Greek Kings on the Nile

So far in our series on the societies on the fringes of the Greco-Roman world, we’ve investigated Carthage, the Scythians, the Etruscans, and the Goths. If you’ve enjoyed these posts, you should subscribe. And if you appreciate the hours of work that I put into these newsletters, you should become a paying subscriber. You’ll get a little bonus at the end of this post and the satisfaction that comes from supporting something you like.

Ptolemy II was the second of his line, ruling from one of the oldest thrones in the world. He was pharaoh of Egypt, but at least some of his subjects had a different nickname for him.

They called him “Philadelphos,” which meant “sister-lover.”

Yes, Ptolemy was married to his sister, Arsinoë II, who by this point was on her third marriage. As so often happened with noblewomen in the ancient world, she had been married out to improve the political status of her father. She’d been the wife of King Lysimachus of Thrace, who was 45 years her senior, and then, when he died, she married her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos. She turned on Ptolemy Keraunos (who in revenge killed two of her sons) and fled to Egypt.

Once in Egypt, she engineered the ouster of Arsinoë I, her brother’s first wife (who was not her blood relative, but was a child of her first husband Lysimachus and the woman he had married before Arsinoë II… confused yet?). Finally, Arsinoë II soon married her brother, and the new royal couple proceeded to issue some creepy coins:

The closeness of the two on that coin and other pieces of art like this cameo have led some historians to conclude that they were joint rulers:

It’s unclear whether the siblings were actual lovers. They had no children (the throne passed to Ptolemy’s son from a previous marriage). A lot of people seem to have thought that their marriage was unusual, even scandalous. So why did they — and so many other members of their dynasties — enter into what looked like an incestuous relationship?

Perhaps some of the other depictions of the couple can shed some light on this. Here’s another head of Ptolemy II:

And here’s one of Arsinoë:

If you know anything about Ptolemy, Arsinoë, and their family, you may already see where I’m going with this. The Ptolemaic pharaohs were Greek — Ptolemy I was one of Alexander the Great’s generals, and after Alexander died, he took control of the Egyptian portion of the empire. They had to impress two audiences: the Greek elites in Alexandria (and the wider Mediterranean world) and the Egyptian people that constituted the bulk of their subjects. Hence, they appeared in traditional Egyptian portraits along with the more Greek-looking ones above.

One of the things that Egyptian pharaohs sometimes did was marry their siblings. So the Ptolemies, eager to convince Egyptians that they were legitimate rulers, entered into all kinds of incestuous relationships. Historian Sheila Ager argues that the Greeks “greatly exaggerated” the degree of historical pharaonic incest, so they may not have impressed the Egyptian public by marrying their siblings.

Ager argues that marrying your sister had several other purposes: it kept all power inside the family, prevented princesses from having babies with anyone but the king, and demonstrated that the pharaohs were set apart from ordinary people. The pharaohs didn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else, behaving instead like gods (siblings Isis and Osiris slept with one another). The result: over time, the Ptolemaic pharaohs became “increasingly inbred.”

The whole sister-marriage thing was just one part of what makes Ptolemaic Egypt so interesting. To the Romans and Greeks, the society was simultaneously familiar and strange, a Greek layer on top of a very old society that they found intimidating and mysterious. In some ways, it was the site of a culture clash. In other ways, it was a graceful merger. And sometimes, as in the case of the Ptolemies’ incest, it was all a little clumsy and strange.

Soon after the Ptolemies took power in Egypt, this guy with the strange hat started to appear:

He was Serapis, a god that may not have been introduced by Egypt’s new Greek overlords, but certainly gained popularity under them. Unlike many Egyptian gods, who were shown with animal heads, he was fully anthropomorphic, in the style of the Greek gods. But he had the characteristics of several popular Egyptian gods, like Apis, a sacred bull:

And Osiris, the god of fertility and the afterlife:

Serapis often wore a basket for collecting food on his head, a symbol of abundance and fertility:

He sometimes held a scepter like Osiris did, and a serpent to remind people of the Egyptian symbol of rulership. He looked a bit like Zeus or Hades. The Ptolemies promoted the cult of Serapis as a new hybrid form of worship that combined what they saw as the best of the two religions. Serapis took off; statues of him have been found as far away as modern Afghanistan:

A similar process took place with the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Greek Aphrodite. In Egypt, they were combined into one figure, Isis-Aphrodite. Her worship persisted into the Roman era:

She was often portrayed with a large crown to emphasize her divinity, and was often shown nude in the Greek style:

This terracotta version is especially captivating because it retains its color:

Hybridity, then, is our theme for this week. At its best, Ptolemaic society combined the ancient traditions of Egypt with the bustling creativity of Hellenistic Greece. This vase is another example. It’s got a distinctively Greek form, but its striking color lets us know that it’s not entirely Greek — it’s faience, a typically Egyptian medium:

Some forms that we might associate with Egypt, like this snake bracelet, only emerged in the Ptolemaic period:

This hybridity lasted all the way until the end of the dynasty. Cleopatra, the final ruler in the Ptolemaic line, was portrayed (along with Caesarion, her son with Julius Caesar) in the traditional Egyptian style:

The Greco-Roman style:

And something in between:

Many Romans saw Cleopatra as a stereotypical Egyptian, manipulative and decadent. She was simultaneously alluring and repulsive. In some ways, this represents the triumph of the Ptolemaic project: a Greek ruler who was able to pass as Egyptian.

And, yes, she kept the family tradition. Cleopatra married both of her brothers before she became romantically attached to Julius Caesar and Marc Antony!

That’s the end of this week’s post… I often have some interesting images and artifacts left over that I can’t squeeze into the main piece and don’t quite know what to do with. Substack has a new feature allowing me to include a bonus section for paid subscribers, so I’m going to try putting them in one of those this week. Let me know what you think!

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