PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 155 



to 1886. Third, a period of recovery from utter collapse, from 1886 

 to the present time, the result of intelligent fiscal administration 

 so signal and complete as to be without precedent in history. It 

 remains to be seen what will happen in the future in the event of 

 the withdrawal of British occupation and governmental admin- 

 istration of the country in compliance with the wishes of all the 

 other great powers of Europe. 



An illustration of how history in Egypt has seemingly re- 

 peated itself in respect to taxation is here pertinent to the subject. 

 Prior to the nineteenth century a key to the hieroglyphic writ- 

 ing of Egypt or of the so-called " demotic," which was a short- 

 hand or abridged form of the true hieroglyphics, had not 

 been discovered, and there was little probability that it ever 

 would be. 



In 1799, however, during the French occupation of Egypt, a 

 large slab of black granite (now in the British Museum), which 

 originally had been a monument in some public edifice, was dis- 

 covered in excavating for military purposes near the village of 

 Rosetta, a place in Lower Egypt not far distant from Alexandria 

 and the western mouth of the Nile. The slab had on it three in- 

 scriptions — the first in hieroglyphic text, the second in the demotic 

 character, and the third in Greek letters ; and a study and com- 

 parison of them, mainly by Champollion, a French scholar, led to 

 a solution of the problem of deciphering the hieroglyphic writing, 

 which previously had almost completely baffled analysis. It was 

 then found that the trilingual inscriptions were in the main a 

 copy of a decree in honor of Ptolemy V, Epiphines, King of Egypt, 

 who, about 193 B. c, had conferred great benefit on his country 

 and its people by remitting certain taxes and reducing others, and 

 read as follows : 



Considering that the King Ptolemy, ever living, the well-beloved of 

 Phtah, most gracious son of the King Ptolemy and of the Queen Arsinoe — 

 gods philopatores (father-loving) — has done all kinds of good ; . . . that he 

 has not neglected any of the means within his power to perform acts of 

 humanity ; that in order that in his kingdom the people and in general all 

 the citizens should be in prosperity, he has suppressed altogether some of 

 the taxes and imposts established in Egypt, and has diminished the onus 

 of others: . . , It has therefore pleased the priests of all the temples of the 

 land to decree that all the honors belonging to the king shall be consider- 

 ably augmented ; that his statue shall be erected in the most conspicuous 

 spot in each temple ; that the priests shall perform three times each day 

 religious service to these statues ; and that in all great solemnities all the 

 honors due to other deities shall be paid them. . . , 



More than two thousand years have elapsed since the service 

 rendered by Ptolemy to Egypt and its people by the remission 

 and readjustment of taxes was thus commemorated. King, 



