Ptolemy III Euergetes I

Egypt's high-water mark against the Seleucids

Ptolemy III launched the Third Syrian War in 246 BCE to avenge the murder of his sister, a former Seleucid queen, and drove deep into Seleucid territory, briefly occupying much of Syria and Mesopotamia before a revolt back home in Egypt forced him to cut the campaign short. Even so, the war is generally regarded as the high point of Ptolemaic military success against the rival Hellenistic dynasty, and Ptolemy returned home having expanded Egyptian influence across the eastern Mediterranean.

A queen's hair, a vanished offering, and a new constellation

Before Ptolemy departed for the Third Syrian War, his queen, Berenice II, vowed to dedicate her hair to the goddess Aphrodite-Arsinoe if he returned home safely, and after his victorious return she cut it and placed it in the temple at Cape Zephyrium. The next day the offering had vanished from the shrine, prompting the court astronomer Conon of Samos to announce that Aphrodite had taken it up into the sky as a reward for the queen's devotion, pointing to a newly named cluster of stars as proof. That group of stars is still called Coma Berenices, "Berenice's Hair," making it one of the few constellations named after a real historical person rather than a mythological figure.