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Ptolemy I - Macedonian King of Egypt
 Ptolemy
(c. 360-284 B.C.) was son of the Macedonian nobleman Lagus and one of
the inner circle of Alexander's commanders and advisers. He fought with
distinction in India and wrote a history of Alexander's campaigns which
was an important source for
Arrian's
Anabasis. After Alexander's death he was appointed governor of Egypt and
determined to maintain his independence of the central authority of
Perdiccas.
One of his first actions to this end was to divert to Egypt the cortege
bearing the body of Alexander, which the army had intended to be buried
in Macedonia. Ptolemy justified his acquisition of this precious relic,
which was first interred with great magnificence at Memphis and
subsequently at Alexandria, on the grounds that Alexander had wished to
be buried at the oracle of Ammon. In 322 he allied himself with
Antipater
against Perdiccas and the pact was consolidated by his marriage to
Antipater's daughter Eurydice. In 316 he joined forces with
Cassander,
Seleucus,
and
Lysimachus
to resist
Antigonus'
ambition to reconstitute the whole of the Macedonia empire under his
rule. But in 306 Ptolemy's fleet was almost wiped out at the battle of
Salamis in Cyprus, by Antigonus' son Demetrius. Yet Antigonus' and
Demetrius' subsequent attempt to invade Egypt was foiled by bad weather.
Ptolemy took no part in the battle of Ipsus, and hence received little
in the subsequent division of the spoils, but he arranged dynastic
alliances by marrying his daughters, Arsinoe to Lysimachus and Lysandra
to Cassander's son Alexander, and his step-daughter Antigone to Pyrrhus
of Epirus. More successful as a statesman than as a soldier, he left
behind him a kingdom which was to prove the most enduring of the
Macedonian monarchies after Alexander the Great. He founded the library
of Alexandria and was one of the few Macedonian generals of his
generation to patronize literature and arts. Ptolemy I is the founder of
the Macedonian Ptolemic dynasty which ruled Egypt for over 3 centuries,
until the death of the last descendent Cleopatra in 30 B.C.
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