Ptolemaic dynasty

Building a dynasty: Ptolemy I–III

Ptolemy I Soter was a commander under Alexander the Great and became satrap of Egypt upon the king’s death. Although, prior to assuming kingship in 305 bce, Ptolemy used only the title satrap of Egypt, the great hieroglyphic Satrap stela, which he had inscribed in 311, indicates a degree of self-confidence that transcends his viceregal role: “I, Ptolemy the satrap, I restore to Horus, the avenger of his father, the lord of Pe, and to Buto, the lady of Pe and Dep, the territory of Patanut, from this day forth for ever, with all its villages, all its towns, all its inhabitants, all its fields.” The inscription emphasizes Ptolemy’s own role in wresting the land from the Persians and links him to the Nubian prince Khabbash, who in about 338 had laid claim to Egyptian kingship during the last Persian occupation.

After naming himself king, Ptolemy’s first concern was the continuing war with Antigonus, which was now focused on the island of Rhodes. In 304 Ptolemy aided the inhabitants of Rhodes against Antigonus and was accorded the divine title Soter (Savior), which he was commonly called from that time. With the defeat of Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 came new conflicts as the remaining successors of Alexander sought to define their kingdoms. Ptolemy navigated many of these disputes diplomatically. His quarrel with Seleucus I Nicator over Syria ended with a compromise in which Ptolemy was granted Coele Syria (Palestine), Pamphylia, Lycia, and part of Pisidia in southern Asia Minor. He also secured and expanded his empire through a policy of alliances and marriages in subsequent years. Ptolemy did, however, participate in a last coalition war in 288–286, in which he, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Pyrrhus opposed Demetrius. The Egyptian fleet participated decisively in the liberation of Athens from Macedonian occupation, and Ptolemy obtained the protectorate over the League of Islanders, which included most of the Greek islands in the Aegean. Egypt’s maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean in the ensuing decades was based on this alliance. Ptolemy also devoted attention to the internal organization of the country and provided for a successor. In 290 he made his wife Berenice queen of Egypt and in 285 (possibly on June 26) appointed his younger son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who had been born to Berenice in 308, co-regent and successor. The provision for the succession, which was based on examples from earlier times, made a peaceful transition possible when Ptolemy died in the winter of 283–282. Little is known of Ptolemy I’s domestic policies. He introduced coinage, which until that time was unknown in Egypt, and he established the Serapis cult in Memphis, which fused the Egyptian and Greek religions. He also restored the temples of the pharaohs, which had been destroyed by the Persians.

An increasing amount of documentary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence from the reign of Ptolemy I’s son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 bce), shows that the kingdom’s administration and economy underwent a thorough reorganization. Under Philadelphus’s supervision, and with the help of Greek administrators, this system developed into a kind of planned economy. Philadelphus became a master at the fiscal exploitation of the Egyptian countryside. A remarkable demotic text of the year 258 refers to orders for a complete census of the kingdom that was to record the sources of water; the position, quality, and irrigation potential of the land; the state of cultivation; the crops grown; and the extent of priestly and royal landholdings. There were important agricultural innovations in this period. New crops were introduced, and massive irrigation works brought under cultivation a great deal of new land, especially in Al-Fayyūm, where many of the immigrant Greeks were settled. The capital, Alexandria, served as the main trading and export center, as well as a hub of Greek culture. A quadrennial festival, the Ptolemaieia, was founded in the city and was intended to enjoy a status equal to that of the Olympic Games. The festival was marked by a procession of amazingly elaborate and ingeniously constructed floats, with scenarios illustrating Greek religious cults.

Philadelphus gave the dynasty another distinctive feature when he married his full sister, Arsinoe II, one of the most powerful and remarkable women of the Hellenistic age. They became, in effect, co-rulers, and both took the epithet Philadelphus (“Brother-Loving” and “Sister-Loving”). The practice of consanguineous marriage was followed by most of their successors and imitated by ordinary Egyptians too. Arsinoe played a prominent role in the formation of royal policy. She was displayed on the coinage and was eventually worshiped, perhaps even before her death, in the distinctively Greek style of ruler cult that developed in this reign.

