Ptolemic Empire

[dvk901]

Just a thought, when it comes to doing the Ptolemic units, remember that they had 'engrained' themselves very much into Egyptian culture. They worshipped their gods, and the King dressed as a Pharoah. It would nice to see this 'egyptianization' in some of them.

[Drtad]

Perhaps something like a hoplite with a symbol of Osiris on the shield or somesuch? I believe I may be able to asisst in the Egyptian symbols department... Just give me a little time.

EDIT: Yay! Four rep point crowns!

[DR. Hobo. PHD.]

i know that they embraced egyptian culture, but i doubt they went into battle looking like the mummie returns

[swhunter]

Eb also has some decent skins to get an idea.
http://www.europabarbarorum.org/ebco...ioi_units.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty


http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ptolemies.htm


http://www.egyptologyonline.com/ptolemies.htm

http://www.ancientbattles.com/WAB_Su...s_overview.htm

http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/battles/raphia217bc.html

http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armieso...nos/index.html

http://nabataea.net/ptolomy.html

history of the empire...

heres a few ....

[pseudocaesar]

Why does everyone reference EB, can we do our own research and come up with stuff ourselves for once?

[swhunter]

Why does everyone reference EB, can we do our own research and come up with stuff ourselves for once?

Sir i believe we reference everyone. We got ideas from RTR.
And spor. and some units from EB.
Also ideas from different modders. I don't think we can take any credit anywhere! Tone does improve from others ideas. But EB has done its homework. And we can learn from all the RTW world cant we ?

[DR. Hobo. PHD.]

Why does everyone reference EB, can we do our own research and come up with stuff ourselves for once?

maybe cause EB has gotten alot right?
lol i hear ya dvk, just making sure lol although i think if we can make custom buildings for them that would be awsome.

[dvk901]

Oh AE! I by NO means meant having units that look like 3000 year old egyptian Vanilla soldiers! Dang, I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb. I'm just talking about what Drtad said, the occasional symbol to give the 'impression' of a Greco\Egyptian mixed up culture. I know the Ptolemies were Greek and should look Greek, but even the Celts that ended up in Egypt fighting for the Ptolemies adopted some of the local customs.

And I agree that EB has done their homework......still, there is a place for our own ideas as well. I personally done think anyone can have done ALL the homework.
It's like the little spat in the main forum for RS about Praetorians. I get a kick out of people who get all bent outta shape because 'their not historical'. When all anyone has to go on is a stone carving or so.....color is pure conjecture, and one can just as easily assume one kind of armor as well as another. When I was in the service, I had FOUR different sets of uniforms.....based on working, climate and dress. Whose to say the Romans and others didn't have the same thing.

[cherryfunk]

I still want Romans with green uniforms...

Let's not forget some Nubian auxiliaries for the Ptolemites! (Including some cool Axemen perhaps? Longbow archers?) And some Nabatean/Arab cavalry!

[dvk901]

I still want Romans with green uniforms...

Let's not forget some Nubian auxiliaries for the Ptolemites! (Including some cool Axemen perhaps? Longbow archers?) And some Nabatean/Arab cavalry!

Oh and don't forget the Zaire Blow Dart guys either. LOL Sorry.

[swhunter]

Thanks DVK and AE
I agree, i believe we can improve, And that's a good point on Uniforms.
Maybe we can have Marian Change in the winter and summer?
lololol... that would be total different!

[swhunter]

[cherryfunk]

Libyan chariots... the Kyrenian Greeks used them...

[swhunter]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Thd...Fy1U1HqK9ye-QE

More info on Phol.
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imper...eastchron.html

History of the east.

http://scaruffi.com/politics/egyptian.html
Egyptian Timelines.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/p...tolemaics.html

Maps.

[Mulattothrasher]

Might be of use for something. Mainly non military info

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/classics...3995/readings/

[cherryfunk]

This is interesting:

Early in the 320's Greece labored under a serious shortage of grain (cf. 62). Prices rose widely, but such was the fertility of Cyrene in North Africa that it could at the same time distribute grain from a massive surplus (probably at reduced prices rather than free; so Tod, GHI II, p. 276). The total listed here is 805,000 medimnoi (the equivalent of 1,207,500 Attic medimnoi, if the figure is given according to the Aeginetan standard, cf. Tod, loc.cit.), and it went to numerous places in Greece and the islands, as well as to two individuals: Alexander's mother Olympias (a total of 72,600 medimnoi) and his sister Cleopatra (50,000).

