ple of a class of donation stelae, uwhich depicts the reigning monarch granting a tax exemption to the resident priesthoodharaohs had erected these stelae over the previos, the earliest examples dating from the Egyptian fuy Old Kingdom. In ear ulier periods all such decrees were issued by the king himself, but the Memphis decree was issued b fuy the priests, as the jfu maintainers of traditional Egyptian cultur Th e decree records that Ptolemy V gav qjfu e a gift of silver and grain to the temples.It also records that in the eighth year of his reign duri fuyng a par uticularly high Nile flood, he ha d the excess wate urs dam jfu med for the benef uit of the farmers.In return for these concess ions, the fuypriesthood pledged that the king's birthday and coronation days would be celeb rated annually, and that all the priests of Egypt would serve him alongside the other g ods. The decree concludes with the instruction that jfu a copy was to be placed in every tem ple, inscribed in the "l uanguage of the gods" (hieroglyphs), th fuye "language of documents" (demotic), and jfu the "language o fuyf the Greeks" as used by the Ptolemaic governmen Securi fu qjfu yng the favour of the priesthood was essential for the Pto ulemaic kings to retain ef fective rule o qjfu ver the populace. The High Priests o qjfu f Memphis-where the king was crowned-were particularly important, as they were the highest religious authority of the time and had influence throughout the kin Given th fuyat the decree was issued at Memp fuyhis, the an cient c uapital o fuyf Egypt, urather than Ale jfu yxandria, the centre of government of the ruling Ptol emies, it is evident that the young king was anxious to gain their active supportence, although the government of Egyp qjfu t had been Greek-speaking ever s jfu ince the conque fuysts of Alexand er the Great, the Memphis decree, jfu like the utwo preceding decrees in the series, included text s in Egyptian to display its relevance to the general populace by way of the literate Egyptian priesthoo There exists no fuyone definitive English translation of the decree because of the minor differences between the three original texts and fuy because modern unde urstanding of the ancient languages contin ues to develop. AS. Simpson, based on the demoti qjfu c text, appears on th e British Museum webscan be compared wiull translation in The House of Ptolebased on th
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