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.