Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs.So, they argue instead that the queen's power was more apparent than real:Philadelphos trusted her, possibly confided in her, and gave her a social role in the affairs of his kingdom". The city of Zenobia, built on tall stilts, or Isaura.But when Arsinoë II was queen , the dynasty hadn't had nearly enough time to degenerate and, anyway, neither she nor Ptolemy II were children of incest. They can't deny that some later Ptolemaic queens did rule in their own right , if often briefly (Cleopatra Berenice, Cleopatra Tryphena, another Berenice, and - most exceptionally - the glorious Cleopatra VII) but there seems to be an unspoken assumption that female rule was only possible because later male Ptolemies were degenerate - and it serves them right for all that incest!Keywords: Italo Calvino, visibility, reception of Italian literature in Poland, image in. Some scholars pooh-pooh the idea of Queen Arsinoë II having had any share in real power. This reference is carried out through the general idea of the articulation of single elements, their placing amongst each other, the. This project designed by Alessandro Tonni and Manuela Spera was created as a meeting point between architecture and literature encompassing and reinterpreting one of the most suggestive surreal images of the 1900’s Italo Calvino’s invisible city, Zenobia.Certainly, unlike his father, the king was not a military man he started lots of wars but won few. Some even suggest that Ptolemy II was a weakling and Arsinoë II the real power in the land. To their eyes, Arsinoë's political sway was far above what was customary for royal consorts.
That doesn't mean that it wasn't awfully daring for Arsinoë II to take this leap into the unknown (and, since she's seen as stronger and smarter than Ptolemy, historians generally assume that it was her idea and not the king's), but there's little doubt that the pairing was of great benefit to queenship: almost inevitably, it conferred greater power on the queen.Sibling incest for the Ptolemies, as also for earlier Pharaohs, established an equality between king and queen as co-rulers. Whether you come down on one side or the other depends, in the end, more on hunches than the solid weight of evidence.Two new points might help: one, admittedly, a matter of opinion the second, a pictorial matter of fact.Brother-sister royal incest from the queen's point of view is a win-win bet. But, however deeply you go into it, the fact remains that there is no proof either way. Naturally, after she died, Ptolemy went on to lose a Second Syrian War because she was not there to help him.Arguing the pro's and con's from our surviving sources can be devilishly difficult (below, I give some on-line sources for those who like the nitty-gritty). Her grateful husband acknowledged his debt to her policies with a public inscription in 266 B.C. She reorganized the army she accompanied it on its campaigns she won the Syrian war. Download wbs chart pro crackedHowever, anyone handling the coin would mentally link the titles and read it as a coin of the 'sibling gods'.Naturally, all the Ptolemies desired to associate themselves with the glory of Alexander. The title of 'gods' appears above the heads of their deceased parents on one side, while Ptolemy and Arsinoë, pictured on the reverse, are simply labelled 'siblings'. And this remained true for future queens of the dynasty: their power and prestige was related to the continuing prevalence of sibling marriage.That's really part of the self-aggrandizing message of the Theoi Adelphoi coins (scroll down to see the images in Part I). Brother-sister marriage did not of itself grant the queen political power and control, but it put her in a position to take power if and when the opportunity arose. It seems to grow naturally from the wavy locks, yet its outline and striations clearly define it as a ram's horn.Why would a queen wear the ram-horn of Amun?An inscription left by her brother-husband after her death, in a temple of Mendes (another god worshipped in the form of a ram) tells us a little of what happened:Princess great of favour, sweet of love, beautiful queen, who has received the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, whose loveliness fills the palace, beloved of the Ram, priestess of the Ram, sister of the king, wife of the king, his beloved, mistress of the Two Lands, Arsinoë. No male Ptolemy, that is, for the remarkable exception was Queen Arsinoë II.On her coins (below), and on hers alone, the ram's horn appear below the ear - and you can just see the outline of the horn beneath her veil.Just as we imagine it on the coins, here the horn emerges in 3-D from the hair to curl backwards and downwards behind the ear. Ptolemy I thus not only exalted his hero but, by doing so, elevated his own status as the guardian of the body of the greatest king, who was also a god.Despite this close association, no Ptolemy ever adopted the divine ram's horns. The dynasty's cult was celebrated there and Alexander's tomb, especially, was treated as a shrine. Over the next three centuries, as each of Ptolemy's descendants died, he was buried in an opulent mausoleum in the royal cemetery, near the central tomb of Alexander. When the cortege had reached the Mediterranean sea at Alexandria-ad-Issum (a city in Syria, founded by Alexander to celebrate his victory over the Persians), Ptolemy arrived with an army and forced the gold-and-jewel-covered cart with the coffin to take the road south to Egypt.The gold-encased body of the hero was eventually transported to Alexandria and placed in what would become the royal cemetery of Ptolemy's line. 2 & 5 (partly available on Google Books). Hazzard, Imagination of a Monarchy: studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda, University of Toronto (2000) Ch. Burr Thompson, "A Portrait of Arsinoe Philadelphos", American Journal of Archaeology 59 (1955) 199-206.** Even if, on a higher plane, Alexander wore the symbol of Amun and Arsinoë that of the god Mendes, they were visually the same it is doubtful if any but the priests of Egypt would have made a distinction.For the minimalist position, see R.A. So, yes, I do think it likely to be an intentional link, meant (in the royal minds at least) to raise the queen to the level of the one-and-only Alexander.If that isn't a statement of real power, what is?* Published by D. She would have been acutely aware of its symbolism and the potency of the image: for the first coins showing Alexander wearing the ram's horn were struck by none other than her first husband, King Lysimachos, in Thrace, when she was still married to him. **It is entirely possible that Arsinoë herself chose this honour before she died. Diademed head of Alexander to right, ram’s horn over his ear. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1920.Below left: ram-headed Amun, Abu Simbel, via Africa Timeline Index.Centre, upper (left): Thracian silver coin issued by Lysimachos, struck circa 280 BC. You can read about this extraordinary underwater find on my blog post, Will The Real Cleopatra Please Stand Up.Lower middle left: gilded and painted limestone statue of Arsinoe II as goddess. Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation - Photos: Christophe Gerigk. If that is true, they need reflect little or nothing of her power during her lifetime.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorKayla ArchivesCategories |