Book Review: "Ancient Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra"

Toby Wilkinson once again proves his mastery of ancient Egyptian history with this nuanced and richly detailed portrait of ancient Egypt's last and most glamorous dynasty.

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Few writers have as much panache when it comes to talking about ancient Egypt as Toby Wilkinson. I have yet to be disappointed with any of his books, and I remain in awe of his ability to capture the complexity of this culture while also managing to be accessible to a lay audience. In The Last Dynasty he turns his attention to the glamorous but ill-fated Ptolemies, the Macedonian dynasty that ruled over Egypt from the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s death to the suicide of Cleoaptra VII several centuries later.

In his capable hands, we learn about such key figures as the first Ptolemy, who managed to not only snag the domains of Egypt from beneath the other Successors but also kidnapped Alexander the Great’s own body, which he ensconced in Alexandria, where it would remain for centuries. We also learn about the various other men who bore that august name, including the ill-fated Ptolemy XII, derisively nicknamed Auletes by the Alexandrians, given that he liked to play the pipes. He was given the thankless task of trying to keep the Romans at bay, a task which he was unable to meet, ultimately mortgaging his kingdom to the rapacious Rome, a decision that would be particularly fateful for his daughter, Cleopatra VII.

Histories of the Ptolemies tend to take a top-down approach to studying and writing about this most fascinating and decadent of Egyptian dynasties. To some extent this makes sense, given the larger-than-life personalities that occupied the throne, and anyone who knows anything about the later Ptolemies in particular knows that this dynasty could give the Targaryens a run for their money when it comes to interfamily strife and marital discord (indeed, George RR Martin has admitted that he drew on them in his creation of his deposed ruling family). Moreover, there were some very dominant personalities of this period, so it makes sense that most histories would focus on their actions.

Wilkinson’s book, however, gives us a more bottom-up approach to the study of the period and the Ptolemies’ reign. While there’s plenty of discussion of the various feuds and spats that ripped the family apart in the decades leading up to the Roman conquest of Egypt under Augustus, we also get insight into the everyday folks who helped the state to run. Thanks to the dry sands of Egypt historians are able to draw on a wide variety of sources to flesh out the lives and wishes and struggles and desires of many of those left out of the accounts of the ancient historians.

We learn, for example, of the methods that the Ptolemies utilized to bring their new realm to heel, and how many native Egyptians continued to view the Macedonians with no small amount of hostility. In the voices of these everyday citizens we experience firsthand how tenuous the Ptolemies’ hold on their lands could be, and how it took every bit of bureaucratic skill at their command to keep their lands under control. And make no mistake. This Ptolemaic Egypt was definitely a very bureaucratic state, even as it was also one in which religion continued to play a key role, as the Ptolemies also realized. They were very adept at incorporating themselves into the religious iconography of their subjects, and they also poured a lot of money into temple renovation (which is why so many of them ended up surviving to the present).

What also emerges from The Last Dynasty is a fascinating portrait of a dynasty determined to make their domain a bastion of learning. This was the dynasty, after all, that gave the world the Library of Alexandria and the Mouseion, and it’s thanks to their largesse and their sponsorship of scholarship that A;examdria became one of the leading intellectual lights of the ancient world.

What’s just as remarkable, however, is just how much of a role the women of this dynasty played in its functioning. Aside from the famous Cleopatra VII (more on her in a moment), there were the various other Cleopatras, Arsiones, and Berenices, all of whom were to play a key role in the kingdom and its rule. Given the extent to women were often relegated to secondary and supporting roles in most of the other Hellenistic kingdoms–to say nothing of Rome–the fact that so many of these women were able to reign, sometimes in their own right as regnants, is nothing short of extraordinary (for more on the reigns of the several Cleopatras, I also highly recommend Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ book on the subject, which I also reviewed here).

It was the Ptolemies’ misfortune that their declining fortunes happened to coincide with the rise of Rome as a superpower in the Mediterranean. Indeed, as the Ptolemies turned increasingly inward and focused on their palace dramas, the Romans were reaching out and conquering the various other successor kingdoms, quickly reducing both Macedon and the Seleucid kingdoms. This process accelerated after the Italian city-state managed to vanquish their rivals, Carthage,

Of course, no account of the Ptolemaic Dynasty would be complete without a discussion of the woman who was both the last and the best of them: Cleopatra VII. Wilkinson gives this last monarch her due, noting many of her many accomplishments, including the fact that she was the only member of her dynasty to actually learn the native language of her Egyptian subjects. Like her predecessors, however, she increasingly found her fate intertwined with that of Rome, which is why she attached herself first to Caesar and then to Antony, the latter with disastrous results.

As Wilkinson points out, the conquest of Egypt by Rome marked the end of the old ways of doing things. While the Ptolemies, for all that they were outsiders, at least made an attempt to incorporate themselves into established systems of religion and worship. The Romans, led by Augustus, really had no patience for what they viewed as a country rife with superstition. With the end of the Ptolemies came the end of an ancient way of life and, thanks to Wilkinson’s powers as a historian and a storyteller, we see just what a loss it was for the ancient world and, in some ways, for our own.