Some scholars believe Ptolemy II Philadelphus was a leader relying on diplomacy rather than war to relate with Egypt’s neighbours and competitors. During his reign though Ptolemy II was involved in a number of conflicts confronting his eastern neighbours, the Seleukids, especially over the control of Koile Syria. Due to these conflicts, Philadelphus’ religious, military, foreign and internal economical and political policies were much influenced. Ptolemaic Egypt under Ptolemy II Philadelphus was a period of war, trade, diplomatic relations, new dynastic religious beliefs and great internal and external achievements. Some of Philadelphus’ main focusses were the control over parts of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, north-east Africa and west Asia. All these conquests, together with some of the political, military and religious relationships that Philadelphus built during his reign, aimed at securing Egypt’s borders and therefore also its survival in a time of great convulsions. The First and Second Syrian wars not only led Ptolemies policies, but also influenced some of Egypt’s breath taking initiatives, such as the exploration of Nubia for gold, the aim of controlling trade routes in Arabia or an extraordinary war-elephants hunting enterprise in North-east Africa. Ptolemy’s relationships with Pyrrhus of Epirus, the Kushite kingdom or Magas of Cyrene, just to give but few examples, were also partly driven by the position of the Seleukids on Egypt’s eastern border. Supported by his sister and wife Arsinoe II, Ptolemy II was involved in the control of the sea and the navigation routes in the Mediterranean and the Aegean, always having in mind his dangerous foes, the Seleukids. In this research, the relations between Ptolemaic Egypt and his neighbours will be looked at, focussing especially on Philadelphus’ relationship with Antiochus I and II and the consequences of these relationships for Egypt’s internal and external affairs.

In his Hymn to Apollo, Kallimachos conspicuously omits mention of Apollo’s famed oracle at Didyma. However, he draws his audience’s attention to the Euphrates, which has no special significance to the god. The itinerary he charts for his Apollo hymn maps onto the inter-kingdom politics of the eastern Mediterranean and a geopolitical reading of the poem reveals the poet’s engagement with contemporary relations between the Ptolemaic and Seleukid empires, offering further clues about the poem’s date. This politically antagonistic dimension resonates with the literary polemics long recognized as a central feature of the hymn.

Much has been written about Hellenistic kings, and rightly so. 1 They were a central political institution of the period. In places like Egypt and western Asia, where monarchy had been the central institution of governance for millennia, the new kings of the Hellenistic world adapted to local expectations, although there were new elements-Alexander was always in the background, and Macedonian kingship more generally, and there was, perhaps, even a tinge of Homeric kingship. 2 But there were new features in part driven by ideological adaptation and in part driven by the new realities of the age including the attitude toward the divinity of kings as expressed in royal cult. In the world of the Greek city-states, in places like Athens, accommodation to the new political world after Alexander was the rule. Kings and royal administration were the dominant power in the Mediterranean world after Alexander, and it is right to emphasize that we are dealing with a " Hellenistic " phenomenon that unites the Ptolemies, the Seleukids with kings like Hiero II in Sicily (Walbank 1984). But we cannot, of course, discount entirely ancient political relationships between priesthoods and kings, and the Demotic Egyptian text known as the Demotic Chronicle is an important illustration that in fact the institutions of kingship was encapsulated by written rules of good and bad behavior, with consequences. 3 Nevertheless Ptolemaic kings stood on the periphery of the Egyptian world and were far less important to Egypt than were the temples. 4 And temples we know, as with the Greek cities, were major centers of social power in their own right. We need not look much beyond the trilingual priestly decrees from Egypt, or events of the Maccabean revolt, to understand this. The world of kings has been one of the richest veins in scholarship across pre-modern societies over many decades. Studies have tended to concentrate on two general

