THE GREAT EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION. Li, 
to a time not long after the events of the Rosettana, 7. e., not later than the fifteenth year of 
the king. The question remains whether the following narrative really fits the twenty-fifth 
year of Ptolemy Epiphanes. At first we are tempted to stretch the date somewhat and to 
find a connection of the report with the events of the nineteenth year of the king’s reign, 
if not with the twentieth. Great preparations have been made, according to Polybius, 
for a military expedition. The king, however, does not take the Greek mercenaries 
where they are needed, 7. e., to the scene of war. Instead, he leads them to Alexandria, 
evidently for executing in the capital some coup d’ état, to free himself of some too powerful 
official, evidently of Polycrates himself. The mentioning of the suspicions of Polycrates 
point to this. Thus it would not do to assume that we have here the preparations for the 
great expedition against the Thebais in the year 19 and to harmonize (as a small slip of 
Polybius or the excerptor) the discrepancy of one year (as twenty-five years of life would seem 
to bring us into the twentieth year of Epiphanes’ reign according to the current chronology). 
It seems impossible, I repeat, to assume that Polycrates’ then was still in command of the 
army and influential enough to keep the king, against his will, from the war plans and opera- 
tions. Assuming that the fragment begins to describe his downfall, we are again brought into 
a period considerably anterior to the eventful year 19, and again come to the result that the 
remark about the 25 years of life can not be correct. At least I should advise the use of that 
fragmentary extract with the greatest possible caution and should, for the present, assume that 
it confounds names and events of different periods, although they seem to date principally from 
the time when the king began to make himself independent from his so-called guardians, 7. e., 
presumably the time after his marriage in 193 B. C., near the date of that embassy to Rome, 
when some serious efforts were made to consolidate the Kingdom, as we have seen above. 
The Thebais, at any rate, must have been independent from the Alexandrian government 
during the whole twenty-one years indicated by the building inscriptions of Edfu (p. 15). This 
fact, so surprising to those who are still under the influence of the deceptive Greek historians, 
has been revealed by the dates of Theban demotic business documents, referring to the new 
government and the native kings installed by the rebels. These documents were discovered 
by Revillout (Revue Archéologique, 1877, 926 foll.). Brugsch (Aeg. Zettschr., 1878, 43) com- 
mented upon them (independently?). Revillout (zbzd., 1879, 131), in a short final discussion 
(also in notes, Revue Egyptol., 1, 190; II, 145, etc.), did not add much to his former results.’ 
The names of those two kings are ,,{x5) Har-(e)m-hleb], pronounced Harmah, Greek 
Harmais, and 2f: 2Op [‘An|ha*-(e)m-h{eb], pronounced Khamah, Greek, after the analogy 
of the other name, probably *Chamais. ‘The pronunciation of the last group in both 
names has, so far, not yet been determined with absolute certainty. It is written by a 
1 Certainly not for parading the troops in triumph, as was conjectured by Sharpe and Duemichen. 
* That a different Polycrates was meant would be very improbable. 
8 The essays by Baillet on these questions repeat only Revillout’s data, with the addition of some errors. 
4 The root ‘nh suffers in such names a strong mutilation, which is indicated orthographically by omission of the initial letter “Ain 
(erroneously omitted Ros. demot. 2, p-twt ‘nl in the very awkwardly engraved text). The pronunciation is furnished by the bi- 
lingual Pap. Berlin, formerly 116, now 3116 (Spiegelberg, Demot. Pap. Berlin, p. 19, pl. 42 foll.), p. I, 8 Xamoxparns =[‘n]h—p-hrd, 
p. II, 6 Xamovyaois (read rather Xaroxavors Pap. Casati 16, 9; 28, 2)=[‘n]h-p-Hns. See Griffith, Rylands Papyri, 206, where 
the Coptic particle looking like a preposition, Se— ‘“‘by”’ (originally ‘‘as well as lives’’), in oaths, correctly is added as the later 
pronunciation of the above verbal form. 
