The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra

Egypt goes from glory to disaster in this lively history of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Egyptologist Wilkinson (Ramesses the Great) begins with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE and continues through the reigns of his general Ptolemy, successive Ptolemies II through XV, and various queens culminating with Cleopatra VII, who almost restored the family’s fortunes with her canny manipulation of Caesar and Mark Antony. The first four Ptolemies oversaw a golden age, in Wilkinson’s telling, as Egypt grew rich on abundant Nile Valley grain and made territorial conquests. The wealthy Ptolemaic capital at Alexandria had the world’s greatest library and academy, where Euclid developed geometry and Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s circumference, but later wars eroded the overextended empire and necessitated high taxes that ruined farmers and sparked revolts. Wilkinson gives an entertaining account of the royal family’s violent rivalries and melodramas—made crazier by the tradition of brothers marrying sisters—along with deeper takes on the religious roots of power (the Ptolemies routinely had themselves declared gods) and the lives of ordinary Egyptians resentful of the Greek-speaking upper class. (One outraged Greek settler, Wilkinson notes, wrote to Pharaoh complaining of an Egyptian woman who doused him with urine and spat in his face.) It’s an insightful interpretation of one of the ancient world’s great civilizations. (Apr.)