himself condemned,
manufactured a number of lamps, lit them every evening at dusk, began to
drink and to lead a life of jollity, without ceasing for a moment night
and day, wandering by the lakes and in the woods wherever he thought to
find an occasion of pleasure. He had planned this in order to convince
the oracle of having spoken falsely, and to live twelve years, the
nights counting as so many days." Legend places after him Asychis or
Sasychis, a later builder of pyramids, but of a different kind. The
latter preferred brick as a building material, except in one place,
where he introduced a stone bearing the following inscription: "Do not
despise me on account of the stone pyramids: I surpass them as much as
Zeus the other gods. Because, a pole being plunged into a lake and the
clay which stuck to it being collected, the brick out of which I was
constructed was moulded from it." The virtues of Asychis and Mykerinos
helped to counteract the bad impression which Kheops and Khephren had
left behind them. Among the five legislators of Egypt Asychis stood out
as one of the best. He regulated, to minute details, the ceremonies of
worship. He invented geometry and the art of observing the heavens.*

* Diodorus, i. 94. It seems probable that Diodorus had
received knowledge from some Alexandrian writer, now lost,
of traditions concerning the legislative acts of Shashanqu
I. of the XXIInd dynasty; but the name of the king, commonly
written Sesonkhis, had been corrupted by the dragoman into
Sasykhis.

He put forth a law on lending, in which he authorized the borrower to
pledge in forfeit the mummy of his father, while the creditor had the
right of treating as his own the tomb of the debtor: so that if the
debt was not met, the latter could not obtain a last resting-place for
himself or his family either in his paternal or any other tomb.

History knows nothing either of this judicious sovereign or of many
other Pharaohs of the same type, which the dragomans of the Greek period
assiduously enforced upon the respectful attention of travellers. It
merely affirms that the example given by Kheops, Khephren, and Mykerinos
were by no means lost in later times. From the beginning of the IVth
to the end of the XIVth dynasty--during more than fifteen hundred
years--the construction of pyramids was a common State affair, provided
for by the administration, secured by special services. Not only did
the Pha