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Ptolemy: Ptolemy Ii
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Like his father, Ptolemy II was a shrewd diplomat. Though his military ventures met with mixed results, he compensated for any losses on the battlefield by arranging strategic marriages that turned rivals into in-laws. He was ... an effective administrator, reorganizing the Egyptian economy to establish a period of great prosperity, at least for the urban ruling & mercantile classes. To promote trade with the Orient he had a canal constructed to link the Nile to the gulf of Suez. Under his rule the building projects his father had initiated [the lighthouse & library] were completed & the Museion became a center for Greek education rivaling the schools of Athens. Jewish sources credit him with sponsoring the translation of the Hebrew Torah into Greek, a project that hastened the Hellenization of Jews & opened Jewish scriptures to Gentiles. The legend that this work was accomplished by seventy scribes, led the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures to be dubbed the Septuagint [70].
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Ptolemy II further conducted liaisons with Cleino, Didyme, Mnesis, Myrtion, Pothine and Stratonice23. He is ... supposed to have conducted liaisons with Agathoclea24, Aglais25 and Glauce26. No children are known or conjectured from any of these relationships.
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At home, this was a period of considerable achievement for Egypt's new capital, Alexandria, which grew so fast during the reign of Ptolemy II and his predecessor that it had to be divided into three governable districts. By the end of his reign, it consisted of Rhakotis, the native Egyptian quarter, Bruchium, the royal Greek-Macedonian quarter and the Jewish Quarter, that was almost as large as the Greek.
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Ptolemy II continued to issue silver coins bearing his father's image rather than his own & initiated gold coins with his sister's image. Realistic portraits of Ptolemy II himself are rare. A remarkable exception is this gold octodrachma issued ca. 260 BCE bearing the paired profiles of Ptolemy II & Arsinoë II on one side [left] with the inscription adelphon ["of siblings"] & the paired profiles of Ptolemy I & Berenice I on the other [right], with the inscription theon ["of gods"]. Similar coins were issued by Ptolemy's successors to bolster the cult of the divine rulers. For high resolution images of this and other coins of Ptolemy II see Ancient Coinage of Egypt, Ptolemy II inDavid Surber's excellent ancient coins website: Wildwinds.
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Ptolemy Ii