Note 47 — LETTER XV.

Compare Letronne Recueil des Inscription Grecques de l’Egypte, tome i. pp. 363 sqq. Ptolemaeus Eupator is not mentioned by the historians. The name was first discovered in a Greek Papyrus at Berlin, written under Soter II. in the year 105 B.C., and indeed foisted in between Philometor and Euergetes. Böckh, who published the Papyrus (1821), referred the surname of Euergetes to Soter II. and his wife, and held Eupator to be a surname of the deified Euergetes II. In the same year Champollion-Figeac treated of this papyrus, and endeavoured to prove that Eupator was that son of Philometer put to death by Euergetes II. on his accession. This view was afterwards accepted by St. Martin, Böckh, and Letronne (Rech. pour serv. à l’Hist. de l’Eg. p. 124). In the meantime the name Eupator had been found in a second papyrus of the reign of Soter II., as also in a letter of Numenius upon the Phileusian obelisk of Herr Bankes of the time of Euergetes II. Eupator was named in both inscriptions, but did not stand behind, but before Philometor, and therefore could not be his son. Letronne now conjectured (Recueil des Inscr. tome i. p. 365) that Eupator was another surname of Philometor. Then, however, it should have been καὶ Θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος τοῦ καὶ Φιλομήτορος, and not καὶ Θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος καὶ Θεοῦ Φιλομήτορος. In a letter to Letronne of the 1st December, 1844, from Thebes, which has been printed in the Revue Archéol. tome i. pp. 678 sqq., I informed him that I had also found in several hieroglyphical inscriptions the name Eupator, and always before Philometor. The same reasons that I alleged against Letronne’s interpretation of the Greek name (that portion of the letter was not printed in the Revue), i. e. the simple recurrence of the Θεοῦ, did also not allow Eupator to be considered another name of Philometor in the hieroglyphical lists. He must have been a Ptolemy recognized for a short time as king, but not mentioned by the historians; and as Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. p. 285) and Letronne (Rec. vol. ii. p. 536) have recognized an elder brother of Philometor, who died in a few months, and was therefore omitted in the Ptolemaic canon.

The son of Philometor and his sister Cleopatra II., however, mentioned by Justin and Josephus, in which it was formerly thought that the Eupator of the Berlin papyrus had been found, is particularly mentioned in the hieroglyphical inscriptions and of the other Ptolemies, in his place between Philometor and Euergetes, and we thus learn his name, which the historians had not added. He is sometimes called Philopator, sometimes Neos Philopator, and is therefore to be referred to in the series of reigned Ptolemies, as Philopator II. Of fourteen hieroglyphical lists which come down to Euergetes II., seven mention Philopator II.; in four other lists in which he might have been mentioned he is passed over, and these seem all to belong to the first year of Euergetes II., his murderer, which readily explains the cause. That he does not appear in the canon is quite natural, because his reign did not extend over the change of the Egyptian year; but, as might be expected, he is named in the protocolls of the Demotic Papyrus, where those Ptolemies receiving divine honours are enumerated, and in which Young had already properly seen Eupator. In fact, he is mentioned here in all the lists known to me (five in Berlin of the years 114, 103, 103, 99, 89 B.C., and one in Turin of the year 89 B.C.) which are later than Euergetes II., as also in a Berlin papyrus of the fifty-second year of Euergetes himself (therefore in 188 B.C.). A comparison of the Demotic lists manifests that the interchange of the names Eupator and Philometor in the Greek papyrus of the year 105 B.C. (not 106, as Franz, Corp. Inscr. p. 285 writes), is not only a mistake of the copyist, as these and similar interchanges are also not uncommon in the Demotic papyrus. The different purposes of the hieroglyphic and demotic lists render it comprehensible, that in the former such variations were not admissible, as in the latter.