Ptolemaic Egypt: Serapis, Scrolls Seized at the Docks, Cleopatra's Last Bid

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Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of a Macedonian Greek dynasty that held Egypt for three centuries. When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, his general Ptolemy seized Egypt rather than chase the whole empire, held its borders against the other successors, and in 305 BC took the titles basileus and pharaoh. The Ptolemies funded Egyptian priesthoods and temples such as the Temple of Horus at Edfu and appeared in Old Kingdom poses on temple walls, while running a Greek-speaking state from Alexandria. They invented the god Serapis, joining the bearded look of Zeus and Hades with the domains of Osiris and Apis, and Ptolemy II married his sister Arsinoe II.

Alexandria's Museum and Great Library were stocked by searching every arriving ship, copying confiscated scrolls and handing back the copies, and the court funded Euclid and Eratosthenes. Marsh drainage in the Fayum, durum wheat for export and a closed coinage that forced foreign merchants to exchange at a fixed one-to-one rate filled the treasury. Heavy taxes sparked the Great Theban Revolt in 205 BC, a 20-year insurgency in Upper Egypt, after which Ptolemy V granted temple concessions recorded on the Rosetta Stone. Ptolemy XII Auletes bankrupted the state bribing Roman senators, and his daughter Cleopatra allied with Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony before defeat at Actium in 31 BC and suicide in 30 BC.

• Native Egyptians could rise in the bureaucracy only by learning Greek and adopting Hellenistic customs.
• Native priests in the south declared themselves the true pharaohs during the Theban revolt.
• The Rosetta Stone carried the decree in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek.
• Through the Donations of Alexandria, Cleopatra and Antony granted Roman client territories to their children.
• Augustus kept the Ptolemaic administrative system and made Egypt the emperors' breadbasket.