1. History

2. Year of birth

3. Tomb at Ephesus

4. Ancestry

5. See also

6. References and sources

7. External links

Arsinoë IV ({{lang-grc-gre|Ἀρσινόη}}; between 68 and 63 BC – 41 BC) was the fourth of six children and the youngest daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes. Queen and co-ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt with her brother Ptolemy XIII from 48 BC – 47 BC, she was one of the last members of the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt. Arsinoë IV was also the half sister of Cleopatra VII.^[1][2][3][4] For her role in conducting the Siege of Alexandria (47 BC) against her sister Cleopatra, Arsinoe was taken as a prisoner of war to Rome by the Roman triumvir Julius Caesar following the defeat of Ptolemy XIII in the Battle of the Nile. Arsinoe was then exiled to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Roman Anatolia, but she was executed there by orders of triumvir Mark Antony in 41 BC at the behest of his lover Cleopatra.

History

Arsinoe was the third, possibly fourth daughter of Ptolemy XII by an unknown woman (presumably since Cleopatra VII's probable mother Cleopatra V had died or been repudiated not long after Cleopatra VII was born.^[5][6][7][8]) When Ptolemy XII died in 51 BC, he left his eldest son and daughter, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, as joint rulers of Egypt, but Ptolemy soon dethroned Cleopatra and forced her to flee from Alexandria. Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria in 48 BC pursuing his rival, Pompey, whom he had defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus. When he arrived in Alexandria, he was presented with Pompey's head. The execution of his longtime friend and foe ended the possibility of an alliance between Caesar and Ptolemy, and instead he sided with Cleopatra's faction. He declared that in accordance with Ptolemy XII's will, Cleopatra and Ptolemy would rule Egypt jointly, and in a similar motion restored Cyprus, which had been annexed by Rome in 58 BC, to Egypt's rule and gave it to Arsinoë and her youngest brother, Ptolemy XIV.^[9][10] Caesar had Ptolemy's regent, the eunuch Pothinus, executed while the general Achillas escaped and began besieging Alexandria.

However Arsinoë then escaped from the capital with her mentor, the eunuch Ganymedes, and took command of the Egyptian army, proclaiming herself Queen as Arsinoë IV, executing Achillas, and placing Ganymedes second in command of the army immediately below herself.^[11][12][13] Under Arsinoë's leadership, the Egyptians enjoyed some success against the Romans. The Egyptians had already trapped Caesar in a section of the city, by the building of walls to close off the streets, and she now directed Ganymedes to order the drawing of water from the sea, which was poured into the canals that supplied Caesar’s cisterns, causing panic among Caesar’s troops.^[14] Caesar countered this measure by digging wells into the porous limestone beneath the city that contained fresh water, which only partially alleviated the situation, so he then sent ships out along the coast to search for more fresh water there.^[15] Caesar realised he would soon have to break out from the city, and attacked the island of Pharos, upon which stood the great lighthouse, in order to gain control of the harbor. But Arsinoë's forces drove him back, inflicting upon him a humiliating defeat, in which Caesar himself was forced to tear off his armour and his purple cloak, and swim to the safety of a nearby Roman ship in the bay. However the leading Egyptian officers, having become disappointed with Ganymedes, and under a pretext of wanting peace, negotiated with Caesar to exchange Arsinoë for Ptolemy XIII, who was subsequently released.^[16][17] But Ptolemy continued the war, until the Romans received reinforcements and inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Egyptians.

Captive, Arsinoë was transported to Rome, where in 46 BC she was forced to appear in Caesar's triumph and was paraded behind a burning effigy of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which had been the scene of her victory over him. ^[18] Despite the custom of strangling prominent prisoners in triumphs when the festivities concluded, Caesar was pressured to spare Arsinoë and granted her sanctuary at the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Arsinoë lived in the temple for a few years, always keeping a watchful eye on her sister Cleopatra, who perceived Arsinoë as a threat to her power. In 41 BC, at Cleopatra's instigation, Mark Antony ordered Arsinoë's execution on the steps of the temple. Her murder was a gross violation of the temple sanctuary and an act that scandalised Rome.^[19] The eunuch priest (Megabyzos) who had welcomed Arsinoë on her arrival at the temple as Queen was only pardoned when an embassy from Ephesus made a petition to Cleopatra.^[20]

