Greek diaspora
143-557: Constantinople and Asia Minor : Africa : Other regions : Other groups : Other languages African Greeks , or Greeks in Africa ( Greek : Έλληνες της Αφρικής ), are the Greek people in the continent of Africa . Greek communities have existed in Africa since antiquity. Greeks have been present in Egypt since at least the 7th century BC. Herodotus visited ancient Egypt in
286-577: A Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered
429-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
572-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
715-647: A garrison of foreign mercenaries at Daphnae , mostly Carians and Ionian Greeks. In 7th century BC, after the Greek Dark Ages from 1100 to 750 BC, the city of Naucratis was founded in Ancient Egypt. It was located on the Canopic branch of the Nile river, 45 mi (72 km) from the open sea. It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek colony in Egypt; acting as
858-521: A golden coffin in Alexandria. It would remain one of the famous sights of the town for many years, until probably destroyed in riots in the 3rd century AD. The initial objective of Ptolemy's reign was to establish firm and broad boundaries to his newly acquired kingdom. That led to almost continuous warfare against other leading members of Alexander's circle. At times he held Cyprus and even parts of mainland Greece . When these conflicts were over, he
1001-494: A land of "burned faces" ( Ethiopians ) and the source of the Nile. Though he is assumed to have been personally familiar with the river only as far as Aswan , he did identify a "city of Ethiopians" at Meroë , apparently from reports by Psamtik II and Cambyses II . A new era of Greek-Nubian relations began in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and soon dispatched reconnaissance expeditions into Nubia, possibly to find
1144-590: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and
1287-400: A limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by
1430-519: A long list of Nubian districts at the Temple of Isis at Philae, near Syene. The conquered territory included the rich gold mines at Wadi Allaqi , where Ptolemy founded a city called Berenice Panchrysus and instituted a large-scale mining programme. The region's gold production was a key contributor to the prosperity and power of the Ptolemaic empire in the third century BC. Probably in response to
1573-652: A military force numbering 57,600 infantry and 23,200 cavalry. Over 2,000 talents were distributed to attendees as largesse. Although this ruler cult was centred on Alexandria, it was propagated throughout the Ptolemaic empire. The Nesiotic League , which contained the Aegean islands under Ptolemaic control, held its own Ptolemaia festival at Delos from the early 270s BC. Priests and festivals are also attested on Cyprus at Lapethos , at Methymna on Lesbos , on Thera , and possibly at Limyra in Lycia . Ptolemy II followed
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#17327656044981716-459: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes ,
1859-403: A procession of lions, leopards, panthers, camels, antelopes, wild asses, ostriches, a bear, a giraffe and a rhinoceros. Most of the animals were in pairs - as many as eight pairs of ostriches - and although the ordinary chariots were likely led by a single elephant, others which carried a 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) golden statue may have been led by four. At the end of the whole procession marched
2002-404: A rematch. Antiochus did this by pursuing ties with Ptolemy II's maternal half-brother, Magas, who had been governor of Cyrenaica since around 300 BC and had declared himself king of Cyrene sometime after Ptolemy I's death. Around 275 BC Antiochus entered into an alliance with Magas by marrying his daughter Apama to him. Shortly thereafter, Magas invaded Egypt, marching on Alexandria, but he
2145-453: A series of Ptolemaic bronze coins known as the 'Galatian shield without Sigma' minted between 271 and 265 BC, have been shown to have been minted in Sicily itself, on the basis of their style, flan shape, die axes, weight and find spots. The first set seem to have been minted by a Ptolemaic mint, perhaps left there in 276 BC after Pyrrhus of Epirus ' withdrawal from Sicily. They are succeeded by
2288-534: A serous threat to Antigonid power in mainland Greece. Also in the late 250s BC, Ptolemy renewed his efforts to reach a settlement with his brother Magas. It was agreed that Ptolemy II's heir, Ptolemy III, would marry Magas' sole child, Berenice . On Magas' death in 250 BC, however, Berenice's mother Apame refused to honour the agreement and invited an Antigonid prince, Demetrius the Fair , to Cyrene to marry Berenice instead. With Apame's help, Demetrius seized control of
2431-520: A significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities". The name Ethiopia itself is Greek and means "of burned face". It is first attested in the Homeric epics but it is unlikely to have referred to any particular nation, but rather, to people of African descent in general. Beginning in the Hellenistic age around the third century BC, Greek culture permeated
2574-529: A state cult of the Ptolemaic dynasty. At the start of his sole reign, Ptolemy II deified his father. He deified his mother Berenice I as well after her death in the 270s. The couple were worshipped as a pair, the Theoi Soteres (Saviour Gods). Around 272 BC, Ptolemy II promoted himself and his sister-wife Arsinoe II to divine status as the Theoi Adelphoi (Sibling Gods). The eponymous priest of
2717-409: A state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that
2860-404: A symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture. At about the same time, the city of Heracleion , the closest to the sea, became an important port for Greek trade. It had a famous temple of Heracles . The city later sank into the sea, only to be rediscovered recently. From the time of Psammetichus I onwards, Greek mercenary armies played an important role in some of
