Université de Liège

Post-Doc, Sciences de l'Antiquité

october 2011 - september 2013

Thesis Title: Deified Arsinoe II Philadelphos on the side of the living king Ptolemy II: Greco-Egyptian iconography, religion and propaganda (270-246 BC)

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Abstract.

In 332 BC Alexander the Great conquered Egypt from the Persian empire. After his death in 323, the province was administrated by his bodyguard Ptolemy, who managed to strengthen his control over the region and finally founded a new dynasty. The Macedonian origins of the new kings did not hamper a necessary interaction with the Egyptian strategies of government and power legitimation: the second ruling couple, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, implemented a pattern of joint rulership drawing on models of female power that were unusual to classical Greece but can be understood against the background of monarchic traditions from Macedon, Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt.

I focus on a part of the Greek and Egyptian documentation related to the cults for the 3rd century Ptolemaic queen Arsinoe II.
The chronological limits of the research, from Arsinoe's death (270 according to the traditional date) to the end of Ptolemy II's reign (246), are meant to seize the birth of the ruler cults for Arsinoe II and distinguish the first definition of the goddess, her prerogatives and iconography, from the later developments in Ptolemaic history. Accordingly, I concentrate on the documentation where the dead and deified queen is visually or textually portrayed on the side of her living husband Ptolemy II. This iconographic type was an innovation of the Ptolemaic court aiming at depicting the deceased queen as the divine protectress of the dynasty and of its geopolitical and cultural projects.
I also study Arsinoe's epicleses and cultic associations in orther to seize her position in both Greek and Egyptian pantheons.

A new attention has been recently paid to Hellenistic courts, ideology, and female power, even though a thorough study of the religious and political relevance of god making processes in a precise historical context is still a desideratum. In this perspective, Arsinoe II is a perfect focus since the queen occupies a pivotal position in the evolution of female power and cults in Hellenistic times.

Power representations are normally studied by discussing different media separately (i.e. reliefs, coins, epigraphic or literary texts) rather than focusing on transversal motifs that may emerge out of an interdisciplinary comparison. Secondly,
a still prevailing approach tends to study the Greek and Egyptian decumentation as two separate worlds. On the contrary, I deal with the cults of Arsinoe thea Philadelphos - nṯr.t mr-sn ('The goddess who loves the Brother') as a unified court project coherently aiming at creating a Graeco-Egyptian goddess who stands by her husband to protect his activity and guide his reign to success, both in the Mediterranean context and in Egypt.

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