Philadelphus harbored imperial ambitions. He engaged the Seleucids in a new war, from 274 to 270 bce, although this conflict would not affect the basic position of the rival kingdoms. He waged the so-called Chremonidean War (268?–261) against Antigonus II Gonatas, king of Macedonia, which resulted in the weakening of Ptolemaic influence in the Aegean and brought about near disaster to Philadelphus’s allies Athens and Sparta. Philadelphus was no more successful in the Second Syrian War (c. 260–253), in which he fought against the coalition of the Seleucid king Antiochus II and Antigonus Gonatas. The unsuccessful course of the military operations was compensated for, to a certain degree, by the diplomatic skill of Philadelphus, who first managed to lure Antigonus into concluding a separate peace (255) and then brought the war with the Seleucid empire to an end by marrying his daughter, Berenice—provided with a huge dowry—to his foe Antiochus II. Philadelphus reasserted his influence in the Aegean against his Antigonid Macedonian rivals.

When Ptolemy II Philadelphus died in 246 bce, he left a prosperous kingdom to his successor, Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221 bce). Euergetes’ reign saw the reunification of Egypt and Cyrenaica in 245 with his marriage to Berenice II, the daughter of Magas, king of Cyrene. His accession and marriage were swiftly followed by a very successful campaign against the Seleucids in Syria, occasioned by the murder of his sister Berenice. To avenge his sister, Euergetes marched into Syria, where he won a great victory. He gained popularity at home by recapturing statues of Egyptian gods originally taken by the Persians, an event attested inthe decree promulgated at Canopus on March 7, 238. Euergetes was also a supporter of temples throughout Egypt, and it was under his reign that the rebuilding of the great Temple of Horus at Idfū (Apollinopolis Magna) began.

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Tumultuous times: Ptolemy IV–XII

Euergetes was succeeded by his son Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205 bce), whom Greek historians portray as a weak and corrupt ruler dominated by a powerful circle of Alexandrian Greek courtiers. The reign was notable for the third Syrian War with the Seleucids, which ended in 217 in a great Ptolemaic victory at Raphia in southern Palestine. The battle is notable for the fact that large numbers of native Egyptian soldiers fought alongside the Macedonian and Greek contingents. Events surrounding the death of Philopator and the succession of the youthful Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 bce) are obscured by court intrigue. Before Epiphanes had completed his first decade of rule, serious difficulties arose. Native revolts in the south, which had been sporadic in the second half of the 3rd century, became serious and weakened the hold of the monarch on a vital part of the kingdom. These revolts, which produced native claimants to the kingship, are generally attributed to the native Egyptians’ realization of their potential power after their contribution to the victory at Raphia. Trouble continued to break out for several more decades. By about 196 a great portion of the Ptolemaic overseas empire had been permanently lost, although there may have been a brief revival in the Aegean islands in about 165–145. To shore up and advertise the strength of the ruling house at home and abroad, the administration adopted a series of grandiloquent honorific titles for its officers. The Rosetta Stone records a religious synod that met in 196 to crown Epiphanes at Memphis in the first known crowning of a Ptolemy at the traditional capital and decreed extensive privileges for the Egyptian temples, remitted debts and taxes, released prisoners, and pardoned rebels who surrendered.