3003-726: A year after the battle of Actium . After its conquest by the Roman forces in 30 BC, Egypt became a province of the new Roman Empire and remained an Eastern Roman territory until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641. Under Greco-Roman rule, Egypt hosted several Greek settlements, mostly concentrated in Alexandria , but also in a few other cities, where Greek settlers lived alongside some seven to ten million native Egyptians . Faiyum 's earliest Greek inhabitants were soldier-veterans and cleruchs (elite military officials) who were settled by
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#17327656044983146-627: Is a letter written in the first half of the 3rd century and mentioning the gymnasiarch and the boulē (thereby indicating the author and recipient were of the upper class) uses the Christian nomina sacra and the Biblical Greek : ἐν κυρίῳ , romanized: en kyrίōi , lit. 'in the Lord', drawn from the Pauline epistles . The Church in Egypt (Patriarchate of Alexandria) split into
3289-763: Is an example of Egyptian Greek language, used in the Coptic Church : ⲇⲟⲝⲁ ⲡⲁⲧⲣⲓ ⲕⲉ ⲩⲓⲱ: ⲕⲉ ⲁ̀ⲅⲓⲱ ⲡⲛⲉⲩⲙⲁⲧⲓ: ⲕⲉ ⲛⲩⲛ ⲕⲉ ⲁ̀ⲓ̀ ⲕⲉ ⲓⲥ ⲧⲟⲩⲥ ⲉⲱⲛⲁⲥ ⲧⲱⲛ ⲉ̀ⲱ̀ⲛⲱⲛ ⲁ̀ⲙⲏⲛ Δόξα Πατρὶ κὲ Υἱῷ κὲ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι, κὲ νῦν κὲ ἀῒ κὲ ἰς τοὺς ἐῶνας τῶν ἐώνων. Ἀμήν. Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. According to Walker, early Ptolemaic Greek colonists married local women and adopted Egyptian religious beliefs, and by Roman times, their descendants were viewed as Egyptians by
3432-434: Is an example of Nubian Greek language: ⲟⲩⲧⲟⲥ ⲉⲥⲧⲓⲛ ⲁⲇⲁⲩⲉⲗ ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲩ ⲙⲱⲥⲉⲥ ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟⲩ, ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲩ ⲛⲟⲩⲃⲇⲏⲥ, ⲁⲣⲟⲩⲁ, ⲙⲁⲕⲣⲟ Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It
3575-683: Is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek
3718-562: Is now Sudan. Vice versa, ancient Nubia also had an influence on Greek culture from those early times onwards, as it was well known by scholars throughout the Hellenic world, where several of the classical writers mentioned it. It evidently inspired curiosity about the exotic lands South of Egypt and particularly about the sources of the Nile river. Hence, the pioneering historian Herodotus (circa 484 – circa 425 BC) made references to Nubia as
3861-518: Is now submerged under Lake Nasser ). The region may have been used by the Nubians as a base for raids on southern Egypt. Around 275 BC, Ptolemaic forces invaded Nubia and annexed the northern twelve miles of this territory, subsequently known as the Dodekaschoinos ('twelve-mile land'). The conquest was publicly celebrated in the panegyric court poetry of Theocritus and by the erection of
4004-546: Is one of the last references to Nubia from that time. The Axumite Empire engaged in a series of invasions that culminated in the capture of the Nubian capital of Meroë in the middle of the 4th century AD, signaling the end of independent Nubian Pagan kingdoms. The Axumites then converted the Nubians to Christianity, establishing the authority of the Coptic Church in the area, and founded new Nubian Christian kingdoms, such as Nobatia , Alodia , and Makuria . Tribal nomads like
4147-1018: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Ptolemy II Philadelphus Ptolemy II Philadelphus ( Ancient Greek : Πτολεμαῖος Φιλάδελφος , Ptolemaîos Philádelphos , "Ptolemy, sibling-lover"; 309 – 28 January 246 BC)
4290-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
4433-562: Is substantial evidence for the exchange of goods and ideas between Syracuse and Alexandria. Hiero seems to have modelled various aspects of his royal self-representation and perhaps his tax system, the Lex Hieronica on Ptolemaic models. Two of the luminaries of Ptolemy II's court, the poet Theocritus and the mathematician and engineer Archimedes came from and eventually returned to Syracuse. Numismatic evidence seems to indicate that Ptolemy II funded Hiero II's original rise to power –
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4576-632: Is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in
4719-566: Is usually referred to as "King Ptolemy son of Ptolemy" to distinguish him from his father. The co-regency between Ptolemy II and his father continued until the latter's death in April–June 282 BC. One ancient account claims that Ptolemy II murdered his father, but other sources say that he died of old age, which is more likely given that he was in his mid-eighties. The fall-out from the succession conflict between Ptolemy II and Ptolemy Keraunos continued even after Ptolemy II's accession. The conflict
4862-584: The 5th century ; the Nubian Greek language resembles Egyptian and Byzantine Greek ; it served as a lingua franca throughout the Nubian Kingdoms, and had a creolized form for trade among the different peoples in Nubia. Nubian Greek was unique in that it adopted many words from both Coptic Egyptian and Nubian ; Nubian Greek's syntax also evolved to establish a fixed word order. The following
5005-715: The Aegean and Levant . He pursued an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy with mixed success. From 275 to 271 BC, he led the Ptolemaic Kingdom against the rival Seleucid Empire in the First Syrian War and extended Ptolemaic power into Cilicia and Caria , but lost control of Cyrenaica after the defection of his half-brother Magas . In the Chremonidean War ( c. 267 –261 BC), Ptolemy confronted Antigonid Macedonia for control of
5148-676: The Beja , Afar , and Saho managed to remain autonomous due to their uncentralized nomadic nature. These tribal peoples would sporadically inflict attacks and raids on Axumite communities. The Beja nomads eventually Hellenized and integrated into the Nubian Greek society that had already been present in Lower Nubia for three centuries. Nubian Greek culture followed the pattern of Egyptian Greek and Byzantine Greek civilization, expressed in Nubian Greek art and Nubian Greek literature. The earliest attestations of Nubian Greek literature come from
5291-635: The Bitter Lakes – had been dug by Darius I in the sixth century BC. However, by Ptolemy's time it had silted up. He had it cleared and restored to operation in 270/269 BC – an act which is commemorated in the Pithom Stele. The city of Arsinoe was established at the mouth of the canal on the Gulf of Suez. From there, two exploratory missions were sent down the east and west coasts of the Red Sea all
