DAZZLING OF BIRTH

Saint-David, an Egyptologist, reassesses the legacy of Pharaoh Ptolemy XII in this nonfiction book.

The subject of Roman imperial histories, Shakespearean dramas, and Hollywood films, Cleopatra VII has fascinated humanity for more than 2,000 years. Despite Cleopatra’s well-established name in the annals of world history, the life and legacy of her father, Ptolemy XII, has failed to garner even a fraction of the attention. Often dismissed outright as a bit player in a larger drama of Roman advancement into the Egyptian world, Ptolemy XII is typically portrayed as “a drunken and feckless puppet ruler.” In what the author claims to be the first standalone biography of the oft-maligned Egyptian ruler written since the 1698 publication of Charles Baudelot de Dairval’s Histoire de Ptolemée Autletes (a work written before hieroglyphics were even deciphered), this book challenges the prevailing narratives of Ptolemy XII’s reign. Divided into three parts, the work begins with a historical overview of the “Saga of the Ptolemies,” which contextualizes the Macedonian family’s connections to Alexander the Great and places Ptolemy XII within a larger history of the Greco-Roman and Egyptian world of the last century BCE. The second section provides readers with a straightforward chronicle of the life of Ptolemy, with a particular emphasis on his tumultuous reign and relationship with the nascent Roman Empire. The book’s final section is an in-depth historiographic essay on how scholars—from contemporaries in ancient Rome to Egyptologists across subsequent centuries—have written about Ptolemy XII’s reign.

While parts one and two provide important details on Ptolemy’s life and legacy, the final section stands out as the book’s greatest contribution to the academic literature. Most Western historians, from the 17th century through today, have based their assessments of Ptolemy XII on Roman sources, often repeating imperial propaganda. Many of these Roman works highlight Ptolemy’s alleged “drunken antics,” palace orgies, and “livelong hours” spent isolated playing his flute while the kingdom around him crumbled. His ineffective attempts to hold on to power, per historians, were outflanked by politically savvy Roman rivals. Eschewing the “Romanocentric” perspective that has dominated Ptolemy XII’s narrative, Saint-David argues that the pharaoh “remained consistently dedicated…to the maintenance of the sovereignty of his kingdom” and the preservation of his family’s dynasty. In other words, while the ruler may have had “personal shortcomings,” he was nevertheless “an agile political operator” who worked tirelessly to ensure the safety of his dynasty. A Harvard University graduate and author of multiple scholarly works on Egyptian history, Saint-David has a firm command of both the primary and secondary sources that intersect with Ptolemy’s life. While fellow scholars may bristle at the book’s lack of in-text citations and its relatively short two-page bibliography, the author is upfront on the relative dearth of sources that directly address Ptolemy’s reign. Beyond its analytical contributions to the scholarship of the late Egyptian kingdom, this book offers general readers an accessible narrative about one of the more convoluted monarchies in world history. Saint-David’s engaging writing is accompanied by a treasure trove of full-color, high resolution maps, family trees, and photographs of Egyptian artifacts, ruins, coins, and other ephemera. This is not only an innovative reassessment of Ptolemy XII’s dynasty, but also a visually stunning volume that showcases the beauty and grandeur of ancient Egypt.

A well-argued, engrossing revisionist history of Ptolemy XII.