THE GREAT EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION. 17 
enemies as rebels. Such a condition of irregular warfare is betrayed, indeed, by the mention 
of military guards, which, apparently, had to be distributed through the loyal parts of Egypt to 
protect life and property of loyal subjects (see Phila decree II, line rod to f). We need not 
follow too literally our priestly historian, who clumsily limits those guards to the protection of 
the temples and priests. The most interesting light on the warfare is thrown when he claims 
(line roe) that the guards against the rebels could also be recruited from native Egyptians, even 
from “soldiers,” z. e., from those who had deserted from the ranks of the machimoi. We may, 
perhaps, apply this condition more to the later period of the insurrection, when the cause of the 
insurgents was in the decline and the weakness of the Egyptian character would manifest itself 
very readily. In the first years, 7. e., in the reign of Philopator, the rising of the natives must 
have been more general, to judge from the results of the revolution. Furthermore, we are 
warned also against underestimating its importance by the way in which Polybius mentions it. 
He reveals its very serious character by calling it a regular “war’’ (see p. 13). We must not 
take too seriously the expression rapaxy: “disturbance, disorder’’ (with the exact Egyptian 
equivalent hun, hnw), which later was used officially for that period. It is a euphemistic word 
and seeks to minimize the seriousness of the national uprising.’ 
At any rate, we may be sure that the greatest part of Egypt was in the hands of the insur- 
gents during the first years of Ptolemy Epiphanes. Conditions were worst then, when the 
guardians of the royal child fought among themselves for the control of the government, 7. e., 
for possession of the treasury in Alexandria, and when the adjoining kings attacked the Ptole- 
maic provinces outside of Egypt. It seems that the Egyptian government concentrated its 
whole power on the defense of the Syrian provinces against the Seleucidan attack, a proof that 
it considered the military power of the insurgents as far inferior to that of Antiochus. This 
meant the temporary abandonment of the largest part of Egypt. We must ask whether much 
ground could be maintained outside of Alexandria “in the nomes”’ (as Ros. hierogl. 1, demot. 16, 
Phils II, od, characterizes the interior country) during the most critical time.” Unfortunately 
we have no knowledge what city in the Delta at that time possessed a Greek population large 
enough to maintain itself against the natives.* It would be very interesting to know something 
about the fate of the exclusively Greek cities higher up, e. g., about the colony Ptolemais. 
Most likely their whole Greek population had to flee northward. 
It was during that critical time that the government thought it wise to offer to the natives 
great reforms and alleviations, évexa tov rv Aiyurrov eis evdlay ayayetv (Rosetta to give, |. 11) “for 
bringing Egypt to a quiet condition,’ demotic text (1. 7), “‘to create (e t(y)-hpr) quietness’ 



1 See this expression already, Ros. Greek 19. For the hieroglyphic equivalent cp. the foundation texts of Edfu. The demotic 
expression tht, thth (Ros. 11). 
2 A recollection of this condition, Diodorus, XXVIII, 15: (Ptolemy V) ‘‘was hated by the Egyptians and was in danger of losing 
his kingdom” (éxvdbveuce 5& &roBadeiv thy Baotdelav). Only Diodorus, in his usual confused way, connects this danger with the 
ungrateful execution of the guardian Aristomenes (about which the natives certainly did not care) and thus leads to a wrong chro- 
nology, etc. See also the statement of a fragmentary extract from Polybius in Angelo May, Script. vet. nov. coll., II, 544: 
“Ptolemy by a revolution was nearly driven out of the country’ (oAiyou wey twos e&€recer). 
3Tt is difficult to draw a conclusion from the stela of a Syrian (?) policeman Kha‘—hap, who according to the calculations of L. 
Stern (Aeg. Zeitschr. 1884, 108), died in Memphis “‘in the fifth month of the second year,” 7.e.,of Epiphanes. That,in this biographic 
notice, he leaves it to the reader to supply the names of the kings under whom he lived is very common in such inscriptions and 
must not be explained as caution. The Asiatic population of Egypt always seems to have considered itself as superior to the native 
Egyptians and more akin to the Greeks, so we could not well expect the man in question to have sided with the insurgents. 
4The old meaning of this causative formation, originally ‘‘quieting,’’ seems to be lost (as in Coptic sgraht, sgreht: quietness) or is, 
at least, uncertain. 
