March 22, 2021 • 38 mins
The Ptolemies were a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt during the Hellenistic period. And in a lot of ways Arsinoë II really set the standard for the generations of Ptolemaic queens that followed her.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Remember our
recent episode on Zoe and Theodora. We talked about how
I had some challenging research moments thanks to their being
(00:24):
so many people in the Macedonian dynasty who had the
same name. I do remember. Yeah, Um, today's episode is
worse from that perspective. We are talking about Ptolemaic queen
our Sinowa, the second. The Ptolemy's were a Greek dynasty
that ruled Egypt during the Hellenistic period, and most of
(00:45):
that dynasty's men were named Ptolemy. For the most part,
the women were named our Sinowa, Baronici or Cleopatra. Sometimes
people say Baronici Bernice, but I understand why they would
land there, but that's not it, um. Sometimes the women
were also called Ptolemace, which was a feminine form of Ptolemy.
(01:05):
So that's that's basically you got four or five names
to work from for the most part. And then the
dynasty's family tree is also pretty convoluted. Our Sinaway's husbands
included her half brother Ptolemy Karnos and her full brother
Ptolemy the Second. Of course, we're gonna be talking more
about that. Of course, these repetitive names and the challenges
(01:26):
that they create are not why I chose our sin
Away for this episode. The Hellenistic period stretched from the
death of Alexander the Great to the establishment of the
Roman Empire, and it's just it's not really a period
we have talked about that often on the show, and
in a lot of ways, are sin Away the Second
really set the standard for the generations of Ptolemaic queens
(01:49):
that followed her, also just as a heads up, as
was the case with Zoe and Theodora. There's a lot
of killing in this episode, including the murders of Chill
written Arsinoways father was Ptolemy the First Soder, meaning savior.
He had been a companion and adviser to Alexander the
Third of Macedon, later becoming one of Alexander's bodyguards and
(02:11):
eventually one of his generals. Alexander was of course also
known as Alexander the Great. That empire was huge. It
stretched from Greece and Egypt in the west to the
Indus River and the Himalayan mountains in the east. Alexander's
empire did not survive his death in three three b C.
(02:32):
Though when Alexander died, his wife Roxanne, was pregnant, but
she had not given birth yet, and he also had
a disabled half brother who was still living. But beyond that,
Alexander had no direct successor. He did not name any
wants to follow him either. He just said that the
empire should go to the strongest or the fittest, depending
(02:53):
on the translation that you're reading. Some of Alexander's generals
and advisers wanted to wait for Roxanne to of birth
to see if she would have a son, and she did,
but soon they were dividing up the empire among themselves,
becoming satraps, or governors of various territories, although some of
these satraps were at least ostensibly holding territory on behalf
(03:15):
of Alexander's surviving kim. His half brother was murdered in
three seventeen BC, and his son with Roxanne was murdered
in three d nine. By three oh six, these diata
key or successors were consolidating territory and presenting themselves as
kings instead of generals or provincial governors. I just want
(03:37):
to say, I have heard at least four different pronunciations
of this of the successors, from from different people who
should know what they're talking about. I've heard diataki, di
ada kidataki, which is more like how it was pronounced
in Greek. It's really all over the place. For Ptolemy's part,
(04:01):
after Alexander's death, he became the sattrap of Egypt, and
then he expanded his territory from there through marriages and
through military conquest, including wars against some of the other
Diatic eye And really this whole period was incredibly chaotic.
It was full of all kinds of disagreements and in
fighting in a series of wars that stretched from three
(04:24):
twenty two to two eighty one BC. Some of those
will come up again later. Ultimately, Ptolemy became king of
Egypt and Macedonia and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty, which controlled
Egypt for nearly three hundred years. His public works projects
included the Library at Alexandria and the Lighthouse of Alexandria,
which is described as one of the seven Wonders of
(04:46):
the ancient world. Ptolemy also stole Alexander's body as it
was being taken back to Macedonia to be buried. He
took it to the Egyptian city of Memphis, and then
eventually to Alexandria, where he had it in two cooms.
This tomb became a focal point for the cult of Alexander,
which Ptolemy made into a state cult, and Ptolemy used
(05:09):
the cults, the worship in the cult, the presence of
Alexander's remains in Alexandria, all of that together to reinforce
the idea that he and his dynasty were the legitimate
rulers of Egypt. But neither Ptolemy nor the rest of
his dynasty ever assimilated with the Egyptian population that they
were ruling. Although Ptolemy initially lived in Memphis, which was
(05:32):
one of Egypt's oldest cities, he ultimately moved to Alexandria,
which Alexander had founded and which was culturally more aligned
with Greece. The Ptolemy's kept up a fairly insular existence
in Alexandria, and they retained their Greek identities throughout the dynasty.
This included generally marrying other Macedonian Greeks, although It's possible,
(05:54):
but not conclusively documented, that there may have been high
ranking Egyptians among the king's wife or concubines towards the
end of the dynasty. This dynasty ended with Cleopatra the Seventh,
who was typically just known as Cleopatra. She was the
daughter of Ptolemy the twelfth and also married to her
brother Ptolemy. She was the only Ptolemaic ruler to learn
(06:17):
the Egyptian language or to really take any effort at
all to learn about the people she was ruling, especially
in the first generations after Alexander's death. Hellenistic rulers were
typically polygamous. Kings had multiple wives simultaneously. Queens, however, did
not have multiple husbands. Ptolemy was no exception. He had
four wives. Bias Urticama Euridicy, Baronici Baronci was our Sinoway
(06:44):
the seconds mother, and she had two other children with
Ptolemy our sin away sister, Philotera and her brother Ptolemy
the Second. There were also lots of half siblings through
their father's other wives. These multiple marriages caused all kinds
of chaos within the Ptolemaic dynasty and then elsewhere in
the Hellenistic World and other episodes about royals. We've talked
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about men who rose to power, or at least tried
to rise to power by marrying a king's widow. But
if the king had multiple wives, that meant there were
multiple possible paths to the throne through his surviving widows.
This is especially true if none of those women were
recognized as the king's primary or lead wife, which was
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the case in most of these marriages during the Hellenistic period.
Instead of having sort of a formal chief or lead wife,
there was this more informal, ever shifting set of favorites
and alliances. And that same was true for the king's heirs.
If he had multiple sons by multiple women, then which
one was supposed to be first in line for the throne.
(07:52):
What if the king did have a clearly favored wife,
but his oldest son had been born to one of
the other wives. Or what if the being thought the
best person to rule was not his oldest son or
the son of his favorite wife, but a younger son
born to someone less esteemed. You did see how this
gets very complicated in a hurry. Yes, many of Alexander's
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successors addressed this problem by choosing a son to be
their co ruler, they intended that son to eventually take
the throne, but this was really more about smoothing the
transition from one king to the next than like formally
permanently designating an air and then the process of determining
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who that co ruler would be and keeping him in
that position. That could all be really fraught. The king's
wives were continually focused on elevating the status of their
sons over those of the other wives, and also if
a king died unexpectedly without having chosen a co ruler,
then that left everything just totally unsettled. In other words,
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there was a lot of chaos within the Ptolemaic dynasty
and outside of it, thanks to infighting among the dead
chi conflicts with kingdoms and administrations that had not been
part of Alexander's empire, and these multiple marriages and potential
lines of succession, And that brings us back to our
sin away. She was born sometime between three eighteen and
(09:20):
three eleven BC. Most sources put it somewhere around three sixteen,
but there's just no documentation of her birth at all.
This year is really a best guess estimate based on
the year of her first marriage. She was probably born
in Memphis, but would have still been a child when
Ptolemy moved the family to Alexandria. That happened around three
(09:43):
eleven b C. And we're going to get to her life,
but first we are going to pause for a sponsor break.
