Ptolemy of Cyprus, King of Cyprus 80–58
Son of Ptolemy IX, brother of Ptolemy XII
The younger of the two illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX took the throne of Cyprus as King Ptolemy. In 58 the Romans annexed Cyprus, driving Ptolemy to commit suicide.
Cleopatra V Tryphaena (Opulent One)
Wife and perhaps sister or half-sister of Ptolemy XII
A woman of obscure origins, Cleopatra V Tryphaena was the mother of Berenice IV, and possibly the mother of Cleopatra VI Tryphaena, Cleopatra VII, Arsinoë IV, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV. She may have acted briefly as co-regent alongside Berenice IV.
Berenice IV, Queen of Egypt 58–55
Daughter of Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra V Tryphaena
Berenice married an insignificant cousin, Seleucos, then had him murdered within a week of their wedding. Her second husband, Archelaos, lasted longer; the couple ruled for two years with the full support of the people of Alexandria. A Roman army took Alexandria in 55. Archelaos was killed and Ptolemy XII, returning home in triumph, had his daughter executed.
Cleopatra VI Tryphaena (Opulent One)
Daughter of Ptolemy XII and (probably) Cleopatra V Tryphaena
The obscure sister of Cleopatra VII who may be identical with Cleopatra Tryphaena V. Cleopatra VI ruled briefly alongside Berenice IV before disappearing from the historical record in 57.
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Father-Loving Goddess), Queen of Egypt 51–30
Daughter of Ptolemy XII and (probably) Cleopatra V Tryphaena, probably wife of Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV
The subject of this book.
Arsinoë IV, Queen of Egypt 47
Daughter of Ptolemy XII
Proclaimed Queen of Cyprus by Julius Caesar, Arsinoë ruled Alexandria briefly during the civil war. Captured by the Romans, she was displayed in Caesar’s Egyptian triumph, then exiled to Ephesus. In 41 she was dragged from the temple and executed on the orders of Mark Antony.
Ptolemy XIII, King of Egypt 51–47
Son of Ptolemy XII, husband of Cleopatra VII
Ptolemy XIII inherited his throne alongside his sister Cleopatra VII. For the first year and a half of their joint reign Cleopatra was the effective monarch, while her brother was pushed into the background. The first decree with Ptolemy’s name preceding Cleopatra’s was issued on 27 October 50. In the summer of 49 Cleopatra’s name disappeared from all official documents as the queen and her supporters fled Egypt. Later that year Ptolemy turned a blind eye to the murder of Pompey. Ptolemy had expected to be granted sole rule of Egypt but Caesar, angered by Pompey’s murder, decided that he was to rule alongside his sister Cleopatra VII. Ptolemy XIII drowned in 47, at the end of the Alexandrian Wars.
Ptolemy XIV, King of Egypt 47–44
Son of Ptolemy XII, husband of Cleopatra VII
Proclaimed king of Cyprus by Caesar, Ptolemy became king of Egypt following the death of his elder brother, Ptolemy XIII. He had an undistinguished reign and died soon after the birth of Cleopatra’s son, Caesarion.
Ptolemy XV Caesar Theos Philopator Philometor (Father-Loving, Mother-Loving God): ‘Caesarion’ (Little Caesar), King of Egypt 44–30
Son of Cleopatra VII and (allegedly) Julius Caesar
Following the death of Ptolemy XIV, Caesarion ruled Egypt alongside his mother. Cleopatra VII died on 12 August 30 and Octavian formally annexed Egypt on 31 August 30. This left an eighteen-day period when Caesarion ruled alone. But he had no meaningful support and could have had no thought of taking up his throne. Soon after his mother’s suicide, Caesarion was betrayed and executed.
Alexander Helios
Son of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, twin of Cleopatra Selene
Following Cleopatra’s suicide, the ten-year-old twins and four-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphos were taken to Rome to be raised by their father’s wife, Octavia. The boys vanished from the historical record soon after entering Octavia’s care.
Cleopatra Selene
Daughter of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, twin of Alexander Helios, wife of Juba of Mauretania
Cleopatra Selene was raised in Rome by Octavia and married the Numidian prince Juba II. She bore a son named Ptolemy and, perhaps, a daughter who, we may guess, was named Cleopatra. She died a natural death some time between 5 BC and AD 11.
