On his arrival in Egypt, Ptolemy found there two other states in addition to that of the Egyptians. These were the old Greek city of Naucratis and the new city of Alexandria. A third arose when he himself founded Ptolemais to be to Upper Egypt what Alexandria was to Lower Egypt--the centre and rallying point of Hellenic interests. To these three city-states he added a multitude of others in and about the Mediterranean when he acquired for his house its foreign dominions. The convenient thing for these to do was to bind themselves to him by the Gordian knot of religious worship; and, as Ptolemy Soter, or the Savior, he was in fact enrolled in the circle of deities recognized by the several cities. In Alexandria we may be sure that its founder, Alexander the Great, had been accorded divine honors from the beginning, and that after his death the citizens appointed each year a priest of Alexander, just as they had been in the habit of doing while he was alive, and just as they appointed one for Zeus or Apollo. However, at some date between 311 and 289 B.C., perhaps on his assumption of the regal title in 306 B.C., Ptolemy took into his own hands the administration of his capital, and thenceforth appointed personally the priest of the city-god Alexander, who became therewith an imperial god. To this cult Philadelphus did not add that of his parents, "the savior gods," when he had them officially deified at their death (283 B.C.); but he did add to it that of his deceased queen and of himself when in 270 B.C. he inaugurated the worship of "the brother gods." His example was followed by each succeeding pair of rulers to the end of the dynasty, except that the savior gods were inserted by the fourth Ptolemy in their proper place after Alexander. So that central among the gods of the capital of the empire stood ultimately the long series of the departed rulers and at its head the living king and queen.