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bundy · 05-20-2004, 11:35 PM

When Sesostris died, he was succeeded by his son Pheros, a prince who undertook no military adventures. He went blind, and the reason for it is explained in the following story:

one year the Nile rose to an excessive height, as much as twenty-seven feet, and when all the fields were under water it began to blow hard, so that the river got very rough. The king in insensate rage seized a spear and hurled it into the swirling waters, and immediately thereafter he was attacked by a disease of the eyes, and became blind. Ha was blind for ten years, and in the eleventh he received an oracle from the city of Buto to the effect that the time of his punishment being now ended, he would recover his sight, if he washed his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never lain with any man except her husband. He tried his wife first, but without success; then he tried other women, a great many, one after another, until at last his sight was restored. Then he collected within the walls of a town, now called Red Clod, all the women except the one whose urine had proved efficacious, set the place on fire, and burnt them all to death, town and all; afterwards he married the woman who had been the means of curing him. In gratitude for his recovery he dedicated a number of offerings in all the temples of repute; but the most remarkable of them were two stone obelisks which he set up in the precinct of the temple of the Sun. These were well worth seeing; they are twelve feet broad and a hundred and fifty feet high, each hewn from a single block of stone.

Pheros was succeeded by a native of Memphis, whose name in the Greek language was Proteus. To this day there is a sacred precinct of his at Memphis, very fine and richly adorned, and situatead south of the temple of Hephaestus. The whole district hereabouts is known as the Camp of the Tyrians, because the houses in the neighbourhood are occupied by Phoenicians from Tyre. Within the enclosure there is a temple dedicated to the foreign Aphrodite. I should guess, myself, that it was built in honour of Helen the daughter of Tyndareus, not only because i have heard it said that she passed some time at the court of Proteus, but also, and more particularly, because of the description of Aphrodite as 'the foreigner', a title never given to this goddess in any of her other temples. I questioned the priests about the story of Helen, and they told me in reply that Paris was on his way home from Sparta with his stolen bride, when, somewhere in the Aegean sea, he met foul weather, which drove his ship towards Egypt, until at last, the gale continuing as bad as ever, he found himself on the coast, and managed to get ashore at the Salt-pans, in the mouth of the Nile now called the Canopic. Here on the beach there was a temple, which still exists, dedicated to Heracles, and in connection with it there is a very ancient custom, which has remained unaltered to my day. If a runaway slave takes refuge in this shrine and allows the sacred marks, which are the sign of his submission to the service of the god, to be set upon his body, his master, no matter who he is, cannot lay hands on him. Now some of Paris' servants found out about this and, wishing to get him into trouble, deserted, and fled as suppliants to the temple and told against him the whole story of his abduction of Helen and his wicked treatment of Menelaus. They bought these charges against their master not only before the temple priests, but also before the warden of that mouth of the Nile, a man named Thonis. Thonis at once sent a dispatch to Proteus at Memphis. 'A Trojan stranger (the message ran) has arrived here from Greece, where he has been guilty of an abominable crime: first he seduced the wife of his host, then carried her off together with a great deal of valuable property; and now stress of weather has forced him to land on this coast. Are we to let him to sail away again in possession of his stolen goods, or should we confiscate them?'

Proteus answered: 'No matter who it is that has committed this crime against his friend, arrest him and send him to me, that i may hear what he can say for himself.' Thonis accordingly arrested Paris, helf his ships, and took both him and Helen to Memphis, together with the stolen property and the servants who had taken sanctuary in the temple. On their arrival Proteus asked Paris who he was and where he had come from, and Paris gave him his anem and all the details of his family and a true account of his voyage; but when he was further asked how he had got possession of Helen, then, instead of telling the truth, he began to vacillate, until the runaway servants convicted him of lying and told the whole story of his crime. Finally Proteus gave his judgement: 'If,' he said, 'I did not consider it a matter of great importance that i have never yet put to death any stranger who has been forced upon my coasts by stress of weather, I should have punished you for the sake of your Greek host. To be welcomed as a guest, and to repay that kindness by so foul a deed! Your are a villain. You seduced your friend's wife, and, as if that were not enough, persuaded her to escape with you on the wings of passion you roused. Even that did not content you - but you must bring with you besides the treasure you have stolen from your host's house. But though i cannot punish you a stranger with death, I will not allow you to take away your ill-gotten gains: I will keep this woman and the treause, until the Greek to whom they belong chooses to come and fetch them. As for you and the companions of your voyage, i give you three days in which to leave my country - and to find an anchorage elsewhere. If you are not gone by then, I shall treat you as enemies.'

