26 THE GREAT EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION. 
avopas € Tis ‘E\A\ados =’ Aptorovixou these and sailed away to Alexandria, having had no 
tT poo beEauEvos TOUTOUS amémA\€voev €ls THY part in the military operations on account of the sus- 
"AreEavopetav, Tay pev TOV Toeuou Tpatewy picions of Polycrates, although he was 25 years old. 
ovdeulas KEeKoLvnKws, dca THY Ilo\vKpatous 
adixodoElay Kalmep Exwy ern TevTE Kal elKoowY. 
This fragment is apparently not in good condition. It speaks of the followers of the 
rebellious chiefs, but not of those chiefs themselves. The number of names given for the 
chiefs makes it plain that the chiefs themselves surrendered and were executed, perhaps after 
having been deserted by their followers. After having been dragged by carts, not much of 
them ought to have remained for execution; indeed, the strange wera ravra returns directly 
below and this looks thus like a doublet, z. e., as though an attempt had been made to remove 
these words further down to a better place. Also elsewhere, the text does not seem to be intact. 
Consequently, the fragment needs more criticism than it has received so far. 
The difficulty to fit it into the events which we know is due to the statement that the king 
was 25 years old. ‘This would bring us into the year 181 B. C., the twentieth year of his reign. 
This is the time when our two decrees were engraved and when all Upper Egypt had again been 
subjected. It would be very surprising to find then the king still fighting rebels in Lower 
Egypt and raising mercenaries in Greece. Lower Egypt, namely, is clearly the scene of the 
fragment. The king’s encampment is at Sais and the rebels have, evidently, not far to 
go to find him. Furthermore, the surviving dynasts point back to the part of the country 
where those chiefs were mentioned before. In Upper Egypt we have only the one rebel 
leader, according to our second decree, hardly various independent chiefs.! Thus it would 
be difficult to explain them as Upper Egyptians. That Lower Egyptian chiefs, however, 
would fight through from the eighth to the twentieth year, even to the time after the 
subjection of the Thebais, seems impossible. A still greater incongruity between that date 
and the events described lies in the commandership of Polycrates. ‘That this old commander 
of Ptolemy IV. kept his position and his favor with the king so long in that time of constantly 
changing officials is too great an improbability; the fragment itself points to the instability of 
that turbulent period, mentioning the suspicions which filled the old commander. Conse- 
quently, that date of the twenty-fifth year of the king’s life does not agree with the above 
details. It either has been taken over erroneously from other, later, events or it has been dis- 
figured. ‘To suit the narrative of the fragment we might propose to change the number xe 
“twenty-five” to ve “fifteen.”” The emphasizing of the fact that the king possessed a sufficient 
age for taking part in military operations, however, would not be very forceful; only for a pre- 
cocious young king an age of fifteen would justify that remark. Neither would an emenda- 
tion to k “‘twenty”’ (omitting the 5!) clear away the aforementioned difficulties. At any rate, 
the commandership of Polycrates and the surrender and execution of the rebels belong 


1 We are not yet sufficiently advanced philologically to explain the Egyptian etymologies of those four names of the chiefs and to 
determine their home from the dialect betrayed in them and from the theophorous parts. Jr(?)—obastos does not necessarily come 
from the city of the goddess Bubastis. Pausiras is evidently to be corrected into the ordinary Pausiris; Wilcken (AZ. 1883, 164) and 
Herodotus (3, 15) show it specially as Low Egyptian and Fayumic; the Pha— which we should expect after the Coptic form for the 
dialect of this part of Egypt, in place of the Pa— of our text, is not yet the rule in Ptolemaic time. For Chesuphos and Athinis I 
prefer not to try uncertain guesses; their form may need correction. We must not overestimate the tradition in Polybius as to its 
accuracy in these details; the names may have suffered various mutilations, even before they reached him. 
