THE BILINGUAL DECREES OF PHILAE. 73 
THE KING SPECIALLY PROTECTS THE TEMPLES DURING THE 
REBELLION—Ccontinued. 
HIEROGLYPHIC TEXT. DEMOTIC TEXT. 
ria 
‘w- | [sn?n]_ rdt(?) es See 
(They! did not] permit to approach(?)? [the A 
[btn 2} ie ot gt ae ee hes] 2 [ef] 
followers of?] [the reb]lel who had inst[igated] war | [leader]!? of(?) rebellfion against him] 
1h h yt?) nm(?) [pf l-ye(?) 
against him and his father(?). and(?) [his| father(?) 
r1b 
Dy(?)-f(?) [nts er = {tIr(7)° | ee en aie Se 92" t 8(?) 
[He] gave (money?) [to?] them to do(?)® ens ee A ee [like?] it(?). 
Sh 
my-nn. Rdy-n hm-f ty—wt Ty(?)-f | ty—w ht nb 
thus.’ (There) caused His Majesty that be taken | He caused to be taken silver (and) gold 
he nh m_ tnw-‘(w) ’w ie ‘Sy (e?) p-[t] e-tb(;)t(?) . 
silver (and) gold in great quantities to the grounds | much (to). the [ground?]# FOU Tie oh 
Iic oa 
| [rv— d]b;(?)[¢| rdt | 
for the purpose of(?)® causing 
"n|—-t]w isw 'w Bat 
(that) be brought troops to Egypt 
‘ 11d 
m—sw—n [s]-’p | ww Se es tn Ieee ESTO) 
for the tax(es)!° (of) the nomes!! sw O08 “the, *nomest?) 


“tH, be,” the king? 
* This last group at first seems clear, but the traces may be deceptive. A big ¢y ‘“‘to take” could also be found 
in the seeming spr. ‘The first gap of the line could also be filled by the restoration ’w'tm rdt “in order not to permit.”’ 
§ The apparent h‘[—f??] “with [him??]” yields no sense. It must consequently be merely accidental. 
* Thus to be restored after line 9d. The s} is partly visible (the captive before it has exaggerated execution 
of his bound arms); the determinative of B‘r (see on gd) is disfigured from the Seth-animal to the hare. 
* The traces over f are not very favorable to reading the cake yt, it is true, but the space behind (for the 
ideograph stroke). 
* So according to the traces, but it yields no convincing sense. The last group seems to be clearly rr; the 
above translation as ’r is almost a correction. He gave for (Jr?) them “two parts,” i. ¢., “two thirds,” however, 
would yield difficult sense; the temples would hardly have paid the missing third. A tempting restoration would 
be ‘n(?)—sn r’r “they turnea again to doing,” 7. ¢., “did again,” implying a pause in the rebellion. The space 
under ‘n(?), however, seems insufficient for the necessary determinative “legs.” 
7 Or connected with the following words: ‘‘thus, likewise, H. M. caused.” 
* The phrase: “to give to the ground,” usually means ‘‘to remit, to overlook’’ (cp. Ros. hierogl. 2). The 
above variant: “to take to the ground,” must mean: ‘‘to expend.’ Cp. for this sense that h)w ‘‘expenses, 
spending” means, literally: ‘‘the falling down.” 
* The above translation is not easily harmonized with the space at the beginning of rra. It seems impossible 
to find there the preposition [r—d]d;[¢], [y—-2]b3[t] or its apparent variants m dbw r2f. ‘Thus I have assumed that 
the two signs r and db;, 2b;, were crowded over the foot of the 6. The following gap, requiring a normal square of 
signs, is to be filled with ¢ and a bookroll. 
“It would be easier to read simply ’p: “taxation,” but the gap must be filled. ‘The above restoration seems 
to amount to the same sense, however, literally meaning “‘inspection, revision.’’ 
It is tempting to correct the w—bird into the hawk, so that we should obtain ‘“‘temples.”’ ‘The sense of the 
whole passage might then be changed into a statement of absolute liberality towards the temples, without taxing 
them. It remains, however, safest to assume here a much more modest sense, namely, that the king is praised for 
spending the income from the taxes “‘of the nomes”’ (7. e., of the whole inland, all Egypt outside of Alexandria) 
on recruiting Greek mercenaries instead of using it for himself. (The preposition m ’swy seems to be used more 
as “for” in the sense of “in return for something,” synonymously with “because of,” while r db;t and its synonym 
r sbwt stand often also with final sense for “obtaining results.’’) 
™ The space suggests that the demotic text was shorter than the hieroglyphic version. Both writing systems, 
however, admit much arbitrary crowding together and extending of the text. 
"8 See the parallel hieroglyphic expression for the meaning of this phrase. 
