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This webpage reproduces part of The House of Ptolemy by E. R. Bevan published by Methuen Publishing, London, 1927 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

 p385  Corrections and Additions

Page 8 ff.— A reviewer of Victor Ehrenberg's book (Alexander und Aegypten, Leipzig, 1926), in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1926, has put forward the view that the motive of Alexander's expedition to Siwah was military. He was afraid of Libyan tribes raiding Egypt from the west and using the Oasis as a place for concentration. Hence he made a personal reconnaissance, and his alleged religious motive was all camouflage. A precisely similar theory was stated in The Times of January 7, 1927, by an anonymous correspondent. It may well be that the correspondent and the reviewer were the same person. The view, in any case, does not seem to me at all a happy thought. Mr. Hogarth pointed out in a letter to The Times of January 12 that the view "has not only unanimous ancient authority, but the probabilities, to contend with. The strategic significance of Siwah has never been serious, and, so far as we know, Alexander left no garrison there; not did he make it any sort of post of observation or defence."

If the motive of Alexander had been the one suggested, there is no reason why Ptolemy (whose account Arrian follows) should not have indicated it. There is no hint of it in our ancient authorities, and the theory of the reviewer and The Times contributor seems to exemplify a common weakness of scholars — the wish to be clever by reading between the lines of our texts all sorts of things which they do not say, especially where it is a case of attributing to men of the ancient world motives which would be natural in a man of the 20th century. A modern man might not be moved to make an expedition to the Oasis for a reason of imaginative religion, but it was like an ancient Greek, and exceedingly like Alexander, to do so. Alexander was obviously inclined to play the part of a hero of the epic age (as he did at Troy), and the motive which is attributed to him by the contemporary Callisthenes — of doing what his ancestor Perseus had done at the outset of his adventure — has really far more inherent probability than the would‑be clever rationalization offered by the reviewer and The Times contributor. One may notice that the assertion of The Times contributor, that the oracle of Ammon had lost its prestige in the Greek world in the 4th century, is flatly opposed to the evidence, as a reference to Pauly-Wissowa, art. "Ammoneion," would show. Plato, in the Laws 738B (written about twenty years before Alexander's visit to the Oasis), speaks of the oracles of Delphi, Dodona, and Ammon as the three chief oracular shrines which Greeks in his time would naturally consult in matters requiring divine guidance. We may say, indeed, that, so far as Alexander was a typical ancient Greek, it would have been odd if he had not consulted  p386 the oracle of Ammon, being as near to it as Egypt, before an adventure of such magnitude.

Pages 55, 65, 129.— Mr. W. W. Tarn questions the validity of Ernst Meyer's calculations in his review of Untersuchungen zur Chronologie der ersten Ptolemäer in the Classical Review, XL (1926) page 86. Mr. Tarn points out that there is no other evidence for the joint-kingship of Euergetes from November 247 to January 245, which Ernst Meyer infers. According to Mr. Tarn, E. Meyer has got his dates for the reign of Ptolemy II a year too late: thus the ordinary dating was right: Ptolemy II became Bouché-Leclercq in 285, not in 284; Ptolemy I died in 283, Arsinoe Philadelphius in 270, and Ptolemy II in 246. With regard to the argument on page 129 — that a worship of the Theoi Adelphoi appears before Arsinoe's death — this would still hold good, if the document in question (Hibeh, 99) belongs to Phamenoth or Pharmuthi in 270 B.C., and Arsinoe died in the following Pachon, in the same year; only the interval between the first appearance of the cult and the death of Arsinoe would be reduced from the thirteen months supposed by Ernst Meyer to about one month.

