The Ptolemies of Egypt

The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom based in ancient Egypt. It was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty, which started with Ptolemy I Soter’s accession after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and which ended with the death of Cleopatra and the Roman conquest in 30 BC.

The Ptolemaic Kingdom was founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, a diadochus originally from Macedon in northern Greece who declared himself pharaoh of Egypt and created a powerful Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled an area stretching from southern Syria to Cyrene and south to Nubia.

Alexandria, a Greek polis founded by Alexander the Great, became the capital city and a major center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, the Ptolemies named themselves as pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions by marrying their siblings per the Osiris myth, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life. The Ptolemies were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its final conquest by Rome.

“THIS book is intended less for the student than for the general reader. The period has become highly specialized: the administrative and economic conditions of Ptolemaic Egypt have been exhaustively reviewed. Textbooks treating of these and kindred subjects exist, and it would be superfluous to add to their number. But the kings and queens of the period, virile if not specially virtuous rulers, have received less attention, and it is in the hope of rescuing from oblivion their personality that this book has been written.”—P. G. Elgood, Foreword