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After Mycerinus, the priests said, Asychis ascended the throne.
He built the eastern gateway of the temple of Vulcan, which in size
and beauty far surpasses the other three. All the four gateways have
figures graven on them, and a vast amount of architectural ornament,
but the gateway of Asychis is by far the most richly adorned. In the
reign of this king, money being scarce and commercial dealings
straitened, a law was passed that the borrower might pledge his
father's body to raise the sum whereof he had need. A proviso was
appended to this law, giving the lender authority over the entire
sepulchre of the borrower, so that a man who took up money under this
pledge, if he died without paying the debt, could not obtain burial
either in his own ancestral tomb, or in any other, nor could he during
his lifetime bury in his own tomb any member of his family. The same
king, desirous of eclipsing all his predecessors upon the throne, left
as a monument of his reign a pyramid of brick. It bears an
inscription, cut in stone, which runs thus: "Despise me not in
comparison with the stone pyramids; for I surpass them all, as much
as Jove surpasses the other gods. A pole was plunged into a lake,
and the mud which clave thereto was gathered; and bricks were made of
the mud, and so I was formed." Such were the chief actions of this prince.
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