u/AlexandriaPod

BB28 is the first season I’ve watched live and I’ve been watching wayyyy too much LOL. So here’s the cast as Greek gods bc that’s my other obsession

This statue depicts an UNIDENTIFIED Greek king of Egypt in the Ptolemaic period. Found in the Karnak Temple in Thebes, the Egyptian museum in Cairo dates this REALLY early, to the reign of Alexander IV (c. 317–310 BCE)! If so, it must depict Alexander the Great, Philip Arrhidaeus, or Alexander IV. But the museum also titles the statue as “Ptolemaic” so who knows!

According to the museum, “The face of the king is modelled in Hellenistic style, but maintains an idealised approach to the portrait.”

Saw this the other day and I just had to take some pics. The book is chock full of annotations by Eben Alexander, its owner, a professor at UNC in the late 1890s. Besides having a really cool copy of the Odyssey from the Renaissance, Eben also played an instrumental role in recruiting and transporting athletes for the FIRST modern Olympic Games in Athens, 1896.

Eben Alexander's students helped start the modern Department of Classics at UNC. One of his proteges, Louis Round Wilson, was a brilliant librarian. Eben's copy of the Odyssey is now housed in a giant library named after Wilson.

Without the Ptolemies, the Odyssey as we have it would never have existed. OUR version of the Odyssey was codified, solidified, and canonized in the Great Library of Alexandria throughout the 3rd century BCE. Before that, there were thousands of competing versions.

Eben Alexander himself

Just an incredible piece of ancient art. And WE KNOW WHO MADE IT! The Hellenistic artist Sophilos, in about 200 BC.

Berenike II (wife of Ptolemy III) is shown as the personification of Alexandria.

Dr. Joann Fletcher writes: “her ship's prow crown and anchor-shaped brooch emphasised her key role in naval successes during her joint reign with husband Ptolemy III."

What’s interesting to you about the period / place?
What do you want to know more about?
In short, what about Ptolemaic Egypt led you here?

I’ll start: I love Ptolemaic Egypt because of the sheer number of Greek papyri preserved, which give us a MUCH BETTER window into daily life than almost anywhere else in the ancient world!

Book is "a reassessment of Ptolemaic state intervention in industry and trade, an issue central to the economic and political history of Hellenistic Egypt."

Published by Cambridge University Press.

Such a beautiful example of the combination of Egyptian and Greek styles in the early Ptolemaic period!

From the British Museum:

"The 'nemes' headdress, plain at the top but ribbed on the lappets, and the uraeus identify the subject as a ruler. The mouth has drill holes in the corners, forcing the lips into a wide smile. The wide, fleshy nose, cheeks and chin are representative of portraits of the Thirtieth Dynasty and Ptolemaic periods, but the slightly raised eyebrows are carved in a more naturalistic manner than those on Late Period sculpture. The large, fleshy ears are also characteristic of Ptolemaic portraiture."

Photo by the British Museum.

EDIT: WOOPS I completely forgot to actually include the link to the podcast!!
The name is Alexandria: a Hellenistic World Podcast!!!

Website link is here and should have functioning links on the homepage to all the relevant platforms.

https://alexandriapod.wordpress.com

Hey all, hope this is the right place to post.

A couple months ago I started a podcast aimed at combining my two interests: history and writing. Each ep starts and ends with a historical fiction short story, interrupted in the middle by a little lecture.

So, for instance, the ep I’m finishing now opens and closes with the story of a young enslaved woman in the Macedonian court, with a section in the middle explaining the historical context and whatever important facets of Macedonian identity I felt the main POV character wasn’t able to naturally witness.

The trouble is, when people ask me what the it’s about, I’m struggling w/ figuring out how to sell this pod quickly (as in an elevator pitch). Is it a historical audio drama with a history lecture attached? A history pod that incorporates hist-fic elements??

How would y’all approach this?

Thanks in advance !!