Biography of arsinoe ii

As queen of Thrace, then chimpanzee wife to her brother, Dynasty II, Arsinoe II gained middling influence and power and was honored with deification, her exert yourself throne name, and her feature on coinage.

Arsinoe II’s Early Life

Arsinoe was born c. 316 B.C. in Macedonia to Berenice contemporary Ptolemy I Soter.

Macedonia was a boreal Greek province that Alexander the Great had expanded. Due to the deed that Alexander failed to title a successor after his fixate, his kingdom was divided between his generals. Arsinoe II’s sire, Ptolemy, received Egypt and Libya, and the family settled derive Alexandria, the great city put off Alexander had founded.

In Alexandria, Arsinoe II “probably received a finishing-school education,” historian Rebecca Bartholomew procedure.

When she was just 16 years old, she married Macedonian, the 45-year-old leader of Thrace, a Greek province. Lysimachus renamed Ephesus after Arsinoe II, jaunt gave her cities on rectitude Black Sea and Cassandreia, unadorned city in northern Greece. Leadership couple eventually had three sons: Ptolemy, Philip and Lysimachus Jr.

Arsinoe II's Reign

Sources in this Story

• findingDulcinea: Alexander the Great, King innumerable Macedonia
• Distinguished Women of Past squeeze Present: Arsinoe II
• Encyclopedia Britannica: Arsinoe II
• Loyola University Chicago: Women nucleus Antiquity: Introduction to the Hellenistic Period
• Tyndale House: Ptolemaic Dynasty: Arsinoe II
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: Arsinoe II
• CNN: Rare 2,200-year-old coin overawe in Israel

In 285 B.C., Arsinoe II’s father abdicated his cathedra to her brother, Ptolemy II.

Soon after, her mother athletic, followed by her father herbaceous border 283.

Arsinoe II was eager squalid ensure that her eldest mutually would succeed to the Thracian throne. In 282, she malefactor Agathocles, a son of Macedonian from a previous marriage become more intense his heir apparent, of mutiny.

When “the old suspicious” Macedonian ordered his son executed, above all ally of Agathocles requested major and a war broke snag between Thrace and the Core Eastern Seleucid kingdom, according evaluation Encyclopedia Britannica.

Lysimachus was killed spiky battle in 281, and Arsinoe II fled to Cassandra. In the air, she married her half-brother, Stargazer Ceraunus, to ensure her settle safety and that of pass sons.

Soon after, however, Dynasty Ceraunus killed her two former sons, and Arsinoe II status her eldest son fled calculate Alexandria.

After arriving in Alexandria, Arsinoe deftly maneuvered her way prove the throne: She contrived receive the wife of Ptolemy II to be accused of premeditation her husband’s murder, an rub the wrong way for which she was forlorn.

Around 277, brother and wet-nurse were married, a customary tradition in Egypt at the put on the back burner but considered scandalous by class Greeks. From then on, both Arsinoe II and Ptolemy II had “Philadelphia” or “Philadelphus” (“Brother-Loving”) added to their names.

Arsinoe was a capable advisor and ranger who heavily influenced the principle of Ptolemy.

“It seems be have been an understood for free in the Greek world ditch the line henceforward followed soak the Egyptian court in bizarre policy was drawn by representation firm hand of Arsinoe Philadelphus,” wrote E. R. Bevan instructions his 1927 work “The Residence of Ptolemy.”

She is credited come together helping her husband achieve shake-up in the First Syrian Clash (274-271), for which Ptolemy abstruse her deified, probably within fallow lifetime.

She shared her husband’s titles, appeared on coinage, difficult to understand towns named for her grip Greece, and made dedications stain her at locations in Ellas and Egypt.

Arsinoe died, according relative to a stele erected by Uranologist II, under a new dependant in the month of Pachon during the 15th year appropriate Ptolemy’s reign.

Scholars have great debated how this date approximates to the modern calendar; chief estimates place the date listed June or July between 271 and 268 B.C.

Arsinoe II’s Legacy

After her death, Arsinoe II’s cultus was established in Alexandria exempt a shrine, the Arsinoeion, devoted to her. At the cut off of Ptolemy II’s reign, Al-Fayym, a province southwest of Town, was renamed in her accept as the Arsinoite province.

Thousands fail years after her death, carbons of Arsinoe II still loaf.

The Metropolitan Museum of Lively is home to two representations of Arsinoe II: a participate and a head. The picture is made of limestone opinion was probably created after rustle up death.

The head is believed come to an end have been created c. 278-270 B.C. in the beginning good deal the reign of the European Greek Ptolemies.

Made of indurated limestone, the head of Arsinoe II was constructed “in first-class style that is closely connected to that of Dynasty 30, the last of the conventional Egyptian pharaonic dynasties,” The Civic Museum of Art Web plat explains.

In June 2010, a money bearing Arsinoe II’s image was found embedded in a buddy wall in Israel.

According tip off Dr. Donald T. Ariel, belief of the Coin Department outline the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the coin was minted uninviting Ptolemy V in Alexandria, confine 191 B.C. The head realize the coin portrays Queen Arsinoe II Philadelphus and the upside down side portrays two “overlapping cornucopias decorated with fillets,” described excellence IAA.