historicwomendaily:“I am old enough to rule.”Arsinoe IV (bet. 68 – 59 BCE – 41 BCE) was a claimant t

historicwomendaily:“I am old enough to rule.”Arsinoe IV (bet. 68 – 59 BCE – 41 BCE) was a claimant to the Kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt and co–ruler beside her brother Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator from December 48 BCE – January 47 BCE. As the youngest daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes and the younger sister to the famous Cleopatra VII Philopator, she was one of the last members of the Macedonian Ptolemaic Dynasty.When Ptolemy XII Auletes died in 51 BCE, his will declared Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII as co–rulers of Egypt. Soon after, Cleopatra was dethroned by her brother and forced into exile in what is now Syria. As it was in the interest of Rome to keep Egypt economically stable, the Roman dictator Julius Caesar became involved in the civil war, siding with Cleopatra’s faction after Pompey’s assassination. Caesar restored Cleopatra to the throne, declaring her to be co–ruler once again with Ptolemy XIII, while Arsinoe and her brother Ptolemy XIV were given Cyprus, restored to Egyptian rule after being annexed by Rome in 58 BCE. All the while, Arsinoe plotted to regain the throne, and those unhappy with Cleopatra’s rule found the now–Queen of Cyprus to be a convenient rallying point.Arsinoe took command of the Egyptian army, and under her leadership, the Egyptians enjoyed success against the Romans at first. Arsinoe’s forces managed to trap Caesar and Cleopatra inside the palace at Alexandria, but upon the arrival of Roman reinforcements, the civil war ended with a victory for Caesar and Cleopatra, forcing Arsinoe and Ptolemy XIII to flee. Ptolemy XIII drowned while attempting to cross the river Nile, while Arsinoe was captured and transported to Rome, where she was forced to appear in Caesar’s triumphal procession in 46 BCE, behind a burning effigy of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the site of one of her early victories against Caesar.Despite the tradition of strangling prisoners of war after the parade, Caesar spared Arsinoe and allowed her to pursue sanctuary at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Arsinoe never stopped plotting her return to power, and the priests at the Temple continued to address her as Queen.In 41 BCE, Cleopatra arranged for her lover and probable husband Marc Antony to have Arsinoe executed on the steps of the temple. Arsinoe’s death was a gross violation of temple sanctuary and scandalized Rome. Her remains were interred in a tomb within the temple, with all the queenly honors that had been denied her in life.In the 1990s, an octagonal monument in Ephesus was hypothesized to be Arsinoe’s tomb. Analysis of the remains dates the bones to be between 200 – 20 BCE and belonging to a young woman between 15 – 18 years of age. DNA tests on the bones, however, remain inconclusive due to improper handling of the remains contaminating the sample. A reconstruction based on photographs and notes of the now–lost skull reveal “African and Egyptian ancestry mixed with classical Grecian features,” although some experts dispute the reliability of skull measurements as an indicator of race. Moreover, the age of the skeleton does not add up to the age of Arsinoe at the time of her death, estimated to have been in her mid–twenties. Nevertheless, if the tomb did indeed belong to Arsinoe, she would be the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty to have her remains recovered. -- source link

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