Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia and the peninsula of Sinai, in the years 1842-1845, during the mission sent out by his majesty, Frederick William IV of Prussia.Lepsius, Richard
History
Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia and the peninsula of Sinai, in the years 1842-1845, during the mission sent out by his majesty, Frederick William IV of Prussia.
[49] The inscription referred to is in the rock-cave of Echmin, and
was, without doubt, first engraved under Ptolemæus Philadelphus, with
double cartouches and the usual royal titles, but without the surname
of Soter; he is mentioned on a stele in Vienna which was erected
under Philopator. Here, however, he has another cartouche than at
Echmin, and moreover, in a remarkable manner, the same as that which
Philippus Aridaeus and Alexander II., under whom Ptolemæus Lagus was
Viceroy in Egypt, bore before his time. In like manner he is named on
a statue of the king in the ruins of Memphis, where the Horus-name of
the king may be found, and which may probably have been made during
his reign. Finally, the Soters are sometimes only mentioned by their
surnames, at the head of the honoured ancestors of later kings, as in
the inscription of Rosetta, and in the bilingual Decrees of Philae
written [Illustration: hieroglyphs] while Soter II. is always written
[Illustration: hieroglyphs] _p. nuter enti nehem_, which would answer
to the Koptic [Illustration: Koptic], _deus servator_. In the Demotic
inscriptions, too, the first Soters are designated by _nehem_, and in
the singular, by the Greek word _p.suter_.
Although it is not to be doubted that the Soters, who, according to the
Demotic papyrus, had a peculiar cultus with the rest of the Ptolemies,
not only in Alexandria and Ptolemais, but also in Thebes, were looked
upon as the chiefs of the Ptolemaic dynasty, it is more remarkable
that till now no building has been discovered which was erected under
Ptolemæus Soter as king, although he continued twenty years in this
capacity. To this must be added that the above-mentioned hieroglyphic
lists of Ptolemies, without exception, do not begin the series with
Soters, but with the Adelphi, as said at Echmin, his cartouches have no
royal titles, and that in Karnak, under Euergetes II., Philadelphus is
represented as King, and Soter, answering to the same period, not as
king. Also in the Demotic king lists of the papyrus, the Alexandrian
series passes over the Soters down to Philometor, and lets the Adelphi
immediately follow Alexander the Great. The Soters have come before
me at the earliest in a papyrus of the seventeenth year of Philopator
(210 B.C.), the oldest in the Berlin collection; the Thebaic cultus of
the Ptolemies seems to have excluded the Soters altogether. Although,
therefore, the beginning of the royal government in the year 305 B.C.,
as the Canon asserts, is an ascertained fact, and is incontestably
confirmed by the hieroglyphic stele in Vienna, which has been cited for
it by my friend M. Pinder (_Beitr. zur älteren Münzkunde_, _Band_ I.
p. 201) in his instructive essay “On the era of Philippus on coins,”
it seems to authorize another legitimate view, according to which,
not Ptolemæus Logi, but Philadelphus, the eldest king’s son (even
though not Porphyrogenitus), was the head of the Ptolemies. Thus it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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