As we said before the break, our sin Away spent
most of her childhood in youth in Alexandria. Her brothers
and half brothers were educated through tutors, and it's possible
(10:07):
that she and her sister and her half sisters shared
in that education as well, but we don't really know
for sure. Really, we know almost nothing about our sin
aways childhood or upbringing, but we do know that her
family's position at court was not all that secure. As
we said earlier, there was a lot of jockeying among
the king's wives and sons as they tried to establish
(10:29):
a line of succession among all of those assorted marriages
and families. While our Sinaway was in Alexandria, her mother
Baronicci wasn't at the top of this hierarchy. Instead, Ptolemy
the first favorite his first wife Eurydice, and her son
Ptolemy Karinos was as a consequence the presumed successor to
(10:49):
the throne. Another source of instability in our sin Away's
childhood would have been the ongoing warfare among the Dead
Chi and three oh one b C. Ptolemy united with Lysimachus,
Seleucus the First, Nicator and Cassander against Antigonus the First
and his son, Demetrius the First. Antigonus and Demetrius ruled
(11:12):
Western Asia. The battle between all these forces took place
at Ipsus, and Ptolemy and his allies were victorious, thanks
in part two Elephants that were contributed by Marian Emperor Chandragupta.
We talked about Chandragupta's alliance with Seleucus and our episode
on Ashoka the Righteous back in May of This victory
(11:33):
led to a whole string of marriages among the four
victorious dead Chi and their relatives. This included our Sinoways
marriage to Lysimachus in about three hundred b C. Lycemicus
was king of Thrace and he also took control of
what had been antigonus territory after the Battle of Ipsus.
Arsinoe was probably in her teens when this marriage took place,
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and Lysimachus was in his fifties or sixties, and although
it was pretty common for men to marry younger women,
this age difference was a lot more dramatic than usual,
and that led to a lot of really derisive jokes
and unflattering depictions of both of them, basically with her
being branded as a gold digging schemer and him as
(12:16):
a doddering old man, even though really he was still
pretty spry he was an active military leader. When they
got married, Arsinaway moved to the capital of Lysimacaiah on
the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. She and
Lysimachus had three sons over the next six years, Ptolemy
born around two, Lismacus born around two, and Philip born
(12:39):
around two. Moving away from her father's court and her
mother's subordinate position there definitely did not free ur sin
Away from the kind of rivalries and in fighting that
she had grown up in. Though Lycemicas already had at
least three other wives, Nicia, a mastress, and a Persian
woman who's is not recorded. That last marriage had taken
(13:03):
place during a mass wedding that Alexander the Great arranged
in Susa in three BC. This is a marriage of
about eighty high ranking Greek men to Persian noble women,
and it was meant to symbolically unify Greece and Persia
and to create a generation of at least hypothetically loyal
offspring from these marriages. Those children would be considered both
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Greek and Persian. Ptolemmy the First had also married his
wife Urticama at this ceremony, although she started out in
a more subordinate position, Our Sineways status during her marriage
to Lysimachus rose thanks to some events that happened back
in Egypt. One was that her brother Ptolemy the second
was named Ptolemmy the first co monarch into b C.
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There are also records of Bernici's chariot team winning at
the Olympic Games, and if this was Our Sinaway's mother Baronici,
she would have shared in the glory as well. It is, however,
not clear which Baronicci this was or exactly when it happened.
Darret a whole paper basically which Baronicci one at the
Olympic Games. It sounds like a very weird setup for
(14:11):
a sitcom. Regardless of whether that really was her mother,
Our sin Away's name comes up and accounts of Lisimacus's
deeds as king and the names of his other wives don't.
Lismcas renamed cities after himself and his family, including our
sin Away. He also gave her control of Cassandrea in
northern Greece, as well as three other smaller cities that
(14:33):
were all along the Black Sea. In two four BC,
lismacus oldest son, Agaskley's son of Nicea, was accused of treason.
Accounts of what happened contradict each other pretty dramatically. In
some are sin Away manipulated Lisimacus into suspecting his son
of plotting against him, something that she could have done
(14:55):
to try to secure a future for her own sons.
But in some accounts are sin Away was infatuated with
Agaskles and he rejected her, and thus she plotted against
him to get revenge. There's no actual documentation of that,
but it kind of ties into the whole idea that
there was this gigantic age difference between her and her husband,
and what if she may bee like this younger closer
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to her own age man at court. Other sources do
not involve arsen Away in this at all, though they
described Lysimachus as coming to the suspicion on his own,
but then kind of filtering his response through our sin
Away to distance himself from it, or in still other accounts,
agath Okles really was plotting against his father, trying to
(15:40):
guarantee his own position as the future king, and then
that plot was discovered. Lots of different options here, regardless
of what actually happened, agath Okles was tried and executed.
Here's a moment where the convoluted Ptolemaic family tree really
comes into play. So just embrace. Agathocles's widow was our
(16:05):
sinoways half sister Lysandra, daughter of Ptolemy the First and Euridessey,
And to recap Ptolemy and Euridessey's son, Ptolemy Kronos had
been Ptolemy's presumed successor before he named our sinus full
brother Ptolemy the Second as his co ruler into eight five.
It is possible that this entire accusation against Agathocles was
(16:28):
precipitated by Karenos joining his sister at Lysimachus court after
having been displaced from the court of Ptolemy the First.
If so, this whole incident may have been connected to
the rivalry between Ptolemy's wives, Baronici and Euridacy, and by extension,
their children. After agath Ocles's death, Lessandra and Karnos, who
(16:51):
were just going to call Karenos because there are too
many Ptolemy's they went to se Lucas, the first Nicator,
for aid, and that led to a war between Thrace
and the Seleucid Empire. Although Lycemacus had taken control of
territory in Western Asia after the Battle of Ipsus, a
lot of the political leaders and people there sided with Seleucus.
(17:12):
The war between Licemacus and Seleucus finally ended with the
Battle of Corypidium and two eighty one BC. This is
actually the last battle in the wars of the Diadochi,
and Lycemicus, who at this point was almost eighty was
killed in battle. Our Sinoway was about thirty five at
this point, and she had accompanied Lycemacus to war, but
(17:33):
not to the actual battle. She stayed behind in Ephesus,
but that city's residents wound up siding with the Seleucids
and opened the gate for the Seleucid army. Our Sinoway
is described as escaping the city disguised in rags while
one of her attendants put on her royal garments and
acted as a decoy. In some accounts, this decoy was killed,
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but in others she survived. Since Our Sinoway had been
given control of Cassandrea and still had supporters there, she
fled to that city and went into hiding. This is
already so much drama. But then Ptolemy Karenos turned on Seleucus.
They had been in the process of conquering what was
left of our sin Away's late husband's kingdom. They had
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crossed the hell of Spot which is now known as
the Dardanelles, into Thrace when Karenos stabbed Seleucus to death.
This may actually be what earned him the nickname Karenos,
which means thunderbolt. Then Ptolemmy Karenos turned his attention to
his half sister, our sin Away. We're gonna get into
that after a sponsor break, just to recap where we
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were before the break, because I feel like the situation
is very tangled. Our sin Away had married Lysimachus, the
king of Thrace, whose son Agathocles was tried for treason
and executed. Agathocles's widow was our sin aways half sister, Lessandra,
and after this execution, she and her brother Ptolemy Caronos
went to Seleucus, the first nicator, for aid. Seleucas went
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to war against our Sinaway's husband, Lycemacus, who was killed
in battle, but then Stolomy Caronos turned against Seleucus and
killed him. Meanwhile, our sin Away fled to cass Andrea,
which her late husband had given to her earlier on
in that marriage. That is where we left off. Although
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Ptolemy Caronos and Seleucus had taken a lot of the
territory that Lysimachus had previously held, there were still people
who were loyal to our sin Away and her late husband.