Year of birth

Arsinoë's year of birth is generally regarded as being between 68 and 63 BC: The Encyclopedia Britannica cites 63 BC, making her 15 at the time of her uprising and defeat against Julius Caesar and 22 at her death,^[21] while the researcher Alissa Lyon cites 68 BC making her 27 at her death.^[22] Joyce Tyldesley places her birth date as between 68 and 65 BC.^[23] An alternate hypothesis was in the docudrama "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer", in which it was alleged a headless skeleton of a female child between the ages of 15 and 18 may be Arsinoë.^[24]

Her actions in the brief war against Caesar naturally suggest that she was older than that and thus, would make it impossible for her to be the headless female child buried in the tomb. Perhaps the strongest evidence that she was in fact exercising her own authority is that Caesar, after the Pharos debacle, was prepared to release Ptolemy XIII — a male, who continued the war against Caesar — just to get his hands on her.^[25][26] Stacy Schiff, who places Arsinoë's age at around seventeen during the events of 48-47 BC, notes that Arsinoë "burned with ambition" and was "not the kind of girl who inspired complacency," writing that once Arsinoë escaped the royal palace she became more vocal against her half-sister and that she assumed her position as head of the army alongside anti-Caesar courtier Achillas.{{sfnp|Schiff|2011|p=48-49}}

Tomb at Ephesus

In the 1990s, an octagonal monument situated in the centre of Ephesus was hypothesized by Hilke Thür of the Austrian Academy of Sciences to be the tomb of Arsinoë.^[19] Although no inscription remains on the tomb, it was dated to between 50 and 20 BC. In 1926 the headless skeleton of a female child estimated to be between the ages of 15–18 years at the time of her death was found in the burial chamber.^[27][28] Thür's identification of the skeleton was based on the shape of the tomb, which was octagonal, like the second tier of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the carbon dating of the bones (between 200 – 20 BC), the gender of the skeleton, and the age of the young woman at death.^[29][30] It was also claimed that the tomb boasts Egyptian motifs, such as "papyri-bundle" columns.^[19]

A DNA test was also attempted to determine the identity of the child. However, it was impossible to get an accurate reading since the bones had been handled too many times,^[31] and the skull had been lost in Germany during World War II. Hilke Thür examined the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull,^[32][33] which was reconstructed using computer technology by forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson to show what the woman may have looked like.^[34] Thür alleged that it shows signs of African and Egyptian ancestry mixed with classical Grecian features^[19] – despite the fact that Boas, Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard, and others have demonstrated that skull measurements are not a reliable indicator of race,^[35] and the measurements were jotted down in 1920 before modern forensic science took hold.^[36] Furthermore, Arsinoe and Cleopatra, shared the same father (Ptolemy XII Auletes) but had different mothers,^[37] with Thür claiming the alleged African ancestry came from the skeleton's mother. Mary Beard wrote a dissenting essay criticizing the findings, pointing out that one, there is no surviving name on the tomb and that the claim the tomb is alleged to invoke the shape of the Pharos Lighthouse "doesn't add up"; second, the skull doesn't survive intact and the age of the skeleton is too young to be that of Arsinoë's (the bones said to be that of a 15-18 year old child, with Arsinoë being around her mid twenties at her death); and thirdly, since Cleopatra and Arsinoë were not known to have the same mother, "the ethnic argument goes largely out of the window." ^[38] Furthermore, craniometry as used by Thür to determine race is based in scientific racism that is now generally considered a pseudoscience that supported "exploitation of groups of people" to "perpetuate racial oppression" and "distorted future views of the biological basis of race."^[39]

A writer from The Times described the identification of the skeleton as "a triumph of conjecture over certainty".^[40] If the monument is the tomb of Arsinoë, she would be the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty whose remains have been recovered.^[41] Forensic and archaeological analysis of the origins of the skeleton and tomb are ongoing. To date, it has never been definitively proved the skeleton is that of Arsinoë IV.

Ancestry

See also

• Death of Cleopatra
• Early life of Cleopatra

References and sources

References

Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica, 2003 edition

External links

• livius.org: Arsinoe IV
• Biography by Christopher Bennett: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170613113043/http://www.reocities.com/christopherjbennett/ptolemies/arsinoe_iv.htm#Arsinoe Arsinoe IV]
• Pockley.S: Video of a bust of Arsinoë IV being copied Nov 2012 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTWoA9TlHDg Arsinoe IV]

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