Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (35 page)

Ptolemy was an imaginative economist and a competent scholar. Keen to promote Alexandria as an international centre of learning, he established the Museion and its world famous library. Outside Alexandria new temples were raised to ancient gods at Terenuthis (Hathor), Naukratis (Amen), Kom el-Ahmar (Osiris) and Tebtynis (Soknebtynis). The vast and highly efficient Egyptian bureaucracy was left more or less untouched, but the new city of Ptolemais Hormou was founded to counteract the influence of the ever-rebellious ancient southern capital, Thebes.

His personal life was less well organised. Already divorced from his first wife, the Persian princess Artakama, he had married Eurydice of Macedon some time between 322 and 319. Eurydice bore her husband four or five children: two sons (Ptolemy Ceraunos and Meleager; both destined to rule Macedon), two daughters (Lysandra and Ptolemais) and a third possible daughter (Theoxena). A simultaneous relationship
with Berenice I yielded three children. Eventually Eurydice was divorced and Ptolemy married his long-term mistress.

Berenice I

Daughter of Magas (?) and Antigone, wife of Ptolemy I

Berenice, widow of Philip II of Macedon, already had a son, Magus, who was to become king of Cyrenaica. Initially the mistress of Ptolemy I, she displaced Eurydice, married Ptolemy and became queen of Egypt. She bore Ptolemy two daughters (Arsinoë II and Philotera) and a son (Ptolemy II).

Ptolemy II Philadelphos (Brother-Loving), King of Egypt 285–246

Son of Ptolemy I and Berenice I

Ptolemy II had ruled alongside Ptolemy I as co-regent for three years; it was obvious that he was his father’s chosen successor. Nevertheless, his accession did not go unchallenged. There were those who felt, with some justification, that Berenice’s children should not have precedence over Eurydice’s offspring. Having secured his throne, Ptolemy’s reign developed into one of internal peace and sporadic foreign campaigns which initially saw an expansion, followed by a setback, of Egypt’s territories.

Back home, Ptolemy made significant improvements to the state bureaucracy and the banking system, refining the taxation structure until it became one of the most sophisticated, and punitive, in the world. Some of the revenue raised was used to complete his father’s unfinished building projects, including the Museion of Alexandria and the Pharos lighthouse. His own building works included the naos (inner sacred area) of the Philae temple of Isis, improvements to the Karnak temple complex (the temple of the goddess Mut and the Opet
temple), and an extension to the birth house at the Dendera temple of Hathor. He restored the canal, silted up since Persian days, which linked the eastern Delta to the Gulf of Suez, and founded the city of Arsinoë – just one of many cities that he founded or renamed Arsinoë – at its southern end. Land reclamation and improvements to irrigation in the Faiyum led to a significantly increased agricultural yield, and the papyrus and grain industries flourished.

Ptolemy II used the memory of his deceased parents and his sister-wife, Arsinoë II, to promote the legitimacy of his dynasty and provide his people, both Greeks and Egyptians, with a unifying royal cult. But perhaps his greatest legacy was the commissioning of a history of Egypt, to be written in Greek for a Greek readership by the Egyptian priest Manetho of Sebennytos. Manetho’s work, now lost but surviving in valuable fragments in later histories, forms the basis of our modern division of Egyptian history into a sequence of ruling dynasties.

Arsinoë I

Daughter of Lysimachos of Thrace, wife of Ptolemy II

Arsinoë I bore Ptolemy II two sons (Ptolemy III Euergetes and Lysimachos) and a daughter (Berenice II) before she was banished from court, accused of plotting against her husband. She took up permanent residence in the southern Egyptian city of Koptos.

Arsinoë II

Daughter of Ptolemy I and Berenice I, sister-wife of Ptolemy II

The sixteen-year-old Arsinoë had been married to the elderly Lysimachos of Thrace, becoming stepmother to Arsinoë I. Several years later, hoping to promote the cause of her own two sons, she masterminded the death of Lysimachos’s heir, Agathocles, husband of her half-sister
Lysandra. This tore the royal family apart, and Lysimachos died in battle in 281, fighting his dead son’s supporters. Arsinoë next married her half-brother Ptolemy Ceraunos. But Ceraunos, self-proclaimed king of Macedon, had her sons by Lysimachos murdered, and Arsinoë fled first to Samothrace and then to her brother’s court in Egypt. Ceraunos ruled Macedon for two years before dying in battle; his brother Meleager succeeded him but was deposed after a mere two months.

