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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Ptolemy II Biography PTOLEMY II (308-247 B.C.), [a king of Egypt, the second in the line of Macedonian kings] surnamed PHILADELPHUS, the son of Ptolemy I by Berenice, the grandniece of Antipater, reigned from 285 to 247 B.C. He first married Arsinoë, the daughter of Lysimachus, King of Thrace, but eventually banished her and, after the ancient Egyptian custom, married his own sister, Arsinoë. Philadelphus undertook no great wars, and under his peaceful reign Egypt prospered greatly. The security afforded by her maritime supremacy stimulated her Mediterranean commerce, and a great trade developed on the Red Sea with Arabia and the Somali coast. This trade was encouraged by the establishment of new ports, by reopening the old route through the Wadi Hammâmât to the Red Sea, and by planting a colony, Ptolemais Epitheras, on the African coast near the site of the modern Suakin. A canal was also opened from the upper end of the Red Sea to the Nile. An important work, undertaken in the reign of Philadelphus, was the famous lighthouse erected on the island of Pharos, at the mouth of the harbor of Alexandria, by Sostratus the Cnidian. The Egyptian history of Manetho is reported to have been compiled at the suggestion of Philadelphus, and tradition alleges that the King caused the Hebrew scriptures to be translated into Greek by 70 (or 72) elders sent from Jerusalem for the purpose. See SEPTUAGINT. The New International Encyclopaedia Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 341. |