After Epiphanes’ death in 180, his son Ptolemy VI Philometor took the throne, ruling as co-regent with his mother, Cleopatra I Syra. Mother and son governed effectively until her death in 176, when Philometor fell under the influence of two ambitious courtiers. Around 173 he married his sister Cleopatra II. In 170 Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Physcon, Philometor’s brother, was associated on the throne with the sibling couple. Egypt invaded Coele Syria that same year, and was decisively defeated by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV, who seized the Egyptian frontier city of Pelusium. Antiochus invaded Egypt again in 168, when he accepted coronation at Memphis and installed a Seleucid governor. However, Antiochus failed to reckon with the more powerful interests of Rome. In the summer of 168, a Roman ambassador, Popillius Laenas, arrived at Antiochus’s headquarters near Pelusium in the delta and staged an awesome display of Roman power. He ordered Antiochus to withdraw from Egypt. Antiochus asked for time to consult his advisers. Laenas drew a circle around the king with his stick and told him to answer before he stepped out of the circle. Only one answer was possible, and by the end of July Antiochus had left Egypt. About October 164 Philometor was expelled from Alexandria by his brother, who ruled as the sole king of Egypt during the following year. The Romans thereupon partitioned the Ptolemaic realm, ordering Euergetes into Cyrenaica and giving Philometor Cyprus and Egypt.

Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Physcon became the sole king of Egypt after his brother Ptolemy VI Philometor’s death in 145. Physcon, like Philometor before him, married their sister Cleopatra II. In 142 he took a second wife—Philometor and Cleopatra II’s daughter, Cleopatra III. Physcon ruled in Egypt with his two wives as co-regents until 116, except for a period in 130–124 when the elder Cleopatra was in revolt. Late in his reign (118) he instituted extensive reforms to restore the country.

The unusual will of Euergetes II partitioned Egypt’s possessions, leaving his widow Cleopatra III as the effective ruler of Egypt and Cyprus. She associated her elder son, the popular Ptolemy IX Soter II Lathyros, on the throne with her, despite her preference for her younger son, Ptolemy X Alexander I. After compelling Lathyros in 115 to divorce his strong-willed sister-queen Cleopatra IV, Cleopatra III forced him to marry his younger, more pliable sister Cleopatra Selene. In 114 he appeared with his mother as joint ruler of Egypt, while his brother, Ptolemy Alexander, was sent to Cyprus as governor. This arrangement came to an end in October 110 when the latent hostility between Lathyros and his mother finally erupted. Cleopatra III expelled him from Egypt and recalled Ptolemy Alexander from Cyprus. Lathyros returned in early 109 but was evicted anew by his mother in March of the following year.

After a reconciliation in May 108 Lathyros fled a third time and established himself in Cyprus, whence in 107 he invaded northern Syria to assist one of the claimants to the Seleucid empire. Cleopatra III allied herself with the Hasmonean ruler in Judaea and actively aided a different Seleucid pretender. In 101 during the protracted war, Cleopatra III died. About this time Lathyros and Ptolemy Alexander reconciled. Ptolemy Alexander became the sole ruler of Egypt and married Lathyros’s daughter Berenice III, while Lathyros remained entrenched in Cyprus.

In 89 bce the army in Alexandria turned against Ptolemy X Alexander I and he was forced into exile. After gathering a mercenary force in Syria-Palestine, the king returned the following year. However, when he plundered the temple-tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria to pay his troops, the infuriated populace of the city expelled him again. He was killed at sea between Lycia in Asia Minor and Cyprus. Berenice III, who had accompanied him into exile, subsequently returned to Egypt to become her father’s queen. Shortly before Lathyros’s return in 88 a serious native rebellion erupted around Thebes in Upper Egypt. After three years of hard fighting Thebes capitulated and was sacked in retribution.

In 81 bce Berenice III was once again widowed and became the sole ruler of Egypt. Meanwhile, young Ptolemy XI Alexander II, son of Ptolemy X Alexander I, had been befriended by the Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, with whose aid he was sent to Egypt to be married to Berenice III. Neither the queen nor the people of Alexandria were consulted about the matter. When Ptolemy Alexander learned that Berenice was loath to surrender her authority, he arranged for her murder. The enraged Alexandrians, in return, killed him.

