Ptolemy II Philadelphus

Ptolemy II Philadelphus ruled Egypt from 283 to 246 BC and turned Alexandria into the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world. Born on Kos in 308 BC, he was a younger son of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander's generals, and was made co-ruler in 285 BC ahead of his elder half-brother. He completed the institutions his father had begun. The Library of Alexandria was expanded under his patronage into a systematic collection — agents bought books abroad, ships entering the harbour were searched and their books copied — and the Museum supported scholars at state expense. Euclid, Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius of Rhodes worked in this environment, and Eratosthenes was appointed librarian shortly afterwards. Tradition places the beginning of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in his reign. He completed the Pharos lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world, and reopened the canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea. He married his full sister Arsinoe II around 273 BC, from which his epithet Philadelphus — sibling-loving — derives. The marriage shocked Greek opinion and followed Egyptian royal precedent; Arsinoe was politically formidable and was deified after her death. He built a centralised royal economy: state monopolies on oil, salt and textiles, a banking network, a coinage closed to foreign currency, and a detailed bureaucracy recorded in surviving papyri. He fought the Seleucids in the First and Second Syrian Wars with mixed results, and lost ground in the Aegean. He sent an embassy to Rome in 273 BC, the first contact between the two.

• Lived: 309 BCE – 246 BCE
• Nationality: Egyptian
• Roles: ruler, patron