Page 68.— Mr. W. W. Tarn urged in the JHS XLIV (1924), p146, note 29, that Rehm's dating of the Miletus inscription could not stand. See his further note in JHS XLVI (1926), p158. It had also been questioned independently by Rostagni in his Poeti Alessandrini in 1916. I ought to have noticed this before writing page 68. Mr. Tarn argues that Ptolemy II's letter to Miletus probably belongs to the year 275 B.C. This complicates the question regarding the "son" mentioned in the letter. Ptolemy II, who was born himself in 308, cannot, as Mr. Tarn truly says, have had a son, legitimate or illegitimate, old enough in 275 to govern Miletus. If the "son" was a son of Arsinoe I, born before Ptolemy III, as I suggested on page 69, he might conceivably, supposing Ptolemy II's marriage with Arsinoe, the daughter of Lysimachus, took place as early as 290, when the future Ptolemy II was eighteen, have been fourteen in 275 — too young certainly to govern Miletus, but perhaps not too young to be sent round as crown prince, to visit the oversea dependencies in charge of Callicrates. But to put the marriage of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe I as early as 290 may seem hazardous. [The age given for Euergetes (pp189, 205) was based on the supposition that his parents were married (as Bouché-Leclercq supposes) about 284; if the marriage took place in 290, and Euergetes was the second son, then Euergetes may have been forty-one at his accession, in 247, and sixty-seven at his death in 221.] Mr. Tarn, then, ruling out on the score of youth the possibility that the "son" of the inscription is a real son of Ptolemy II, says that he "can only be the son of Lysimachus and Arsinoe II," adopted by Ptolemy II, according to the Beloch hypothesis. But it must be remembered that hypothesis was built on a number of pillars, one of which was the supposition that the supposed son of Arsinoe II adopted by Ptolemy II was the joint-king of the Papyri from 266 to 258, another of which was his identification with the Telmessian "Ptolemy son of Lysimachus." These two main pillars are knocked away. I have  p387 shown the insuperable difficulty of supposing that the joint-king was a son of Arsinoe II, and Mr. Tarn himself rejects the identification of Arsinoe II's son with the Telmessian Ptolemy. The adventurous hypothesis of this supposed son of Arsinoe II adopted by Ptolemy II would thus remain, on Mr. Tarn's presentation, resting upon the single pillar that some one called a "son" of Ptolemy II's is mentioned in a single document of 275. I cannot think that, unless the Beloch hypothesis had been already in Mr. Tarn's mind, it would have occurred to him to construct it on the strength of this document alone. If Mr. Tarn is right regarding the early date of the letter to Miletus, that does unquestionably make the "son" a puzzle, and I cannot suggest any explanation of him with confidence. It still seems to me possible that he may have been a son of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II sent round, very young, to visit the dominions. Ptolemy V came officially of age, and was crowned in Memphis, when he was only twelve.

But it has to be noted that Mr. Tarn's argument for the early date of the letter to Miletus rests upon the assumption that when Callicrates went with the "son" to Miletus he was nauarchos. This assumption seems to me far from certain. Granted that Callicrates ceased to be high-admiral in the Aegean after 266 B.C., as Mr. Tarn infers, the termination of his command need not necessarily mean that he had died. He might surely have continued to be a person of great consideration at the Ptolemaic court — just the sort of person who would be chosen to take charge of the heir apparent, if he was sent round to visit the dependencies. There is nothing in the Miletus inscription to show that Callicrates was nauarchos at the time when he was in Miletus with the son. The fact that the report on the loyalty of the Milesians had been sent to the king not by the "son" in his own name alone, but by the "son" in conjunction with Callicrates and the other "friends" of his escort, rather indicates, I think, that the "son" was at the time young. The real author of the report will have been the old courtier in charge of the "son," though, as a matter of form, the "son" himself is regarded as making the report in association with Callicrates and the rest. If Callicrates was no longer nauarchos at the time, Rehm's dating of the letter may perhaps be right after all, and "son" may be a young man over twenty.

Page 75.— Fresh light has come on the history of the Cyrenaica in the latter years of Ptolemy II from an inscription published by S. Ferri in the Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin for 1926. Wilamowitz supposes that the inscription gives an edict (diagramma) of Ptolemy II or Ptolemy III regulating the constitution of Cyrene after the slaying of Demetrius and the return of the Cyrenaica, under the young queen Berenice, to dependence on Ptolemy. It is odd that Ptolemy does not appear in the character of king, but in that of strategos of Cyrene for life, with five colleagues elected for limited terms. The citizen body is increased from a thousand to ten thousand, and established on a property qualification. These nominated by Ptolemy amongst (democratic?) exiles who had taken refuge in Egypt were to be included in the new citizen-body provided they possessed the necessary amount of property. We are also shown a boule of 500, and a gerusia of 101, members. The  p388 gerontes are all nominated by Ptolemy; the members of the boule are chosen by lot, and half the boule renewed every other year. We have therefore, as at Ptolemais in Egypt, or as at Pergamon, republican forms controlled in reality by the king.

Pages 79 to 188, Chapters IV and V.— A notable addition to the literature bearing on the subjects treated in these chapters has been made by P. Jouget in his volume, L'Impérialisme Macédonien et l'Hellénisation de l'Orient (1926), in the series "L'Evolution de l'Humanité." The book unfortunately did not come into my hands in time to use it in writing mine, but I am gratified to find that its judgments correspond generally with those expressed in this volume.

Page 110.— Regarding the "Persians," in addition to the literature referred to in the footnote, reference should have been made to two earlier articles by A. Segré in Aegyptus for 1922, pp143 ff., and in the Rivista di Filologia for 1924, pp86 ff.