Kronos probably wanted to protect himself from those people, as
well as from anyone who had been loyal to Seleucus.
He probably also wanted cass Andrea itself, But whatever his
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exact reasons were, he lay siege to that city, offering
to marry his half sister our sin Away and adopt
her children as his own. He said he would take
no other wives and have no other children. Her sons
would be his heirs, are Sineway and Ptolemy Karnos were
both in their mid thirties at this point. Are sin
Away really had no reason to trust her half brother.
(20:15):
Her full brother, Ptolemmy the Second, had displaced him as
the presumed heir to the Ptolemaic kingdom. He and his
ally so Lucas, had gone to war with and ultimately
killed her husband. He was also literally besieging the city
where she had taken refuge. That's how you woo a gal,
didn't you know. But at the same time, here's the thing.
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She really did not have many other options. If she
and her son's managed to escape Cassandrea, there was no
guarantee that they would be able to make it all
the way to Alexandria and to her brother's protection there
before being apprehended. If she married someone with enough military
and political power, she might be able to defend herself
again Karenos. But although high ranking women in this era
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weren't generally forced to marry without their consent, they also
were not people who negotiated these unions their male relatives did. That.
You could argue that Karenos kind of did an in
run around that whole thing right by negotiating a marriage
with his half sister himself. But regardless are sent Away
agreed to marry Ptolemy Karenos. She did the one thing
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that she really could to try to protect herself in
this situation, which was that she demanded that the marriage
ceremony be conducted in public. Karenos agreed, but then immediately
afterward he murdered her two young sons, Lysimachus and Philip.
Her oldest son, Ptolemy escaped. It's possible he just was
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not there when his younger brothers were murdered. He was
the only one of her sons who had reached adulthood
by this point, and there is some suggestion that he
and his mother were estranged in some way are in
a way was forced to flee once again, this time
taking refuge in same race. Accounts are pretty contradictory about
what Krainosa's motivations were in killing his nephews, whether that
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really had been his plan from the beginning, whatever it was, though,
he did not wind up remaining king of all this
territory for long. He married our sin away And about
two a d b c. E. And the following year
his territory was attacked by the Gauls, and he was
killed in battle. Eventually, some time between two eighty and
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two seventy six b c. E Ar Sinoway returned to
Egypt t Froum samith Race, possibly taking her son Ptolemy
with her. It had been at least twenty years at
that point since Our sin Away had been in Alexandria.
Her brother, Ptolemy the Second was now the king, and
his court had been through its own allegations of treachery.
His first wife, or sin Away the First, just to
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keep it confusing, had been exiled under suspicion of plotting
against him. Our sin Away the First was the daughter
of our sin Away the second husband Lysimachus, and although
it is not clear which of his wives was our
sin Away the First mother, she was much younger than
our sin Away the Second, and it's possible that elder
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our sin Away may have even helped raise her. This
timeline is really really fuzzy, but it seems that our
sin Away the First suspicion and exile happened before our
sin Away the Second returned to Alexandria, although some sources
still try to pin the whole thing on our sin
Away the Second. A few years After returning to Egypt
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and about two seventy three b c. Our sin Away
the Second married her brother Ptolemy the Second, and the
details of this marriage aren't really known. They had no
children together, although our sin Away the Second did adopt
our sin Away the first children as her own. Ptolemy
did not take any other wives after marrying his sister,
although he did have several concubines. Are sin Away and
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Ptolemy we're both given the moniker Philadelphoi or sibling loving
our sinaways earlier marriage to her half brother Ptolemy Karenos
had been unusual in the Greek world, but such a
marriage wasn't totally unheard of, and it was legally permitted
in some places. But marrying her full brother Ptolemy the
Second would have been far more unusual among the Greeks.
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It wasn't really unusual in the Egyptian society. The Ptolemy's
were ruling, though at least not for Egyptian royalty. We
talked about this in our episode on hatsup Shot. Back
in an Egyptian king often took a sister or half
sister as his great royal wife, with that pairing echoing
back to an Egyptian creation story. In that story, the
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god a tomb had no partner and created a pair
of sibling deities, who in turn created another pair of
sibling deities as their descendants, continuing that line in pairs.
It doesn't seem like this brother sister marriage was as
taboo in the ancient Greek world as it would be
in the West today, and there's really almost no surviving
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account of the actual Greek response to it at the time.
Our sin Away and Ptolemy did take some steps to
try to normalize it, though, including comparing themselves to the
Greek deities Zeus and Hera, who were also married siblings.
They also made the comparison to Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris,
who were descendants of that chain of Egyptian sibling partners,
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although this was really one of the few ways that
they tried to frame themselves as Egyptian at all. We
have no documentation of their thought process or reasoning for
this marriage. It's possible that they just wanted to consolidate
some of their political power, or that they thought they'd
be a little more protected in a world of perpetual
dynastic rivalries and in fighting. Our sin Away may have
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thought that marrying her brother was her last chance to
secure a political future for her one surviving son. There
are several references to various Ptolemy's in the historical record
that may have been him meaning that son, but it
is not clear where he wound up. It was not
in the primary Ptolemaic line of succession. Though cults were
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a huge part of the religious and political structure of
the Hellenistic world, with rulers being deified and worshiped sometimes
during their lifetimes, and this also had some roots in
the Egyptian tradition of deifying royalty. Our sin Away and
Ptolemy established the theoy Adelphoi, or the cult of the
Royal Couple. Our sin Away herself was also deified individually,
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probably while she was still living. Our sin Away also
established an annual festival that was held in Alexandria that
honored Adonis, with Ptolemy appearing in the role of Adonis
and herself appearing in the role of Aphrodite. Our sin
Away became highly influential in Ptolemy's government. She appeared on
its coins, both alone and with him, and on some
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of these coins she appears to be in full foreronic regalia,
suggesting that she was regarded not just as the king's wife,
but also as a pharaoh herself. This includes wearing the
eurus or royal cobra and our sinaways. Cartouche also included
a throne and described her as king of Upper and
Lower Egypt, but it is not clear if that's an
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honorific from her lifetime or something that was bestowed on
her later as a more honorary title. Are sin Away
also became a popular public figure during her reign. She
accompanied Ptolemy on a tour of the Egyptian border and
its defenses, making public appearances along the way, and one
year it's not clear which she won a clean sweep
(27:44):
of the equestrian events at the Olympic Games. Although her father,
Ptolemy the First was the one who started the construction
of the library and museum at Alexandria, some sources credit
are sent Away the Second with actually finishing that. She
also seems to have influenced or in policy, advocating for
an alliance with Greek city states that protected their freedom
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from encroachment by Macedonia. This influence continued after her death.
Ptolemy the second outlived her, and he allied with several
Greek city states against Macedonia in the Criminadian War. Our
sinoways memory became sort of a recruitment and public relations
tool to rally support for Egypt's involvement in that war.
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Arsinoe became the standard for future Ptolemaic queens to follow,
and her marriage to her brother also became a template
for later marriages in the Ptolemaic dynasty. As we've said,
although the Ptolemy's ruled Egypt, they never really became Egyptian.
They kept their power to themselves and in the hands
of Greek people. Most of the dynasty's marriages after Arsinoe
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and Ptolemy were between siblings, half siblings, or cousins, and
this actually seems to have influenced culture in Egypt after
the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty as well. There are
sibling marriages that are recorded in Roman census records in Egypt.