5434-604: The Black Sea , waging a campaign in support of the free city of Byzantion . Ptolemy was able to pursue this interventionist policy without any challenge because a long-running civil war in Macedon had left a power vacuum in the northern Aegean. This vacuum was threatened after Antigonus II firmly established himself as king of Macedon in 272 BC. As Antigonus expanded his power through mainland Greece, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II positioned themselves as defenders of 'Greek freedom' from Macedonian aggression. Ptolemy forged alliances with
5577-562: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in
5720-706: The Byzantine emperor ). It is estimated that as much as 30 percent of the population of Faiyum was Greek during the Ptolemaic period, with the rest being native Egyptians; the Faiyum mummy portraits reflect the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Egyptian Greek minority in Faiyum. By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins, and by
5863-657: The European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek
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6006-733: The Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria following the fourth ecumenical council , the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Some 30,000 Greeks of Chalcedonian persuasion were ranged against some five million Coptic non-Chalcedonians. The Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria remained in communion with the other patriarchs by accepting the council's decision, and were referred to as melkites ("the King's men", meaning those loyal to
6149-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
6292-662: The Septuagint . This account contains several anachronisms and is unlikely to be true. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is likely to have taken place among the Jews of Alexandria, but the role of Ptolemy II is unclear and only the Pentateuch is likely to have been translated during his reign. Ptolemy II and King Hiero II of Syracuse are regularly referred to as having enjoyed particularly close relations. There
6435-652: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to
6578-468: The genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in
6721-417: The syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,
6864-566: The 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
7007-728: The 5th century BC and claimed that the Greeks were one of the first groups of foreigners that ever lived there. Diodorus Siculus claimed that Rhodian Actis , one of the Heliadae , built the city of Heliopolis before the cataclysm ; likewise the Athenians built Sais . Siculus reports that all the Greek cities were destroyed during the cataclysm, but the Egyptian cities including Heliopolis and Sais survived. According to Herodotus (ii. 154), King Psammetichus I (664–610 BC) established
7150-568: The Aegean and suffered serious setbacks. This was followed by a Second Syrian War (260–253 BC) against the Seleucid empire, in which many of the gains from the first war were lost. Ptolemy II was the son of Ptolemy I and his third wife, Berenice I . He was born on the island of Kos in 309/308 BC, during his father's invasion of the Aegean in the Fourth Diadoch War . He had two full sisters, Arsinoe II and Philotera . Ptolemy
7293-411: The Axumite king Zoskales ( Ancient Greek : Ζωσκάλης ) established the Axumite Empire ( Ancient Greek : Ἀξωμίτης ) (c. 100 AD–c. 960 AD), which maintained Ethiopian Greek culture and used Greek as its lingua franca . In the city of Axum , many obelisks, statues, and architecture made in Egyptian Greek style still mark the landscape. As the Islamic conquest of North Africa severed Axum's link with
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#17327656044987436-418: The Battle of Kos, whose chronology is much disputed by modern scholars. Almost nothing is known about the events of the battle, except that Antigonus II, although outnumbered, led his fleet to defeat Ptolemy's unnamed commanders. Some scholars, such as Hans Hauben, argue that Kos belongs to the Chremonidean War and was fought around 262/1 BC, with Patroclus in command of the Ptolemaic fleet. Others, however, place
7579-404: The Egyptian wars. One such army was led by Mentor of Rhodes . Another such personage was Phanes of Halicarnassus . Alexander the Great conquered Egypt at an early stage of his conquests. He respected the pharaonic religions and customs and he was proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt. He established the city of Alexandria . After his death, in 323 BC, his empire was divided among his generals . Egypt
7722-451: The Great, while Arsinoe was shown carrying a pair of cornucopiae with a small ram's horn behind her ear. Ptolemy also instituted cults for a number of relatives. Following her death around 269 BC, Arsinoe II was honoured with a separate cult in her own right, with every temple in Egypt required to include a statue of her as a 'temple-sharing deity' alongside the sanctuary's main god. Her cult would prove extremely popular in Egypt throughout
7865-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
8008-476: The Greek geographer and librarian at Alexandria , sketched "with fair accuracy" the course of the Nile as far south as what is now Khartoum , based on the accounts of various travellers. Pliny listed a number of Greeks who had travelled to Meroë and sometimes beyond: Dalion , Aristocreon , Bion , Basilis, and Simonides the Younger , who apparently lived at Meroe for five years. Relations between Kush and Ptolemaic Egypt thereafter remained tense, but stable. By
8151-442: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
8294-458: The Greek world in the 7th century, Greek culture and knowledge waned; Muslim presence in the Red Sea also caused Axum to suffer economically and it declined in power. Axum's final three centuries are considered a dark age, in which Ethiopian Greek culture disappeared; the Axumite Empire finally collapsed around 960 AD. Despite its position as one of the foremost empires of late antiquity, Axum fell into obscurity as Ethiopia remained isolated throughout
