Free Cleopatra the Great by Joann Fletcher

quelled a rebellion of Celtic mercenaries in northern Egypt and defended the eastern Delta against Seleucid invasion before the two sides finally made peace in 271 BC .
    The Ptolemies’ reach across the Mediterranean was reflected in a huge marble statue of Isis on the Acropolis in Athens, along with buildings on Delos and a temple to Ptolemy II at his birthplace on Kos. On Samothrace Arsinoe II erected a monument in gratitude for her earlier period of sanctuary here, commemorating the place where Alexander’s parents first met with an enormous rotunda temple of Doric columns and carved bulls’ heads.
    At the other end of the Mediterranean the couple also expanded trade links with Italy, whose Greek colonies were gradually being taken over by Rome. Although this small Italian city is said to have sent a delegation to Alexander himself, Arsinoe II and her husband were the first of the Successors to make official contact, sending an embassy to Rome in 273 BC . In response, ‘the Romans, pleased that one [sic] so far away should have thought so highly of them’, sent ambassadors to Alexandria. The resulting treaty was commemorated with Rome’s first silver coins, so similar to those of Arsinoe II that the Ptolemies must have supplied the necessary expertise. They could never have guessed that their new allies were nothing less than a ticking time bomb which would push its way to the heart of Egypt’s affairs with fatal results.
    Yet for now the Ptolemies ruled supreme, their pole position in the Mediterranean marked by the completion of their great Pharos lighthouse which was immediately regarded as one of the wonders of the world. At 135m, almost as tall as that other wonder, the Great Pyramid of Giza, its blazing beacon reflected by polished metal mirrors for almost 50 miles in every direction was regarded as a man-made star through which Isis illuminated the world. Her presence on Pharos was also marked by a colossus beside the lighthouse, the Nile’s static goddess transformed into a lively windswept figure appropriate to her new coastal setting. Striding forward as a kind of ‘action version’ of the Statue of Liberty, great Isis Pharia held out her billowing mantle (‘pharos’) to catch the breeze, emphasising her invention of navigation and her role as ‘Mistress of Winds’ inherited from Hathor and Aphrodite.
    Visible to all who approached by sea, great Isis was flanked by colossal companion figures of the royal couple, who used pharaonic statues to give ancient kudos to their modern city. With its wide boulevards and marble colonnades shaded by green awnings it anticipated many of Europe’s later cities; comparisons have also been drawn with New York, based on a shared grid pattern of high-rise buildings, financial houses, passenger terminals, fast-food outlets, theatres, libraries and parks adorned with ancient Egyptian obelisks. Alexandria even had automatic doors and steam power courtesy of leading scholar Heron, who invented the steam turbine simply as a means of opening and closing temple doors. It was just one of many inventions that the monarchs funded within their Mouseion (Museum), with its lecture halls, laboratories, observatories, gardens and zoo, although its best-known feature was the Great Library. Designed to hold all the world’s knowledge under the Ptolemies’ sole control, rival Successors to Alexander decided to set up their own library at Pergamom in western Anatolia (modern Turkey) until the Ptolemies’ immediate ban on papyrus exports forced their rivals to invent parchment (‘pergamenon’) as a means of sustaining the race for knowledge.
    Anxious to obtain Greek translations of all known texts in the ancient world, Ptolemy II set his scholars to work on everything from a complete translation of the Hebrew scriptures to the fabled knowledge of ancient Egypt. He commissioned his father’s Egyptian adviser, Manetho,