After the end of this dynasty. At least two rotundas
were built in our Sineways honor, one in Alexandria and
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the other in Samothrace. The rotunda and Samothrace was built
in her lifetime and It was dedicated by her, but
the inscription detailing who her husband was at the time
has not survived, so it's possible that it was built
during the reign of Lysimachus to commemorate the alliance between
the Ptolemaic dynasty and Thrace, or during the reign of
Ptolemy to commemorate Samothrace having sheltered our Sin away after
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she had to flee from her half brother. There are
also a lot of coins that bear her image, as
well as carving, statues, statuettes, and other depictions that are
either of her or believed to be of her. The
date of Arsinoway the seconds death is uncertain. One Steely
lists it as in the fifteenth year of Ptolemy the
(29:58):
Second's reign, which would have been too seventy BC, but
other sources say it was in the seventeenth year or
to sixty eight, so she would have been in our
mid forties. Both her cults and the cult of the
Royal Couple continued to worship her after her death. Her
brother also named streets in Alexandria after her, and renamed
the city of Fayume and its surrounding district for her
(30:21):
as well. Our Sin Away also became a popular name
for daughters of priestly Egyptian families, but after the end
of the Ptolemaic dynasty, are sin Away the second mostly
vanished from literature and art. Instead, Cleopatra's sister are sin
Away became the more well known woman with that name.
Yet you can um accidentally get a whole bunch of
(30:43):
stuff that you bookmark that turns out to be about
Cleopatra's sister and not the podcast the wrong Our sin Away.
We will end this with a quote from Elizabeth Donnelly
Carney from the introduction to Our sin Away of Egypt
and Massadi, a Royal Life. This is really the only
modern English language biography of her. It's from an academic press,
(31:06):
but it's pretty accessible and also quite short, because there's
like not a lot that we actually know about our
sin Away. She wrote quote, looking at our sin Away's
life is a bit like trying to meet someone at
a big party but somehow always missing them, though perhaps
getting a whiff of their perfume and hearing a lot
of stories about them. In a sense, our sin Away
(31:27):
is always in the other room. I really liked that quote,
and I think it summed up some of my challenges
researching this episode. UM, do you have less challenging listener mail?
I do so this listener mail posed a question, and UM,
I don't know that we'll ever tackle the topic that
they suggested, but it was an interesting enough question to
(31:49):
me that I wanted to read it. And uh, it
is from Eva. Eva says high Holly and Tracy. I'm
a few months late or very early sending this idea
for a hog of the episode, but here it is.
Bear with me. Every time I watched that scene in
a Christmas story when the father breaks out a hammer
and pry bar to open the giant wooden crate containing
(32:10):
the infamous leg lamp, I think to myself, I have
never in my life received a delivery in a wooden crate,
Not at Christmas, not in a year of pandemic lifestyle
supply delivery. Not ever. Why is this? Presumably the answer
is corrugated cardboard boxes? And then I wonder weren't corrugated
cardboard boxes around in the nineteen sixties when this movie
(32:33):
was set, to which the answer is, I have no idea.
It seems like a simple, low tech technology that you'd
expect to have been around for a long time. And
then I go to the liquor store to get boxes
for moving my books like you do, and I see
ten dollar bottles of wine, and I wonder how much
that same bottle cost back in the day whenever it was,
with the extra cost of shipping it around in wooden
(32:54):
crates presumably built into the cost. And then I get
into the mental exercise of comparing the environmental pact of
wooden crates versus cardboard boxes, extra fuel and exhaust ship
wooden crates versus the disposable nature of the cardboard boxes,
and I get stuck, because you can reuse cardboard boxes
over and over until they wear out or get damaged.
(33:14):
People just don't reuse them much exactly because they were
so wonderfully light and cheap that we take them utterly
for granted. But if a Christmas story is to be believed,
they've only been introduced in like my boss's lifetime, So
how is there impact? So invisible to us are corrugated
cardboard boxes a classic textbook case study that all the
materials scientists know about and no one else does. Like
(33:37):
three M Scotch tape is a classic case study in business.
Ee circles and the snow slash whitehead cholera outbreak is
the progenitor of infographics? Or is it like the Happy
Birthday song where it's so elegantly simple that everyone assumes
it sprang forth from the primordial ooze, fully formed and
ready to ship. Enquiring minds want to know. So that's
(33:57):
my holiday episode suggestion. The history of core gate did
cardboard boxes? Um? The The email goes on a bit
from this, but to have time to answer the question,
I'm going to stop it there. So thank you Eva
for this email. I actually have gotten things shipped in
boxes like that. One of them. Uh, it was from
(34:21):
one of those places where you you opened your mail
and there's a surprising and strange thing there that's part
of a mystery, and as you solve the mystery and
the end, you get something special that's like the sort
of capstone piece to this mysterious thing that you have
unfolded through your through the things you've gotten in the mail.
(34:41):
And the final thing that we got was was in
a wooden crate, very like that. Um. Also, when I
was a child, my brother and I desperately wanted a playhouse.
Playhouses are very expensive. What my father did was cut
a door into a shipping crate that had been used
(35:02):
for a refrigerator. Um, and that became our playhouse. So um,
neither of those things would I call a normal shipping circumstance.
What I really think is happening in a Christmas story
is that that shipping crate which looks like like a
museum shipping crate. Like that's part of the joke that
(35:24):
that is, like, here is your box of very carefully
packed leg lamp. What in the world? Because it is
a precious artifact tracy, That's why, Yeah, it's a It's
incredibly important. It looks a lot more like you would
see like an antiquity shipped to a collector than an
(35:48):
ordinary thing that you would have shipped to your home. Um. Cardboard, however,
very briefly. Cardboard was developed in the mid nineteenth century.
By the early twentie century, cardboard boxes were coming into
common use. So by the time this um, this film
(36:08):
takes place, there were plenty of cardboard boxes. UM. I
really do think it is that is for comedic effect
to hype up what is the magical wonder that is
in this box? And it is a leg lamp? Like? Um,
I don't know if you had something you wanted to
add with that. Ally, No, I'm suddenly thinking about how
(36:31):
many um, when she mentioned shipping alcohol, how many places? Uh,
we're really just making alcohol for local consumption for a
long time being shipped around. That idea of like sourcing
alcohol from different magical places as a is a little
modern but not entirely Yeah, yeah, that would be an
(36:54):
interesting and fun study rabbit hole to go down. Yeah. Well,
and that that made me think about like the way
less happy sounding like the rum trade and how that
was connected to both sugar and slavery. But that was
also like a you know, eighteenth and nineteenth century shipping
things a long way on a boat, right, not quite
(37:16):
the kind of direct to consumer packaging think not at
the hall, although also often distilled locally so that people
that landed on those islands had been at sea would
have it as part of their healthy regimen. Um. I've
(37:38):
it's I don't know. I that suddenly took me down
the mental rabbit hole of um, the various places near
me that have started delivering from their uh you know,
their their liquor and beer and wine stores during the pandemic. Um.
Something I have taken advantage of during these times. So
(38:01):
thank you again for this delightfully written email. Eva. I
hope we have you have answered your question satisfactorily. I
don't know that we will do an episode on the
history of cardboard, but um I did think this was
a fun email to listen, to read and talk about.
