The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard & Howard Reid

Author:Justin Pollard & Howard Reid [Pollard, Justin & Reid, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143112518
Google: GIJJPO8jFAEC
Amazon: 0143112511
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-10-30T07:00:00+00:00

Then trouble arose, because ignorant rebels interrupted in the South the works on the Throne-of-the-gods [i.e., the temple of Edfu]. The rebellion raged in the South until year 19 of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, “the heir of the gods Philopatores,” the son of Re “Ptolemy, loved by Ptah,” now deceased, the god Epiphanes, the strong one, the king who chased disorder out of the country.

Inscription from the Naos, temple of Edfu

It was ironic that after the outrageous success at Raphia, it would be his own Egyptians, those “ignorant rebels,” who would humble the all-conquering pharaoh and bring his most Egyptian work—the building of the temple of Horus at Edfu—to a halt. After his victory in Palestine, Ptolemy IV had chosen to return to Egypt on that god’s birthday, traveling like the new Horus downstream by ship from Memphis to Alexandria at the inception of the annual flooding (and symbolic rebirth) of the Nile. To honor him and his sister-wife it was decreed that statues of the king and queen be placed in the largest courts of all the major temples in Egypt; Ptolemy Horus, it was declared, was his father’s protector and his victory at Raphia was “beautiful.” In this way the polite fiction of the divinity of Ptolemy Philopator was at least maintained in his own mind. In truth the victory was not beautiful but hollow.

In 204 BC, still in the midst of the native rebellion and just forty years old, Philopator departed to join the gods. The circumstances surrounding his death are shrouded in mystery. There was no formal announcement of his death from Sosibius or Agathocles; he simply wasn’t seen for several months. Then, mysteriously, his wife-sister, Arsinoe, who would certainly have taken the role of regent, disappeared too. Finally, Sosibius summoned the court and announced that both king and queen were dead. He then proceeded to read out a forged royal will appointing himself and Agathocles guardians of the new king. There were few tears shed for the death of the king, but the people were immediately suspicious about Arsinoe’s death. How had she come to die simultaneously with her husband, and what, or who, had killed her? Polybius tells us that on receiving the news of her unhappy death “the people fell into such a state of distraction and affliction that the town was full of groans, tears and ceaseless lamentation, a testimony, in the opinion of those who judged correctly, not so much of affection for Arsinoe as of hatred for Agathocles” (Polybius, The Histories, book 15, chapter 25).

Sosibius escaped the backlash, dying a few months later, but Agathocles was determined to continue as sole guardian of the new king and proxy ruler of the nation. His first acts were to send away from Alexandria all the most able and influential people at court, on diplomatic missions, so that he gained absolute ascendancy there. Having secured his own position, he began to revel in it, living a life of constant drunkenness

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