So Cyrene should be extremely fertile...

[Mulattothrasher]

Good point. North Africa/Egypt was the breadbasket of Rome throughout its life.

Do you have any ideas how the fertility of the area would translate into game mechanics or anything along those lines, cherry?

[rory o'kane]

lots of grain, BIG trade income from it.

[Mulattothrasher]

Some info on the Ptolemies. Will update...

(Whats the chance the Ptolemies could be renamed the Lagids? )



ALEXANDRIA

- City of Alexandria was renown as the biggest Hellenistic City in the Ancient world. Not only the Pharos (the popular lighthouse), but the museum and library were world famous. The Temple of Serapis was a huge place of worship. Alexander's body was last recorded as being taken from Memphis to Alexandria, where it was visited by many (Maybe the temple of Serapis and the tomb could be designed for the city as happiness bonus?)

- The only two cites that were made in the true Hellenistic style was Alexandria and Ptolemais Hermaiou (in upper Egypt), a center of Hellenism in the south and rival of Thebes while Alexandria was the bigger center in the north of Egypt. Before the end of the third century, it had just over 500,000 inhabitants.

- The Greeks and Macedonians had their own privileges and organizations called politeuma, and the sizable Jewish population had its own autonomous politeuma (I noticed that the Jewish spearmen units can be recruited in the BETA, by the Seleucids, and I assume the Ptolemies as well, so thats excellent to reflect this )



GOVERNEMENT/TRADE/WEALTH

- The government was described as a mix of monopolistic nationalization, bureaucratic centralism, and mercantilism. Everything the Ptolemies did was to enrich the royal coffers, squeezing every source of enrichment out of the people and land at the least expense. The natives were brought from the Bronze age quickly into the Iron age (iron farming tools and technology were unknown until the coming of the Ptolemies), taxes were very high, and the harvest and growing was on a strict timetable. (I read about their knack of tight fisted regulation and red tape in every Ptolemaic article/book I read. They would do well with a "Ptolemaic faction only" building that would increase money, but take away from happiness to reflect this. Perhaps it could be a low level building that progresses into a bigger one as the population in a city grows?).

- An document was found that says, "None has the right to do what he wants to do, but everything is regulated for the best!" The idea was that the land was the king's, and he had the right to do with it what he pleased. The monarchs did their best to exploit all possible resources for their own advantage.

- Complex universal demographics were worked on and surveyed, economic registers were very detailed to the point that the government knew what each person was doing, what they were worth at any given time. This caused the record keepers to become hopelessly swamped with paperwork of their own statistics.

- Wheat and barley was the empire main staple food resource. Barley was next in line. Rhodes and Delos were the main international distribution centers of the harvest. The Empire was the greatest grain nation the world had ever seen. The papyrus was regulated and exported in the same regulated fashion.

-The main foundations of trade with India was begun by the first four kings. The spice trade in Alexandria was so regulated and strict that workers were strip searched before they could leave home for the day.The imports entered the south of the empire along the coast of the Red Sea, and made its way northward to Alexandria and into the Mediterranean and beyond. (The BETA has the import building, it's symbol being that boat, so thats good unless anyone thinks it needs to be improved? A description can be added to it stating that its receiving goods from India and elsewhere too.)

- Citizens of the Empire paid heavily in taxes, it was unprecedented, so much so that its hard to equal in modern times, particularly the extortion that Ptolemy II Philadephus stole from the land. To prevent competition, they had their own coinage and value system (the light Phoenician standard) used in Cyrene

- Under the king himself, the man who ran the empire was the dioketes, or chancellor/financial minister. Under him were the oikonomoi, who had the thankless duties of extraction rents and taxes from the population and preventing natives from becoming so discouraged that they fled their settlements, which happened often. (To add flavor to the faction, is it possible to have the text, "dioketes," in place of the word "governor" for the leaders of the cities?)