If you would like to write to us about this,
are any other podcast or at history podcast at i
(38:24):
heeart radio dot com, and then all over social media
at miss in History so we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. You can subscribe to our show on the
i heeart Radio app and Apple Podcasts and anywhere else
that you get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History
(38:44):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Remember our
recent episode on Zoe and Theodora. We talked about how
I had some challenging research moments thanks to their being
(00:24):
so many people in the Macedonian dynasty who had the
same name. I do remember. Yeah, Um, today's episode is
worse from that perspective. We are talking about Ptolemaic queen
our Sinowa, the second. The Ptolemy's were a Greek dynasty
that ruled Egypt during the Hellenistic period, and most of
(00:45):
that dynasty's men were named Ptolemy. For the most part,
the women were named our Sinowa, Baronici or Cleopatra. Sometimes
people say Baronici Bernice, but I understand why they would
land there, but that's not it, um. Sometimes the women
were also called Ptolemace, which was a feminine form of Ptolemy.
(01:05):
So that's that's basically you got four or five names
to work from for the most part. And then the
dynasty's family tree is also pretty convoluted. Our Sinaway's husbands
included her half brother Ptolemy Karnos and her full brother
Ptolemy the Second. Of course, we're gonna be talking more
about that. Of course, these repetitive names and the challenges
(01:26):
that they create are not why I chose our sin
Away for this episode. The Hellenistic period stretched from the
death of Alexander the Great to the establishment of the
Roman Empire, and it's just it's not really a period
we have talked about that often on the show, and
in a lot of ways, are sin Away the Second
really set the standard for the generations of Ptolemaic queens
(01:49):
that followed her, also just as a heads up, as
was the case with Zoe and Theodora. There's a lot
of killing in this episode, including the murders of Chill
written Arsinoways father was Ptolemy the First Soder, meaning savior.
He had been a companion and adviser to Alexander the
Third of Macedon, later becoming one of Alexander's bodyguards and
(02:11):
eventually one of his generals. Alexander was of course also
known as Alexander the Great. That empire was huge. It
stretched from Greece and Egypt in the west to the
Indus River and the Himalayan mountains in the east. Alexander's
empire did not survive his death in three three b C.
(02:32):
Though when Alexander died, his wife Roxanne, was pregnant, but
she had not given birth yet, and he also had
a disabled half brother who was still living. But beyond that,
Alexander had no direct successor. He did not name any
wants to follow him either. He just said that the
empire should go to the strongest or the fittest, depending
(02:53):
on the translation that you're reading. Some of Alexander's generals
and advisers wanted to wait for Roxanne to of birth
to see if she would have a son, and she did,
but soon they were dividing up the empire among themselves,
becoming satraps, or governors of various territories, although some of
these satraps were at least ostensibly holding territory on behalf
(03:15):
of Alexander's surviving kim. His half brother was murdered in
three seventeen BC, and his son with Roxanne was murdered
in three d nine. By three oh six, these diata
key or successors were consolidating territory and presenting themselves as
kings instead of generals or provincial governors. I just want
(03:37):
to say, I have heard at least four different pronunciations
of this of the successors, from from different people who
should know what they're talking about. I've heard diataki, di
ada kidataki, which is more like how it was pronounced
in Greek. It's really all over the place. For Ptolemy's part,
(04:01):
after Alexander's death, he became the sattrap of Egypt, and
then he expanded his territory from there through marriages and
through military conquest, including wars against some of the other
Diatic eye And really this whole period was incredibly chaotic.
It was full of all kinds of disagreements and in
fighting in a series of wars that stretched from three
(04:24):
twenty two to two eighty one BC. Some of those
will come up again later. Ultimately, Ptolemy became king of
Egypt and Macedonia and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty, which controlled
Egypt for nearly three hundred years. His public works projects
included the Library at Alexandria and the Lighthouse of Alexandria,
which is described as one of the seven Wonders of
(04:46):
the ancient world. Ptolemy also stole Alexander's body as it
was being taken back to Macedonia to be buried. He
took it to the Egyptian city of Memphis, and then
eventually to Alexandria, where he had it in two cooms.
This tomb became a focal point for the cult of Alexander,
which Ptolemy made into a state cult, and Ptolemy used
(05:09):
the cults, the worship in the cult, the presence of
Alexander's remains in Alexandria, all of that together to reinforce
the idea that he and his dynasty were the legitimate
rulers of Egypt. But neither Ptolemy nor the rest of
his dynasty ever assimilated with the Egyptian population that they
were ruling. Although Ptolemy initially lived in Memphis, which was
(05:32):
one of Egypt's oldest cities, he ultimately moved to Alexandria,
which Alexander had founded and which was culturally more aligned
with Greece. The Ptolemy's kept up a fairly insular existence
in Alexandria, and they retained their Greek identities throughout the dynasty.
This included generally marrying other Macedonian Greeks, although It's possible,
(05:54):
but not conclusively documented, that there may have been high
ranking Egyptians among the king's wife or concubines towards the
end of the dynasty. This dynasty ended with Cleopatra the Seventh,
who was typically just known as Cleopatra. She was the
daughter of Ptolemy the twelfth and also married to her
brother Ptolemy. She was the only Ptolemaic ruler to learn
(06:17):
the Egyptian language or to really take any effort at
all to learn about the people she was ruling, especially
in the first generations after Alexander's death. Hellenistic rulers were
typically polygamous. Kings had multiple wives simultaneously. Queens, however, did
not have multiple husbands. Ptolemy was no exception. He had
four wives. Bias Urticama Euridicy, Baronici Baronci was our Sinoway
(06:44):
the seconds mother, and she had two other children with
Ptolemy our sin away sister, Philotera and her brother Ptolemy
the Second. There were also lots of half siblings through
their father's other wives. These multiple marriages caused all kinds
of chaos within the Ptolemaic dynasty and then elsewhere in
the Hellenistic World and other episodes about royals. We've talked
(07:07):
about men who rose to power, or at least tried
to rise to power by marrying a king's widow. But
if the king had multiple wives, that meant there were
multiple possible paths to the throne through his surviving widows.
This is especially true if none of those women were
recognized as the king's primary or lead wife, which was
(07:30):
the case in most of these marriages during the Hellenistic period.
Instead of having sort of a formal chief or lead wife,
there was this more informal, ever shifting set of favorites
and alliances. And that same was true for the king's heirs.
If he had multiple sons by multiple women, then which
one was supposed to be first in line for the throne.
(07:52):
What if the king did have a clearly favored wife,
but his oldest son had been born to one of
the other wives. Or what if the being thought the
best person to rule was not his oldest son or
the son of his favorite wife, but a younger son
born to someone less esteemed. You did see how this
gets very complicated in a hurry. Yes, many of Alexander's
(08:14):
successors addressed this problem by choosing a son to be
their co ruler, they intended that son to eventually take
the throne, but this was really more about smoothing the
transition from one king to the next than like formally
permanently designating an air and then the process of determining
(08:36):
who that co ruler would be and keeping him in
that position. That could all be really fraught. The king's
wives were continually focused on elevating the status of their
sons over those of the other wives, and also if
a king died unexpectedly without having chosen a co ruler,
then that left everything just totally unsettled. In other words,
(08:59):
there was a lot of chaos within the Ptolemaic dynasty
and outside of it, thanks to infighting among the dead
chi conflicts with kingdoms and administrations that had not been
part of Alexander's empire, and these multiple marriages and potential
lines of succession, And that brings us back to our
sin away. She was born sometime between three eighteen and
(09:20):
three eleven BC. Most sources put it somewhere around three sixteen,
but there's just no documentation of her birth at all.
This year is really a best guess estimate based on
the year of her first marriage. She was probably born
in Memphis, but would have still been a child when
Ptolemy moved the family to Alexandria. That happened around three
(09:43):
eleven b C. And we're going to get to her life,
but first we are going to pause for a sponsor break.
