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Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Koine Greek: Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος; Ancient Egyptian: Userkanaenre Meryamun[1]
This granite statue depicts Ptolemy II in the traditional canon of ancient Egyptian art. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Kingdom
Reign	285–246 BCE (Ptolemaic dynasty)
Predecessor	Ptolemy I Soter
Successor	Ptolemy III Euergetes
Royal titulary Prenomen  (Praenomen) wsr-kꜢ-rꜤ mrj-jmn Userkare Meryamun The strong one of the ka of Ra, beloved of Amun Nomen ptwꜢlwmys Petualumys Ptolemaios Horus name ḥwnw-ḳni Khunuqeni The brave youth Nebty name wr-pḥtj Urpekhti Great of strength Golden Horus šḫꜤj-n-sw it.f Shekhaiensu itef Whose father enthroned him
Consort	Arsinoe I Arsinoe II
Children	With Arsinoe I: Ptolemy III Euergetes Lysimachus Berenice Phernopherus With Bilistiche: Ptolemy Andromachou
Father	Ptolemy I Soter
Mother	Berenice I
Born	308/9 BCE Kos
Died	28 January 246 BCE (aged 62–63)

Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Greek: Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος, Ptolemaîos Philádelphos "Ptolemy, lover of his sister"; 308/9–246 BCE^[2]) was the king of Ptolemaic Egypt from 283 to 246 BCE. He was the son of Ptolemy I Soter, the Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great who founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom after the death of Alexander, and queen Berenice I, originally from Macedon in northern Greece.

During Ptolemy II's reign, the material and literary splendour of the Alexandrian court was at its height. He promoted the Museum and Library of Alexandria. He erected a commemorative stele, the Great Mendes Stela. He also led the Ptolemaic Kingdom against the rival Seleucid Empire in the first of a series of Syrian Wars that witnessed periodic territorial changes between the two powers in West Asia.

Family

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Ptolemy II was the son of Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice I. He had two full sisters, Arsinoe II and Philotera.^[3][4] He was educated by Philitas of Cos.^[5]

Ptolemy II had numerous half-siblings.^[6] Two of his father's sons by his previous marriage to Eurydice, Ptolemy Keraunos and Meleager, became kings of Macedonia.^[7] The children of his mother Berenice's first marriage to Philip included Magas of Cyrene. Pyrrhus of Epirus became his brother-in-law through marriage to Ptolemy's maternal half-sister Antigone.^[8]

Ptolemy's first wife, Arsinoe I, daughter of Lysimachus, was the mother of his legitimate children:^[9]

• 
  Ptolemy III Euergetes, his successor.


• Lysimachus of Egypt


• 
  Berenice Phernopherus, who married the Seleucid emperor Antiochus II Theos

After he repudiated Arsinoe, he married his full sister Arsinoe II, widow of Lysimachus, which brought him her Aegean possessions.^[9]

He also had several concubines. With a woman named Bilistiche he is said to have had an (illegitimate) son named Ptolemy Andromachou.^[10] He had many mistresses, including Agathoclea (?), Aglais (?) daughter of Megacles, the cup-bearer Cleino, Didyme, the Chian harp player Glauce, the flautist Mnesis, the actress Myrtion, the flautist Pothine and Stratonice.^[11] His court, magnificent and dissolute, intellectual and artificial, has been compared^{[by whom?]} with the Palace of Versailles of Louis XIV of France.

Ptolemy deified his parents and his sister-wife after their deaths.

Reign

Ptolemy II began his reign as co-regent with his father, Ptolemy Soter, from c. 285 to c. 283 BCE, and maintained a splendid court in Alexandria. Egypt was involved in several wars during his reign. His maternal half-brother Magas had declared himself king of Cyrene in 276 and began a war against Ptolemy's government in 274 BCE. Magas managed to keep Cyrenaica independent of the Ptolemies until his death in 250 BCE.

Magas' attack on the Ptolemies began when their armies were in the east; Seleucid emperor Antiochus I Soter had attacked Coele-Syria with Judea in the First Syrian War. Two or three years of war followed. Egypt's victories solidified the kingdom's position as the undisputed naval power of the eastern Mediterranean; his fleet of 112 ships bore the most powerful naval siege units of the time, guaranteeing the king access to the coastal cities of his empire. The Ptolemaic sphere of power extended over the Cyclades to Samothrace, and the harbours and coast towns of Cilicia Trachea, Pamphylia, Lycia and Caria. In 275/4, Ptolemaic forces invaded Nubia and annexed the Triakontaschoinos.

