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Powerful Historic Family Dynasties that Are Rotten to the Core

Khalid Elhassan June 8, 2022 38 min

The Koch brothers, Charles, left, and David. Competition Policy International

12. Ptolemaic Dynasty’s Rot Deepens

A Ptolemaic queen, thought to be Cleopatra II or Cleopatra III. Walters Art Museum

Unsurprisingly, Queen Cleopatra II was hopping mad that her husband-brother, King Ptolemy Potbelly, had taken her son and reneged on his promise to share the rule with her. Then Potbelly made things worse when he seduced and married Cleopatra II’s daughter, Cleopatra III. She was his stepdaughter, as well as double niece, being the daughter of both his sister and his deceased brother, Ptolemy VI. To add insult to injury, Potbelly did not bother to divorce Cleopatra II before he married her daughter.

In retaliation, Cleopatra II engineered a revolt in Alexandria, that forced her brother/ husband/ son-in-law, and his stepdaughter/ niece/ wife, to flee the city in 132 BC. The resultant civil dispute pitted Cleopatra II, supported by the city of Alexandria, against her daughter and Ptolemy Potbelly, who was backed by the rest of Egypt. When things turned against Cleopatra II, she offered her throne to the neighboring Seleucids, but their armies were unable to rescue her, and she was forced to flee to Syria in 127 BC. Chaos reigned in Egypt, until Rome intervened once again, in 116 BC, to restore order.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.