Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley Read Free Book Online

to poison.
    Philip III Arrhidaeos, King of Egypt 323–316
    Son of Philip II of Macedon
    With Alexander dead, his half-brother assumed nominal control of an empire stretching from Macedon to India, becoming uncrowned king of Egypt by default. Philip Arrhidaeos was the son of a Thessalian woman of humble birth; unkind rumour held that she was little better than a dancing girl, and everyone agreed that her son was, at best, half-witted. Half-witted or not, Arrhidaeos had managed to survive the violent family struggle which followed the assassination of his father, Philip, and which saw the elimination of all other potential rivals to the throne. Supported by his forceful wife, Adea, Arrhidaeos ruled his empire for just six years, his reign ending with an invasion of Macedon led by the dowager Olympias of Epiros. With Olympias triumphant, Arrhidaeos was executed and Adea, offered the choice of a dagger, a noose or poison, hanged herself.
    Alexander IV, King of Egypt 316–304
    Posthumous son of Alexander III the Great and Roxanne
    Alexander the Great was just thirty-three years old and childless when he died. However, his Sogdian (Iranian) wife, Roxanne, was pregnant with a child who, if a boy, was destined to share the throne with Alexander’s half-brother, Philip Arrhidaeos. The child was indeed a boy, and at Arrhidaeos’s untimely death the throne passed unchallenged to his nephew, Alexander IV. The younger Alexander would never see Egypt; both he and Roxanne were murdered in Macedon in 310. The remains of a ‘young prince’, discovered in a silver funerary urn in the Macedonian royal cemetery of Vergina, may well be those ofAlexander IV. For the last six years of Alexander’s ‘reign’, as recorded in Egypt’s official lists, Ptolemy son of Lagos acted as uncrowned king.
    Ptolemy I Soter I (Saviour), King of Egypt 304–284
    Son of Lagos of Eordaea and Arsinoë
    Ptolemy I was born in Macedon in 367. His father, Lagos, was a man of respectable but unexceptional Macedonian descent who had made a good marriage; his mother, Arsinoë, was second cousin to Philip II. Like many of Egypt’s commoner-born kings, Ptolemy was not overproud of his humble origins. Soon after the death of Alexander III he would spread the rumour that his mother had been one of Philip’s many mistresses and that he himself was half-brother to the late, great king.
    As a Macedonian general, Ptolemy witnessed Alexander defeat Darius III of Persia at the battle of Issus in November 333. A year later he was present when Alexander took Egypt, and he was almost certainly present when Alexander marched to the Siwa Oasis. Other military successes followed. In 329 he captured Bessus, satrap of Bactria and assassin of Darius III, and in 327 he campaigned in India, commanding a third of Alexander’s army.
    In 323 Ptolemy took control of Egypt, governing first on behalf of Philip Arrhidaeos, then on behalf of Alexander IV. It was Ptolemy who, in Philip’s name, supervised the temple improvements at Karnak and Hermopolis Magna, and in Alexander’s name built at the Elephantine temple of Khnum. He extended Egypt’s territories to create a buffer zone around his land and masterminded the kidnapping and subsequent display of Alexander’s body in Alexandria. In 304 the situation was regularised. In a coronation ceremony held at Alexandria, General Ptolemy was transformed into King Ptolemy I Soter I. As Ptolemy’s Greek profile – hook-nosed, sharp-chinned, sunken-eyedand topped with a mop of unruly curls – started to appear on her coins, Egypt became an independent realm with Alexandria as her capital.
    Alexander’s enormous empire was by now irretrievably fragmented and his own dynastic line had ended. The Wars of the Successors (321–285) left the Mediterranean world dominated by three rival Macedonian-based kingdoms: the Antigonid empire of Macedon and mainland Greece, ruled by the descendants of Antigonos ‘the One-Eyed’; the Seleucid empire of