SESOSTRIS 311
to make use of the multitudes whom he had brought with him from the conquei'ed countries, partly to drag the huge masses of stone which were moved in the course of his reign to the temple of Vulcan, jjartly to dig: the numerous canals with which the whole of Egypt is intersected. By these forced labors the entire face of the country was changed ; for whereas Egypt had formerly been a region suited both for horses and carriages, henceforth it became entirely unfit for either. Though a flat country throughout its whole extent, it is now unfit for either horse or carriage, being cut up by the canals, which are ex- tremely numerous and run in all directions. The king's object was to supply Nile water to the inhab- itants of the towns situated in the mid-country, and not lying upon the river ; for previously they had been obliged, after the subsidence of the floods, to drink a brackish water which they obtained from wells. Sesostris also, they declared, made a division of the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants, assigning square plots of ground of equal size to all, and obtaining his chief revenue from the rent which the holders were required to pay him every year. If the river carried away any portion of a man's lot, he appeared before the king, and related what had happened ; upon which the king sent persons to examine and determine by measurement the exact extent of the loss ; and thenceforth only such a rent was demanded of him as was proportionate to the reduced size of his land. From this practice, I think, geometry first came to be known in Egypt, whence it passed into Greece. The sun-dial, however, and the gnomon, with the division of the day into twelve parts, were received by the Greeks from the Babylonians. (^Booh II., Chapters 102-109).
