Although the
Ptolemaic Period ushered in a long period of foreign rule, the Macedonian kings
of that dynasty did not interfere with the Egyptian artistic traditions of the
preceding three milennia. Ptolemy II Philadelphos, like his father Ptolemy I
Soter, the founder of the dynasty, continued the practice of building and
decorating temples in traditional Egyptian fashion.
While this is
not to say that the Macedonian rulers did not have Greek artists portray them
according to Greek artistic conventions, here the Greek ruler is shown in a
purely Egyptian guise, wearing the traditional nemes-headdress of the pharaoh.
The style of the relief, including the deeply cut navel, the horizontal
treatment of the torso muscles, the "golf ball" chin, and the
upturned smile, is common in representations from Dynasties XXIX and XXX (circa
399–342 B.C.) and was readily adopted by the Ptolemies into their iconographic
program. Visible behind the king is the figure of a goddess in another scene.
Dates: 285 or
282-246 B.C.E.
Period:
Ptolemaic Period
Dimensions: 27
3/16 x 23 5/8 x 2 3/8 in. (69 x 60 x 6 cm) (show scale)
Accession
Number: 72.127
Credit Line:
Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Rights
Statement: Creative Commons-BY
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, The Second King of Egypt's Greek
Period
by Jimmy Dunn for www.touregypt.net
In about 285 BC, Ptolemy I Soter probably took as his
co-ruler one of his sons by Berenice, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who became the
sole ruler of Egypt and the rest of his father's empire upon the elder king's
death in about 282 BC. He took the Egyptian name, Meryamun Setepenre, which
means "Beloved of Amun, Chosen of Re". His reign can only be
described as successful, considering the expansion of his possessions around
the Mediterranean, the internal stability in Egypt, and the fulfillment of many
of his father's imaginative projects, such as the Pharos Lighthouse and the
Alexandrian University and Library.
However, it is important to put into perspective many of
these accomplishments, and to understand the basis for the future of the
Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt that flowed from this early period.
Ptolemy II was
actually not born in Egypt but in Cos in about 309 BC. As a youth, he enjoyed
the best tutors. The practice of getting the best scholars or poets available
to educate the crown prince was something that Ptolemy I had the occasion to
observe in Macedonia, where the young Alexander was taught by no less a figure
than Aristotle himself. Ptolemy II would need this training, as well as the
natural attributes of his family, in order to rule during an age of intrigue
amidst international ambitions. Indeed, the Ptolemies were known for their
seemingly natural ability to live in greed, luxury and intrigue while other
members of the diadochi (the followers) of Alexander the Great, who split his
empire amongst themselves, suffered from these follies. When he took the throne
of Egypt, he was known as Ptolemy II Philadelphus was, like his father before
him, not simply the ruler of Egypt. Indeed, he specifically wanted control over
the Aegean, the eastern Mediterranean trade routes and the sea passage through
the Black Sea. He was in fact making headway on his ambitions in this regard
when Macedonia made a resurgence under Antigonus Gonatas. Greece and the Aegean
had been Macedonia's natural sphere of influence ever since the days of Philip
II, and Gonatas showed no signs of abandoning that role. When Gonatas began to
restore the naval supremacy that Macedonia had once enjoyed, nothing could have
been more alarming to Ptolemy II. Therefore, the Egyptian king began to
actively subsidize any and all of Macedonia's enemies in the area.
Athens, under Macedonian control, was one such enemy.
Ptolemy II was already supplying much of Athens' wheat, and he concentrated his
efforts there. He knew that most Athenians longed for freedom and autonomy from
Macedonia, and that they had a dream of regaining control of Piraeus. However,
he also worked anti-Macedonian allies, such as the Sparetan king Areus, into a
coalition. Eventually, when he felt the time was ripe, Ptolemy II, through his
agents, encouraged the Athenian to declare war on Antigonus. The patriotic
notion of war was made in Athens by an idealistic and handsome Athenian citizen
named Chremonides, who also gave his name to the war.
However, this war backfired on Ptolemy II and the Greeks.
Ptolemy actually did very little to support the efforts of the Athenians, even
though Chremonidean had claimed that Ptolemy "conspicuously shows his zeal
for the common freedom of the Greeks". When the Spartan king Areus met
Antigonus outside Corinth during this war, he died on the battlefield, leaving
Antigonus to lay siege to Athens. There was no rescue by Ptolemy II, and in the
end, the Greeks were much worse off than before. However, it must be said that,
through all of this, Ptolemy seems to have been gaining ground in the region,
and he continued to spark conflicts between Macedonia and its enemies. This was
a time of intrigue amongst all parties, and sometimes Ptolemy II expanded his
region of control, only to lose it again and these types of conflicts outside
of Egypt appear to have been ongoing through his reign.
At home, this was a period of considerable achievement for
Egypt's new capital, Alexandria, which grew so fast during the reign of Ptolemy
II and his predecessor that it had to be divided into three governable
districts. By the end of his reign, it consisted of Rhakotis, the native
Egyptian quarter, Bruchium, the royal Greek-Macedonian quarter and the Jewish
Quarter, that was almost as large as the Greek.
However, Alexandria did not only grow quantitatively, but in
quality as well. It was Ptolemy II who called upon the most learned men in all
fields to come to Alexandria and to the new university to lecture. He managed
to integrate them into the Alexandrian society and provided these scholars with
a life free from want and from taxes, allowing them to study write, collate
manuscripts, research lecture and theorize in their respective disciplines.