Following the sudden violent deaths of the last two fully legitimate members of the Ptolemaic family in Egypt, the people of Alexandria invited Ptolemy XII Auletes to assume the throne in 80 bce. Although he was known as a son of Ptolemy IX Soter II, his mother was a mistress of Lathyros, not a wife. Shortly after his arrival in Egypt, Ptolemy married his sister Cleopatra V Tryphaeana and in 76 he was crowned in Alexandria according to Egyptian rites. In Rome, however, anti-Senate politicians in 65 raised the issue of Auletes’ legitimacy, producing a questionable will of Ptolemy XI Alexander II purporting to bequeath Egypt to the Roman people. Auletes, seeking Roman support, sent troops to assist the consul and general Pompey the Great in Palestine. Cicero, representing Pompey’s interests, persuaded the Senate to oppose Roman annexation. Facing serious opposition from the people of Alexandria and still unsure of his status at Rome, Auletes bribed Julius Caesar, one of the Roman consuls for the year 59, with 6,000 talents, in return for which Caesar passed a law acknowledging Auletes’ kingship. Rome nevertheless divested Egypt of Cyprus the next year, and, when his brother in Egypt failed to support him, the island’s king committed suicide.

The loss of Cyprus and Ptolemy’s submissive attitude to Rome outraged the people of Alexandria, who drove Auletes out of Egypt and accepted his queen, Tryphaeana, and his eldest daughter, Berenice IV, as rulers in 58. Residing at Pompey’s villa at Rome, Auletes employed bribery to obtain the support of the Roman senators. He also arranged the assassination of delegations sent by his opponents from Alexandria, where the people had made Berenice IV sole ruler after her mother’s death. Auletes continued to dispense bribes and fell deeper into debt to Roman moneylenders. Late in 57 the Senate passed a resolution to support Auletes, but when a prophecy forbade the granting of active aid, the Egyptian king departed for Ephesus, a city in Asia Minor.

In 55 bce, after promising Pompey’s lieutenant Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, 10,000 talents, Auletes returned to Egypt with a Roman army. Once restored, he executed his daughter, who had headed the opposition at Alexandria. Shortly before his death in 51 he proclaimed his eldest surviving daughter, the celebrated Cleopatra VII, and his eldest son co-regents. His extensive bribery left Egypt in financial trouble.

The reign of Cleopatra VII

When Ptolemy XII Auletes died in 51 bce, the throne passed to his young son, Ptolemy XIII, and daughter, Cleopatra VII. It is likely, but not proven, that the two married soon after their father’s death. The 18-year-old Cleopatra, older than her brother by about eight years, became the dominant ruler. Evidence shows that the first decree in which Ptolemy’s name precedes Cleopatra’s was in October of 50. Soon after, Cleopatra was forced to flee Egypt for Syria, where she raised an army and in 48 returned to face her brother at Pelusium, on Egypt’s eastern border. The murder of the Roman general Pompey, who had sought refuge from Ptolemy XIII at Pelusium, and the arrival of Julius Caesar brought temporary peace.

Cleopatra realized that she needed Caesar’s support if she was to regain her throne. Each was determined to use the other. Caesar sought money for repayment of the debts incurred by Cleopatra’s father, Auletes, as he struggled to retain his throne. Cleopatra was determined to keep her throne and, if possible, to restore the glories of the first Ptolemies and recover as much as possible of their dominions, which had included southern Syria and Palestine. Caesar and Cleopatra became lovers and spent the winter besieged in Alexandria. Roman reinforcements arrived the following spring, and Ptolemy XIII fled and drowned in the Nile. Cleopatra, now married to her brother Ptolemy XIV, was restored to her throne. In June 47 she gave birth to Ptolemy Caesar (known to the people of Alexandria as Caesarion, or “little Caesar”). Whether Caesar was the father of Caesarion, as his name implies, cannot now be known.

