Ptolemaic Chronology in the Phoenician Inscriptions from Cyprus

Author(s): Javier Teixidor

Source: Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 71 (1988), pp. 188-190
Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (Germany)
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1 88
PTOLEMAIC CHRONOLOGY IN THE PHOENICIAN INSCRIPTIONS FROM CYPRUS
Studies on Ptolemy Philadelphus' chronology fail to take into account
the Phoenician inscriptions from Cyprus which are dated to the reign of that
monarch. I present here the data that may be gleaned from those inscriptions.
An inscription found at Lapethos on the nord coast of the island and
now in the Musee du Louvre
)
records the erection in the temple of Melqart
of the statue of Yatonbaal who was, like his father, a magistrate of a terri
tory outside of the city walls (RB 'RS). Writing in the first person the
local official says that he set up the statue as his memorial "in the 11th
year of the lord of kings Ptolemy son of the lord of kings Ptolemy, which is
the 33rd year of the people of Lapethos." This was also the year in which
Yatonbaal's brother, Abdashtart, was "the priest of the lord of kings."
The threefold indication of the date in this inscription is to some
degree unavailing, however, because the dates of the era of Lapethos and of
the eponymous priest of the local cult of Ptolemy Soter are unknown to us:
we are left with a chronology to be computed only starting with Philadelphus'
regnal years. The Cypriot inscription certainly abides by the practice of
dating the first regnal year of Philadelphus in 285/284 when he was associated
with his father in the government of Egypt2); the date of the inscription,
therefore, is 274 and were there any doubts about it the second part of the
inscription dissipates them. There Yatonbaal rehearses two former acts of
piety. The first one took place when he placed in the sanctuary the bronze
effigy of his father; this occurred "in the 4th year of the lord of kings
Ptolemy son of the lord of kings Ptolemy." The second pious act occurred "in
the 5th year of the lord of kings Ptolemy son of the lord of kings Ptolemy";
then, Yatonbaal tells us, he instituted sacrifices in honor of Melqart "on
behalf of my life and on behalf of my progeny, and for the legitimate scion
(SMH SDQ) and for his wife."
The mention of "the legitimate scion" seems to me to be decisive to
establish the chronology, for the sentence cannot but be applied to a
particular year in Philadelphus' reign. It is known that he was chosen by
1. H. Donner and W. R6llig, Kanaanaische und aramaische Inschriften,
vols I (Wiesbaden 21966), II (21968) and III (1964) = KAI no 43; J.C.L. Gibson,
Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. Vol. 3: Phoenician Inscriptions
(Oxford 1982), n? 36; R.S. Bagnall, The Administration of the Ptolemaic
Possessions outside Egypt (Leiden 1976), pp. 71-72.
2. See W. Clarysse and G. Van der Veken, The Eponymous Priests of
Ptolemaic Egypt (P.L.Bat. 24). Chronological Lists of the Priests of
Alexandria and Ptolemais with a Study of the Demotic Transcriptions of their
Names (Leiden 1983), p. 5 (n. 19).
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Ptolemaic Chronology in the Phoenician Inscriptions from Cyprus 189
Soter as his successor in place of his eldest brother Ptolemy Keraunus. The
conduct of the latter conveys the impression that the claim of his brother
Philadelphus to the Egyptian throne could not have gone indisputed after
their father's death in 282. Consequently, the straightforward and unique
reference to the "legitimate" king in the fifth year of his reign makes sense
only if the year of the second offering of Yatonbaal coincided with the begin
ning of 281: Soter was dead, Lysimachus was going to die at Korupedion, and
Keraunus, disinherited, would appoint himself king of Macedonia after killing
Seleucus. As for Ptolemy's wife in 281, Yatonbaal preferred not to mention
her name when he wrote the inscription in 274: by then Arsinoe II had taken
Arsinoe I's place probably since 2793).
A second Cypriot
inscription4),
this one from Idalion, also reckons the
regnal year of Ptolemy Philadelphus from the first year of his coregency. The
text commemorates the setting up by a local lady of votive statues as a vow
to Reseph on behalf of her grandchildren. The offering took place "on the
31rst year of the lord of kings Ptolemy son of Ptolemy ..., which is the
57th year of the people of Kition, Amat-Osir (...) being the Kanephoros of
Arsinoe Philadelphus." The Kition era is known to have started in 311 B.C.,
namely the year Ptolemy Soter put to death Pumyaton the king of Kition. This
inscription therefore must date from 254, a reckoning that matches the regnal
years of Philadelphus if counted from 285.