Ptolemy Philadelphos (Brother/Sister-Loving)
Son of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony
Following his mother’s suicide, Ptolemy Philadelphos was taken to Rome to be raised alongside his brother and sister. He vanished from the historical record soon after.
Ptolemy of Mauretania
Son of Cleopatra Selene and Juba II of Mauretania
Ptolemy inherited his father’s throne in AD 23. Seventeen years later he was executed by his half-cousin Caligula.
Chronology of Ancient Egypt
All dates given are BC. The dating of the earlier dynasties is by no means certain. This chronology is based on the dates suggested in J. Baines and J. Malek (1984), Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Phaidon, Oxford.
LATE PREDYNASTIC/EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD (DYNASTIES 0–2): c. 3100–2649
OLD KINGDOM (DYNASTIES 3–6): c. 2649–2150
FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (DYNASTIES 7–11): c. 2150–2040
MIDDLE KINGDOM (DYNASTIES 11–14): c. 2040–1640
SECOND INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (DYNASTIES 15–17): c. 1640–1550
NEW KINGDOM (DYNASTIES 18–20): c. 1550–1070
THIRD INTERMEDIATE PERIOD (DYNASTIES 21–25): c. 1070–712
LATE PERIOD (DYNASTIES 25–31): c. 712–332
MACEDONIAN DYNASTY 332–304
Alexander III the Great (332–323)
Philip III Arrhidaeos (323–316)
Alexander IV (316–304)
PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY (304–30)
Ptolemy I Soter I (304–284)
Ptolemy II Philadelphos (285–246)
Ptolemy III Euergetes I (246–221)
Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205)
Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180)
Ptolemy VI Philometor (180–164, 163–145)
Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (170–163, 145–116)
Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator (145)
Ptolemy IX Soter II (116–107, 88–81)
Ptolemy X Alexander I (107–88)
Cleopatra Berenice III (81–80)
Ptolemy XI Alexander II (80)
Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos (80–58, 55–51)
Berenice IV (58–55)
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (51–30)
Ptolemy XIII, King of Egypt (51–47)
Ptolemy XIV, King of Egypt (47–44)
Ptolemy XV Caesar (44–30)
Notes
Introduction
1 Weigall (1914, revised 1924): v.
2 The most influential queen consorts were Meritneith, Khentkawes, Ankhnesmerypepi II, Tetisheri, Ahhotep, Ahmose-Nefertari, Tiy and Nefertiti; the three queens regnant were Sobeknofru, Hatshepsut and Tawosret. Egyptologists are currently divided about a possible fourth queen regnant who may have ruled Egypt at the end of the Amarna period. The Old Kingdom Queen Nitocris, described by Manetho as ‘the most noble and lovely woman of her time, fair-skinned, with red cheeks’, is likely to have been a legendary figure. Although the 19th Dynasty chronology known as the Turin Canon does allocate ‘Neitaqerti’ a brief reign of two years one month and one day, it is likely that ‘Neitaqerti’ is a misrecorded fragment of a male king’s name.
3 Manetho, the acknowledged father of Egyptian history, compiled his list of Egypt’s kings during the reign of Ptolemy II. He divided the kings into dynasties – lines of connected rulers – but stopped at Nectanebo, the last king of the 30th Dynasty. His list was later expanded to include Egypt’s Persian rulers as the 31st Dynasty, but Manetho’s own age remained excluded.
4 The Egyptian falcon-headed god Horus was the son of the Goddess Isis and her murdered husband, the God Osiris. He represented the living king of Egypt, while Osiris represented all
of Egypt’s dead kings. Outside Egypt Horus was equated with the Greek god Eros, who in later Greek mythology was recognised as the son of Aphrodite.
5 Not everyone agrees. Carlo Maria Franzero, whose 1957 book The Life and Times of Cleopatra, The Philosophical Library, New York, inspired Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1963 film Cleopatra, said of the ruined temple of Venus Genetrix, ‘The site of those three beautiful columns seemed to give me the key to the mystery of Cleopatra’: 9–10.
6 See, for example, Hughes-Hallett (1990), a work that has inspired others to investigate the phenomenon of the modern Cleopatra.
7 The Guardian, having published ‘Antony and Cleopatra: Coin Find Changes the Faces of History’ on 14 February, was forced to make a correction two days later, agreeing that Cleopatra was not in fact descended from Alexander the Great, and that the battle of Actium was not actually fought off the coast of Egypt. Other less scrupulous newspapers left their errors uncorrected, their readers misinformed. And so the Cleopatra myth grows.
