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

Syria and Mesopotamia, ruled by Seleucos I; and the Lagid or Ptolemaic empire of Egypt and Libya, whose territories included Cyprus and much of Palestine (including much of the modern states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and southern Syria; a region known as Coele-Syria, or ‘Hollow Syria’). There would be frequent small-scale skirmishes – borders would expand and contract, alliances form and break, loyalties wax and wane – but the situation would remain more or less constant until a new superpower emerged to challenge the status quo.
    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 relationshipwith 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 Opettemple), 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