A Biography of Queen Berenike II
FAIN: FA-55042-10
Dee L. Clayman
CUNY Research Foundation, Graduate School and University Center (New York, NY 10016-4309)
This will be the first book-length treatment in any language of the life of Berenike II, the daughter of Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned in Egypt 246-222/1 BCE). Through her (mostly) astute political choices, Olympic victories, representations in art, and cult foundations she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens who descended from the successors of Alexander the Great. Uniquely, she was at the center of a group of important poets and intellectuals associated with the Museum and Library at Alexandria, who celebrated her in their work including the great Callimachus whose "Lock of Berenike" is extant in fragments and in a Latin translation by the Roman poet Catullus. The literary evidence will be combined with references in histories, inscriptions, papyri, and images of her on coins, ceramics, mosiacs, and stone to assemble a complex portrait of an able and successful monarch who has been all but written out of history.