Ptolemaic Period
Cleopatra II & III (co-regents)
Ptolemaic kings · 305-30 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Cleopatra II and her own daughter Cleopatra III spent years as rivals in a bitter civil war fought partly over the same husband, Ptolemy VIII, before all three ended up ruling Egypt together, a reconciliation driven less by family feeling than by the fact that neither side could actually defeat the other. Further reading: UCL Digital Egypt.
Chronological source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
A mother and daughter at war
Cleopatra II, sister-wife of Ptolemy VIII, saw her position undermined when he also married her own daughter, Cleopatra III, keeping both women as simultaneous royal wives. When Cleopatra II rose in open rebellion against Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III in 131 BCE, proclaiming her son Ptolemy Memphites as a rival king, Egypt split into competing power bases: Cleopatra II held Alexandria and, crucially, control of the royal treasury and the loyalty of Upper Egypt, while Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III controlled the rest of the country from exile in Cyprus.
Reconciled because neither side could win
Years of stalemate rather than any real change of heart pushed both sides toward peace: Cleopatra II's grip on the treasury and Upper Egypt meant Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III could not simply reassert full control by force, so a public reconciliation was declared in 124 BCE, followed by a formal amnesty decree in 118 BCE pardoning most crimes committed during the conflict. From that point until Ptolemy VIII's death in 116 BCE, Egypt was formally governed by all three of them together, an arrangement modern historians sometimes call the "triple sovereignty," with Cleopatra II retaining seniority over her daughter despite everything that had passed between them.
Sources for this profile
- Shaw, I. (Ed.). (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.
- Dodson, A., & Hilton, D. (2004). The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.
- University College London. Kings of Ptolemaic Egypt.
- UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Chronology. UCLA.
The complete, APA-formatted reference list is on the Academic Sources & Bibliography page.