Chapter 1: Princess of Egypt
1 E. R. Bevan (1927), The House of Ptolemy, Methuen Publishing, London: 359.
2 Antiochos VIII, Antiochos IX and Antiochos X.
3 Strabo, The Geography, 17:1:11. Translated by H. L. Jones.
4 Lucian, Slander, A Warning, 16. Dionysiac cross–dressing is discussed in detail in E. Csapo (1997), ‘Riding the Phallus for Dionysus: Iconology, Ritual, and Gender-Role Deconstruction, Phoenix, 51: 3–4: 253–95. Lucian describes his King Ptolemy as one ‘who was nicknamed Dionysos’: experts are undecided whether he means Ptolemy IV or, more likely in my opinion, Ptolemy XII.
5 Greek law itself was a complicated and diverse mass of rules, with the cities of Naukratis, Alexandria and Ptolemais Hormou applying their own laws, and Greeks living outside these cities being subject to a version of the laws of their home city-states.
6 Herodotus, The Histories, 2: 35–6. Translated by A. de Sélincourt.
7 Quoted in Ray (2002): 138.
8 The exact number of nomes varied from time to time, and nomes were occasionally combined and created as economic and political circumstances dictated.
9 Figures suggested in Rowlandson (1998): 5.
10 B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, eds (1901), The Amherst Papyri, H. Frowde, London, 2: 12.2.
11 Theocritos, Odes 15: 44–71. After A. S. F. Gow (1952), Theocritus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: ‘Nowadays no ruffian slips up to you in the street Egyptian-fashion and does you a mischief – the tricks those packets of rascality used to play, one as bad as another with their nasty tricks, a cursed lot.’
12 Papyrus Enteuxis, 26. Translation adapted from A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar (1963), Select Papyri, Heinemann, London, 2: 233: 268.
13 Theocritos translation after R. Hunter (2003), Theocritus: Ecomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Text and Translation with Introduction and Commentary, University of California Press, Berkeley: 88–91.
14 The misguided equation of ancient Egypt with slavery, promoted by the biblical story of the Exodus, has made discussion of Cleopatra’s racial origins into an even more sensitive area. For an introduction to Afrocentric history, see M. Bernal (1987, 1991), Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Free Association Books, London. For a counter argument, see M. R. Lefkowitz and G. M. Rogers eds (1996), Black Athena Revisited, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. See also M. Hamer (1996), ‘Queen of Denial’, Transition, 72: 80–92.
15 Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 15: 15. Translated by E. O. Winstedt (1918), Heinemann, London and New York; Appian, Roman History, 5: 1. Both are quoted in Hughes-Hallett (1990): 72.
16 Plutarch, Life of Antony, 26. Translated by B. Perrin.
17 Technically not a triumvirate, this period is nevertheless often described as the ‘first triumvirate’ to distinguish it from the second, genuine triumvirate of Octavian, Lepidus and Antony, which was established following Caesar’s assassination.
18 An English translation of H. Petermann’s Latin translation of an Armenian translation of the original Greek text of Eusebius’s Chronicle is available on www.attalus.org/translate/seusebius1.html.
19 Plutarch, Life of Antony, 3: 2. Translated by B. Perrin.
20 As just one other king, the long-lived 18th Dynasty Amenhotep III, married a daughter, the true nature of these father–daughter unions must be open to question. Only one royal daughter, Bint-Anath, consort to Ramesses II, produced a child, and the paternity of Bint-Anath’s daughter is never stated. The lack of children suggests that these marriages may have been unconsummated unions designed to ensure that the father had a consort, and the daughter achieved the highest female status in the land.
21 Auletes either built or completed existing projects at Athribis (the enlargement of the sanctuary of Triphis), Akhmim (a ritual building of unknown purpose), Dendera (the replacement of the 30th Dynasty Hathor temple), Koptos (the gateway to the Geb temple), Karnak (the gateway to the Ptah temple and various small buildings), Deir el-Medina (the enclosure wall for the Hathor temple), Edfu (the expansion of the Horus temple), Philae (the decoration of the first gateway of the Isis temple and the transfer of the kiosk of Nectanebo I), Biggeh (work at the Osiris temple) and, perhaps, Kom Ombo (the enclosure wall and a new gateway), and the walls of his temples were covered in his own propaganda.