8437-429: The Greek world remained sporadic until Ptolemy II 's Nubian campaign for Meroë in the 270s BC. Ptolemy's interest in Nubia was to secure a source of war elephants from Meroë, and to gain access to Meroitic gold mines. At the same time, Ergamenes (Arkamani II), a king of one of the nine Nubian kingdoms, studied Greek language and customs at the Alexandrian court in the Ptolemaic Empire. Eratosthenes (circa 276–194 BC),
8580-408: The Middle Ages. Later Abyssinian Greeks were attested in the 1700s, largely descending from Greek craftsmen and sailors residing in Abyssinia, who facilitated commerce between Abyssinia and Europe. The explorer James Bruce reported that a number of Greek refugees from Smyrna had also arrived in Gondar during the reign of Emperor Iyasu II . The Smyrniot refugees included twelve silversmiths, whom
8723-411: The Ptolemaic empire. One of the Ptolemaia festivals from the 270s BC was described by the historian Callixenus of Rhodes and part of his account survives, giving a sense of the enormous scale of the event. The festival included a feast for 130 people in a vast royal pavilion and athletic competitions. The highlight was a Grand Procession, composed on a number of individual processions in honour of each of
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#17327656044988866-495: The Ptolemaic kings on reclaimed lands. Native Egyptians also came to settle in Faiyum from all over the country, notably the Nile Delta , Upper Egypt , Oxyrhynchus and Memphis , to undertake the labor involved in the land reclamation process, as attested by personal names, local cults and recovered papyri . Christianity probably arrived in Egypt among the Hellenized Alexandrian Jews, from Palestine's communities of Jewish Christians. The earliest evidence of Christianity in Egypt
9009-413: The Ptolemaic period. Ptolemy's other sister Philotera also received a cult. Even Ptolemy's mistress Bilistiche received sanctuaries in which she was identified with the goddess Aphrodite . A festival, called the Ptolemaia , was held in Ptolemy I's honour at Alexandria every four years from 279/278 BC. The festival provided an opportunity for Ptolemy II to showcase the splendour, wealth, and reach of
9152-424: The Ptolemaic presence in the Aegean. On the contrary, the naval bases established during the war at Keos and Methana endured until the end of the third century BC, while those at Thera , and Itanos in Crete remained bulwarks of Ptolemaic sea power until 145 BC. Around 260 BC, war broke out once more between Ptolemy II and the Seleucid realm, now ruled by Antiochus II . The cause of this war seems to have been
9295-415: The Ptolemies access to the western end of the caravan routes of the incense trade, run by the Nabataeans , who became close allies of the Ptolemaic empire. Throughout the early period of Ptolemy II's reign, Egypt was the preeminent naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. The Ptolemaic sphere of power extended over the Cyclades to Samothrace in the northern Aegean. Ptolemaic naval forces even entered
9438-419: The Roman rulers, despite their own self-perception of being Greek. The dental morphology of the Roman-period Faiyum mummies was also compared with that of earlier Egyptian populations, and was found to be "much more closely akin" to that of ancient Egyptians than to Greeks or other European populations. Victor J. Katz notes that "research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that
9581-425: The Second Syrian War, Ptolemy refocused his attention on the Aegean and mainland Greece. Some time around 250 BC, his forces defeated Antigonus in a naval battle at an uncertain location. In Delos , Ptolemy established a festival, called the Ptolemaia in 249 BC, which advertised continued Ptolemaic investment and involvement in the Cyclades , even though political control seems to have been lost by this time. Around
9724-403: The Seleucids as the dowry connected to this wedding. After the war was over, in July 253 BC Ptolemy travelled to Memphis . There he rewarded his soldiers by distributing large plots of land that had been reclaimed from Lake Moeris in the Fayyum to them as estates ( kleroi ). The area was established as a new nome, named the Arsinoite nome, in honour of the long-dead Arsinoe II. After
9867-437: The Spartan army and then use their combined forces to isolate and expel the Antigonid garrisons at Sounion and Piraeus which held the Athenians in check. However, the Spartan army was unable to break through to Attica and the plan failed. In 265/4 BC, the Spartan king Areus I once again tried to cross the Isthmus of Corinth and aid the beleaguered Athenians, but Antigonus II concentrated his forces against him and defeated
10010-424: The Spartans, with Areus himself among the dead. After a prolonged siege, the Athenians were forced to surrender to Antigonus in early 261 BC. Chremonides and his brother Glaucon, who were responsible for the Athenian participation in the war, fled to Alexandria, where Ptolemy welcomed them into his court. Despite the presence of Patroclus and his fleet, it appears that Ptolemy II hesitated to fully commit himself to
10153-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
10296-518: The alliance with Magas, Ptolemy declared war on Antiochus I in 274 BC by invading Seleucid Syria. After some initial success, Ptolemy's forces were defeated in battle by Antiochus and forced to retreat back to Egypt. Invasion was imminent and Ptolemy and Arsinoe spent the winter of 274/3 BC reinforcing the defences in the eastern Nile Delta . However, the expected Seleucid invasion never took place. The Seleucid forces were afflicted by economic problems and an outbreak of plague. In 271 BC, Antiochus abandoned
10439-569: The amount of arable land in Egypt, particularly by reclaiming large amounts of land from Lake Moeris in the Fayyum . Ptolemy distributed this land to the Ptolemaic soldiers as agricultural estates in 253 BC. The Zenon papyri also record experiments by the dioiketes Apollonius to establish cash crop regimes, particularly growing castor oil, with mixed success. In addition to these measures focused on agriculture, Ptolemy II also established extensive gold mining operations, in Nubia at Wadi Allaqi and in
