Note 38 — LETTER XV.

The first news of the discovery of these important inscriptions, which had not been noticed by the French-Tuscan expedition, excited some surprise. Simultaneously with the more exact description of them in the Prussian Gazette, a short English notice of them appeared, in which the discovery of a second copy of the Rosetta inscription was mentioned, and, indeed, in Meröe. More recently, when M. Ampère had brought an impression of the inscription to Paris, the learned academician, M. de Saulcy, denied that the decree had anything to do with the Rosetta inscription, and felt himself obliged to ascribe it to Ptolemy Philometor. I therefore took an opportunity to point out more accurately, in two letters to H. Letronne (Rev. Archéol., vol. iv., p. i., &c., and p. 240, &c.), as well as in an essay, in the Papers of the German Oriental Society (vol. i., p. 264, &c.), that the document in question had been drawn up in the 21st year of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and that it contained a repetition of the actual decree of the Rosetta inscription, which referred to Cleopatra, who had meanwhile been elevated to the throne.