Ptolemaic Period
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemaic kings · 305-30 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Ptolemy II Philadelphus presided over the completion of Alexandria's Library and Lighthouse and openly married his own full sister, a step that Egyptian tradition tolerated but that scandalized the wider Greek world badly enough that a poet who mocked the marriage was hunted down and executed. Further reading: UCL Digital Egypt.
Chronological source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
Building Alexandria's golden age
Ptolemy II Philadelphus inherited a kingdom already secured by his father and used the wealth of Egypt to turn Alexandria into the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world, overseeing the completion of the Library of Alexandria and the construction of the Lighthouse at Pharos, later counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. His reign is remembered as the high point of Ptolemaic prosperity and cultural patronage, even as costly wars against the rival Seleucid kingdom continued along Egypt's eastern frontier.
A marriage that got a poet drowned
After setting aside his first wife, Arsinoe I, Ptolemy married his own full sister, Arsinoe II, probably around 273 BCE, and both took the shared epithet Philadelphoi, meaning sibling-lovers. The match echoed the sibling marriages of Egyptian pharaohs and of the gods Osiris and Isis, and provoked no apparent backlash among Egyptians, but Greek observers found it shocking. The satirist Sotades mocked the marriage in an obscene verse and paid for it: Ptolemy had him imprisoned, and after he escaped to Caunus he was captured by the admiral Patroclus, sealed inside a lead chest, and thrown into the sea. Arsinoe herself was deified after her death in 270 BCE and remained one of the most heavily promoted royal cults of the dynasty.
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.