10582-479: The arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from
10725-702: The battle around 255 BC, at the time of the Second Syrian War . The Chremonidean War and the Battle of Kos marked the end of absolute Ptolemaic thalassocracy in the Aegean. The League of the Islanders , which had been controlled by the Ptolemies and used by them to manage the Cycladic islands seems to have dissolved in the aftermath of the war. However, the conflict did not mean the complete end of
10868-598: The centre of the Greek and Hellenistic world and the centre of international commerce, art and science. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World while during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus , the Library of Alexandria was the biggest library in the world until it was destroyed. The last Pharaoh was a Greek princess, Cleopatra VII , who took her own life in 30 BC,
11011-444: The city, but he was assassinated by Berenice. A republican government led by two Cyrenaeans named Ecdelus and Demophanes controlled Cyrene until Berenice married Ptolemy III in 246 BC after his accession to the throne. Ptolemy died on 28 January 246 BC and was succeeded by Ptolemy III without incident. Ptolemy II was responsible for the transformation of the cult of Alexander the Great which had been established by Ptolemy I into
11154-461: The collection of the taxes (though the actual collection was carried out by royal officials). The tax farmers received any excess from the collected taxes as profit. This decree was followed in 258 BC by a 'General Inventory' in which the whole of Egypt was surveyed to determine the quantity of different types of land, irrigation, canals, and forests within the kingdom and the amount of income that could be levied from it. Efforts were made to increase
11297-509: The conflict in mainland Greece. The reasons for this reluctance are unclear, but it appears that, especially in the last years of the war, Ptolemaic involvement was limited to financial support for the Greek city-states and naval assistance. Gunther Hölbl argues that the Ptolemaic focus was on the eastern Aegean, where naval forces under the command of Ptolemy II's nephew and co-regent Ptolemy took control of Ephesus and perhaps Lesbos in 262 BC. The end of Ptolemaic involvement may be related to
11440-796: The country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine ,
11583-441: The dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before
11726-532: The death of Ptolemy I in 282 and of Seleucus I in 281 BC that changed. Seleucus I's son Antiochus I spent several years fighting to re-establish control over his father's empire. Ptolemy II took advantage of this to expand his realm at Seleucid expense. The acquisitions of the Ptolemaic kingdom at this time can be traced in epigraphic sources and seem to include Samos , Miletus , Caria , Lycia , Pamphylia , and perhaps Cilicia . Antiochus I acquiesced to these losses in 279 BC, but began to build up his forces for
11869-486: The deified Alexander, who served annually and whose name was used to date all official documents, became the 'Priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi'. Each subsequent royal couple would be added to the priest's title until the late second century BC. In artistic depictions, Ptolemy II was often depicted with divine attributes, namely the club of Heracles and the elephant-scalp headdress associated with Alexander
12012-528: The earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of
12155-444: The eastern desert at Abu Zawal . Ptolemy II was an eager patron of scholarship, funding the expansion of the Library of Alexandria and patronising scientific research. Poets like Callimachus , Theocritus , Apollonius of Rhodes , and Posidippus were provided with stipends and produced masterpieces of Hellenistic poetry, including panegyrics in honour of the Ptolemaic family. Other scholars operating under Ptolemy's aegis included
12298-639: The emperor put to work producing a variety of items for both his court and the churches of Gondar. Abyssinian Greeks held many of the highest positions in the Abyssinian Empire ; the principal Abyssinian Greek community stayed with the Abyssinian Emperor in the capital, Gondar. Emperor Theodore II specifically made known that he favored the Abyssinian Greeks, because of their virility and integrity of character. Cyrenaica
12441-546: The establishment of his friend Seleucus I as ruler of Mesopotamia , but relations had cooled after the Battle of Ipsos in 301 BC, when both kings claimed Syria . At that time, Ptolemy I had occupied the southern portion of the region, Coele Syria , up to the Eleutherus river , while Seleucus established control over the territory north of that point. As long as the two kings lived, this dispute did not lead to war, but with
12584-404: The example of his father in making an effort to present himself in the guise of a traditional Egyptian pharaoh and to support the Egyptian priestly elite. Two hieroglyphic stelae commemorate Ptolemy's activities in this context. The Mendes stele celebrates Ptolemy's performance of rituals in honour of the ram god Banebdjedet at Mendes , shortly after his accession. The Pithom stele records
12727-412: The extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English
12870-668: The gods, beginning with the Morning Star , followed by the Theoi Soteres , and culminating with the Evening Star. The procession for Dionysus alone contained dozens of festival floats , each pulled by hundreds of people, including a four-metre high statue of Dionysus himself, several vast wine-sacks and wine krateres , a range of tableaux of mythological or allegorical scenes, many with automata , and hundreds of people dressed in costume as satyrs , sileni , and maenads . Twenty-four chariots drawn by elephants were followed by
