Hello and welcome to another ancient warfare magazine podcast. I'm Angus Wallace. In this episode,

we're looking at Ancient Warfare Magazine Volume 10, Issue 2. Wars in Hellenistic Egypt,

the Kingdom of the Potolomies. We have a full team today. I'm joined by Joshua Browers,

Murray D'Arm, Lindsay Powell, Mark

McCaffrey, Mark DeSantis and Sean Hussman. So for those who've not yet picked up their

copy of the magazine and don't forget you can order it from ancient dash warfare.com,

I wonder if one of you guys could give us a quick overview of Hellenistic Egypt.

It starts off of course with how every,

how the Hellenistic period starts off in general with the death of Alexander.

And when Alexander dies, his entire empire becomes the battleground for all of his generals who believe that they

should succeed Alexander and one of his generals Ptolemy takes control of Egypt which is

probably the most stable he takes control of Egypt and he found his own dynasty there

and of all the Hellenistic kingdoms that arise after Alexander's death.

The Ptolemae Kingdom of Egypt is basically the most stable Hellenistic entity that we have because of Egypt's isolation.

Thanks to the desert, thanks to the Mediterranean, etc.

So he founds this dynasty and it survives after death of Alexander until the Romans arrive,

with Mark Anthony and Cleopatra being defeated at the Battle of Axiom in 31 BC by Augustus

and then committing suicide

of 30 BC after which Egypt is turned into a Roman province.

And the whole period in between is basically the Ptolemaic era of Egypt and that's the subject

of the issue.

So how did the Ptolemy's maintain power? I mean, there were foreigners

...