See also: Ptolémée (homonymy)

Ptolémée Philadelphe (-309/-246) is a Egyptian Pharaon of the period lagide.

Wire of Ptolémée {{Ier}}, it was associated with the throne towards -285 and with died of his/her father in -283 (or -282 according to the authors) he becomes Pharaon. Of his first wife, Arsinoé {{Anger}}, it would have had three children of which Ptolémée {{III}}, its successor.

Its nickname, Philadelphe, come to him from the love which it would have carried to his sister Arsinoé {{II}} that it married in second weddings and that it divinisa with its death towards -271 by giving him the name “Philadelphos” ( that which loves his/her brother ).

Ptolémée is the first Lagide to be made crown like Pharaon by the Egyptian priests.

An inscription of the temple of Edfou indicates that Horus delivered to him the ground of Egypt with its documents of title written by the divine clerk Thot. Successor of the Pharaons, alive god, it is of him that all the priests hold their ministry. He manages directly and perceives the incomes of the crowned ground which always comprises immense land fields and workshops (weaving).

Genealogy

Reign

Ptolémée made two military campaigns in Syria to ensure the borders of the Pharaonic empire and undertook large work of restoration in particular to Alexandria, Naucratis, Philae and Tanis. It also developed the area of the Fayoum and enriches the Bibliothèque by Alexandria.

Ptolémée, at the time of the greatest expansion of its power, has Cyrène, Cyprus, the Pamphylie, the Lycie, the Cœlésyrie and exerts its hegemony on the confederation of the Nésiotes (Insular of the Cyclades). It sends ambassadors in India and with Rome.

Ptolémée and the Seventy

Very quickly after the foundation of Alexandria by Alexandre Large the (-332/-331) a Jewish population was established and proliferated in this Greek city so much so that two of the five districts are reserved for the descendants of Abraham. They continue there to speak the Hebraic language and to study the texts of the Old Testament.

According to the letter of Aristée (II E), the origins of the Seventy would be due on the initiative of the founder of the Bibliothèque of Alexandria, Démétrios de Phalère. This one suggested with king Ptolémée (more cultivated kings hellenistic) interested by the life of its subjects Jews to order the translation in Greek of all the books Jews, texts crowned and profane narrations.

The Jewish scientists 72 (6 of each of the 12 tribes of Israel) are in charge of this work which, in their honor, bears the name of Septuagint . The tradition claims that the sovereign sacrificator of Jerusalem, Éléazar, agreed at the request of Ptolémée only in one condition: stamping by the monarch of the six hundred and twenty thousand Jews of Judaea that his/her father Ptolémée Soter had made captive and reduced to slavery in Egypt.