13013-420: The greatest intellectual and artistic centers of the Greek world, famous for its medical school, learned academies and architecture, which included some of the finest examples of the Hellenistic style . The Cyrenaics , a school of thinkers who expounded a doctrine of moral cheerfulness that defined happiness as the sum of human pleasures, were founded by Aristippus of Cyrene. Other notable natives of Cyrene were
13156-695: The horns of a ram to his image. Ammon had a wife, Ammonia , and a son, Parammon ( Thoth-Hermes ), considered Ammon's hypostasis (incarnation). Parammon was also the secretary of Osiris , one of the sons of Ammon. Intercultural exchange between the Hellenic and Nubian civilizations started at least two and a half millennia ago. The Greek presence in the Nile Valley and its considerable impact on ancient Nubia have long been recognized by scholars. The first recorded contact took place in 593 BC: graffiti at Abu Simbel reveal that large numbers of Greek mercenaries served under Psamtik II in his invasion of what
13299-403: The idea being that each would act as a check on the others and thus prevent officials from developing regional power bases that might threaten the power of the king. Each village had a komarch (village-leader) and a komogrammateus (village-secretary), who reported to the nomarch and the basilikos grammateus respectively. Through this system, a chain of command was created which ran from
13442-570: The inauguration of a temple at Pithom by Ptolemy, in 279 BC on his royal jubilee. Both stelae record his achievements in terms of traditional Pharaonic virtues. Particularly stressed is the recovery of religious statuary from the Seleucids through military action in 274 BC – a rhetorical claim which cast the Seleucids in the role of earlier national enemies like the Hyksos , Assyrians , and Persians. As part of his patronage of Egyptian religion and
13585-520: The king all the way down to each of the three thousand villages of Egypt. Each nome also had its own strategos (general), who was in charge of the troops settled in the nome and answered directly to the king. A key goal of this administrative system was to extract as much wealth as possible from the land, so that it could be deployed for royal purposes, particularly war. It achieved this goal with greatest efficiency under Ptolemy II. Particular measures to increase efficiency and income are attested from
13728-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows
13871-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
14014-452: The many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is
14157-442: The marriage, was exiled and assassinated. The marriage may not have been consummated, since it produced no children. Another poet Theocritus defended the marriage by comparing it to the marriage of the gods Zeus and his older sister Hera . The marriage provided a model which was followed by most subsequent Ptolemaic monarchs. The three children of Arsinoe I, who included the future Ptolemy III , seem to have been removed from
14300-477: The mathematician Euclid and the astronomer Aristarchus . Ptolemy is thought to have commissioned Manetho to compose his Aegyptiaca , an account of Egyptian history, perhaps intended to make Egyptian culture intelligible to its new rulers. A tradition preserved in the pseudepigraphical Letter of Aristeas presents Ptolemy as the driving force behind the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek as
14443-465: The morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of
14586-413: The most important in Egypt. In addition, Ptolemy initiated work at a number of other sites, including (from north to south): Ptolemaic Egypt was administered by a complicated bureaucratic structure. It is possible that much of the structure had already been developed in the reign of Ptolemy I, but evidence for it – chiefly in the form of documentary papyri – only exists from the reign of Ptolemy II. At
14729-426: The next three centuries. Even further south was Ptolemais Theron (possibly located near the modern Port Sudan ), which was used as a base for capturing elephants. The adults were killed for their ivory , the children were captured to be trained as war elephants . On the east coast of the sea, the key settlements were Berenice (modern Aqaba / Eilat ) and Ampelone (near modern Jeddah ). These settlements allowed
14872-550: The original Theran colonists and ethnic Libyans , second, Peloponnesians and Cretans, and third, Aegean islanders. Under the Cyrenean constitution, the king only had the authority to grant land to citizens, and held the role of chief priest, in charge of religious duties. Libyan Greek religion was directly influenced by Ancient Egyptian religion . The Cyreneans assimilated the Egyptian god Amun with Zeus as "Ammon", embodying Zeus in his style and Amun in his nature, attributing
15015-522: The other hand, Lysimachus' heir, Agathocles , was married to Keraunos' full sister Lysandra . Lysimachus chose to support Ptolemy II and sealed that decision at some point between 284 and 281 BC by marrying his daughter Arsinoe I to Ptolemy II. Continued conflict over the issue within his kingdom led to the execution of Agathocles and the collapse of Lysimachus' kingdom in 281 BC. Around 279 BC, Arsinoe II returned to Egypt, where she clashed with her sister-in-law Arsinoe I. Some time after 275 BC, Arsinoe I
15158-613: The poet Callimachus and the mathematicians Theodorus and Eratosthenes . The most influential of the Libyan Greeks were the Cyreneans. The Cyreneans invited Greek colonists from all over the Greek world to settle in Cyrene. The Cyrenean government was originally an absolute monarchy, but under Demonax , it became a constitutional monarchy with a senate. Demonax divided the Cyreneans into three groups to elect senators: first,
15301-459: The priestly elite, Ptolemy II financed large-scale building works at temples throughout Egypt. Ptolemy ordered the erection of the core of the Temple of Isis at Philae was erected in his reign and assigned the tax income from the newly conquered Dodekaschoinos region to the temple. Although the temple had existed since the sixth century BC, it was Ptolemy's sponsorship that converted it into one of
