Berenike III Vs Greek

The power exercised by royal women in Ptolemaic Egypt fascinated me. I particularly enjoyed the example of Ptolemy XII, who was “deposed in favour of his daughter Berenike IV…” (Shipley 213) Removing a father and putting his daughter in place as ruler suggests that ancestry is more important than gender. Although the decision of who should rule was still limited to those who were descendants of the last ruler, rather than the most able member of the population being selected, the fact that Berenike IV was a daughter and not a son did not hinder her. I was also intrigued by the fact that Berenike IV “ruled initially with her sister Kleopatra VI Tryphaina II.” (Ibid) Both women had the same royal blood and neither could claim dominance over the other

Given how many of the Ptolemies married close relatives, “father-daughter incest” being “unknown” (Shipley 212) puzzled me. In terms of producing children that could one day inherit, a father marrying his daughter would seem more advantageous than a son marrying his mother (though if the mother was quite young when she gave birth she might still be fertile). However, marrying the wife of the former ruler perhaps helped a man who wished to inherit seem more legitimate in the eyes of his subjects, even if the woman he was marrying was his mother. Marrying a daughter would not seem to grant a man the same legitimacy. The mention of Kleopatra Berenike III being “now popular” (Ibid) suggests that there was some legitimacy to be gained for Soter II by ruling at her side though, and yet they do not appear to have married. Again, I struggled with the idea of how disputes would be solved between two unmarried rulers. Would the daughter have the final say, as the one who grew popular in her own right, or would the father, as the elder and the one who could perhaps claim partial credit for her