In 270, Ptolemy hired 4000 Gallic mercenaries (who in 279 BCE under Bolgios killed his half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos). According to Pausanias, soon after arrival the Gauls plotted "to seize Egypt," and so Ptolemy marooned them on a deserted island in the Nile where “they perished at one another’s hands or by famine.”^[12]

The victory won by Antigonus II Gonatas, king of Macedonia, over the Egyptian fleet at Kos (between 258 BCE and 256 BCE) did not long interrupt Ptolemy's command of the Aegean Sea. In the Second Syrian War with the Seleucid Empire of Antiochus II Theos (after 260 BCE), Ptolemy sustained losses on the seaboard of Anatolia and agreed to a peace by which Antiochus married Ptolemy's daughter Berenice Phernopherus (c. 250 BCE).

Ptolemy was of a delicate constitution. Elias Joseph Bickerman gives the date of his death as 29 January.^[13]

Court

The material and literary splendour of the Alexandrian court was at its height under Ptolemy II. Pomp and splendor flourished. He had exotic animals of far off lands sent to Alexandria, and staged a procession in Alexandria in honor of Dionysus led by 24 chariots drawn by elephants and a procession of lions, leopards, panthers, camels, antelopes, wild asses, ostriches, a bear, a giraffe and a rhinoceros. According to scholars, most of the animals were in pairs - as many as eight pairs of ostriches - and although the ordinary chariots were likely led by a single elephant, others which carried a 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) golden statue may have been led by four.^[14] Although an enthusiast for Hellenic culture, he also adopted Egyptian religious concepts, which helped to bolster his image as a sovereign.

Callimachus, keeper of the library, Theocritus,^[15] and a host of lesser poets, glorified the Ptolemaic family. Ptolemy himself was eager to increase the library and to patronize scientific research. He is thought to be the patron that commissioned Manetho to compose his Aegyptiaca.

The tradition preserved in the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas which connects the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek with his patronage is probably overdrawn. However, Walter Kaiser says, "There can be little doubt that the Law was translated in Philadelphus's time since Greek quotations from Genesis and Exodus appear in Greek literature before 200 BCE The language of the Septuagint is more like Egyptian Greek than it is like Jerusalemite Greek, according to some."^[16]

Relations with India

Ptolemy is recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra in India,^[17] probably to Emperor Ashoka:

"But [India] has been treated of by several other Greek writers who resided at the courts of Indian kings, such, for instance, as Megasthenes, and by Dionysius, who was sent thither by Philadelphus, expressly for the purpose: all of whom have enlarged upon the power and vast resources of these nations." Pliny the Elder, "The Natural History", Chap. 21 ^[18]

He is also mentioned in the Edicts of Ashoka as a recipient of the Buddhist proselytism of Ashoka:

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Now it is conquest by Dhamma that Beloved-Servant-of-the-Gods considers to be the best conquest. And it [conquest by Dhamma] has been won here, on the borders, even six hundred yojanas away, where the Greek king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule, likewise in the south among the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni. Rock Edict Nb13 (S. Dhammika)

See also

• Alexandrian Pleiad


• Library of Alexandria


• 
  Ptolemaic period - period of Egyptian history during the Ptolemaic dynasty


• 
  Ptolemais (disambiguation) - towns and cities named after members of the Ptolemaic dynasty

References

Bibliography

• 
  Clayton, Peter A. (2006). Chronicles of the Pharaohs: the reign-by-reign record of the rulers and dynasties of ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28628-0.
  


• 
  Marquaille, Céline (2008). "The Foreign Policy of Ptolemy II". In McKechnie, Paul R.; Guillaume, Philippe. Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World. Leiden and Boston: BRILL. pp. 39–64. ISBN 9789004170896.
  


• 
  O'Neil, James L. (2008). "A Re-Examination of the Chremonidean War". In McKechnie, Paul R.; Guillaume, Philippe. Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World. Leiden and Boston: BRILL. pp. 65–90. ISBN 9789004170896.
  


• 
   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ptolemies" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 616–618.
  

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ptolemy II.

• 
  Ptolemy Philadelphus at LacusCurtius — (Chapter III of E. R Bevan's House of Ptolemy, 1923)


• 
  Ptolemy II Philadelphus entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith


• the Great Mendes Stele of Ptolemy II

Ptolemy II Philadelphus Ptolemaic Dynasty Born: 309 BCE Died: 246 BCE
Preceded by Ptolemy I Soter	Pharaoh of Egypt 283–246 BC	Succeeded by Ptolemy III Euergetes