Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt, circa -270. Its northern realm outside of Egypt shifted through time.

Ptolemaic Egypt (-305 to -30) was Egypt under rule of the Ptolemies, by one of Alexander the Great’s generals and his descendants. It is the Egypt of Cleopatra, the Rosetta Stone, the Septuagint, and the Library of Alexandria.

• When: the years -305 to -30.
• Where: Egypt, Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), sometimes Cyprus, Rhodes, Palestine, even a bit of Syria, Crete or Anatolia. One of the three main parts that Alexander’s empire broke into.
• Population: maybe 3 million.
• Major cities: Alexandria (capital), Memphis.
• Languages: Koine Greek (upper and middle class), Demotic (middle and working class). Demotic is a later stage of Ancient Egyptian and an early stage of Coptic.
• Religions: pagan – Egyptian and Greek, which start to mix, creating stuff like the cult of Serapis and Isis, which in turn spread beyond Egypt.
• Currency: Alexandrian silver tetradrachm (about 13g of silver). Ptolemaic coins looked like Greek coins but smaller. Coins were rare in Egypt before Ptolemaic times.
• Economy: exports wheat, linen, papyrus; becomes the middleman between India, Africa, and the Mediterranean by way of the ports of Alexandria on the Mediterranean and Berenice on the Red Sea. In the -200s, Hippalus discovers the pattern of monsoons, making trade with India faster, safer, cheaper.
• Military: strong navy.
• Famous sons and daughters: Cleopatra, Berenice, Manetho, Euclid, Eratosthenes, but not the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who came later, in Roman times, and was probably not a relative of either the Ptolemies or the Roman emperor Claudius.

The Hollywood version: Roxana and Alexander.

Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in -332, founded Alexandria, and, oh, was declared the son of Amun, an Egyptian god. Alexander went on to greater glory, dying just nine years later in Babylon in -323. His son by Roxana of Bactria (Rosario Dawson in the Hollywood version) was yet unborn. His generals fought over his empire. No one general could defeat the others, so it broke into three parts ruled by three dynasties:

• Ptolemaic (-305 to -30), based in Egypt (Africa)
• Seleucid (-312 to -63), based in Mesopotamia (Asia)
• Antigonid (-306 to -168), based in Macedonia (Europe)

The three main pieces of Alexander’s empire by -240.

The borders shifted back and forth between them till Rome swallowed them up one by one. Cleopatra, a Ptolemy, was the last to hold out. Rome would go on to reduce much of Egypt to serfdom.

Ptolemaic rule did benefit Greeks over Egyptians – they got the top positions and had a better chance to become landowners. And the laws became more sexist.

Alexandria was like Hong Kong or New York: a port city and international go-between for a vast hinterland. It was where Greek and Egyptian science, medicine, religion, art, and culture met and enriched each other. Alexandria became the largest city in Egypt and in the Greek-speaking world, the main seat of Greek learning. Alexandria was cosmopolitan, open, a world city – what Alexander would have wanted. That would not always be true – like now in 2021 or in the 415 that brought Hypatia and much else to an end.

The Library of Alexandria had some 490,000 scrolls (estimates vary), easily the largest library of its time. Of its books, 99% are lost. But if it were not for the Library, we would not have even that 1%, through copying and recopying, stuff like Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Thucydides and Herodotus.

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

• Ancient Egypt
• Roman Egypt
• Cleopatra
  • was she Black?
  • Was she beautiful?
• Rosetta Stone
• Septuagint
• Alexandria
  • Library of Alexandria
  • Pharos lighthouse
• papyrus
• languages
  • Egyptian
  • Greek
• Eratosthenes
• Amun
• Rosario Dawson
• Africans in the Greek and Roman world

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