Together with is father, the new king of Egypt established the foundations upon
which Alexandria's fame would be based. Not that all of this arose completely
from Ptolemy II's pure passion for intellectualism. Much of his policy was one
of cultural ostentation and self-advertisement.
To a certain extent, offering patronage to Hellenistic
scholars such as poets was a brilliant step, not unlike the powerful men of
today that harness the power of print and television. These scholars were well
cared for by Ptolemy II, but in return, at intervals, were also expected to
glorify their patrons with palpable flattery and hints of divine status. In his
first hymn, Callimachus associates, indeed virtually equates Ptolemy II with
Zeus, and with the second, Apollo. He writes, "From Zeus come kings, for
than Zeus's princes nothing is more divine... We can judge this from our lord
(Ptolemy II) since he has outstripped the rest by a wide margin. What he thinks
in the morning he accomplishes by evening - by evening the greatest projects,
but the lesser one the moment he thinks of them." Thus, through
Callimachus and many others that he supported, there arose a viable catalog of
works exhorting the king. Manetho even dedicated his history of Egypt to him,
though it was Ptolemy II who had ordered him to write the history in the first
place.
Of course, this sort of advertisement did not very well
reach the Egyptian people outside of those in Alexandria. Egypt was really two
lands at this point, and through much of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Many of the
Greeks never bothered to even learn the local language, and indeed it is
claimed that the famous and last Ptolemy, Cleopatra, was the only Ptolemaic
ruler ever to learn the Egyptian. Therefore, the Greeks worked through an army
of translators to communicate with the priests and bureaucracy that actually
ran the remainder of Egypt. Ptolemy ran Egypt as a private estate, and much of
the bureaucracy, which had a stranglehold on Egypt, was simply to insure that
he received what was due him.
The dynastic cult of the Ptolemies was a Greek cult with a
Greek hierarchy, and with worshippers drawn from the Greek speaking population
of the country. Though they borrowed from pharaonic cult practices, this made
no fundamental difference to this basic fact. The nearest the Ptolemies came to
any kind of integration was the imposition of themselves, and their cult, for
political reasons, on the native theocracy. They treated Egyptian priests with
some amount of respect, and in return they enjoyed pharaonic privileges and
honors. Nevertheless, it is clear that the priests, particularly of Upper
Egypt, still regarded them privately as foreign interlopers, not unlike the
Hyksos, to be expelled when the time was right. That never happened.
Nevertheless, Egypt is said to have attained its greatest
height under Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
Though perhaps most famous for completing his father's great
works in Alexandria, he is also credited with other accomplishments. For
example, he completing the canal from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile River.
The construction of this canal was begun under Necho and continued by Darius
who abandoned it when he was told that the Red Sea was at a higher level than
Egypt. Ptolemy II provided the canal with a lock and after its completion, the
canal was named the Ptolemy River in his honor. And even though Ptolemy II's
buildings and many of his accomplishments have been lost to us through time,
one of his most enduring contributes to Egypt is readily visible to us today.
He was the first to import camels to Egypt.
Interestingly, one of Ptolemy II's claims to fame was his
marriage to his full sister. At first, he made a dynastic marriage with
Arsinoe, the daughter of the powerful Lysimachus of Thrace, who had been one of
Alexander the Great's foremost generals. By her, he had three children.
However, when his sister, another Arsinoe, who was bored with sanctuary on
Samorthrace, finally returned to Egypt, she cultivated her brother who was her
junior by eight years. Ptolemy II ended up repudiating his existing wife, after
some rumors of treason associated with her arose and she was banished to Coptos
in Southern Egypt. He then married his full sister. She promptly adopted his
first wife's children, and began to appear with her brother and now husband on
his gold and silver coinage. In fact, by some sexist oddity, it was his sister
and wife, who while they both lived, and not Ptolemy II who was known as
Philadelphus. The date of this marriage is uncertain, but it must have taken
place before 274/3 BC, when Arsinoe appears as regnant queen on the Pithom
stele.
It is not always certain that the more ancient Egyptian
pharaohs who also married their sisters had sexual relations with them, but
Arsinoe was undeniably beautiful, as well as determined, and therefore her
incestuous marriage to her brother seems to have been more than a mere act of
calculated policy. Nevertheless, calculation undoubtedly entered into it.
Ptolemy I had already been deified, and the more divinity that hedged the royal
succession the better. Ptolemy II probably figured on playing Osiris to
Arsinoe's Isis for the benefit of his Egyptian subjects, and Zeus to her Hera
for the Greeks.
Sailors were already praying to Arsinoe during her lifetime,
a sign that she was regarded in some sense as the avatar of Isis, and she was
promptly deified after her death. It has often been thought that she held
considerable influence over Ptolemy, though her role as the political power
behind the throne has probably been exaggerated. Ptolemy could be a forceful
enough ruler when force was called for.
All was not perfect, though. By now, the very
intellectualism in Alexandria established by the first two Ptolemies had
created satirists in the city, and no great man seems to have escaped them.
When Ptolemy II married his full sister, the Greek poet Sotades published a
lampoon that included the stinging line, "You are pushing the prong into
an unholy fleshpot". This landed him in prison, and later Ptolemy II had
him hunted down by his admiral, Patroclus, who drowned him in a lead coffin.
Ptolemy seems to have died a relatively peaceful death and
been buried in Alexandria as was probably his father. he was succeeded by
Ptolemy III Euergetes, a product of his first wife who had been brought up by
his stepmother.
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None Stated
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|
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3816/Sunk_Relief_Representation_of_Ptolemy_II/image/17032/image#
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/ptolemy2.htm
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