Note 45 — LETTER XV.

The correction Ἀδελφῆς in this inscription, dated in the thirty-fifth year of Euergetes (136 B. C.), is of importance to some chronological determinations of that period. Letronne (Rec. des Inscr. vol. i. p. 33 sqq. 56) assumed that Cleopatra III. the niece and second wife of Euergetes II., was here mentioned. From this alone he judged that this king only added the name of his wife, Cleopatra III., to his own in the official documents, previous to his expulsion in the year 132 B. C., and therefore placed all the inscriptions, in which after the King, both Cleopatras, the sister and the (second) wife are named, in the period after the return of Euergetes (127-117), e. g. the inscriptions of the obelisk of Philae (Rec. vol. i. p. 333). In this he is followed by Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. p. 285), who places for the same reason the inscriptions C. I. No. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896, between 127 and 117 B. C., although he was aware of my correction of the inscription of Pselchis (C. I. No. 5073).

It is always remarkable that only one Cleopatra is mentioned in the inscription of Pselchis, but as it is Cleopatra II., the first wife of the king, whom he always distinguishes from his second wife by the designation of “the sister,” it is not to be concluded that he should have expressly omitted mention of the latter in the documents from the beginning of his second marriage. This is confirmed in the decisive manner by two demotic Papyri of the Royal Museum, in which both Cleopatras are mentioned, although one is of the year 141 B. C., and the other of the year 136 B. C. All the inscriptions, which, according to Letronne (Rec. des Inscr. tome i. No. 7, 26, 27, 30, 31) and Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. No. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896) fall between 127 and 117 B. C., for this reason, can therefore be referred with the same probability to the years between 145 and 135 B.C.