It took Caesar two years to extinguish the last flames of Pompeian opposition. As soon as he returned to Rome in 46 he celebrated a four-day triumph—the Roman ceremonial in honor of a general after his victory over a foreign enemy—in which Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra’s younger and hostile sister, was paraded. Cleopatra paid at least one state visit to Rome, accompanied by her husband-brother and son. She was accommodated in Caesar’s private villa beyond the Tiber River and may have been present to witness the dedication of a golden statue of herself in the temple of Venus Genetrix, the ancestor of the Julian family to which Caesar belonged. Cleopatra was in Rome when Caesar was murdered in 44 bce.

Soon after her return to Alexandria that same year Cleopatra’s coruler, Ptolemy XIV, died. Cleopatra now ruled with her infant son, Ptolemy XV Caesar. In 42 Mark Antony, now controller of Rome’s eastern territories, sent for Cleopatra so that she might explain her role in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination. She set out for Tarsus in Asia Minor loaded with gifts, having delayed her departure to heighten Antony’s expectation. She entered the city by sailing up the Cydnus River in a barge while dressed in the robes of the new Isis. Antony, who equated himself with the god Dionysus, was captivated. Forgetting his wife, Fulvia, who in Italy was doing her best to maintain her husband’s interests against the growing menace of young Octavian, Antony returned to Alexandria, where he treated Cleopatra not as a “protected” sovereign but as an independent monarch.

In 40 Cleopatra gave birth to twins, whom she named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. Antony had already left Alexandria to return to Italy, where he was forced to conclude a temporary settlement with Octavian. As part of this settlement, he married Octavian’s sister, Octavia (Fulvia having died). Three years later Antony was convinced that he and Octavian could never come to terms. His marriage to Octavia now an irrelevance, he returned to the east and reunited with Cleopatra. Antony needed Cleopatra’s financial support for his postponed Parthian campaign. In exchange, Cleopatra requested the return of much of Egypt’s eastern empire, including large portions of Syria and Lebanon and even the rich balsam groves of Jericho. Ultimately, the Parthian campaign was a costly failure, as was the temporary conquest of Armenia.

By 34 bce Caesarion was officially coruler with Cleopatra. In the autumn of that year Cleopatra and Antony staged an extravagant display known as “the Donations of Alexandria.” Crowds flocked to the Gymnasium to see Cleopatra and Antony seated on golden thrones on a silver platform with their children sitting on slightly lower thrones beside them. Antony proclaimed Caesarion to be Caesar’s son—thus relegating Octavian, who had been adopted by Caesar as his son and heir, to legal illegitimacy. Cleopatra was hailed as queen of kings, Caesarion as king of kings. Alexander Helios was awarded Armenia and the territory beyond the Euphrates, his infant brother Ptolemy the lands to the west of it. The boys’ sister, Cleopatra Selene, was to be ruler of Cyrene. In the aftermath, Octavian began a propaganda war against Antony. Octavian seized Antony’s will (or what he claimed to be Antony’s will) from the temple of the Vestal Virgins, to whom it had been entrusted, and revealed to the Roman people that not only had Antony bestowed Roman possessions on a foreign woman but he had also intended to be buried beside her in Egypt. The rumor quickly spread that Antony also intended to transfer the capital from Rome to Alexandria.

Antony and Cleopatra spent the winter of 32–31 bce in Greece. The Roman Senate deprived Antony of his prospective consulate for the following year, and it then declared war against Cleopatra. The naval Battle of Actium, in which Octavian faced the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra on September 2, 31 bce, was a disaster for the Egyptians. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt, and Cleopatra retired to her mausoleum as Antony went off to fight his last battle. Receiving the false news that Cleopatra had died, Antony fell on his sword. In a last excess of devotion, he had himself carried to Cleopatra’s retreat and there died, after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian.

Cleopatra buried Antony and then committed suicide. The means of her death is uncertain, though classical writers came to believe that she had killed herself by means of an asp, symbol of divine royalty. She was 39 and had been a queen for 22 years.