This was the account i had heard from the priests about the arrival of Helen at Proteus' court. I think Homer was familiar with the story; for though he rejected it as less suitable for epic poetry than the one he actually used, he left indications that it was not unknown to him. For instance, when he descrobes the wanderings of Paris in the Iliad (and he has not elsewhere contradicted his account), he says that in the course of them he brought Helen to Sidon in Phoenicia. The passage occurs in the section of the poem where Diomedes performs his great deeds and it runs like this:

There were the bright robes woven by the women of Sidon,
Whom the hero Paris, splendid as a god to look on,
Brought from that city when he sailed the wide sea
Voyaging with the high-born Helen, when he took her home.

There is also a passage in the Odyssey alluding to the same fact:

These drugs of subtle virtue the daughter of Zeus was given
By an Egyptian woman, Polydamna, wife of Thon;
For the rich earth of Egypt beas many herbs
Which steeped in liquor have power to cure, or to kill.

and, again, Menelaus is made to say to Telemachus:

In Egypt the gods still stayed me, though i longed to return,
For i had not paid them their due of sacrifice.

Homer makes it quite clear in these passages that he knew about Paris going out of his way to Egypt - the point of the first quoted being that Siden borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, live in Syria.

05-20-2004, 11:35 PM	#79 (permalink)
bundy . Location: Tokyo	When Sesostris died, he was succeeded by his son Pheros, a prince who undertook no military adventures. He went blind, and the reason for it is explained in the following story: one year the Nile rose to an excessive height, as much as twenty-seven feet, and when all the fields were under water it began to blow hard, so that the river got very rough. The king in insensate rage seized a spear and hurled it into the swirling waters, and immediately thereafter he was attacked by a disease of the eyes, and became blind. Ha was blind for ten years, and in the eleventh he received an oracle from the city of Buto to the effect that the time of his punishment being now ended, he would recover his sight, if he washed his eyes with the urine of a woman who had never lain with any man except her husband. He tried his wife first, but without success; then he tried other women, a great many, one after another, until at last his sight was restored. Then he collected within the walls of a town, now called Red Clod, all the women except the one whose urine had proved efficacious, set the place on fire, and burnt them all to death, town and all; afterwards he married the woman who had been the means of curing him. In gratitude for his recovery he dedicated a number of offerings in all the temples of repute; but the most remarkable of them were two stone obelisks which he set up in the precinct of the temple of the Sun. These were well worth seeing; they are twelve feet broad and a hundred and fifty feet high, each hewn from a single block of stone. Pheros was succeeded by a native of Memphis, whose name in the Greek language was Proteus. To this day there is a sacred precinct of his at Memphis, very fine and richly adorned, and situatead south of the temple of Hephaestus. The whole district hereabouts is known as the Camp of the Tyrians, because the houses in the neighbourhood are occupied by Phoenicians from Tyre. Within the enclosure there is a temple dedicated to the foreign Aphrodite. I should guess, myself, that it was built in honour of Helen the daughter of Tyndareus, not only because i have heard it said that she passed some time at the court of Proteus, but also, and more particularly, because of the description of Aphrodite as 'the foreigner', a title never given to this goddess in any of her other temples. I questioned the priests about the story of Helen, and they told me in reply that Paris was on his way home from Sparta with his stolen bride, when, somewhere in the Aegean sea, he met foul weather, which drove his ship towards Egypt, until at last, the gale continuing as bad as ever, he found himself on the coast, and managed to get ashore at the Salt-pans, in the mouth of the Nile now called the Canopic. Here on the beach there was a temple, which still exists, dedicated to Heracles, and in connection with