31.216,30.16] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa Gizeh , near +Cairo [31.25,30.5] (inhabited place), Cairo, Urban, Egypt, Africa Cairo . ; they heaved up the blocks from the ground onto the first tier of steps;
when the stone had been raised, it was set on another lever that stood on the first tier, and the lever again used to lift it from this tier to the next.
It may be that there was a new lever on each tier of steps, or perhaps there was only one lever, quite portable, which they carried up to each tier in turn; I leave this uncertain, as both possibilities were mentioned.
But this is certain, that the upper part of the pyramid was finished off first, then the next below it, and last of all the base and the lowest part.
There are writings onOr, “in.” the pyramid in Egyptian characters indicating how much was spent on radishes and onions and garlic for the workmen; and I am sure that, when he read me the writing, the interpreter said that sixteen hundred talents of silver had been paid.
Now if that is so, how much must have been spent on the iron with which they worked, and the workmen's food and clothing, considering that the time aforesaid was spent in building, while hewing and carrying the stone and digging out the underground parts was, as I suppose, a business of long duration.
And so evil a man was Kheops that, needing money, he put his own daughter in a brothel and made her charge a fee (how much, they did not say). She did as her father told her, but was disposed to leave a memorial of her own, and asked of each coming to her that he give one stone;
and of these stones they said the pyramid was built that stands midmost of the three, over against the great pyramid; each side of it measures one hundred and fifty feet.
The Egyptians said that this Kheops reigned for fifty years; at his death he was succeeded by his brother Khephren, who was in all respects like Kheops. Khephren also built a pyramid, smaller than his brother's. I have measured it myself.
It has no underground chambers, nor is it entered like the other by a canal from the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), Africa Nile , but the river comes in through a built passage and encircles an island, in which, they say, Kheops himself lies.
This pyramid was built on the same scale as the other, except that it falls forty feet short of it in height; it stands near the great pyramid; the lowest layer of it is of variegated Ethiopian stone. Both of them stand on the same ridge, which is about a hundred feet high. Khephren, they said, reigned for fifty-six years.
Thus, they reckon that for a hundred and six years Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt was in great misery and the temples so long shut were never opened. The people hate the memory of these two kings so much that they do not much wish to name them, and call the pyramids after the shepherd Philitis, who then pastured his flocks in this placeThis is the form which Hdt. gives to the story of the rule of the “shepherds” (Hyksos) in +Lower Egypt [31,31] (region), Egypt, Africa Lower Egypt , perhaps from 2100 to 1600 B.C. .
The next king of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt , they said, was Kheops' son Mycerinus. Disliking his father's doings, he opened the temples and let the people, ground down to the depth of misery, go to their business and their sacrifices; and he was the most just judge among all the kings.
This is why he is praised above all the rulers of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt ; for not only were his judgments just, but Mycerinus would give any who were not satisfied with the judgment a present out of his own estate to compensate him for his loss.
Though mild toward his people and conducting himself as he did, yet he suffered calamities, the first of which was the death of his daughter, the only child of his household. Deeply grieved over this misfortune, he wanted to give her a burial somewhat more sumptuous than ordinary; he therefore made a hollow cow's image of gilded wood and placed the body of his dead daughter therein.
This cow was not buried in the earth but was to be seen even in my time, in the town of Saïs, where it stood in a furnished room of the palace; incense of all kinds is offered daily before it, and a lamp burns by it all through every night.
Near this cow in another chamber statues of Mycerinus' concubines stand, so the priests of Saïs said; and in fact there are about twenty colossal wooden figures there, made like naked women; but except what I was told, I cannot tell who these are.
But some tell the following story about the cow and the statues: that Mycerinus conceived a passion for his own daughter and then had intercourse with her against her will;
and they say that afterwards the girl strangled herself for grief, and that he buried her in this cow, but that her mother cut off the hands of the attendants who had betrayed the daughter to her father, and that now their statues are in the same condition as the living women were.
But this I believe to be a silly story, especially about the hands of the figures. For in fact we ourselves saw that the hands have fallen off through age, and were lying at their feet even in my day.
As for the cow, it is covered with a purple robe, only the head and neck exposed, encrusted with a very thick layer of gold. Between the horns is the golden figure of the sun's orb.
It does not stand, but kneels; it is as big as a live cow of great size. This image is carried out of the chamber once every year, whenever the Egyptians mourn the god whose name I omit in speaking of these matters:
then the cow is brought out into the light; for they say that before she died she asked her father, Mycerinus, that she see the sun once a yearThe cow-worship is no doubt the cult of Isis, honored at Saïs under the name Nit..