In 2006 Ch. Marek published a decree from Caunus in Caria, dated to year 15 of the reign of a certain Antigonus (IKaunos 4: βασιλεύοντος Ἀντιγ[όνο]υ, [ἔτ]ει πεντεκαιδεκά[τωι, μην]ὸς Ἀπελλαίου). Among three kings who bore this name, whose interests were at different times closely connected to Caria and adjoining regions (all of them being members of the Antigonid dynasty), the only one who reigned for more than 15 years was Antigonus II Gonatas (283–239). Before the inscription from Caunus was published, E. Grzybek (Ancient Macedonia–V, 1993, 521–7) had noticed for a different reason (the problem of the mysterious dating of the manumission from Beroea in Macedonia – EKM I 45) that from 317/6 some Babylonian cuneiform documents had been dated by the name of Antigonus Monophthalmus (however, without the title of ‘king’). Grzybek proposed that even after Monophthalmus had accepted the title basileus in 306 after the victory of Salamis of Cyprus the period of his ‘reign’ was calculated not from that moment, but from 317/6. In due course, this system (a de facto dynastic era) was used by Monophthalmus’ son Demetrius I Poliorcetes during his reign in Macedonia in 294–288. Thus, according to Grzybek, the manumission from Beroea should be dated 291 or 290, but he is obviously wrong in the case of this inscription (Yu. N. Kuzmin, Аристократия Берои в эпоху эллинизма [The Aristocracy of Beroea in the Hellenistic Epoch], Moscow 2013, 108–23). However some students of Hellenistic history rely on Grzybek’s theory on the ‘Babylonian system’ and make suppositions to the effect that the inscription from Caunus could be dated according to the years of Monophthalmus ‘reign’ from 317/6 onwards; and, therefore, that, its date should be c. 303/02 (C. Bennett, A. Meadows, I. Savalli-Lestrade et al.). It is possible to accept the reckoning of Monophthalmus’ ‘reign’ from 317/6, at least in some parts of his ‘empire’ (Babylonia and Idumaea), but only before 306. There is not a single sound piece of evidence that Monophthalmus used this year-reckoning system after 306 (likewise, Seleucus I and Ptolemy I, having accepted their royal titles in the ‘Year of the Kings’, continued their systems of year-reckoning from earlier dates). Monophthalmus and Poliorcetes both had a great victory as the starting-point for their kingship and dynasty, but their opponents were declared kings without similar military successes. They were forced to seek another basis for the justification of their kingship, and Seleucus and Ptolemy probably found it in the earlier starting-points for the calculating of their ‘reigns’. It is not quite certain that Caunus belonged to the Antigonid Empire in the late fourth century shortly before it collapsed after the catastrophe of Ipsus and the death of Monophthalmus (301). Yet, even if the city really was controlled by Antigonus I at that time, this should not lead to conclude that decree IKaunos 4 is to be dated in his reign. We need also to take into account that from 306 onwards the title of ‘king’ belonged to the son and co-regent of Monophthalmus, Demetrius Poliorcetes, whose role in the rule of the Antigonid Empire and military command was crucial. It would be quite natural for the name of Demetrius to be included in the dating of the Caunian decree (as happened later in the documents of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies). One can think that the decree from Caunus may well be dated to the year 15 of the reign of Antigonus II Gonatas, i.e. the time c. 269–268. This inscription which radically changed the perception of politics and possessions of Gonatas’ in the Aegean region and Asia Minor, as well as the balance of power in the East Mediterranean before the beginning of the Chremonidean War (c. 268–262), still awaits a detailed historical study. If Antigonus Gonatas did not receive the rule over Caunus from his father Demetrius Poliorcetes, then the city must have been conquered by the Macedonian king shortly before the beginning of the Chremonidean War. Despite the possibility that Gonatas could have already lost control over Caunus in the course of the Chremonidean War (the capture and the execution of poet Sotades’ by Ptolemaic general Patroclus in the ‘isle of Caunus’ may be connected with this event – Athen. 14.621a), the inscription IKaunos 4 allows a better understanding of the causes of interest towards Caria of subsequent Antigonid kings, Antigonus III Doson and Philip V.

This dissertation provides the first overarching and comparative study of Hellenistic Egyptian queens, from the origins of the dynasty to the final ruler, Kleopatra VII. It explores the ways in which the Ptolemies developed a practice of royal incest, which was supplemented by the institution of a dynastic cult, during the reigns of the first three pharaohs of the dynasty. Their consorts and the later queens of the dynasty, who have been largely overlooked in the history of the Hellenistic world, used their position as one half of the deified, ruling couple to gain increasing access to power, culminating in several instances of co-rule, regency, and female sole-rule, the most notable being Kleopatra VII. While the pharaohs of the dynasty have been comprehensively studied, the queens are neglected and relegated to the academic trope of the “powerless woman,” one which this study disproves by verifying that these queens did, in fact, act with ruling interests. This dissertation overturns the antiquated interpretations of these queens, which characterized them as either good (obedient/docile) or bad (ambitious/conniving), that have persisted into modern scholarship, much to the detriment of both the legacies of these women and ancient history in general. Overall, this dissertation will provide both a rehabilitation of the reputations of these queens and the first informed and comprehensive overview of their ability to gain and wield public power. It will, ideally, also provide a methodology for similar studies that could be conducted on royal women elsewhere in the ancient world.

This paper examines the evidence for portraiture of royal women in the first century and a half of the Seleukid empire. Literary, numismatic, epigraphic, and art historical sources are reviewed and analyzed, and methodological questions are raised. The available evidence seems to suggest that, unlike their contemporaries in Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleukid royals did not promote the visibility of their women until early in the second century. Our first surviving numismatic portrait of a Seleukid female is Laodike IV, on coinage issued by her brother-husband, Seleukos IV; her successor, Laodike V, appears in jugate fashion on coinage with her husband, Demetrios I. After Laodike V, Ptolemaic princesses begin to enter the Seleukid line, and the numismatic evidence bears clear marks of Ptolemaic influence. Such influence may already have begun to infiltrate the Seleukid dynasty by the end of the third century: judging from the epigraphic evidence, Antiochos III may have been more open to the promotion of visible royal females than his predecessors in the Seleukid house.