As we said before the break, our sin Away spent
most of her childhood in youth in Alexandria. Her brothers
and half brothers were educated through tutors, and it's possible
(10:07):
that she and her sister and her half sisters shared
in that education as well, but we don't really know
for sure. Really, we know almost nothing about our sin
aways childhood or upbringing, but we do know that her
family's position at court was not all that secure. As
we said earlier, there was a lot of jockeying among
the king's wives and sons as they tried to establish
(10:29):
a line of succession among all of those assorted marriages
and families. While our Sinaway was in Alexandria, her mother
Baronicci wasn't at the top of this hierarchy. Instead, Ptolemy
the first favorite his first wife Eurydice, and her son
Ptolemy Karinos was as a consequence the presumed successor to
(10:49):
the throne. Another source of instability in our sin Away's
childhood would have been the ongoing warfare among the Dead
Chi and three oh one b C. Ptolemy united with Lysimachus,
Seleucus the First, Nicator and Cassander against Antigonus the First
and his son, Demetrius the First. Antigonus and Demetrius ruled
(11:12):
Western Asia. The battle between all these forces took place
at Ipsus, and Ptolemy and his allies were victorious, thanks
in part two Elephants that were contributed by Marian Emperor Chandragupta.
We talked about Chandragupta's alliance with Seleucus and our episode
on Ashoka the Righteous back in May of This victory
(11:33):
led to a whole string of marriages among the four
victorious dead Chi and their relatives. This included our Sinoways
marriage to Lysimachus in about three hundred b C. Lycemicus
was king of Thrace and he also took control of
what had been antigonus territory after the Battle of Ipsus.
Arsinoe was probably in her teens when this marriage took place,
(11:56):
and Lysimachus was in his fifties or sixties, and although
it was pretty common for men to marry younger women,
this age difference was a lot more dramatic than usual,
and that led to a lot of really derisive jokes
and unflattering depictions of both of them, basically with her
being branded as a gold digging schemer and him as
(12:16):
a doddering old man, even though really he was still
pretty spry he was an active military leader. When they
got married, Arsinaway moved to the capital of Lysimacaiah on
the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. She and
Lysimachus had three sons over the next six years, Ptolemy
born around two, Lismacus born around two, and Philip born
(12:39):
around two. Moving away from her father's court and her
mother's subordinate position there definitely did not free ur sin
Away from the kind of rivalries and in fighting that
she had grown up in. Though Lycemicas already had at
least three other wives, Nicia, a mastress, and a Persian
woman who's is not recorded. That last marriage had taken
(13:03):
place during a mass wedding that Alexander the Great arranged
in Susa in three BC. This is a marriage of
about eighty high ranking Greek men to Persian noble women,
and it was meant to symbolically unify Greece and Persia
and to create a generation of at least hypothetically loyal
offspring from these marriages. Those children would be considered both
(13:26):
Greek and Persian. Ptolemmy the First had also married his
wife Urticama at this ceremony, although she started out in
a more subordinate position, Our Sineways status during her marriage
to Lysimachus rose thanks to some events that happened back
in Egypt. One was that her brother Ptolemy the second
was named Ptolemmy the first co monarch into b C.
(13:49):
There are also records of Bernici's chariot team winning at
the Olympic Games, and if this was Our Sinaway's mother Baronici,
she would have shared in the glory as well. It is, however,
not clear which Baronicci this was or exactly when it happened.
Darret a whole paper basically which Baronicci one at the
Olympic Games. It sounds like a very weird setup for
(14:11):
a sitcom. Regardless of whether that really was her mother,
Our sin Away's name comes up and accounts of Lisimacus's
deeds as king and the names of his other wives don't.
Lismcas renamed cities after himself and his family, including our
sin Away. He also gave her control of Cassandrea in
northern Greece, as well as three other smaller cities that
(14:33):
were all along the Black Sea. In two four BC,
lismacus oldest son, Agaskley's son of Nicea, was accused of treason.
Accounts of what happened contradict each other pretty dramatically. In
some are sin Away manipulated Lisimacus into suspecting his son
of plotting against him, something that she could have done
(14:55):
to try to secure a future for her own sons.
But in some accounts are sin Away was infatuated with
Agaskles and he rejected her, and thus she plotted against
him to get revenge. There's no actual documentation of that,
but it kind of ties into the whole idea that
there was this gigantic age difference between her and her husband,
and what if she may bee like this younger closer
(15:18):
to her own age man at court. Other sources do
not involve arsen Away in this at all, though they
described Lysimachus as coming to the suspicion on his own,
but then kind of filtering his response through our sin
Away to distance himself from it, or in still other accounts,
agath Okles really was plotting against his father, trying to
(15:40):
guarantee his own position as the future king, and then
that plot was discovered. Lots of different options here, regardless
of what actually happened, agath Okles was tried and executed.
Here's a moment where the convoluted Ptolemaic family tree really
comes into play. So just embrace. Agathocles's widow was our
(16:05):
sinoways half sister Lysandra, daughter of Ptolemy the First and Euridessey,
And to recap Ptolemy and Euridessey's son, Ptolemy Kronos had
been Ptolemy's presumed successor before he named our sinus full
brother Ptolemy the Second as his co ruler into eight five.
It is possible that this entire accusation against Agathocles was
(16:28):
precipitated by Karenos joining his sister at Lysimachus court after
having been displaced from the court of Ptolemy the First.
If so, this whole incident may have been connected to
the rivalry between Ptolemy's wives, Baronici and Euridacy, and by extension,
their children. After agath Ocles's death, Lessandra and Karnos, who
(16:51):
were just going to call Karenos because there are too
many Ptolemy's they went to se Lucas, the first Nicator,
for aid, and that led to a war between Thrace
and the Seleucid Empire. Although Lycemacus had taken control of
territory in Western Asia after the Battle of Ipsus, a
lot of the political leaders and people there sided with Seleucus.
(17:12):
The war between Licemacus and Seleucus finally ended with the
Battle of Corypidium and two eighty one BC. This is
actually the last battle in the wars of the Diadochi,
and Lycemicus, who at this point was almost eighty was
killed in battle. Our Sinoway was about thirty five at
this point, and she had accompanied Lycemacus to war, but
(17:33):
not to the actual battle. She stayed behind in Ephesus,
but that city's residents wound up siding with the Seleucids
and opened the gate for the Seleucid army. Our Sinoway
is described as escaping the city disguised in rags while
one of her attendants put on her royal garments and
acted as a decoy. In some accounts, this decoy was killed,
(17:54):
but in others she survived. Since Our Sinoway had been
given control of Cassandrea and still had supporters there, she
fled to that city and went into hiding. This is
already so much drama. But then Ptolemy Karenos turned on Seleucus.
They had been in the process of conquering what was
left of our sin Away's late husband's kingdom. They had
(18:17):
crossed the hell of Spot which is now known as
the Dardanelles, into Thrace when Karenos stabbed Seleucus to death.
This may actually be what earned him the nickname Karenos,
which means thunderbolt. Then Ptolemmy Karenos turned his attention to
his half sister, our sin Away. We're gonna get into
that after a sponsor break, just to recap where we
(18:46):
were before the break, because I feel like the situation
is very tangled. Our sin Away had married Lysimachus, the
king of Thrace, whose son Agathocles was tried for treason
and executed. Agathocles's widow was our sin aways half sister, Lessandra,
and after this execution, she and her brother Ptolemy Caronos
went to Seleucus, the first nicator, for aid. Seleucas went
(19:09):
to war against our Sinaway's husband, Lycemacus, who was killed
in battle, but then Stolomy Caronos turned against Seleucus and
killed him. Meanwhile, our sin Away fled to cass Andrea,
which her late husband had given to her earlier on
in that marriage. That is where we left off. Although
(19:30):
Ptolemy Caronos and Seleucus had taken a lot of the
territory that Lysimachus had previously held, there were still people
who were loyal to our sin Away and her late husband.
