Note 61 — LETTER XV.

The first news of the discovery of this important inscription, which had also not been noticed by the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, made some commotion. Simultaneously with the more circumstantial account in the Preussische Staatszeitung, a careless English notice appeared, in which the discovery of a second specimen of the inscription of Rosetta was spoken of, and the place assigned was Meroe. Later, when M. Ampère had brought an impression of the inscription to Paris, the Academician, M. de Saulcy, contrariwise put forth an argument on the opposite side asserting that the inscription had some resemblance to that of Rosetta, and referred it to Ptolemæus Philometer. I therefore took occasion to prove, in two letters to M. Letronne (Rev. Archéol. vol. iv. p. 1 sqq. and p. 240 sqq.) as also in an essay in the Transactions of the German Oriental Society (vol. i. p. 264 sqq.), that the document in question was prepared in the twenty-first year of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, and contained a repetition of the Rosetta inscription, the provisions of which were extended to Queen Cleopatra I., who had come to the throne in the meantime.