THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 305–30 BCE · Northern Africa

Ptolemaic Kingdom

When Alexander's empire broke up, his general Ptolemy took Egypt, declared himself king in 305 BCE and founded the last dynasty of pharaohs. The Ptolemies were Macedonian Greeks who ruled from Alexandria, a new Greek city on the coast, while presenting themselves to Egyptians as traditional pharaohs and building temples to Egyptian gods.

Egypt's grain made them rich, and they fought repeated wars with the Seleucids over Syria. Alexandria became the intellectual capital of the Greek world, with its Great Library, Museum and Lighthouse. From the 2nd century BCE dynastic feuds and revolts weakened the kingdom, which survived increasingly as a Roman client. Cleopatra VII allied with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, but after Antony's defeat at Actium she took her own life and Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BCE.

Follow its story on the map

The Temple of Isis at Philae, built by the Ptolemaic kings from the 3rd century BCE (now re-erected on Agilkia Island)
The Temple of Isis at Philae, built by the Ptolemaic kings from the 3rd century BCE (now re-erected on Agilkia Island) M.ramadan2014 · CC BY-SA 3.0
Years
305–30 BCE
Capital
Alexandria
Greatest extent
240 BCE, about 1.00 million km²
Region
Northern Africa

Under Ptolemy III: Egypt, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, the southern Levant and Aegean outposts; c. 1.0M km² (Taagepera 1979); c. 1.0M km² (Taagepera 1979, for c. 301 BCE); c. 1.0M km² (Taagepera 1979, dated c. 301 BCE)

Legacy

Ptolemaic Alexandria preserved and advanced Greek science and scholarship, and the Rosetta Stone, a Ptolemaic decree, later unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Timeline of Ptolemaic Kingdom

  1. Ptolemy I declares himself king, ruling from Alexandria

    After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his general Ptolemy became satrap (governor) of Egypt, nominally serving Alexander's heirs while building his own power. He beat off an invasion by the regent Perdiccas in 321 BCE and, during the wars between Alexander's successors, won Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Coele-Syria. When Antigonus and Demetrius took royal titles in 306 BCE, Ptolemy followed and proclaimed himself king in 305/304 BCE, ruling from Alexander's new city of Alexandria. Egypt became an independent Greek-ruled kingdom, and his dynasty would hold it for nearly three centuries.

  2. Ptolemy III's Third Syrian War reaches Babylonia: the kingdom's height

    Ptolemy III came to the throne in 246 BCE just as a succession crisis broke out in the rival Seleucid Empire. His sister Berenice, widow of the Seleucid king Antiochus II, was murdered with her infant son, and Ptolemy went to war against her rival's son, Seleucus II. In this Third Syrian War (246–241 BCE) he won victories in Syria and Anatolia, briefly held Antioch and, as a cuneiform tablet shows, even reached Babylon, while his fleets made conquests as far as Thrace. This was the height of Ptolemaic power, with Egypt controlling most of the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean.

  3. Ptolemy IV defeats Antiochus III at Raphia

    Antiochus III, the energetic young Seleucid king, wanted to win back Coele-Syria, the strip of land between Egypt and Syria that the Ptolemies had held for about eighty years. On 22 June 217 BCE the two kings met near Raphia (modern Rafah) in one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic age; Polybius gives about 70,000 infantry for Ptolemy IV and 62,000 for Antiochus. Antiochus's Indian elephants scattered Ptolemy's smaller African ones, but the Ptolemaic phalanx, in which native Egyptian soldiers played a major role, won the day. Coele-Syria stayed Egyptian, but the war strained the treasury and boosted native Egyptian confidence.

  4. Great Theban Revolt breaks out in Upper Egypt

    Under Ptolemy IV, misrule from Alexandria and the financial strain of war bred deep resentment among native Egyptians, especially in the south, far from the Greek capital. In 205 BCE a priest named Horwennefer proclaimed himself pharaoh, and rebels seized Thebes and much of Upper Egypt. After his death in 199 BCE his son Ankhwennefer carried on the fight, at times nearly driving the Ptolemies out of the country. For about twenty years the kings in Alexandria lost control of much of Egypt, just as foreign enemies were preparing to attack their overseas lands.

  5. Coele-Syria lost to the Seleucids

    When Ptolemy IV died, his heir Ptolemy V was a small child ruled by regents, and the Great Revolt was still raging in the south. Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire and Philip V of Macedon agreed to seize the Ptolemies' overseas possessions: Philip took islands and towns in Caria and Thrace, while Antiochus invaded Coele-Syria. At the Battle of Panium in 200 BCE Antiochus defeated the Ptolemaic army and took Coele-Syria and Judea. Egypt's lands in the Levant passed to the Seleucids, and the weakened kingdom turned to an alliance with the rising power of Rome.