Kronos probably wanted to protect himself from those people, as
well as from anyone who had been loyal to Seleucus.
He probably also wanted cass Andrea itself, But whatever his
(19:52):
exact reasons were, he lay siege to that city, offering
to marry his half sister our sin Away and adopt
her children as his own. He said he would take
no other wives and have no other children. Her sons
would be his heirs, are Sineway and Ptolemy Karnos were
both in their mid thirties at this point. Are sin
Away really had no reason to trust her half brother.
(20:15):
Her full brother, Ptolemmy the Second, had displaced him as
the presumed heir to the Ptolemaic kingdom. He and his
ally so Lucas, had gone to war with and ultimately
killed her husband. He was also literally besieging the city
where she had taken refuge. That's how you woo a gal,
didn't you know. But at the same time, here's the thing.
(20:39):
She really did not have many other options. If she
and her son's managed to escape Cassandrea, there was no
guarantee that they would be able to make it all
the way to Alexandria and to her brother's protection there
before being apprehended. If she married someone with enough military
and political power, she might be able to defend herself
again Karenos. But although high ranking women in this era
(21:03):
weren't generally forced to marry without their consent, they also
were not people who negotiated these unions their male relatives did. That.
You could argue that Karenos kind of did an in
run around that whole thing right by negotiating a marriage
with his half sister himself. But regardless are sent Away
agreed to marry Ptolemy Karenos. She did the one thing
(21:27):
that she really could to try to protect herself in
this situation, which was that she demanded that the marriage
ceremony be conducted in public. Karenos agreed, but then immediately
afterward he murdered her two young sons, Lysimachus and Philip.
Her oldest son, Ptolemy escaped. It's possible he just was
(21:48):
not there when his younger brothers were murdered. He was
the only one of her sons who had reached adulthood
by this point, and there is some suggestion that he
and his mother were estranged in some way are in
a way was forced to flee once again, this time
taking refuge in same race. Accounts are pretty contradictory about
what Krainosa's motivations were in killing his nephews, whether that
(22:12):
really had been his plan from the beginning, whatever it was, though,
he did not wind up remaining king of all this
territory for long. He married our sin away And about
two a d b c. E. And the following year
his territory was attacked by the Gauls, and he was
killed in battle. Eventually, some time between two eighty and
(22:33):
two seventy six b c. E Ar Sinoway returned to
Egypt t Froum samith Race, possibly taking her son Ptolemy
with her. It had been at least twenty years at
that point since Our sin Away had been in Alexandria.
Her brother, Ptolemy the Second was now the king, and
his court had been through its own allegations of treachery.
His first wife, or sin Away the First, just to
(22:56):
keep it confusing, had been exiled under suspicion of plotting
against him. Our sin Away the First was the daughter
of our sin Away the second husband Lysimachus, and although
it is not clear which of his wives was our
sin Away the First mother, she was much younger than
our sin Away the Second, and it's possible that elder
(23:16):
our sin Away may have even helped raise her. This
timeline is really really fuzzy, but it seems that our
sin Away the First suspicion and exile happened before our
sin Away the Second returned to Alexandria, although some sources
still try to pin the whole thing on our sin
Away the Second. A few years After returning to Egypt
(23:37):
and about two seventy three b c. Our sin Away
the Second married her brother Ptolemy the Second, and the
details of this marriage aren't really known. They had no
children together, although our sin Away the Second did adopt
our sin Away the first children as her own. Ptolemy
did not take any other wives after marrying his sister,
although he did have several concubines. Are sin Away and
(24:00):
Ptolemy we're both given the moniker Philadelphoi or sibling loving
our sinaways earlier marriage to her half brother Ptolemy Karenos
had been unusual in the Greek world, but such a
marriage wasn't totally unheard of, and it was legally permitted
in some places. But marrying her full brother Ptolemy the
Second would have been far more unusual among the Greeks.
(24:23):
It wasn't really unusual in the Egyptian society. The Ptolemy's
were ruling, though at least not for Egyptian royalty. We
talked about this in our episode on hatsup Shot. Back
in an Egyptian king often took a sister or half
sister as his great royal wife, with that pairing echoing
back to an Egyptian creation story. In that story, the
(24:45):
god a tomb had no partner and created a pair
of sibling deities, who in turn created another pair of
sibling deities as their descendants, continuing that line in pairs.
It doesn't seem like this brother sister marriage was as
taboo in the ancient Greek world as it would be
in the West today, and there's really almost no surviving
(25:07):
account of the actual Greek response to it at the time.
Our sin Away and Ptolemy did take some steps to
try to normalize it, though, including comparing themselves to the
Greek deities Zeus and Hera, who were also married siblings.
They also made the comparison to Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris,
who were descendants of that chain of Egyptian sibling partners,
(25:31):
although this was really one of the few ways that
they tried to frame themselves as Egyptian at all. We
have no documentation of their thought process or reasoning for
this marriage. It's possible that they just wanted to consolidate
some of their political power, or that they thought they'd
be a little more protected in a world of perpetual
dynastic rivalries and in fighting. Our sin Away may have
(25:53):
thought that marrying her brother was her last chance to
secure a political future for her one surviving son. There
are several references to various Ptolemy's in the historical record
that may have been him meaning that son, but it
is not clear where he wound up. It was not
in the primary Ptolemaic line of succession. Though cults were
(26:14):
a huge part of the religious and political structure of
the Hellenistic world, with rulers being deified and worshiped sometimes
during their lifetimes, and this also had some roots in
the Egyptian tradition of deifying royalty. Our sin Away and
Ptolemy established the theoy Adelphoi, or the cult of the
Royal Couple. Our sin Away herself was also deified individually,
(26:39):
probably while she was still living. Our sin Away also
established an annual festival that was held in Alexandria that
honored Adonis, with Ptolemy appearing in the role of Adonis
and herself appearing in the role of Aphrodite. Our sin
Away became highly influential in Ptolemy's government. She appeared on
its coins, both alone and with him, and on some
(27:01):
of these coins she appears to be in full foreronic regalia,
suggesting that she was regarded not just as the king's wife,
but also as a pharaoh herself. This includes wearing the
eurus or royal cobra and our sinaways. Cartouche also included
a throne and described her as king of Upper and
Lower Egypt, but it is not clear if that's an
(27:22):
honorific from her lifetime or something that was bestowed on
her later as a more honorary title. Are sin Away
also became a popular public figure during her reign. She
accompanied Ptolemy on a tour of the Egyptian border and
its defenses, making public appearances along the way, and one
year it's not clear which she won a clean sweep
(27:44):
of the equestrian events at the Olympic Games. Although her father,
Ptolemy the First was the one who started the construction
of the library and museum at Alexandria, some sources credit
are sent Away the Second with actually finishing that. She
also seems to have influenced or in policy, advocating for
an alliance with Greek city states that protected their freedom
(28:05):
from encroachment by Macedonia. This influence continued after her death.
Ptolemy the second outlived her, and he allied with several
Greek city states against Macedonia in the Criminadian War. Our
sinoways memory became sort of a recruitment and public relations
tool to rally support for Egypt's involvement in that war.
(28:26):
Arsinoe became the standard for future Ptolemaic queens to follow,
and her marriage to her brother also became a template
for later marriages in the Ptolemaic dynasty. As we've said,
although the Ptolemy's ruled Egypt, they never really became Egyptian.
They kept their power to themselves and in the hands
of Greek people. Most of the dynasty's marriages after Arsinoe
(28:50):
and Ptolemy were between siblings, half siblings, or cousins, and
this actually seems to have influenced culture in Egypt after
the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty as well. There are
sibling marriages that are recorded in Roman census records in Egypt.