Chapter 2: Queen of Egypt
1 Boccaccio, On the Lives of Famous Women, Johann Zainer, Ulm, 1473. Translated by Guido A. Guarino, quoted in Flamarion (1997): 128–31: 128.
2 Stela 13. H. W. Fairman (1934), in R. Mond and O. H. Myers (1934), The Bucheum, 2 vols, Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 2. See also W. W. Tarn (1936), ‘The Bucheum Stelae: A Note’, Journal of Roman Studies, 26: 2: 187–9. The stela is currently housed in the Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
3 There is even an outside possibility that the anonymous king might be Auletes. This is discussed further in R. S. Bianchi, ‘Images of Cleopatra Reconsidered’, and S.-A. Ashton, ‘Cleopatra: Goddess, Ruler or Regent?’, both papers in Walker and Ashton, eds (2003): 13–23 and 25–30.
4 Dates calculated from the information given on Tayimhotep’s funerary stela. In Rome, Augustan law would soon fix the legal minimum age for marriage at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys.
5 Hatshepsut’s images are discussed further in J. A. Tyldesley (1996), Hatshepsut: The Female Pharaoh, Viking Penguin, London. Hatshepsut excepted, images of queens dressed as kings are extremely rare, although both Berenice II and Berenice IV have been associated with male images.
6 ‘ …she based the external trappings of her monarchy on the precedents provided by famous ancient Egyptian female monarchs, Hatshepsut among them, as was clearly demonstrated in her representations and the accompanying inscriptions at the temple of Hathor at Dendera’: R. S. Bianchi, ‘Cleopatra VII’, in D. B. Redford (2001), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York: 273–4.
7 This papyrus was discovered as part of a cartonnage mummy case (cartonnage being made from layers of linen or papyrus held together by plaster or glue and moulded to shape). It is now housed in Berlin Museum (C Ord Ptol 73). A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar (1934), Select Papyri II, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and Heinemann, London: 209.
8 W. Schubart and D. Schäfer (1933), Spätptolemäische Papyri aus amtlichen Büros des Herakleopolites, Weidmann, Berlin: 1,834.
9 The visit to Thebes appears in many histories, but is not supported by contemporary documentation and so must be open to a certain amount of doubt. Strabo and Appian record the visit to ‘Syria’ without further definition.
10 Plutarch, Life of Pompey, 77–80. Translated by B. Perrin; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 42: 4. Translated by E. Cary.
11 Alternatively, the Ptolemy of circle nine may be the inhospitable captain of Jericho who killed his guest Simon Maccabaeus.
12 Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 49. Translated by B. Perrin.
13 Suetonius,
Divine Julius, 45. Translated by R. Graves.
14 Ibid., 52.
15 Cicero, quoted ibid., 49.
16 Ibid., 50–51.
17 The other Cleopatra heads are housed in the Antikensammlung, Berlin, the Louvre, Paris (a Hellenistic-style Cleopatra probably carved by an Egyptian craftsman) and the Cherchell Museum, Algeria. For further details of Cleopatra’s images, see the various papers in Walker and Ashton, eds (2003).
18 The coin images – the official face of Cleopatra – can be compared with images on clay seal impressions found among a diverse collection of sealings from the Ptolemaic temple of Horus at Edfu and today housed in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. The sealings were originally attached to papyrus documents that vanished long ago. One sealing shows a queen – Cleopatra VII? – wearing a vulture headdress, solar crown and a long, full wig. Another replicates the Cypriot Cleopatra/Isis coin but Caesarion, somewhat bizarrely, has vanished from the scene.
19 For a discussion on approaches to Cleopatra’s beauty, see E. Shohat ‘Disorientating Cleopatra: A Modern Trope of Identity’, in Walker and Ashton, eds (2003): 127–38.
20 Grant (1972): 66.
21 The Berlin head is just one among many representations of Nefertiti. Few of the others display the same stark symmetrical beauty. See J. A. Tyldesley (2005, revised edition), Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen, Penguin Books, London.
22 Plutarch, Life of Antony, 27. Translated by B. Perrin.
23 Cassius Dio, Roman History, 42: 34. Translated by E. Cary.
Cleopatra Page 25