The chronological correlation present in the two inscriptions permit us
to conclude that the Lapethos era started in 307/306 when Demetrius
Poliorcetes captured Cyprus to rule over the island for some twelve years5)
When Ptolemy Soter conquered Cyprus he did not treat Kition and Lapethos in
the same manner, for Kition was allowed to start a new era after the suppres
sions of its monarchy whereas the same event did not give Lapethos the op
portunity of gaining a new statute. Diodorus says that Soter "arrested"
Praxippus, the king of Lapethos, "whom he suspected of being ill-disposed
toward himself" (19.79), but this can hardly explain the absence of a new
era in the city. The explanation for Soter's behaviour escapes us and one can
only guess that the determining factor was the different social component of
3. E. Will. Histoire politique du monde hell6nistique I (Nancy 21979),
pp. 104-105; cf. H. Hauben, Arsinoe II et la politique ext6rieure de l'tgypte,
Studia hellenistica 27 (Lovanii 1983),
pp.
99-127. Following Gibson (note 1),
p. 140 '1TW in line 11 should de translated "his wife" and not "his wifes"
as A.M. Honeyman in Journ. Egypt. Arch. 26 (1940), p. 64 (the editors of KAI
stand undecided). The translation here proposed is grammatically sound.
Gibson however is mistaken when he states that "the wife" is Arsinoe II.
4. KAI n? 40; G. Hill, A History of Cyprus I (Cambridge 1949), p. 184.
5. Hill, p. 171.
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190 J. Teixidor
6)
the two cities
The inscription of Lapethos provides another interesting piece of in
formation concerning the dynastic cult. By 274 only the cult of Soter was
known in the island, the cult devoted to Arsinoe Philadelphus had yet to be
founded in Cyprus and most probably in Egypt as well. The mention for the
first time in a contract dated in the 14th year of Philadelphus of "the
priest of Alexander and of the Theoi Adelphoi," namely in 272/271 has led
7)
Fraser to conclude that Arsinoe's cult must have been founded that
year
As a result the Lapethos inscription and the contract supply two dates
between which the appearance of the dynastic cult can be confidently placed.
A third inscription from Cyprus should be mentioned here. The text, in
Greek and Phoenician, was written on a rock outside of Larnax tis Lapithou
near ancient Lapethos. It is usually dated to the end of the fourth century
B.C. but a date at the beginning of the third century seems more coherent
with the event there recorded. The inscription commemorates the erection by
Praxidemos Sesmaos (in Phoenician Baalshillem son of Sesmai) to
'Aenva
EcxTeCpa N1T1 / IaxcL BQ OLX6WO HIoTX6jLQou which in Phoenician reads: L'NT M'Z
HYM / WL'DMLKM PTLMYS, "To Anat the shelter of life and to the lord of kings
Ptolemy"8 . The wording of the Greek text is awkward and it has been suggested
that the xcx' of line 2 belongs to the preceding word, i.e. "to the Victory
of king Ptolemy." In any event the text refers to a victory gained by Soter,
in my view to that of 295, when the Egyptian monarch eliminated any effective
control by Demetrius over Cyprus and not to Soter's ephemeral victory over
the kings of the island in 312/311. We know that Lapethos did not at that
time receive a new statute and therefore the euphoric tone of the inscription
hardly fits that circumstance.
Paris Javier Teixidor
6. Kition was Phoenician since the beginning of the First Millennium B.C.,
see M. Yon, Studia Phoenicia V, ed. E. Lipifnski (Leuven 1987), pp. 369-373
and Lapethos was a Laconian foundation, Strabon 14.6.3; Hill, p. 99 note 6.
According to the fifth century B.C. source used by (Pseudo-)Skylax Lapethos
was Phoenician (phoinikon, 86; MUller 103): I follow A. Peretti, Il periplo
di Scilace. Studio sul primo portolano del Mediterraneo (Pisa 1979).
7. P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I, p. 216; II, p. 366 n. 219 but
see Hauben (n. 3), p. 113 note 57.
8. KAI no 42; Dittenberger OGIS I 17; G.A. Cooke, A Text-Book of
North-Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford 1903), p. 81; for the name Sesmas see
0. Masson, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques (Paris 1961), p. 182.
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