After the end of this dynasty. At least two rotundas
were built in our Sineways honor, one in Alexandria and
(29:13):
the other in Samothrace. The rotunda and Samothrace was built
in her lifetime and It was dedicated by her, but
the inscription detailing who her husband was at the time
has not survived, so it's possible that it was built
during the reign of Lysimachus to commemorate the alliance between
the Ptolemaic dynasty and Thrace, or during the reign of
Ptolemy to commemorate Samothrace having sheltered our Sin away after
(29:37):
she had to flee from her half brother. There are
also a lot of coins that bear her image, as
well as carving, statues, statuettes, and other depictions that are
either of her or believed to be of her. The
date of Arsinoway the seconds death is uncertain. One Steely
lists it as in the fifteenth year of Ptolemy the
(29:58):
Second's reign, which would have been too seventy BC, but
other sources say it was in the seventeenth year or
to sixty eight, so she would have been in our
mid forties. Both her cults and the cult of the
Royal Couple continued to worship her after her death. Her
brother also named streets in Alexandria after her, and renamed
the city of Fayume and its surrounding district for her
(30:21):
as well. Our Sin Away also became a popular name
for daughters of priestly Egyptian families, but after the end
of the Ptolemaic dynasty, are sin Away the second mostly
vanished from literature and art. Instead, Cleopatra's sister are sin
Away became the more well known woman with that name.
Yet you can um accidentally get a whole bunch of
(30:43):
stuff that you bookmark that turns out to be about
Cleopatra's sister and not the podcast the wrong Our sin Away.
We will end this with a quote from Elizabeth Donnelly
Carney from the introduction to Our sin Away of Egypt
and Massadi, a Royal Life. This is really the only
modern English language biography of her. It's from an academic press,
(31:06):
but it's pretty accessible and also quite short, because there's
like not a lot that we actually know about our
sin Away. She wrote quote, looking at our sin Away's
life is a bit like trying to meet someone at
a big party but somehow always missing them, though perhaps
getting a whiff of their perfume and hearing a lot
of stories about them. In a sense, our sin Away
(31:27):
is always in the other room. I really liked that quote,
and I think it summed up some of my challenges
researching this episode. UM, do you have less challenging listener mail?
I do so this listener mail posed a question, and UM,
I don't know that we'll ever tackle the topic that
they suggested, but it was an interesting enough question to
(31:49):
me that I wanted to read it. And uh, it
is from Eva. Eva says high Holly and Tracy. I'm
a few months late or very early sending this idea
for a hog of the episode, but here it is.
Bear with me. Every time I watched that scene in
a Christmas story when the father breaks out a hammer
and pry bar to open the giant wooden crate containing
(32:10):
the infamous leg lamp, I think to myself, I have
never in my life received a delivery in a wooden crate,
Not at Christmas, not in a year of pandemic lifestyle
supply delivery. Not ever. Why is this? Presumably the answer
is corrugated cardboard boxes? And then I wonder weren't corrugated
cardboard boxes around in the nineteen sixties when this movie
(32:33):
was set, to which the answer is, I have no idea.
It seems like a simple, low tech technology that you'd
expect to have been around for a long time. And
then I go to the liquor store to get boxes
for moving my books like you do, and I see
ten dollar bottles of wine, and I wonder how much
that same bottle cost back in the day whenever it was,
with the extra cost of shipping it around in wooden
(32:54):
crates presumably built into the cost. And then I get
into the mental exercise of comparing the environmental pact of
wooden crates versus cardboard boxes, extra fuel and exhaust ship
wooden crates versus the disposable nature of the cardboard boxes,
and I get stuck, because you can reuse cardboard boxes
over and over until they wear out or get damaged.
(33:14):
People just don't reuse them much exactly because they were
so wonderfully light and cheap that we take them utterly
for granted. But if a Christmas story is to be believed,
they've only been introduced in like my boss's lifetime, So
how is there impact? So invisible to us are corrugated
cardboard boxes a classic textbook case study that all the
materials scientists know about and no one else does. Like
(33:37):
three M Scotch tape is a classic case study in business.
Ee circles and the snow slash whitehead cholera outbreak is
the progenitor of infographics? Or is it like the Happy
Birthday song where it's so elegantly simple that everyone assumes
it sprang forth from the primordial ooze, fully formed and
ready to ship. Enquiring minds want to know. So that's
(33:57):
my holiday episode suggestion. The history of core gate did
cardboard boxes? Um? The The email goes on a bit
from this, but to have time to answer the question,
I'm going to stop it there. So thank you Eva
for this email. I actually have gotten things shipped in
boxes like that. One of them. Uh, it was from
(34:21):
one of those places where you you opened your mail
and there's a surprising and strange thing there that's part
of a mystery, and as you solve the mystery and
the end, you get something special that's like the sort
of capstone piece to this mysterious thing that you have
unfolded through your through the things you've gotten in the mail.
(34:41):
And the final thing that we got was was in
a wooden crate, very like that. Um. Also, when I
was a child, my brother and I desperately wanted a playhouse.
Playhouses are very expensive. What my father did was cut
a door into a shipping crate that had been used
(35:02):
for a refrigerator. Um, and that became our playhouse. So um,
neither of those things would I call a normal shipping circumstance.
What I really think is happening in a Christmas story
is that that shipping crate which looks like like a
museum shipping crate. Like that's part of the joke that
(35:24):
that is, like, here is your box of very carefully
packed leg lamp. What in the world? Because it is
a precious artifact tracy, That's why, Yeah, it's a It's
incredibly important. It looks a lot more like you would
see like an antiquity shipped to a collector than an
(35:48):
ordinary thing that you would have shipped to your home. Um. Cardboard, however,
very briefly. Cardboard was developed in the mid nineteenth century.
By the early twentie century, cardboard boxes were coming into
common use. So by the time this um, this film
(36:08):
takes place, there were plenty of cardboard boxes. UM. I
really do think it is that is for comedic effect
to hype up what is the magical wonder that is
in this box? And it is a leg lamp? Like? Um,
I don't know if you had something you wanted to
add with that. Ally, No, I'm suddenly thinking about how
(36:31):
many um, when she mentioned shipping alcohol, how many places? Uh,
we're really just making alcohol for local consumption for a
long time being shipped around. That idea of like sourcing
alcohol from different magical places as a is a little
modern but not entirely Yeah, yeah, that would be an
(36:54):
interesting and fun study rabbit hole to go down. Yeah. Well,
and that that made me think about like the way
less happy sounding like the rum trade and how that
was connected to both sugar and slavery. But that was
also like a you know, eighteenth and nineteenth century shipping
things a long way on a boat, right, not quite
(37:16):
the kind of direct to consumer packaging think not at
the hall, although also often distilled locally so that people
that landed on those islands had been at sea would
have it as part of their healthy regimen. Um. I've
(37:38):
it's I don't know. I that suddenly took me down
the mental rabbit hole of um, the various places near
me that have started delivering from their uh you know,
their their liquor and beer and wine stores during the pandemic. Um.
Something I have taken advantage of during these times. So
(38:01):
thank you again for this delightfully written email. Eva. I
hope we have you have answered your question satisfactorily. I
don't know that we will do an episode on the
history of cardboard, but um I did think this was
a fun email to listen, to read and talk about.
If you would like to write to us about this,
are any other podcast or at history podcast at i
(38:24):
heeart radio dot com, and then all over social media
at miss in History so we'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. You can subscribe to our show on the
i heeart Radio app and Apple Podcasts and anywhere else
that you get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History
(38:44):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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