Note 31 — LETTER XV.

Compare Letronne, Recueil des Inscriptions Grecques de l’Egypte, tome i., p. 365, &c. Ptolemy Eupator is not mentioned by authors. He was introduced for the first time among the predecessors of Soter II., who were worshipped as divinities, in a Greek papyrus [in Leyden⁠[A]], which was composed in the reign of Soter II., in the year B.C. 105, and he was inserted between Philometor and Euergetes. Böckh, who published the Papyrus (1821), referred the surname of Euergetes to Soter II. and his wife, and considered Eupator to be a surname of the deified Euergetes II. In the same year, Champollion Figeac also wrote about this papyrus, and endeavoured to prove that Eupator was the son of Philometor, who was killed by Euergetes II., on his ascent to the throne. This view was assented to at a later period by St. Martin, Böckh, and Letronne (Rech. pour ser à l’Hist. de l’Eg., p. 124). Meanwhile, the name of Eupator was discovered in a second papyrus from the reign of Soter II., as well as in the letter of Numenius on the Philensic obelisk of H. Bankes, from the time of Euergetes II. In both inscriptions the name of Eupator was mentioned; it did not, however, follow, but preceded Philometor, and therefore could not signify his son. Letronne now conjectured (Recueil des Inscr., vol. i., p. 365) that Eupator was another surname of Philometor. But then it would not have been καὶ θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος καὶ θεοῦ Φιλομήτορος, but καὶ θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος τοῦ καὶ Φιλομήτορος. In a letter to Letronne, of the 1st Dec., 1844, from Thebes, which is printed in the Révue Archéol., vol. i., p. 678, &c., I communicated to him that I had also found the name of Eupator in several hieroglyphic inscriptions, and indeed always before Philometor. The same reason which I had employed against Letronne’s explanation of the Greek name (the passage is not printed along with it in the Révue), namely, the simple repetition of the θεοῦ, did not even permit us in the hieroglyphic list to consider Eupator another surname of Philopator. He must have been a Ptolemy who, for a short time at least, was acknowledged as king, but who is not mentioned by authors; and, indeed, according to Franz (Corp. Inscr., vol. iii., p. 285), and also by the acknowledgment of Letronne (Rec., vol. ii., p. 536), he must have been an elder brother of Philometor, who died in a few months, and therefore was omitted in the Ptolemaic canon.

But the son of Philometor, and of his sister, Cleopatra II., mentioned by Justinus and Josephus, who was formerly believed to have been re-discovered in the Eupator of the [Leyden] papyrus, is particularly mentioned in the hieroglyphic inscriptions among the other Ptolemies, in his place between Philometor and Euergetes, and we thence become acquainted with his name, which had not been added by the authors. He is sometimes named Philopator, sometimes Neos Philopator, and he must therefore also be placed in future as Philopator II. in the series of the reigning Ptolemies. Among fourteen hieroglyphic lists of the Ptolemies, which come down at least as far as the second Euergetes, seven of their number give Philopator II.; in four other lists, in which his name might appear, he is passed over, and these all seem to belong to the first years of Euergetes II., his murderer, when the omission is easily explained. It is natural that he does not appear in the canon, because neither he nor Eupator lived to witness a change of the Egyptian year during his reign; on the other hand, as was to be expected, he is also named in the protocol of the Demotic Papyrus, in which the Ptolemies who are worshipped as divinities are exhibited, and in which Young had also already correctly acknowledged Eupator. In fact, he is here cited in all the lists with which I am acquainted (five in Berlin, from the years 114, 103, 99, 89, one in Turin from the year 89), which are of more recent date than Euergetes II., as well as in a Berlin papyrus from the fifty-second year of Euergetes himself (B.C. 118). A comparison also of the demotic lists shows finally that the transposition of the names Eupator and Philometor in the Greek papyrus from the year B.C. 105 (not 106, as Franz writes—Corp. Inscr., p. 285) is not alone an error of the copyist in writing, as this, and other transpositions also, are not unfrequent in the Demotic Papyrus. The different object of the hieroglyphic and the demotic lists makes it conceivable that such deviations were not admissible in the former, as in the latter lists.

[A] Note.—Leyden in place of Berlin, both here and below, is a correction by the author, April, 1853.—Tr.