Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

128 AFTER PHILIP AND ALEXANDER
custom in Macedonia, as well as in Pharaonic Egypt, for the legitimate
successor to provide for the burial of his predecessor. In a magisterial
act of propaganda Ptolemy thus singled himself out from the
rest of the Successors of Alexander, as the guardian of the king’s body;
an idea he further elaborated upon by instituting a cult with an eponymous
priesthood in Alexander’s honor. 36
By the time of Philadelphus’ accession to the throne in 283 B.C.
Alexander’s carefully constructed role as the predecessor of the Ptolemaic
dynasty permeated public and domestic life in Alexandria, the
center of the Hellenic-Macedonian experience in Egypt. The Ptolemies’
attempt to establish continuity as the legitimate heirs to Alexander’s
Egypt, however, was not exhausted by Ptolemy I’s pioneering and
persistent manipulation of the former’s image and cultic presence.
Argead Genealogies
Even if, as Diodorus mentions, a collective sigh of relief escaped the
Successors when the last of the Argeadai was eliminated by Cassander,
the old Macedonian dynasty still mattered as a legitimating
vehicle. 37 This section will examine the creation of dynastic links
with the Argead dynasty as a whole by looking at the genealogical
traditions put forward in the early Ptolemaic period.
If we accept the premise that power can stem from the control of
ideological resources and that the rulers in a monarchic environment
have the capacity to monopolize the choice of myths and symbols
that they associate with themselves, then we can deduce that the
royal genealogies that circulated in early Ptolemaic Egypt, especially
within court literary circles, served the precise aim of advertising the
legitimating agenda of the rulers to their subjects. 38
Walbank has argued that the Ptolemies did not press their Argead
connections very far. 39 In fact, however, the genealogical strands preserved
in a number of accounts paint a different picture. In all of them,
Ptolemy I is presented as having direct blood relations with the Argead
kings. In what seems to be the most widely iterated version, Ptolemy I
inherited this connection through his mother, Arsinoe. Satyrus, evidently
a contemporary of Ptolemy IV, traced the patrilinear descent of
Arsinoe directly through the various Macedonian Kings, all the way
back to Heracles, the mythical founder of the Argeadai, and Dionysus. 40
The Adulis inscription, dating to the reign of Ptolemy III, suggests that
this link was fi rst promulgated long before Satyrus. 41
Connections with the Argeadai were not only drawn in order to
establish a common mythical ancestry. Another story, which was