4 INTRODUCTION. 
The modifications in the enumeration of royal reforms and benefits are the most difficult to 
understand; in the mutilated condition of the text we can not follow them very well nor decide 
whether the shortening of some paragraphs was due to cancellation of those laws’ or to the 
impression of the redactor that those matters were somewhat obsolete after twelve years. 
The most important matter of the decree, after all, claims to be the worship of the royal couple, 
and of this the description is given very minutely. For the rest, the redactor’s mode of pro- 
ceeding remains yet to be determined. 
We might infer from the promptness with which the priests at Phila engraved the two 
decrees, and from the prominent place which they gave to them, that they had a specially bad 
conscience toward the Alexandrian government. We can not, however, with full certainty, 
add this inference to some other indications which could be interpreted as though the rebellion 
had started in the cataract region or had received special aid from this frontier district. (See 
below, on the titles of the two rebel kings.) 
The question of the original language of all those priestly decrees is now rather plain. The 
priests, of course, discussed their resolutions and probably sketched them in their native lan- 
guage. Itis certain that the first form in which the resolutions went into writing was in demotic 
script; the hieroglyphic style was too much confined to the most learned and not practical 
enough for a protocol of this kind. The official form, however, finally was in Greek. After 
this form, authorized by communication to the Royal Government, the final Egyptian versions, 
such as we have them, were translated rather literally. Small additions occur for the sake of 
loyalty or clearness; they are of greater importance where the Greek redaction had not done 
full justice to matters of too special Egyptian character, e. g., in the description of the hiero- 
glyphic symbols decorating the portable shrine of the king, which had merely been summarily 
touched by the Greek version (Rosetta, lines 43 to 44). There the Egyptian translations went 
back to the original (demotic) minutes of the priest.” Elsewhere, these minutes scarcely 
exercise any influence. The demotic version of the official Greek form preceded the hiero- 
glyphic; the latter often leans more on the demotic than on the Greek text. These principles 
I consider now as settled, especially for the Rosetta and Phile decree.’ 
Difficult and obscure as are the Egyptian versions, on account of their clumsy writing and 
style, nevertheless they are extremely helpful for the elucidation of the Greek text. The 
redactors of this text always strove more for eleganceand terseness of style than for clearness, pre- 
supposing too much that the readers would be sufficiently familiar with the matters mentioned. 
Of course, the hieroglyphic versions arehampered, on their part, by their striving after archaizing 
beauty while expressing too modern matters. To follow a model in a language differing in 
expression so widely from Egyptian as does classical Greek was not much easier for the hiero- 
grammates than it would be for a lawyer or newspaper reporter of our age to express matters of 
modern politics or business in Latin. The demotic version ought to be simpler and is, indeed, 


1 As Mahaffy, Empire, 311, believes to trace the reintroduction of the apomoira from wine, in documents from the year 18. 
2 Not copying them, however, word for word. ‘The description is neither quite exhaustive nor clear in the demotic version on stone. 
3 Thus the remarks by Mahaffy (Empire of the Ptolemies, 302) on the succession of the versions, are to be corrected. ‘The plan 
of all those decrees is, of course, very un-Greek, betraying somewhat the first conception in the old Egyptian style, but their Greek 
wording is excellent, at least for the contemporaries. The demotic text, on the other hand, struggles too desperately and is often too 
un-Egyptian to be literally the original version of the final official edition. 
4 See the honest confession of Mahaffy, Empire, 302, 