Arsinoë II next married her younger brother, Ptolemy II. She was queen of Egypt for less than seven years, yet had an enormous influence on the developing role of the queen. Deified after her death, her statue stood in all of Egypt’s temples.

Ptolemy III Euergetes I (Benefactor), King of Egypt 246–221

Son of Ptolemy II and Arsinoë I

The ending of the Third Syrian War (246–241) saw Ptolemy III, having captured the port of the enemy capital, Antioch, ruling an eastern Mediterranean empire whose influence stretched from the River Euphrates to Cyrenaica, as far north as Thrace and as far south as northern Nubia.

Ptolemy III was a successful and hard-working king whose building achievements include the founding of the temple of Horus at Edfu and the construction of the Alexandria Serapeum, but the end of his reign was marred by an unprecedented series of native uprisings, a response to the high levels of taxation and the growing economic differences between the Egyptian peasants and the immigrant Greeks.

Berenice II

Daughter of Magus of Cyrenaica, wife of Ptolemy III

The classical authors admired Berenice II as a strong and
independently wealthy consort who, not content with ruling Egypt in her husband’s absence, rode into battle alongside him. Less admirable, and equally unlikely to be true, is the rumour that the hot-tempered Berenice had murdered her first fiancé, the Macedonian prince Demetrios the Fair, because she had found him in bed with her mother, Apame. Ptolemy III and Berenice II seem to have been genuinely fond of each other and their marriage produced six children. Berenice was murdered during her son’s reign.

Ptolemy IV Philopator (Father-Loving), King of Egypt 221–205

Son of Ptolemy III and Berenice II

The reign of Ptolemy IV heralded the beginning of the end of the Ptolemaic empire. The eldest son of Ptolemy III, Ptolemy IV has gone down in history as a pleasure-seeking drunkard who chose to stand silent as the highly influential, multi-talented athlete, priest and courtier Sosibios purged the royal family, murdering Ptolemy’s brother Magas, his uncle Lysimachos and his mother, Berenice II. Guided by Sosibios, Ptolemy took his younger sister, Arsinoë III, as his queen, but his affections lay with his mistress Agathoclea, who was herself the daughter of his father’s mistress. This formidable lady bore him at least one child before (allegedly) poisoning first Ptolemy IV and then Arsinoë III.

Private life aside, Ptolemy’s reign was by no means all bad. He successfully and most surprisingly armed his people and defended his country against an attempted takeover by Antiochos III of Syria. In winning the battle of Raphia on 22 June 217 he became the first Ptolemy to use native Egyptian troops. He improved and extended many temples, and completed the temple of Horus at Edfu. An enthusiastic scholar, he endowed a temple and cult to Homer at Alexandria. He even composed a tragedy,
Adonis
. Nevertheless, he was a deeply
unpopular king, and his reign saw continuing native revolts that included the emergence of an Egyptian counter-pharaoh, Harwennefer, who ruled from Thebes in 206–200.

Arsinoë III

Daughter of Ptolemy III and Berenice II, sister-wife of Ptolemy IV

The mother of Ptolemy V was murdered soon after her husband’s unnatural death.

Ptolemy V Epiphanes (Manifest God), King of Egypt 205–180

Son of Ptolemy IV and Arsinoë III

Ptolemy V had been named co-regent alongside his father as a baby. He became solo king at just six years of age. But the purge that had followed his father’s succession, and his mother’s murder, meant that there was no one suitable to act as regent on his behalf. His father’s (almost certainly forged) will named Sosibios and Agathocles, brother of Agathoclea, as guardians. When Sosibios died suddenly, Agathocles became sole guardian – until, that is, in 203 his entire family was murdered; torn apart by an angry mob determined to avenge their king and queen.

The mob may have supported the young Ptolemy V, but away from Alexandria the Egyptian people remained deeply unhappy with their Macedonian rulers and with the expensive after-effects of their seemingly endless military campaigns. Ptolemy IV had armed the Egyptian people to defeat Antiochos III in the battle of Raphia; they now realised just how powerful they could be. In 200 the Theban counter-pharaoh Harwennefer was succeeded by a second counter-pharaoh, Ankhwennefer, who held power in southern Egypt until 186. Meanwhile, a simultaneous rebellion in the Delta threatened the security of Alexandria. In order to secure his throne, Ptolemy reached an
agreement with the Egyptian priesthood. The details of this agreement were carved on the bilingual Rosetta Stone, used in Champollion’s decipherment of the hieroglyphic script.

