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Reigning for 275 years, the Ptolemaic was the longest and last dynasty of ancient Egypt from 305 BC until its incorporation into the Roman Republic in 30 BC. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] Ptolemy , a general and one of the somatophylakes (bodyguard companions) of Alexander the Great , was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC.
[3] [4] As Ptolemy I Soter ("Saviour"), he founded the Ptolemaic dynasty that was to rule Egypt for nearly 300 years. All the male rulers of the dynasty took the name Ptolemy, while princesses and female rulers preferred the names Cleopatra, Arsinoë and Berenice. The Ptolemies also adopted the Egyptian custom of marrying their sisters, with ...
The first 30 divisions come from the 3rd century BC Egyptian priest Manetho, whose Aegyptaiaca, was probably written for a Greek-speaking Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt but survives only in fragments and summaries. The names of the last two, the short-lived Persian-ruled 31st Dynasty and the longer-lasting Ptolemaic Dynasty, are later coinings.
The situation is further complicated by occasional conflicting information on the same regnal period from different versions of the same text; thus, the Egyptian historian Manetho's history of Egypt is only known by epitomes and references to it made by subsequent writers, such as Eusebius and Sextus Julius Africanus, and the length of reign ...
The Ptolemaic Kingdom (r. 305–30 BC, the Thirty-first Dynasty) had ruled Egypt since the Wars of Alexander the Great that overthrew Achaemenid Egypt.The Ptolemaic pharaoh Cleopatra VII sided with Julius Caesar during Caesar's Civil War (49–45 BC) and Caesar's subsequent Roman dictatorship.
The Ptolemaic dynasty was Egypt's last before it became part of the Roman Empire. The dynasty was founded in 305 B.C. after Alexander the Great of Macedonia took Egypt in 332 B.C. and one of his ...
Large migrations of Greeks to Egypt ceased by the 2nd century BC, so the Greek minority in Ptolemaic Egypt remained demographically small. [381] Although Egyptian priests were often wealthy landowners who rivaled the wealth of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, the Ptolemaic monarchs technically owned all Egyptian lands as part of their estate. [382]
The date used as the end of the ancient era is arbitrary. The transition period from Classical Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages is known as Late Antiquity.Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world: generally from the end of the Roman Empire's ...