Histories

When Sesostris died, he was succeeded in the kingship (the priests said) by his son Pheros [*](Manetho's list shows no such name. It is probably not a name but a title, Pharaoh.). This king waged no wars, and chanced to become blind, for the following reason: the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), AfricaNile came down in such a flood as there had never been, rising to a height of thirty feet, and the water that flowed over the fields was roughened by a strong wind;

then, it is said, the king was so audacious as to seize a spear and hurl it into the midst of the river eddies. Right after this, he came down with a disease of the eyes, and became blind. When he had been blind for ten years, an oracle from the city of +Kawm al-Farain [30.733,31.2] (deserted settlement), Kafr ash-Shaykh, Lower Egypt, Egypt, Africa Buto declared to him that the term of his punishment was drawing to an end, and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never had intercourse with any man but her own husband.

Pheros tried his own wife first; and, as he remained blind, all women, one after another. When he at last recovered his sight, he took all the women whom he had tried, except the one who had made him see again, and gathered them into one town, the one which is now called “Red Clay”; having concentrated them together there, he burnt them and the town;

but the woman by whose means he had recovered his sight, he married. Most worthy of mention among the many offerings which he dedicated in all the noteworthy temples for his deliverance from blindness are the two marvellous stone obelisks which he set up in the temple of the Sun. Each of these is made of a single block, and is over one hundred and sixty-six feet high and thirteen feet thick.

Pheros was succeeded (they said) by a man of Mit Rahina [31.25,29.85] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaMemphis, whose name in the Greek tongue was Proteus. This Proteus has a very attractive and well-appointed temple precinct at Mit Rahina [31.25,29.85] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaMemphis, south of the temple of Hephaestus.

Around the precinct live Phoenicians of +Tyre [35.183,33.266] (inhabited place), Al-Janub, Lebanon, Asia Tyre, and the whole place is called the Camp of the Tyrians. There is in the precinct of Proteus a temple called the temple of the Stranger Aphrodite; I guess this is a temple of Helen, daughter of Tyndarus, partly because I have heard the story of Helen's abiding with Proteus, and partly because it bears the name of the Foreign Aphrodite: for no other of Aphrodite's temples is called by that name.