Listed 4 sub titles with search on: Biographies for destination: "EGYPT Country MIDDLE EAST".
Common title for the kings of ancient Egypt. The word is a rendering
of the Hebrew par'o, which in turn renders the Egyptian word pr-' ('great house').
From the fifteenth century BCE, this title was used as a synonym to describe the
person of the king; in combination with the king's name (e.g., 'pharaoh Amasis'),
it is used from the tenth century.
The names of the pharaohs are known from Egyptian texts and the Aegyptiaca
of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the first half of the third century
BCE. He divides the Egyptian history in thirty dynasties; sometimes he is wrong,
but it is common to follow his division.
After c.2000 BCE, the pharaoh had five names: four throne names and
the name he had received when he was born.
Name of the last dynasty of independent Egypt.
In 332, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and
gave a new capital to the old kingdom along the Nile,
Alexandria. After his death
(June 11, 323), his friend Ptolemy became governor of Egypt, and started to behave
himself rather independently. When Perdiccas, the regent of Alexander's mentally
unfit successor Philip Arridaeus arrived in 320, he was defeated. This marked
the beginning of Egypt's independence under a new dynasty, the Ptolemies (or Lagids).
Ptolemy accepted the royal title in 306.
The fourteen kings of this dynasty were all called Ptolemy and are
numbered by modern historians I to XV (Ptolemy VII never reigned). A remarkable
aspect of the Ptolemaic monarchy was the prominence of women (seven queens named
Cleopatra and four Berenices), who rose to power when their sons or brothers were
too young. This was almost unique in Antiquity. Another intriguing aspect was
the willingness of the Ptolemies to present themselves to the Egyptians as native
pharaohs (cf. the pictures below, some of which are in Egyptian style). This was
less unique: the Seleucid dynasty that reigned the Asian parts of Alexander's
empire did the same.
Although Ptolemy I had refused the regency after the death of Perdiccas,
he aimed at more than Egypt alone. In the last years of the fourth century, he
managed to seize Coele Syria,
which is more or less equivalent to modern Israel,
Palestine, Lebanon
and southern Syria (and included the small Jewish state around Jerusalem). The
possession of this area was, however, hotly contested: several Syrian wars were
fought to defend it against the claims of the Seleucids. At first, Egyptian power
was great: Cyprus, several
Aegean islands, parts of Asia Minor and parts of Thrace belonged to the Ptolemaic
empire.
However, after the death of Ptolemy IV in 204, his son Ptolemy V was
too young to rule, and his wife Arsinoe was murdered. During this crisis, the
Seleucid king Antiochus III and Philip V of Macedonia decided to attack the Ptolemaic
empire and divide the booty. When a peace treaty was signed in 195, Egypt had
lost Coele Syria and all oversea possessions, except for Cyprus. The next years
saw several revolts inside Egypt.
In 169 and 168, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes invaded Egypt,
conquered the Delta, and laid siege to Alexandria. However, the Romans intervened
and forced him to return. From now on, the Ptolemies were increasingly dependent
on Rome.
The first Roman plans to conquer Egypt were made in the 140's, but
the rich kingdom was too high a prize for one man to win: every Roman senator
wanted to be the man who conquered Egypt, and hence all senators jointly prevented
any Roman magistrate who wanted to go to Alexandria from doing so. Egypt was left
to its own until 47, when Julius Caesar -who had defeated all other senators-
arrived. He made Cleopatra VII queen (together with her twelve-year old brother
Ptolemy XIV) and demanded money. Seventeen years later, Caesar's adoptive son
Octavian drove Cleopatra into suicide, murdered her son Ptolemy XV and annexed
the country.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Egyptian philosopher. In the Enneads (which were collected
and published by his pupil Porphyry) Plotinus extrapolated from the writings of
Plato a comprehensive view of reality in which everything flows in a series of
emanations from the central unity outwards into ever less significant things.
On this view, the chain of being extends from nous through
psyche to physis. Although human beings are typically caught
up in the lowest element of nature, Plotinus supposed each to be a microcosm of
the universe as a whole, capable of contemplative awareness of the divine unity.
This extract is cited Sept 2003 from the Philosophy Pages URL below, which contains image.
Dioscorides (Dioskorides), the author of thirty-nine epigrams in the Greek Anthology (Brunck, Anal. i. 493; Jacobs, i. 244; xiii. 706, No. 142) seems, from the internal evidence of his epigrams, to have lived in Egypt, about the time of Ptolemy Euergetes. His epigrams are chiefly upon the great men of antiquity, especially the poets. One of them would seem, from its title in the Vatican MS., Dioskoridou Nikopolitou, to be the production of a later writer. The epigrams of Dioscorides were included in the Garland of Meleager. (Jacobs, xiii. pp. 886, 887.)
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