History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
History
History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
Egypt -- History
In the Egyptian inscriptions Ptolemy and Arsinoe are always called the
brother-gods; on the coins they are called Adelphi, the brothers; and
afterwards the king took the name of Philadelphus, or sister-loving,
by which he is now usually known. In the first half of his reign
Philadelphus dated his coins from the year that his father came to the
throne; and it was not till the nineteenth year of his reign, soon after
the death of his mother, that he made an era of his own, and dated his
coins by the year of his own reign. The wealth of the country is well
shown by the great size of those most in use, which were, in gold the
tetra-stater or piece of eight drachms, and in silver the tetra-drachma,
or piece of four drachms, while Greece had hardly seen a piece of gold
larger than the single stater. In Alexandrian accounts also the unit
of money was the silver didrachm, and thus double that in use among the
merchants of Greece.
[Illustration: 142.jpg COIN WITH THE HEADS OF SOTER, PHILADELPHUS AND
BERENICE]
Among the coins is one with the heads of Soter and Philadelphus on the
one side, and the head of Berenice, the wife of the one and mother of
the other, on the other side. This we may suppose to have been struck
during the first two years of his reign, in the lifetime of his father.
Another bears on one side the heads of Ptolemy Soter and Berenice, with
the title of "the gods," and on the other side the heads of Philadelphus
and his wife Arsinoe, with the title of "the brothers." This was struck
after the death of his parents. A third was struck by the king in honour
of his queen and sister. On the one side is the head of the queen, and
on the other is the name of "Arsinoe, the brother-loving," with the
cornucopia, or horn of Amalthea, an emblem borrowed by the queens of
Egypt from the goddess Amalthea, the wife of the Libyan Anion. This was
struck after his second marriage.
On the death of Arsinoe, Philadelphus built a tomb for her in
Alexandria, called the Arsinoeum, and set up in it an obelisk eighty
cubits high, which had been made by King Nectanebo, but had been left
plain, without carving.
[Illustration: 143.jpg COIN OF ARSINOE, SISTER OF PTOLEMY II.]
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