15444-461: The province, with no major population centers, was called Marmarica ; the more important western portion was known as the Pentapolis, as it comprised five cities: Cyrene (near the modern village of Shahat) with its port of Apollonia (Marsa Susa), Arsinoe or Taucheira (Tocra), Euesperides or Berenice (near modern Benghazi ), Balagrae ( Bayda ) and Barce ( Marj ) – of which the chief
15587-643: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of
15730-576: The regions of ancient Ethiopia. Greeks established colonies in Ethiopia, with Ptolemais Theron and Axum becoming major capitals of Ethiopian Greek culture. In the second century BC, Ptolemy III Euergetes annexed several northern Ethiopian cities such as Tigray and the port of Adulis , which became major trading hubs for Ethiopian Greeks. After the Romans annexed the Ptolemaic Empire,
15873-414: The same since early Pharaonic times. Within each nome, there were three officials: the nomarch (nome-leader) who was in charge of agricultural production, the oikonomos (household steward) who was in charge of finances, and the basilikos grammateus (royal secretary), who was in charge of land surveying and record-keeping. All three of these officials answered to the dioiketes and held equal rank,
16016-582: The same time, Ptolemy was convinced to pay large subsidies to the Achaean League by their envoy Aratus of Sicyon . The Achaean League was a relatively small collection of minor city-states in the northwestern Peloponnese at this date, but with the help of Ptolemy's money, over the next forty years Aratus would expand the League to encompass nearly the whole of the Peloponnese and transform it into
16159-532: The sources of the Nile. Scholars assume that the potential Ptolemaic threat contributed to the decision by the Kushitic king Nastasen to move the capital from Napata to Meroë. Greek language and culture were introduced to the Kushitic ruling classes, which may have triggered the creation of an alphabetic Meroitic writing. Hellenic influences are also evident from changes in art styles. Nubian contact with
16302-539: The start of the Second Syrian War. A decree, known as the Revenue Laws Papyrus was issued in 259 BC to increase tax yields. It is one of our key pieces of evidence for the intended operation of the Ptolemaic tax system. The papyrus establishes a regime of tax farming ( telonia ) for wine, fruit, and castor oil . Private individuals paid the king a lump sum up front for the right to oversee
16445-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
16588-457: The succession after their mother's fall. Ptolemy II seems to have adopted Arsinoe II's son by Lysimachus, also named Ptolemy , as his heir, eventually promoting him to co-regent in 267 BC, the year after Arsinoe II's death. He retained that position until his rebellion in 259 BC. Around the time of the rebellion, Ptolemy II legitimised the children of Arsinoe I by having them posthumously adopted by Arsinoe II. Ptolemy I had originally supported
16731-563: The time of Ptolemy VIII (170-163 BC), Greek ships regularly sailed on the Red Sea and to Meroitic ports. The Nubian upper class traded with Greek merchants and adopted certain Hellenic styles of life. However, following the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC and an unsuccessful attempt by the Romans to conquer the kingdom, Greek influences withered in Nubia. The account of Strabo , the geographer and historian of Greek descent, in his Geographia
16874-473: The time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century AD, ethnic Egyptians could be distinguished from Egyptian Greeks only by their speech. Egyptian Greek is the variety of Greek spoken in Egypt from antiquity until the Islamic conquest of Egypt in the 7th century. Egyptian Greek adopted many loanwords from Egyptian language ; there was a great deal of intracommunity bilingualism in Egypt. The following
17017-428: The top of the hierarchy, in Alexandria, there were a small group of officials, drawn from the king's philoi (friends). These included the epistolographos ('letter-writer', responsible for diplomacy), the hypomnematographos ('memo-writer' or the chief secretary), the epi ton prostagmaton ('in charge of commands', who produced the drafts of royal edicts), the key generals, and the dioiketes ('household manager', who
17160-451: The two kings' competing claims to the cities of western Asia Minor, particularly Miletus and Ephesus. Its outbreak seems to be connected to the revolt of Ptolemy II's co-regent Ptolemy, who had been leading the Ptolemaic naval forces against Antigonus II. The younger Ptolemy and an associate took control of the Ptolemaic territories in western Asia Minor and the Aegean. Antiochus II took advantage of this upset to declare war on Ptolemy II and he
17303-422: The two most powerful Greek cities, Athens and Sparta . The Athenian politician Chremonides forged a further alliance with Sparta in 269 BC. In late 268 BC, Chremonides declared war on Antigonus II. The Ptolemaic admiral Patroclus sailed into the Aegean in 267 BC and established a base on the island of Keos . From there, he sailed to Attica in 266 BC. The plan seems to have been for him to rendezvous with
17446-501: The war and agreed to peace, with a return to the status quo ante bellum . This was celebrated in Egypt as a great victory, both in Greek poetry, such as Theocritus' Idyll 17 and by the Egyptian priesthood in the Pithom stele . Ptolemy revived earlier Egyptian programmes to access the Red Sea . A canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Gulf of Suez – via Pithom , Lake Timsah and
17589-543: The way down to the Bab-el-Mandeb . The leaders of these missions established a chain of 270 harbour bases along the coasts, some of which grew to be important commercial centres. Along the Egyptian coast, Philotera , Myos Hormos , and Berenice Troglodytica would become important termini of caravan routes running through the Egyptian desert and key ports for the Indian Ocean trade which began to develop over