  6. Theban revolt finally suppressed

    The native revolt in Upper Egypt, led since 199 BCE by Ankhwennefer, had dragged on for nearly twenty years and at times threatened to end Greek rule altogether. In 186 BCE the forces of the young Ptolemy V finally defeated the rebel dynasty and restored royal control over Thebes and the south. Egypt was reunited under one king again, and the Ptolemies kept courting the powerful Egyptian priesthood with gifts and temple building. But the long war had severely weakened their hold on the country, and the kingdom never fully recovered its earlier strength.

  7. Day of Eleusis: Rome orders Antiochus IV out of Egypt and Cyprus

    In the Sixth Syrian War (170–168 BCE) the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Egypt, captured the young Ptolemy VI and set him up as a puppet king at Memphis, while Alexandria crowned his brother instead. In 168 BCE Antiochus invaded again, seized Cyprus and Memphis, and marched on Alexandria. At Eleusis, a suburb of the capital, the Roman envoy Gaius Popillius Laenas handed him the Senate's order to leave Egypt and Cyprus; according to Polybius, he drew a circle in the sand around the king and demanded an answer before he stepped out. Antiochus obeyed, so Egypt survived, but as a kingdom that now owed its independence to Rome.

  8. Death of Ptolemy VI; decades of dynastic feuding follow

    Ptolemy VI Philometor had restored some strength, reasserting control over northern Nubia and intervening in the Seleucid civil wars in Syria. In 145 BCE he was killed in the Battle of Antioch, and his infant son was soon murdered by his uncle, who seized the throne as Ptolemy VIII. For more than a century afterwards, members of the dynasty fought one another: kings were driven out and restored, and one, Ptolemy XI, was lynched by the Alexandrian mob. These feuds left Egypt so weak that it became in effect a protectorate of Rome.

  9. Ptolemy Apion dies and bequeaths Cyrenaica to Rome

    Cyrenaica, the fertile coast of eastern Libya, had belonged to the Ptolemies since Ptolemy I, but at times it was ruled separately by rival members of the dynasty. Ptolemy Apion, an illegitimate son of Ptolemy VIII, was apparently given Cyrene as his own kingdom around 105–101 BCE, although almost nothing is recorded of his reign and some scholars doubt he ruled at all. When he died without heirs in 96 BCE, his will left Cyrenaica and his royal estates to the Roman Republic. The Ptolemaic realm shrank to Egypt and Cyprus, and Rome now stood on Egypt's western border.

  10. Cleopatra VII comes to the throne

    Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, had kept his throne by paying vast sums to Rome and was even restored by the Romans after the Alexandrian mob drove him out in 58 BCE. When he died in 51 BCE, his will, with the Roman Senate as executor, left the kingdom jointly to Cleopatra VII, then in her late teens, and her 10-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII. Cleopatra soon fell out with her brother's advisers, was driven into exile and regained power only with Julius Caesar's help in 48–47 BCE. She would be the last ruler of an independent Egypt, trying to restore Ptolemaic power through alliances with Roman leaders.

  11. Antony and Cleopatra defeated by Octavian at Actium

    Cleopatra's partner Mark Antony and Octavian, Caesar's heir, had shared the Roman world, but by 32 BCE their rivalry turned into war, which Rome declared on Cleopatra. Octavian's admiral Agrippa cut Antony's supply lines in western Greece and trapped his army and fleet at Actium. On 2 September 31 BCE Antony's fleet tried to break out but was routed by Octavian's smaller, more agile ships, and Antony and Cleopatra escaped to Egypt. Their army in Greece deserted or surrendered, leaving Egypt with no real defence against a Roman invasion.

  12. Cleopatra dies; Egypt becomes a Roman province

    In the summer of 30 BCE Octavian's forces invaded Egypt and beat Antony's remaining troops outside Alexandria, and Antony killed himself. Cleopatra, unwilling to be paraded in a Roman triumph, took her own life in August 30 BCE, by tradition through the bite of an asp, though poison is more likely. Octavian had her son by Caesar, Caesarion, executed and made Egypt a Roman province. The Ptolemaic Kingdom, the last independent Hellenistic state, vanished from the map, and Egypt's grain and wealth now served Rome.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Chapters

Sources