it there is a very ancient custom, which has remained unaltered to my day. If a runaway slave takes refuge in this shrine and allows the sacred marks, which are the sign of his submission to the service of the god, to be set upon his body, his master, no matter who he is, cannot lay hands on him. Now some of Paris' servants found out about this and, wishing to get him into trouble, deserted, and fled as suppliants to the temple and told against him the whole story of his abduction of Helen and his wicked treatment of Menelaus. They bought these charges against their master not only before the temple priests, but also before the warden of that mouth of the Nile, a man named Thonis. Thonis at once sent a dispatch to Proteus at Memphis. 'A Trojan stranger (the message ran) has arrived here from Greece, where he has been guilty of an abominable crime: first he seduced the wife of his host, then carried her off together with a great deal of valuable property; and now stress of weather has forced him to land on this coast. Are we to let him to sail away again in possession of his stolen goods, or should we confiscate them?' Proteus answered: 'No matter who it is that has committed this crime against his friend, arrest him and send him to me, that i may hear what he can say for himself.' Thonis accordingly arrested Paris, helf his ships, and took both him and Helen to Memphis, together with the stolen property and the servants who had taken sanctuary in the temple. On their arrival Proteus asked Paris who he was and where he had come from, and Paris gave him his anem and all the details of his family and a true account of his voyage; but when he was further asked how he had got possession of Helen, then, instead of telling the truth, he began to vacillate, until the runaway servants convicted him of lying and told the whole story of his crime. Finally Proteus gave his judgement: 'If,' he said, 'I did not consider it a matter of great importance that i have never yet put to death any stranger who has been forced upon my coasts by stress of weather, I should have punished you for the sake of your Greek host. To be welcomed as a guest, and to repay that kindness by so foul a deed! Your are a villain. You seduced your friend's wife, and, as if that were not enough, persuaded her to escape with you on the wings of passion you roused. Even that did not content you - but you must bring with you besides the treasure you have stolen from your host's house. But though i cannot punish you a stranger with death, I will not allow you to take away your ill-gotten gains: I will keep this woman and the treause, until the Greek to whom they belong chooses to come and fetch them. As for you and the companions of your voyage, i give you three days in which to leave my country - and to find an anchorage elsewhere. If you are not gone by then, I shall treat you as enemies.' This was the account i had heard from the priests about the arrival of Helen at Proteus' court. I think Homer was familiar with the story; for though he rejected it as less suitable for epic poetry than the one he actually used, he left indications that it was not unknown to him. For instance, when he descrobes the wanderings of Paris in the Iliad (and he has not elsewhere contradicted his account), he says that in the course of them he brought Helen to Sidon in Phoenicia. The passage occurs in the section of the poem where Diomedes performs his great deeds and it runs like this: There were the bright robes woven by the women of Sidon, Whom the hero Paris, splendid as a god to look on, Brought from that city when he sailed the wide sea Voyaging with the high-born Helen, when he took her home. There is also a passage in the Odyssey alluding to the same fact: These drugs of subtle virtue the daughter of Zeus was given By an Egyptian woman, Polydamna, wife of Thon; For the rich earth of Egypt beas many herbs Which steeped in liquor have power to cure, or to kill. and, again, Menelaus is made to say to Telemachus: In Egypt the gods still stayed me, though i longed to return, For i had not paid them their due of sacrifice. Homer makes it quite clear in these passages that he knew about Paris going out of his way to Egypt - the point of the first quoted being that Siden borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, live in Syria. __________________ Ohayo!!!