Ptolemaic Kingdom

The Ptolemaic Kingdom (305 BCE– 30 BCE) was a Hellenistic kingdom based in ancient Egypt during the late 1st millennium BCE. Named after the Ptolemaic dynasty which governed it, it was founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian general who followed Alexander the Great–in 305 BCE, following the fragmentation of Alexander's Macedonian Empire.

Socially, the kingdom was rife with perpetual ethnic conflict between the native Egyptians and the Greek elites. Although the country initially saw great cultural and intellectual prosperity in its early years, establishing the Great Library and erecting the Lighthouse of Alexandria, it suffered a precipitous decline in stability and fortunes from the late 3rd century BCE onward. By the 1st century BCE, it held an unsavoury reputation as a failed state that gradually subsumed under the rising power of the Romans.

This predicament was not helped by the conspiracies of the Order of the Ancients, a predecessor of the Templar Order founded by the pharaoh Smenkhkare of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In 30 BCE, the kingdom eventually fell to the future Roman Empire when Octavian, leader of the Order of the Ancients, defeated his rival Marcus Antonius and his lover, Cleopatra.

One of the greatest legacies of the Ptolemaic period is the birth of the Hidden Ones, an antecedent to the Assassin Brotherhood, which sprang from the efforts of the last Medjay, Bayek of Siwa and Aya of Alexandria, to combat the Order of the Ancients and save their country.

Gallery

• 
  Alexandria, the kingdom's capital
• 
  A painted map of the kingdom's extent

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Origins – Desert Oath (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Origins
  • The Hidden Ones
  • Curse of the Pharaohs
• Assassin's Creed: Origins comic
• Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game (mentioned only)