It was stated here and elsewhere that the textual evidence from historical sources, most notably the Alexandrian Wars by ‘psuedo-Caesar’, demonstrated that Arsinoe must have been over twenty years old, at least 21, when she was put to death, and therefore the skeleton from Ephesus, dated at death to mid or late teens, could not be hers.
In fact, this is not the case at all. The assumption that Arsinoe must have been more than 13 when she escaped from Ceasar’s control in Alexandria (41 B.C), and took command of an Egyptian army, was simply based on the assumption that a girl of less than 13 could not have done this, and that her slightly older brother Ptolemy XIV would have been preferred. In fact, it seems that we do not know what the situation of Ptolemy XIV was at the time, and he may have been elsewhere entirely. Pseudo-Caesar also does not say that Arsinoe took control of all the armies, only the one commanded by Achillas, and pseudo-Caesar also states that she escaped and took command of the army with her governor, Ganymede. It is therefore also possibly that she was slightly younger than 13 than slightly older, and that the assumption that this event formed a terminus ante quem was only based on probabilities, when taking the text in isolation, rather than facts and certainties.
It is possible that she was simply placed as nominal head of the army for political expediency, as her governor and the future general of the army the eunuch Ganymede escaped with her from Alexandria, where her brother Ptolemy XIII was being held by Caesar. The Egyptians were aware that Caesar was to effectively reduce Egypt a province of the Roman Empire, and so they would have been motivated to have an Egyptian royal to legitimise their army. As we can see from the rest of Alexandrian Wars, Arsinoe is rarely mentioned, whereas Ganymede is mentioned often, taking strategic decisions several times, including his involvement with the assassination of Achillas, the previous general of the army, after which Ganymede took control himself. Pseudo-Caesar mentions that Arsinoe is the youngest daughter of Ptolemy XII, but not whether or not she was the youngest child. Therefore we should not automatically assume she was older than the youngest son Ptolemy XIV. The assumption made seems to be that because she was put in charge of the army instead of Ptolemy XIV that she must therefore have been older than him, but this assumption is simply not supported because we don’t know what the situation of Ptolemy XIV was at the time. He may well have been oversees or under duress.
The historian who made this assumption writes ‘therefore’ after his assumption that she could not have been less than 13 years old to have led the army, so we can see that the terminus ante quem must be based on this assumption. After looking again at pseudo-Caesar’s Alexandrian Wars we can see that it is quite possible that Arsinoe was placed nominally in charge of the army under her governor Ganymede at an age younger than 13, and as we can see, later on he assumes charge of the army, and future decisions are described as being his.
Clearly the Egyptians realised that Caesar was only interested in exploiting Egypt, so any method to legitimise an army with a royal from the Ptolomaic line would have been desirable to engender support for the fight against Caesar.
At the time Arsinoe was put in charge of the army, her Brother Ptolemy XIII was in Alexandria where she escaped from, and later we know that he had been incarcerated there by Caesar.
Therefore, in conclusion the historical sources provide support for the theory that Arsinoe’s skeleton has been found at Ephesus, as the age of the deceased at death (48 B.C) was consistent with the range of dates allowed by the facts stated in historical texts, notably Alexandrian Wars. This would mean Arsinoe would have been born in the 50s B.C., and not in the 60s B.C., as had been assumed based on the earlier body of evidence.

[classics.mit.edu]

“Chapter 4

Meanwhile, a division arising between Achillas, who commanded the veteran army, and Arsinoe, the youngest daughter of king Ptolemy, as has been mentioned above, while they mutually endeavored to supplant one another, each striving to engross the supreme authority, Arsinoe, by the assistance of the eunuch Ganymed, her governor, at length prevailed, and slew Achillas. After his death, she possessed the whole power without a rival, and raised Ganymed to the command of the army; who, on his entrance upon that high office, augmented the largesses of the troops, and with equal diligence discharged all other parts of his duty.”

Bennet's geneology of the Ptolemies site:
[www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk]

Anyway, I have had enough of Ma'at for a while again, so will not be commenting further until the paper is given at the conference.

It appears the scholars undertaking this new research think that this IS the skeleton and tomb of Arsinoe, sister of Cleopatra, and if so, it allows us to narrow down the age at which Arsinoe was born and died.

So I am skeptical about these older assumptions being correct.

Dave Lightbody
Archaeologist








The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Architecture JAEA:
[egyptian-architecture.com]
[glasgow.academia.edu]
[egyptology-scotland.squarespace.com]
Dave's Archaeology Homepage:
[arkysite.wordpress.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2009 08:26AM by Dave L.