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On the death of Sesostris, his son Pheron, the priests said,
mounted the throne. He undertook no warlike expeditions; being struck
with blindness, owing to the following circumstance. The river had
swollen to the unusual height of eighteen cubits, and had overflowed
all the fields, when, a sudden wind arising, the water rose in great
waves. Then the king, in a spirit of impious violence, seized his
spear, and hurled it into the strong eddies of the stream. Instantly
he was smitten with disease of the eyes, from which after a little
while he became blind, continuing without the power of vision for ten
years. At last, in the eleventh year, an oracular announcement
reached him from the city of Buto, to the effect, that "the time of
his punishment had run out, and he should recover his sight by washing
his eyes with urine. He must find a woman who had been faithful to her
husband, and had never preferred to him another man." The king,
therefore, first of all made trial of his wife, but to no purpose he
continued as blind as before. So he made the experiment with other
women, until at length he succeeded, and in this way recovered his
sight. Hereupon he assembled all the women, except the last, and
bringing them to the city which now bears the name of Erythrabolus
(Red-soil), he there burnt them all, together with the place
itself. The woman to whom he owed his cure, he married, and after
his recovery was complete, he presented offerings to all the temples of
any note, among which the best worthy of mention are the two stone
obelisks which he gave to the temple of the Sun. These are
magnificent works; each is made of a single stone, eight cubits
broad, and a hundred cubits in height.
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