Page 114.— On the subject of the Jews in Egypt a recent book (which I have not seen) is said to be valuable — Fuchs, Die Juden Aegyptens in ptolemäischer und römischer Zeit (Vienna, 1924).

Page 176.— The statement that recent attempts to train the African elephant have been unsuccess­ful must be modified in view of a report by Captain Keith Caldwell, of the Kenya Game Department (a résumé is given in The Times of April 9, 1927), regarding the experiments made by the Belgians at Api, in the Congo. Seven Indian mahouts were employed at the outset to instruct the native mahouts of the Azande tribe. The results of the experiment seem to have been very encouraging. "Once they are sufficiently grown, the elephants work willingly and well, and show intelligence in their careful use of the plough in difficult land. The cotton crop around Api was, at the time of the report, being shifted by elephants to Titule. . . . The average value of the Api elephants is said to be £500. Captain Caldwell declares his belief that, if it were decided to train elephants in Uganda, results equal to those in the Congo would be obtained" (The Times). The elephants do not attempt to breed in captivity. This would explain why the Ptolemies had always to keep up their supply by fresh captures.

Page 232.— A complete translation into German of the new Pithom stele, with commentary, is given by W. Spiegelberg in the Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosoph.-philolog. und histor. Klasse for 1925 (published as a separate pamphlet at Munich in the same year). Since translations of similar documents have been given in this volume, and it may not be easy for a student to come by a translation of this one, it seems worth while to give an English version of it here:

[What follows is too fragmentary to make translation here worth while.]

Page 274.— It should have been noted that the decree of a synod of Egyptians assembled at Alexandria in the September of 186 indicates that the nationalist leader Anchmachis had been taken prisoner by a Greek officer on August 27 (Sethe, Zeitschrift für ägypt. Sprache u. Altertumsurkunde for 1917, pp35 ff.).

Page 327.— In connexion with Cleopatra III it ought to have been noted that further priesthoods in her honour were added to the eponymous priesthoods of the state-cult in Alexandria. These are hardly traceable in our Greek documents because scribes after the time of Ptolemy VI took to a short formula which omitted the names of the eponymous priests of the year at Alexandria just as they did those at Ptolemais (see p10).º A demotic document, however, of the year 112‑111 shows us four eponymous priests, all apparently of Cleopatra III. In the case of the first priesthood she is not called by her own name but "Isis, Great Mother of the Gods." The name may have been chosen because Cleopatra was queen-mother of the two god-kings, Soter II and Alexander I. The priest has the odd name of the hieros pōlos, "Holy Foal." Otto points out that pōlos is found in Greece as a name given to a priestess of Demeter, and may have been chosen for this Alexandrine priest because Isis was often identified by the Greeks with Demeter.

In the case of the other three priesthoods Cleopatra is called by her own name with her official surnames (Cleopatra Philometer Soteira), and is served by priestesses, the first being called stephanephoros, "Wreath-wearer," the second pyrphoros, "Fire-bearer," and the third simply hiereia, "Priestess."

Yet a fifth priesthood of Cleopatra III is shown in Pap. Reinach, 9, 10, 14‑16, 20 (112‑108 B.C.), with the name phōsphoros, "Light-bearer."

The splendour and picturesqueness of the processions of the ministers of the state-cult through the streets of Alexandria may have been increased when with the Basket-bearer of Arsinoe Philadelphius and the Prize-bearer of Berenice Euergetis there walked the Holy Foal of Isis, no doubt in some quaint habit representative of his  p393 name, and the four priestesses of the reigning queen, each with her particular emblem, a wreath, a blazing torch, and so on. When the real power of the house of Ptolemy had shrunk so pitifully, it was still easy to multiply its pomps and displays. Under the earlier kings new priesthood was only now and again at long intervals added to the state-cult, and no queen had more than one; now Cleopatra III has five added all at once for herself alone. Just so the later queens of the house, instead of one grandiloquent surname, have two or three.

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The Author's Notes:

1 This should, of course, be Berenice: the priestly scribe has carelessly followed the forms of the previous reign.

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2 An odd confirmation of the story in 3 Maccabees, though I still think that the attempt of Philopator cannot have been seriously pressed or we should have heard about it in Daniel xi.

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3 Antiochus would never have defaced images of the ancient Greek gods. Unless the priestly phrase is a merely conventional attribution of wickedness to the enemy, the images in question must be statues of kings and queens of the house of Ptolemy which Antiochus had found in the Syrian cities.

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4 The meaning of the Egyptian phrase here seems doubtful. The whole of this section is very obscure.

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5 Spiegelberg understands this of the revolt of the nationalist Egyptian commanders, which necessitated Philopator's return to Egypt.

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6 A literal Egyptian translation of the Greek kallinikos.

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