Berenice Ii Euergetis

Berenice II Euergetis (267/6-221 BCE), the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene (Libya) and wife of King Ptolemy III of Egypt, was queen at an important juncture in Hellenistic history. This collection of four essays focuses on aspects of chronology, genealogy and marital practices, royal ideology and queenship.

Berenice II Euergetis (267-6-221 BCE), the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene (Libya) and wife of King Ptolemy III of Egypt, was queen at an important juncture in Hellenistic history. This collection of four essays focuses on aspects of chronology, genealogy and marital practices, royal ideology and queenship.

Berenice II (c. 264-221 BCE), daughter of King Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, came to embody all the key religious, political, and artistic ideals of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Though she arrived there nearly friendless, with the taint of murder around her, she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens descended from the successors of Alexander the Great. She was at the center of a group of important poets and intellectuals associated with the Museum and Library, not the least of which was Callimachus, the most important poet of the age. These men wrote poems not just for her, but about her, and their eloquent voices projected her charisma widely across the Greek-speaking world. Though the range of Berenice's interests was impressive and the quantity and quality of the poetry she inspired unparalleled, today she is all but known. Assimilating the scant and scattered evidence of her life, Dee L. Clayman presents a woman who was more powerful and fascinating than we had previously imagined. Berenice II and the Golden Age of Ptolemaic Egypt offers a portrait of a woman who had access to the cultural riches of both Greece and Egypt and who navigated her way carefully through the opportunities and dangers they presented, ultimately using them to accrue unprecedented honors that were all but equal to those of the king.

Berenice II Euergetis (267/6-221 BCE), the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene (Libya) and wife of King Ptolemy III of Egypt, was queen at an important juncture in Hellenistic history. This collection of four essays focuses on aspects of chronology, genealogy and marital practices, royal ideology and queenship.

Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether the Amazons of Greek legend actually existed. Notably, Soviet archaeologists' discoveries of the bodies of women warriors in the 1980s appeared to directly contradict western classicists' denial of the veracity of the Amazon myth, and there have been few concessions between the two schools of thought since. Postcolonial Amazons offers a ground-breaking re-evaluation of the place of martial women in the ancient world, bridging the gap between myth and historical reality and expanding our conception of the Amazon archetype. By shifting the centre of debate to the periphery of the world known to the Greeks, the startling conclusion emerges that the ancient Athenian conception of women as weak and fearful was not at all typical of the world of that time, even within Greece. Surrounding the Athenians were numerous peoples who held that women could be courageous, able, clever, and daring, suggesting that although Greek stories of Amazons may be exaggerations, they were based upon a real historical understanding of women who fought. In re-examining the sources of the Amazon myth, this compelling volume resituates the Amazons in the broader context from which they have been extracted, illustrating that although they were the quintessential example of female masculinity in ancient Greek thought, they were not the only instance of this phenomenon: masculine women were masqueraded on the Greek stage, described in the Hippocratic corpus, took part in the struggle to control Alexander the Great's empire after his death, and served as bodyguards in ancient India. Against the backdrop of the ongoing debates surrounding gender norms and fluidity, it breaks new ground as an ancient history of female masculinity and demonstrates that these ideas have a much longer and more durable heritage than we may have supposed.

Cutting-edge research by twenty-four international scholars on female power, agency, health, and literacy in ancient Egypt There has been considerable scholarship in the last fifty years on the role of ancient Egyptian women in society. With their ability to work outside the home, inherit and dispense of property, initiate divorce, testify in court, and serve in local government, Egyptian women exercised more legal rights and economic independence than their counterparts throughout antiquity. Yet, their agency and autonomy are often downplayed, undermined, or outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Egypt twenty-four international scholars offer a corrective to this view by presenting the latest cutting-edge research on women and gender in ancient Egypt. Covering the entirety of Egyptian history, from earliest times to Late Antiquity, this volume commences with a thorough study of the earliest written evidence of Egyptian women, both royal and non-royal, before moving on to chapters that deal with various aspects of Egyptian queens, followed by studies on the legal status and economic roles of non-royal women and, finally, on women’s health and body adornment. Within this sweeping chronological range, each study is intensely focused on the evidence recovered from a particular site or a specific time-period. Rather than following a strictly chronological arrangement, the thematic organization of chapters enables readers to discern diachronic patterns of continuity and change within each group of women. · Clémentine Audouit, Paul Valery University, Montpellier, France · Anne Austin, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, USA · Mariam F. Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt · Romane Betbeze, Université de Genève, Switzerland, and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France · Anke Ilona Blöbaum, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany · Eva-Maria Engel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany · Renate Fellinger, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK · Kathrin Gabler, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland · Rahel Glanzmann, independent scholar, Basel, Switzerland. · Izold Guegan, Swansea University, UK, and Sorbonne University, Paris, France · Fayza Haikal, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt · Janet H. Johnson, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Il, USA · Katarzyna Kapiec, Institute of the Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland · Susan Anne Kelly, Macquarie University Sydney, Sydney, Australia · AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA · Suzanne Onstine, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA · José Ramón Pérez-Accino Picatoste, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain · Tara Sewell-Lasater, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA · Yasmin El Shazly, American Research Center in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt · Reinert Skumsnes, Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway · Isabel Stünkel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA · Inmaculada Vivas Sainz, National Distance Education University), Madrid, Spain · Hana Vymazalová, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czeck Republic · Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, Fairfax, Viriginia, USA · Annik Wüthrich, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna, Austria

This book provides specially commissioned in-depth discussions of the poetry of Catullus from ten leading Latin scholars.