Neither in Pharaonic Egypt nor in other Hellenistic kingdoms were female members of the royal house honored on a par with their spouses. The worship of Ptolemaic Queens was not a simple side-effect of the cults established for Ptolemaic Kings. Several Ptolemaic queens became so powerful that they actually reigned independently or as regent over their children. It was, moreover, considered imperative that she participate in religious and/or royal ceremonies, such as the dynastic cult and the royal jubilee. The remarkable paired representations of royal couples and her role in the transmission of divine kingship emphasize the ideological importance of the queen’s presence at court. Of course, the queen’s position depended first of all on her status as the king’s wife, as well as the mother of the crown prince. Authority and influence, power and prestige could be comprehended. The phenomenon offered a framework through which the queens. The queens’ religious identification, I argue, contributed to the popularization, legitimization and sacralization of Lagid rule in Egypt. In this context, my research underscores the amalgamation of Hellenistic and Pharaonic concepts of royalty particularly in terms of the idealized functions and duties of monarchy. They bear out the notion that the Lagids’ marriages were presented in a wide range of media as (consanguineous) hieroi gamoi, and that mourning, immortalization, triumph and elation were part and parcel of royal ideology. Four thematic case studies on matrimony, incest, lamentation and jubilation reveal various related religious motifs, such as prosperity, fecundity, reincarnation, sacralization and victory. This dissertation presents an interpretation of the ideological importance and symbolic significance of the queens’ identifications particularly with Aphrodite, Demeter, Hathor and Isis. The religious identification of Ptolemaic Queens with Greek and Egyptian deities has thus far received rather marginal attention in studies of Hellenistic ruler cults.
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