CONTENTS. Page The Epistle to Diognetus and its Possible Authorship, with a Notes on Longinus περὶ ὕψους. ROBINSON ELLIS, HON. HERMATHENA. A STELE FROM ASWÂN IN THE BRITISH THE HE tall cippus of speckled granite which was found in Aswân in 1886 was partially copied by me in situ, some of it being still underground. Then Mr. Sayce took a hurried copy, which he published in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology for 1887. Then, fortunately, the stone was brought to the British Museum, and Mr. C. Torr said some things not worth criticising about it in the Classical Review. Wilcken has since touched it with his usual ability, in the Wochenschrift für Klass. Philologie for July, 1888, but has given no transcription; so that we are still in need of a fuller account of this important text. In April, 1895, I brought Mr. Sayce's copy to the British Museum, and verified it with Professor Wilcken's corrections, by a careful collation, as far as 1. 53, making some further alterations in the readings. The lower portion (11. 53-76), which is extremely worn with weather, was not to be deciphered in the very unfavourable position the stone now occupies in the British Museum. This portion I have studied with the aid of a squeeze very kindly prepared for 1 For the text, see pp. 284 sqq. me by the order of Dr. Budge. The result is that I have deciphered the remains of 11. 54-60 pretty completely. The rest is so effaced that I have read little more than the final words of the remaining text, but have fortunately thus discovered the dates of the last three of the ten documents contained in the inscription. It is to be observed that this great slab, about 9 or 10 feet high, was rounded at the top, and a group of conventional figures, representing Chnum, Satis, and Anukis (so Wilcken), occupied the highest place. Then came the text in large and very well cut characters, each successive document being separated by a blank interval from the previous one. This stone was sawn vertically into three shafts to be used for door-posts (as the deep holes in the extant piece, sunk in a vertical line for bars, testify), and we have recovered only the central one. The problem how much is lost at the beginning and end of each line is not easy to solve, as will appear in the sequel; and yet on this depends much of our interpretation. There is no doubt about the king and his date, and that Mr. Torr was in error about it. It is the year 115 B.C., the second year of the reign of Ptolemy Philometor Soter II. (Lathyrus), and of his mother Cleopatra III., the widow of Euergetes II.1 This appears with certainty from the opening of Document VI. (1. 39). The first document (11. 1-14) is, therefore, a statement that this king ascended the river to the first cataract; that there he was met in state by all the officials of the district and the priests of the local temples, and that having performed all the proper sacrifices to the gods of Elephantine, and more particularly to the Nile-he seems from 1. 8 to have undertaken a visit to the alleged source—having also been duly feasted at the temple of Hera (identified 1 Wilcken (op. cit.) holds that Soter II. only succeeded in the end of 116 B.C.; hence the date would be 115-4. |