When the Greeks Ruled Egypt

By James Romm

The Ptolemies who ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries, from about 320 to 31 BCE, had a difficult dual part to play: that of Hellenistic monarchs, in the mold of Alexander the Great, and, simultaneously, Egyptian pharaohs. The founding father of their line, Ptolemy I Soter (“Savior”), a Macedonian general in Alexander’s army of conquest, secured rule over Egypt amid the confusion following his king’s death, crowned himself monarch in 306 BCE. But he bequeathed to his heirs—the fourteen other Ptolemies who would succeed him, not to mention several Cleopatras—a difficult demographic and geopolitical position. The Ptolemies’ palace complex, staffed by a European elite, stood in Alexandria, one of the world’s original Green Zones, a Greek-style city founded on a strongly fortified isthmus facing the Mediterranean. To the south, nearly cut off by the vast marshes of Lake Mareotis, lived most of their Egyptian subjects. Some scholars have reckoned the country’s ratio of Egyptians to Greco-Macedonians at ten to one.

The strategies by which the Ptolemies maintained power in this complex environment are vividly illustrated in “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra,” an exhibition at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through January 4. To wield sovereignty over both populations required ingenuity, adaptability, and, in the Ptolemies’ case, a willingness to adopt the customs of their Egyptian subjects. Their great hero and model, Alexander, had set the template for religious tolerance and cultural fusion, winning hearts and minds in 332 BCE with his participation in the cult of the Apis—an Egyptian deity, incarnated in a living bull, that had been mocked by other foreigners. The Ptolemies followed his lead, taking part in age-old pharaonic traditions even while preserving their European heritage. To suit their Egyptian subjects, they had their portrait busts carved out of native black basalt, adorned by the pharaonic nemes headddress and uraeus or rearing cobra circlet; to the Hellenes in Alexandria, they displayed their images in stark white marble, with curling locks bound only by the thin diadem that, ever since Alexander first wore it, signified enlightened Greek monarchy.

Multiculturalism: Nothing New

‘When the Greeks Ruled Egypt’ Highlights the Diversity of Cultures in Ptolemaic Egypt

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
OCTOBER 6, 2014

For the three centuries from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, Greeks ruled Egypt not so much as foreign conquerors but as the next dynasty in the long line of pharaohs. It was not out of character for Alexander himself to assume the power and status of a pharaoh, not to mention the promised fringe benefit of a grand afterlife and kinship to the Egyptian gods.

Though these classical Greeks knew a thing or two about grandeur, they were bedazzled by the pyramids at Giza, temples up the Nile, and varied cultures speaking different languages and living side by side. Instead of imposing Greek culture, the new rulers oversaw an early and generally successful experiment in multiculturalism. Their new city Alexandria grew to be the cosmopolitan center of a hybrid culture.

The Greek strategy may have been common for ancient empires, scholars say, but not so in the age of nation-states, and especially not in today’s Middle East.

The Greek royal family in Egypt, the Ptolemies, embraced many local customs, among them marriages of brother and sister to keep political power in the family. In their reinterpretation of Egyptian divinities, they emphasized their link to the Egyptian triad of the gods Osiris, Isis and Horus. Osiris and Isis were brother and sister, and Horus their offspring. To Greeks, who frowned on incestuous unions, the Ptolemaic message was when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians do.

Their overriding policy was not to demand assimilation but to accept many ways of life. No official language was imposed for all purposes. Government affairs were often conducted in Greek, but also in Demotic, the local everyday language derived from the more formal hieroglyphs. Jewish and other immigrants often spoke and wrote Aramaic.

Cleopatra: Rome and the Magic of Egypt

Dalu Jones visits an intriguing new exhibition investigating the captivating effects that Cleopatra and Ancient Egyptian culture had on the Romans

Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt (69-30 BC), has recently returned to Rome as 
the inspiration for an exhibition entitled Cleopatra: Rome and the Magic of Egypt. Major museums and galleries worldwide have lent almost 200 works of art to this show celebrating a woman whose appeal and influence remain undiminished even now, 2000 years after her death. 

These include the 'Nahman Cleopatra', a marble head (circa 33-30 BC), on show in Italy for the first time. The portrait, which is still in private hands, takes its name from Maurice Nahman (1868-1948), the most famous of Cairo's antique dealers and collectors in pre-Nasser Egypt. 
The 'Nahman Cleopatra' resembles another head dating from the second half of the 1st century BC, from the Vatican Museums, which is also on view here (circa 45 BC), one of the few portraits thought by scholars to really represent the queen. Found in 1784 at the Villa dei Quintilii on the Via Appia, the young woman wears the royal diadem, a broad band of cloth tied around the head (first adopted by Alexander the Great) that came to symbolise Hellenistic kingship.

Photograph: Musei Vaticani

Both heads may be Roman copies, in marble, of the lost, gilded bronze statue of Cleopatra given by Julius Caesar to the Temple of Venus Genetrix, while she was living in Rome from 46 to 44 BC. Another marble head found in Rome, on the Via Labicana, may be a portrait of Cleopatra in her youth, represented in the guise of the goddess Isis and dating from the 2nd or 1st century BC. The likeness of Cleopatra shown on coins does not do her justice. Men found her extremely attractive, although she may not have been a great beauty in the conventional sense but probably a highly intelligent jolie-laide whose allure was derived from her elegant bearing, notable wit, regal status and undoubted political savoir faire.

Representing the queen's illustrious Macedonian ancestry there is the 'Guimet Alexander', a masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture from the Louvre. Alexander the Great was the founder of Alexandria, where he was reputedly buried by Ptolemy Soter I (circa 367 BC-circa 283 BC), one of his generals, the initiator in 305 BC of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ended with Cleopatra's death in 30 BC. Cleopatra's lovers Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) and Mark Antony (83-30 BC) are also represented, as is Caesarion (47-30 BC), her son by Julius Caesar, who became Ptolemy XV.

Ian S. Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism - A Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.04.45

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Ian S. Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism.   Cambridge; New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2011.  Pp. x, 347.  ISBN 9780521765510.  $110.00.  

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Reviewed by Phiroze Vasunia, University of Reading

“O Egypt, Egypt, of your pious deeds only stories will survive, and they will be incredible to your children.” Ian Moyer’s book is a first-rate analysis of the relationship between Egypt and Hellenism; it moves significantly beyond the historical positivism, the binary framework of Greek/barbarian, and the colonialist assumptions of older scholarship. Moyer considers four sources closely—Herodotus, Manetho, the Delian Sarapis aretalogy, and Thessalus (who composed a treatise De virtutibus herbarumin the first or second century CE)—to each of which he devotes a chapter. The book is ostensibly about meetings between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the latter group typified by the figure who looks “mysterious and austere, dressed in white linen, head shaved, wise in the ways of magic and divination… known since Herodotus as a fount of ancient wisdom”. But the device is a launching-point for a series of investigations into the encounters of Egyptians and Greeks over many centuries. Moyer is a learned and skilled reader of the texts, and there is much to hail in the publication of this erudite, sophisticated, and thoughtful volume.