Ptolemy, son of Lagus, was a high-ranking officer in Alexander’s army, and was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 BCE when Alexander’s generals divided up his empire. In 305-304 BCE he proclaimed himself king. He eventually began using the epithet Soter (saviour). In 285 BCE he made his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus co-regent and died two years later at 84 years of age, leaving behind him a dynasty that lasted until the death of the famous Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE.
When Alexander marched into Egypt in 332 BCE he was received as a liberator. Egypt had been conquered by the Persians in 525 BCE, but it had rebelled repeatedly and in 404 BCE had become independent again. The Persians reconquered it in 343, but had not yet had time to re-integrate it into their empire when Alexander invaded. For pragmatic reasons Egyptians accepted Alexander as their ruler, and Ptolemy drew on Alexander’s legacy to promote his own legitimacy, both among the Greek and Macedonian immigrants in places like Alexandria, and among the native Egyptians. Ptolemy utilized the propaganda value of coinage by depicting the source of his authority on the obverse of his coins.
Portraits on coins, before Alexander, had been reserved for gods. On the obverse of his earliest coins, however, Ptolemy replaced the image of a Heracles (who looked like Alexander) with an image which was indisputably that of Alexander himself. Alexander wears the scalp of an elephant to represent the last conquest of new territory before his death, India. Heracles’ lion’s skin would, of course, have been perfectly good attire for his descendant Alexander, but the use of the elephant scalp instead of the lion’s skin makes a clear distinction between the two heroes. Furthermore, Alexander is depicted with the ram’s horns of the Egyptian god Ammon whom Alexander had claimed as his own divine father. One can see nods both to Greco-Macedonian immigrants who admired Alexander’s military prowess and to native Egyptians familiar with Ammon. On the reverse Ptolemy retained the seated Zeus of Alexander’s coinage as well as the dead king’s name. There is little evidence to provide a date for Ptolemy’s introduction of these coins, so scholars suggest ca. 321 to coincide with Ptolemy’s abduction of Alexander’s funeral cortege, another powerful propaganda move to legitimize his rule. Eventually the reverse of Ptolemy’s Alexander coins was adorned with the image of an advancing Athena accompanied by Ptolemy’s personal badge of an eagle and a thunderbolt. The obverse was also redesigned with the elephant scalp pushed back to accommodate a diadem on Alexander’s forehead, and the sections of the elephant scalp tied under his chin took on the scales of the Aegis of Zeus and Athena (Figs. 1 & 2).
The diadem – a fillet that the Persian kings had worn around the upright tiara but that Alexander had worn alone – had been the symbol of Achaemenid kingship and was adopted by Alexander in 330 BCE when he began integrating Persian customs into his court. The practice was carried on by the Diadochi. Wearing the diadem was part of the assumption of royal status. The diadem became the symbol of kingship in the Hellenistic period, and, from Ptolemy’s portrait on his coins onwards, it was standard iconography for coin portraits. Such was the diadem’s centrality to the image of a Hellenistic ruler, that it is still depicted in portraits on coins even then when the ruler wears some other head-gear which covers it. In such cases its ends flying out behind the neck make its presence clear. The elephant scalp took on a lasting association with Alexander and the image of power, and was especially favoured by the Indo-Bactrian kings from Demetrius I onwards.
