![]() ![]() Ptolemaic queens ( 2002.66 ) received special attention as guarantors of the inheritance of divine rulership. There were also, however, temples to Egyptian gods and traditional pharaonic monuments relocated from other sites, although the extent of the latter practice in the Ptolemaic Period is very difficult to ascertain because it continued through Roman times. Temples included those for the royal cult and for the chief god Serapis, a deity combining aspects of Osiris, Apis, and Ptah, but in a Hellenistic guise and whose consort was Isis. The magnificent city had splendid palaces, temples, and libraries oriented on a Hellenistic street grid cemeteries stretched to the east and west. The Ptolemies were very much Hellenistic rulers, with the country as their military prize. The encounter of the two cultures had many aspects and phases, and is easiest to comprehend by looking first at the new ruling class, its involvements and concerns, and then at religion and the arts in the greater land of Egypt.Īlexandria, Hellenistic Monarchy, and External RelationsĪlexander established the new city of Alexandria on the northwestern Delta coast. Thereafter, kingship was handed down through Ptolemy’s descendants until 30 B.C., when Roman takeover followed swiftly on the defeat of Cleopatra VII ( 89.2.660).Įxamining Egyptian art during these 300 years reveals strong continuities in its traditions but also interactions with Greek art, whose forms and styles swept the world with Alexander’s armies. On the death of Alexander’s last heirs, his conquests were divided among his generals: the Ptolemaic dynasty begins in 305 B.C., when one of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy, became Ptolemy I of Egypt. Then, when Alexander the Great of Macedon set out to dismantle the Persian empire, he took Egypt in 332 B.C., initiating the Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemaic Period. After more than a century of conquest and rule by the Achaemenid Persians, Egypt shook off these overlords, and independent Egyptian Dynasties 28–30 ruled for sixty years, before being reconquered by the Persians in 343 B.C. Conflict with imperial powers Assyria and Persia in the Near East dominated the same centuries, and the Egyptians relied on Greek alliances and troops to help fight their expansion. From the seventh century B.C., Egyptian rulers encouraged a flourishing Mediterranean trade involving Greeks from many islands and city-states: the coastal cities Canopus and Thonis/Herakleion, with large immigrant populations, served as gateways for trade down the westernmost Canopic Nile branch to the Egyptian/Greek trade city Naukratis near Sais and onward to the great city of Memphis. Preludes to Greek presence in Egypt are seen in the land reclamation and settlement of the western Delta beginning in the Third Intermediate Period and the new prominence of that area with the capital of Dynasty 26 at Sais. The Arc of Egyptian and Greek Interaction in the First Millennium ![]()
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