17732-494: The wife of Pyrrhus of Epirus . At Ptolemy II's birth, his older half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos was the heir presumptive. As Ptolemy II grew older a struggle for the succession developed between them, which culminated in Ptolemy Keraunos' departure from Egypt around 287 BC. On 28 March 284 BC, Ptolemy I had Ptolemy II declared king, formally elevating him to the status of co-regent. In contemporary documents, Ptolemy
17875-559: Was colonized by Greeks beginning in the 7th century BC. The first and most important colony was that of Cyrene , established in about 631 BC by colonists from the Greek island of Thera , which they had abandoned because of a severe famine. Their commander, Aristoteles, took the Libyan name Battos. His descendants, known as the Battiad dynasty , persisted in spite of severe conflict with Greeks in neighboring cities. The eastern portion of
18018-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
18161-695: Was also ostensibly considering some military action in Pre-Islamic Arabia , and so sent Ariston to reconnoiter the western coast of Arabia. Ptolemy clashed with the kingdom of Nubia , located to the south of Egypt, over the territory known as the Triakontaschoinos ('thirty-mile land'). This was the stretch of the Nile river between the First Cataract at Syene and the Second Cataract at Wadi Halfa (the whole area
18304-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
18447-556: Was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and
18590-404: Was charged with conspiracy and exiled to Coptos . Probably in 273/2 BC, Ptolemy married his older sister, Arsinoe II. As a result, both were given the epithet "Philadelphoi" ( Koinē Greek : Φιλάδελφοι "Sibling-lovers"). While sibling-marriage conformed to the traditional practice of the Egyptian pharaohs , it was shocking to the Greeks, who considered it incestuous . Sotades , a poet who mocked
18733-413: Was educated by a number of the most distinguished intellectuals of the age, including Philitas of Cos and Strato of Lampsacus . Ptolemy II had numerous half-siblings. Two of his father's sons by his previous marriage to Eurydice , Ptolemy Keraunos and Meleager , became kings of Macedonia . The children by his mother Berenice's first marriage to Philip included Magas of Cyrene and Antigone ,
18876-469: Was firmly in control of Egypt and had strong claims (disputed by the Seleucid dynasty ) to Palestine . He called himself king of Egypt from 306 BC. By the time he abdicated in 285 BC, in favour of one of his sons, the Ptolemaic dynasty was secure. Ptolemy and his descendants showed respect to Egypt's most cherished traditions – those of religion – and turned them to their own advantage. Alexandria became
19019-653: Was forced to turn back when Libyan nomads launched an attack on Cyrene. At this same moment, Ptolemy's own forces were hamstrung. He had hired 4,000 Galatian mercenaries, but soon after their arrival the Gauls mutinied and so Ptolemy marooned them on a deserted island in the Nile where "they perished at one another's hands or by famine." This victory was celebrated on a grand scale. Several of Ptolemy's contemporary kings had fought serious wars against Gallic invasions in Greece and Asia Minor, and Ptolemy presented his own victory as equivalent to theirs. Around this time Ptolemy
19162-412: Was given to Ptolemy I Soter , whose descendants would give Egypt her final royal dynasty – a glittering one. The dynasty was composed solely by ethnic Greeks and produced dynasts such as the famous Cleopatra . Its capital was Alexandria. Ptolemy added legitimacy to his rule in Egypt by acquiring Alexander's body. He intercepted the embalmed corpse on its way to burial, brought it to Egypt, and placed it in
19305-462: Was in charge of taxation and provincial administration). The dioiketes for most of Ptolemy II's reign was Apollonius (262–245 BC). The enormous archive of his personal secretary, Zenon of Kaunos , happens to have survived. As a result, it is the administration of the countryside that is best known to modern scholarship. The whole of Egypt was divided into thirty-nine districts, called nomes (portions), whose names and borders had remained roughly
19448-596: Was joined by the Rhodians . The course of this war is very unclear, with the chronological and causal relationship of events attested at different times and in different theatres being open to debate. In 253 BC, Ptolemy negotiated a peace treaty, in which he conceded large amounts of territory in Asia Minor to Antiochus. The peace was sealed by Antiochus' marriage to Ptolemy's daughter Berenice , which took place in 252 BC. Ptolemy presented large indemnity payments to
19591-432: Was probably the reason why Ptolemy executed two of his brothers, probably full brothers of Keraunos, in 281 BC. Keraunos himself had gone to the court of Lysimachus , who ruled Thrace and western Asia Minor following his expulsion from Egypt. Lysimachus' court was divided on the question of supporting Keraunos. On the one hand, Lysimachus himself had been married to Ptolemy II's full sister, Arsinoe II, since 300 BC. On
19734-597: Was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in
19877-663: Was the pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 284 to 246 BC. He was the son of Ptolemy I , the Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great who founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom after the death of Alexander , and Queen Berenice I , originally from Macedon . During Ptolemy II's reign, the material and literary splendour of the Alexandrian court was at its height. He promoted the Museum and Library of Alexandria . In addition to Egypt, Ptolemy's empire encompassed much of
20020-537: Was the eponymous Cyrene. The term "Pentapolis" continued to be used as a synonym for Cyrenaica. In the south, the Pentapolis faded into the Saharan tribal areas, including the pharaonic oracle of Ammonium . The region produced barley, wheat, olive oil, wine, figs, apples, wool, sheep, cattle and silphium , a herb that grew only in Cyrenaica and was regarded as a medicinal cure and aphrodisiac . Cyrene became one of
20163-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
20306-637: Was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to
20449-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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