52 Rev. Edward Hincks on the Egyptian Stele, <yr Tablet. 



published by Mr. Burton ;* and also by an obvious inference from the narrative 

 in 2 Kings, xxiii, taken in connexion with the tablet above mentioned. Necho 

 was king of Egypt before the death of Josiah, in 610, B. C. ; but this could not 

 have been the case, if Cambyses had only conquered Egypt in 525, B. C, as 

 Amasis only reigned forty-four years, and Necho and the intermediate kings only 

 forty. The true date of the death of Amasis, and of the conquest of Egypt by 

 Cambyses, must therefore be 527, B. C. 



The other tablet to which I have alluded is of the Ptolemaic age ; and its 

 dates are useful, not in determining the chronology of the reigns, which is 

 already known from other sources.f but in ascertaining the power of a numeral 

 character, which occurs for the first time in inscriptions of this age ; and in de- 

 termining to which of the Ptolemies a cartouche with certain titles belonged. 

 This tablet belongs to Mr. Harris, of Alexandria, and it has been published by 

 Mr. Sharpe, in the seventy-second and seventy-third Plates of his Egyptian in- 

 scriptions. 



The person commemorated by this tablet was a priest at Memphis, named 

 Psherin- phthah, son of a priest, who held a very high sacerdotal office, the name 

 or precise nature of which I have not yet been able to ascertain. He is said to 

 have been born in the x -j- 5 year of a Ptolemy, whose cartouche is 



:i: ^ m 



I have used the letter x to represent the unknown numeral, a bird's head, which 

 is here accompanied by five vertical lines. He was born in the second month 

 of this year, on the twenty-first day. When he was thirteen years old, his father 

 died. He was promoted by Ptolemy " the new Osiris" (the Neo-Dionysus of 

 the Greeks), in the tenth year of his reign, to the sacerdotal office which his 

 father had held. After he had completed his forty-third year, he had his first 



* An Egyptian functionary is said to have served under the Persians for six years of Cambyses, 

 thirty-six of Darius, and twelve of Xerxes. — Burton Exc. Hier. 8. 



f It appears from Ptolemy's canon, that the first year of Lathyrus was the 632nd of Nabonassar ; 

 the first of Neo-Dionysus, the 668th of Nabonassar ; and the first of Cleopatra, the 697th of Nabo- 

 nassar. Alexander's first year was 635, when his brother Lathyrus was driven to Cyprus ; and the 

 latter was restored to the throne of Egypt about 660. 



