servation of himself and the rest of his family. According to other accounts, his brother, having seized the throne during his absence, openly rebelled against him, and even offered violence to the queen; and they ascribe his hurried return to the anxiety he felt on receiving intelligence of his perfidy.

Sesostris was no sooner delivered frem the sinister attempts of his brother, than he returned thanks to the gods for his escape, and raised six colossal marble statues before the temple of Pthah, or Vulcan, at Memphis; two of himself and the queen, which were thirty cubits in height, and four of twenty cubits, each representing one of his children. Many splendid monuments were also erected by him in different parts of Egypt, in token of his gratitude to the gods for the great victories he had obtained; and the captives he took in war were employed in transporting the immense blocks of stone used in the construction of the temple at Memphis, and in other ornamental and useful works. He also set up two splendid obelisks *, and dedicated a ship 280 cubits in length to the god of Thebes; and his statue, which was erected in the temple of Vulcan, together with those of his predecessors, in order to show the esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, had the first and most conspicuous post assigned to it, nor did any succeeding monarch obtain permission to place his own before that of Se

* Diodorus says 120 cubits: 180 feet high! i. 57.

sostris. Darius, indeed, claimed this honour, upon the plea that his conquests had equalled those of his Egyptian precursor; but, after they had weighed his claims, the priests of Memphis declared him to have been eclipsed by Sesostris, inasmuch as he had vanquished the Scythians, who had never yielded to the arms of Darius. This candid remonstrance of the priests was far from displeasing the Persian monarch, who, in acknowledging the justice of his precedence, expressed a hope that, if he lived as long as Sesostris, he should be enabled to equal his exploits.

In every building erected by his captives he put up an inscription purporting that it was the work of those he had taken in war, and that no native* was employed in the laborious part of the undertaking; and in every city of Egypt he dedicated a monument to the presiding deity of the place. The same captives were also employed in digging large canals, and in raising dykes and embankments, for the purposes of irrigation, the protection of the townst and lands, and the distribution of the water of the Nile during the inundation; and though these had been previously established throughout the country by his predecessors, the superior scale on which they were now constructed, the many wise regulations he introduced relative to landed property, and the accurate surveys he ordered to be made, in order to ascertain the levels and extent

* Diod. i. 56.

+ Herodotus in another place (ii. 137.) says, the towns were elevated in the reign of Sesostris when the canals were made.

of every person's estate, obtained for Sesostris the credit of having been the first to intersect the plains of Egypt with canals, and of having introduced the science of mensuration and land sur

veying. Herodotus supposes that Egypt, "previous to his reign, was conveniently adapted to those who travelled on horses or in carriages," and that afterwards it became disagreeable to traverse the country on horseback, and utterly impossible in chariots; but as many dykes were raised, as at present, to facilitate the communication from one town to another, and as the journey along the edge of the desert is not only more commodious, but shorter, for those who go by land from Lower to Upper Egypt, neither Sesostris nor his predecessors were guilty of the great impediments complained of by the historian. Nor is it probable that this monarch was the first to suggest the expediency of ascertaining the quantity of land irrigated by the rising Nile, or the justice of proportioning the taxes to the benefits derived from its fertilising influence; and however we may be inclined to believe that geometry may have originated in Egypt, in consequence of the necessity of ascertaining the changes which annually take place on the banks of the Nile, we cannot suppose that no means were devised for this purpose previous to his reign.

Sesostris is reported to have raised a wall on the east side of Egypt*, extending from Pelusium

* In my Egypt and Thebes (p. 368.) I have shown that Voltaire is wrong in the inference he draws from this fact.

along the edge of the desert by Heliopolis*, 1500 stadia in length, or about 187 Roman miles; and that such a wall was actually made by one of the Egyptian monarchs, we have positive proof from the vestiges which remain in different parts of the valley. It was not confined to Lower Egypt, or to the east of the Delta, from Pelusium to Heliopolis, but continued to the Ethiopian frontier at Syene; and though the increase of the alluvial deposit has almost concealed it in the low lands overflowed during the inundation by the waters of the Nile, it is traced in many of the higher parts, especially when founded upon the rocky eminences bordering the river. The modern Egyptians have several idle legends respecting this wall, some of which ascribe it to a king anxious to prevent an obnoxious stranger from intruding on the retirement of his beautiful daughter: and the name applied to it is Gisr el Agoós, or " the old man's dyke.” It is of crude brick; the principal portion that remains may be seen at Gebel e'Tayrt, a little below Minyeh; and I have even traced small fragments of the same kind of building on the western side of the valley, particularly in the Fyoom.

Of the humane character of the ancient Egyptians, we have several strong proofs; but, if we may trust the authority of Diodorus + and Pliny §,

* Diod. (i. 57.) says to Heliopolis.

+ I have already noticed it in my Egypt and Thebes, p. 367. Diod. i. 58.

Plin. xxxiii. 15. "Sesostri Ægypti rege, tam superbo, ut prodatur annis quibusque sorte reges singulos e subjectis jungere ad currum solitus, atque ita triumphare."

Sesostris tarnished his glory by an act of great oppression, compelling captive monarchs to draw his chariot as he proceeded to celebrate his triumph. And the Theban artists have not been ashamed to introduce a similar instance of cruelty in the sculptures of the temple at Medeenet Haboo, representing the triumphal return of Remeses III.* after his conquests in the Eastern war: where three captives are tied beneath the axle of his chariot, while others bound with ropes walk by his horse's side, to be presented to the deity of the place. +

The latter days of Sesostris were embittered by the misfortune of losing his sight, which so affected him that he put a period to his existence: an act far from being considered unworthy of a pious and good man, but looked upon by his subjects, and even by the priests themselves, as becoming a hero admired by men and beloved by the gods, whose merited gifts of eternal happiness he had hastened to enjoy.

He was succeeded by his son, the Pheron of Herodotus, the Sesoosis II. of Diodorus, and the Nuncoreus of Pliny. Like his father, he was affected by a weakness of the eyes, which terminated in total blindness: but though it continued during eleven years, he at length recovered, owing more probably to some operation which the noted skill of the Egyptian surgeons had suggested, than to the ridiculous cause assigned by Herodotus. Diodorus and Pliny both agree with the historian + Vide Plate I.

* And of Osirei, at Karnak.