A sensible diplomatic marriage to the ten-year-old Cleopatra I, daughter of Antiochos III of Syria, ensured that Ptolemy V remained on good terms with his most influential neighbour. But his reign saw the loss of many foreign territories and the empire contracted until it essentially comprised Cyprus, Cyrenaica and a handful of Aegean outposts. Greek immigration into Egypt, a constant stream since the reign of Ptolemy I, now slowed to a trickle and, deprived of constant renewed contact with their homeland, the Greeks within Egypt finally started to accept a more assimilated culture.

Following a threat to levy heavy taxes on Egypt’s Greek elite – the money was needed to finance military campaigns that, it was hoped, would restore the lost territories – Ptolemy V was poisoned by his generals in 180.

Cleopatra I

Daughter of Antiochos III of Syria, wife of Ptolemy V

Cleopatra I bore two sons (Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII) and a daughter (Cleopatra II). Although a foreigner (Cleopatra, nicknamed ‘the Syrian’, was of Macedonian-Persian descent), she managed to achieve what few members of the Ptolemaic dynasty could: a position of importance and respect within the royal family, both within Alexandria and the wider Egypt. After her husband’s death her influence grew even stronger as she acted as both regent and guardian for the five-year-old Ptolemy VI. While she lived, Egypt sensibly showed little interest in foreign affairs and remained on good terms with her native Syria. But Cleopatra I died a mere four years after Ptolemy V.

Ptolemy VI Philometor (Mother-Loving), King of Egypt 180–164, 163–145

Son of Ptolemy V and Cleopatra I

The orphaned Ptolemy VI, still too young to rule alone, came under the control of the eunuch Eulaeus and the Syrian ex-slave Lenaeus. It is not clear how such a curious couple came to be chosen as regents, although we may speculate that Cleopatra I died unexpectedly, before she had appointed a suitable guardian. Eulaeus and Lenaeus decided that the young king should marry his slightly older sister Cleopatra II. Soon after, in a move which was presumably intended to strengthen national unity but which had precisely the opposite effect, they announced that the kingship was to be a triumvirate, with the two young Ptolemies (VI and VIII) plus Cleopatra II as corulers.

Their next decision – in hindsight an extremely foolish one – was an attempt to reclaim Egypt’s lost territories by provoking a new Syrian war. This almost brought about the collapse of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Egypt suffered a humiliating invasion, Ptolemy VI was captured by his uncle Antiochos IV, Eulaeus and Lenaeus disappeared, and the people of Alexandria proclaimed the twelve-year-old Cleopatra II and her younger brother, Ptolemy VIII, their queen and king. For a time Egypt had two rival courts, based at Memphis (Ptolemy VI under the control of Antiochos IV) and Alexandria (Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II), but the situation was untenable and the triumvirate was resumed at Alexandria. Antiochos, angered by the defection of Ptolemy VI, marched west; only direct Roman intervention prevented Alexandria from falling to the Syrians. Antiochos departed from Egypt in 168, leaving the siblings ruling from Alexandria, and Egypt greatly indebted to Rome.

The people outside Alexandria were unhappy. In 164, with Ptolemy VI distracted by civil unrest, Ptolemy VIII seized the throne and, as his brother fled first to Rome and thence to Cyprus, ruled alongside Cleopatra II from Alexandria. The Alexandrian mob quickly turned
against their new king, and in 163 Ptolemy VI, with the full support of Rome, was invited home to rule with Cleopatra II. Increased stability brought increased prosperity to Egypt, and there was an impressive programme of temple restorations. In 145, having regained many of Egypt’s lost territories, Ptolemy VI died in battle in Syria.

Ptolemy Eupator ([Born] of a Noble Father)

Son of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II

Died while still crown prince.

Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator (New Father-Loving), King of Egypt 145

Son of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II

Murdered in his mother’s arms by his new stepfather, his uncle Ptolemy VIII, on their wedding day.

Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (Benefactor): ‘Physcon’ (Pot-Belly) or ‘Kakergetes’ (Malefactor), King of Egypt 170–163, 145–116

Son of Ptolemy V and Cleopatra I