This rare monument consists of a stela of solid limestone, and has on its front surface a hieroglyphic inscription of thirty-seven lines, and the Greek translation of the same in seventy-six closely written lines. On the edge of the tablet, though Lepsius did not notice it at first, is the same text in demotic writing, that is, in the popular dialect of the later heathen Egyptians. The whole stone, including the rounded upper surface, is 2.16 meters high and 0.78 of a meter wide, and is at present kept in the museum of Bulak. It is in excellent preservation, and Lepsius could easily read both texts at the first trial. The translation of the hieroglyphic decree, which was made on the basis of Champollion’s method of deciphering and by the aid of the grammars and lexicons published between the time when that was discovered and the year 1866, agreed perfectly with the Greek version thereof upon the same stone. With this valuable monument for a basis it was thus once for all positively determined that the study of the Egyptian language was being pursued according to the correct method. The decree discovered by Lepsius was dated in the ninth year of Ptolemy Euergetes I. Like the decree upon the Rosetta stone it had been passed by priests, who had assembled at Canopus for the celebration of the birthday of the king. In the first part of it were enumerated the benefits conferred by the ruler of the land, which had caused the hierarchy to accord to him many new honors in addition to those conferred upon his predecessor. In the part establishing a new popular festival to be celebrated in honor of Euergetes in all the temples of the country, there occurred certain arrangements of the calendar from which, as Lepsius immediately perceived, it must be inferred that a mutable year had been in use at an early period, in addition to the fixed year. It was also evident that in the ninth year of Euergetes I. the fixed Julian year had already come into use in the civil affairs of Egypt. The hieroglyphic names for Canopus, Syria, Phœnicia, the island of Cyprus and Persia, could be determined with the aid of the Greek translation. This weighty document also furnished much important information regarding history, chronology and the calendar. Egyptian philology is indebted to these inscriptions for confirmation only, if we except a few additions to the dictionary, and some peculiarities of the dialect of Lower Egypt in which they were written. Lepsius immediately made the monument which he had discovered the common property of science, in a model publication[83] containing both texts, which he accompanied by thorough translations and most important explanations. In so doing he gave an example worthy of imitation to Mariette, the great autocrat of all the monuments in Egypt, who always published the inscriptions which he excavated long after their discovery.