soon to be joined by Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (“opulent”), their brother, also known as Physcon (“fatty”), in a ruling triad. Having arranged the murder of his nephew Ptolemy VII ...

Luxury and corpulence signified status. (In an age when most Egyptians got only enough food to get by, her heavy-set son Ptolemy VIII was “an aspirational role model.”) It helped that her ...

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria while under the rule of the Roman Empire. Much of medieval astronomy and ...