ABSTRACT
From what lias already been said in the remarks on the hieroglyphic text the reader will have no hesitation in admitting the importance of the Demotic version of the famous decree which the priests promulgated at Memphis in the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes. The Demotic text, it is true, follows the hieroglyphic version in point of order on the Stone, but there is every reason for assuming that it holds the chief place of honour. It is known that stelae of the shape and form of the Rosetta Stone were in the G-raeco-Roman Period mounted upon a pedestal, which was provided with one or more steps, and it is not, therefore, unreasonable to assume that the base of the Stone was raised to a height of eighteen inches or two feet above the floor of the temple. If this were so, the Demotic version of the Decree would be on the “eye line” of the beholder, while the hieroglyphic text would be too high for him to read with comfort, and he would be unable to read the Greek text without bending or kneeling. The hieroglyphic text of the Decree would be unintelligible to by far the greater number of the visitors in the temple, and it is clear, from the nature of the case, that it was only added as a tribute to the vanity of the native Egyptian people. If we consider the confusion of characters, and the reverse order in which they are placed in the words of which they form parts, it becomes clear that even if the priest who wrote the draft in hieroglyphics understood what he was writing the public in general did not. Even in Pharaonic times the long inscriptions which covered the walls of the temples and other public buildings might have been mere ornaments as far as the great mass of the population were concerned, and in Ptolemaic times those who could read the ancient hieroglyphic character must have been very few indeed. But apart from considerations of this kind, a perusal of almost any of the truly modern translations of the Demotic version will convince the reader that he has before him a copy of what must have been the original, or at least, one of the earliest forms of the document. The details which it gives are fuller, while its natural turns and expressions indicate that we are not dealing with a translation, either literal or paraphrastic, that is made from the Greek, but with a homogeneous composition, which was drafted, probably, during a single session of the priests at Memphis. It is, of course, possible that a draft was prepared by a few of their number beforehand and was submitted to the general body when they assembled in the temple of Apis, and that additions were made to it after it was submitted to the whole company of the priests, but if this were so, the additions must have been very few, and must, moreover, have been very carefully inserted, for the text of the document appears to run very smoothly, and all the translations of it suggest a connected, plain narrative. Before, however, we pass on to consider the contents of the Demotic version of the Eosetta Stone, it will be well to mention the works of the chief writers upon it.
