Note 30 — LETTER XV.

The emendation, ἀδελφῆς, in this inscription, which dates from the thirty-fifth year of Euergetes (B.C. 136), is of importance in certain chronological determinations of that period. Letronne (Rec. des Inscr., vol. i., p. 33-56) assumed that Cleopatra III., the niece and second wife of Euergetes II., was here meant. Hence alone he concluded that this king, in the official documents written before his expulsion, in the year 132 B.C., only joined the name of his wife, Cleopatra III., to his own, and therefore he fixed the date of all the inscriptions, in which both the Cleopatras, the sister, and the (second) wife are named after the king, in the period after the return of Euergetes (127-117), e. g. the inscriptions on the obelisk of Philæ (Rec., vol. 1., p. 333). In this determination of the time, he is followed by Franz (Corp. Inscr., vol. iii., p. 285), who, for the same reason, fixes the date of the inscriptions (c. i., no. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896) between B.C. 127 and 117, although he was already aware of my correction of the inscription of Pselchis (c. i., no. 5073).

It is indeed singular that only one Cleopatra is mentioned in the inscription of Pselchis; but as it is Cleopatra II., the first wife of the king, who he always distinguishes from his second wife by the appellation of sister; it cannot thence be concluded that from the very commencement of his second marriage he expressly excluded all mention of the latter in the documents. This also is confirmed in the most distinct manner by two Demotic Papyri belonging to the royal museum, in which both Cleopatras are mentioned, although the one papyrus is as early as the year B.C. 141, the other, a duplicate, is from the year B.C. 136. All 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), from the reasons stated, date between the years B.C. 127 and 117, may, therefore, still be placed, with equal probability, in the years 145 to 132.