RELIGION

- The Cults of Serapis and Isis were paramount. The king accepted separate religions, usually without attempting to change of modify it along Greek ways. The kings wanted to be seen as rulers as well as pharaohs. Ptolemy V Epiphanes was crowed at Memphis according the Egyptian tradition.

- During the Ptolemaic period, large temples were built at Denderah, Karnak, Edfu, and Kom Ombo to *native* deities.

- The cult of Serapis was the only non Hellenistic deity to be widely worshiped by the Hellenes. Serapis was associated with the underworld, but also healing. (If Serapis gets a building/temple, a health bonus could be used for the city/cities that it's constructed in).



LAND

- Choice pieces of land were given to the Hellenistic settlers. These allotment were called cleruchies. Large tracts of these settlement were concentrated in the Fayum region ( I was thinking that the Fayum region could feature a handful of those small nameless villages that are found all over the map to simulate the heavy cleruch/katoikoi settlements found there. The Fayum is around that lake south of Alexandria and west of Memphis. Most of the settlements/villages would be to the left of the lake from the maps I've seen).

- The Empire was divided up into 40 nomes, ruled by a nomarch. Nomes were divide into topoi (areas) ran by the toparchs, and these were divided further into komai (villages) ran by he komarchs.



MILITARY

- Troops were under the strategoi. With the passing of time, more power fell to these strategoi, especially during the second century, when their other duties became so great that their military functions were taken over by separate officials, with authority over several nomes, called epistrategoi (Again, maybe this Greek term could replace the governors and others in a Ptolemaic city?).

- The traditional name for the military settlers in the Fayum before Raphia were the cleruchs. After 217 B.C., the term katoikoi was used as well.

- After Rahpia, the 20,000 native in the army became increasingly hard to handle, due to their victory, ans this nationalistic feeling spread. From this point onward (RS'2 timeframe) revolts were a thorn in the side of the empire. In Upper Egypt, lasting from, 207-186 B.C., that area broke away under Nubian pharaohs. To counter this, the temples, ran by rich and powerful native priests, gained more power through royal concessions. One concession was to grant land to natives, called machmoi.

- Polybius gives us to understand that the Ptolemaic army was reorganized from top to bottom. The old cadres were broken up, and the men redistributed, according as they were specially adapted by their race or their age to the use of some particular arm — the sarissa of the phalangite, the light shield of the peltast, the bow, the javelin, the sling.

The emergency led to one momentous innovation. The court decided to form a phalanx of natives, beside the ordinary phalanx of Greek and Macedonian soldiers; 20,000 strong-bodied and docile, if unwarlike, fellahîn were armed like Macedonians, taught to wield the long Macedonian pike (the sarissa), and move in a solid mass, as Macedonians did, at the words of command. Some hundreds of native Egyptians were also enrolled in the cavalry and trained by Polycrates of Argos, whose family had been honorable in the great days of Greek freedom. Beside the natives of Egypt, some thousands of Libyans, the fair-skinned natives of the Cyrenaica, were enrolled in the new army — some of them in the cavalry under Polycrates, 3000 of them armed like Macedonians under a commander, who belonged himself to the Cyrenaica, a Greek, no doubt, Ammonius of Barca.



Celts in Egypt
Amongst those called up from the soldier-colonists in Egypt, in the Fayûm and elsewhere, were 4000 Gauls and Thracians; and another 2000 arrived by ship from Thrace under a Thracian captain, Dionysius. But the bulk of the army remained Greek and Macedonian. The phalanx of Macedonians and Greeks, commanded by Andromachus of Aspendus, numbered 25,000, as against the native phalanx of 20,000; there were, besides, all the Greek light-armed troops and the Greek and Macedonian cavalry.

- Settled in the Fayum region as katoikoi and cleruchs/kleruchs. During Ptolemy IV, the "Gauls and Thracians" were raised to Egypt's defense at the victory of Raphia, where Polybius mentions descendants of these original settlers, called Epigovoi, 4,000 Epigovoi fighting at Raphia with their fathers and kinsmen alongside the other 10,000 Celts from Thrace present at the battle. (Epigovoi would be an excellent addition to the Ptolemaic roster. They were a mix of Celts and Egyptians, similar to the Gallogracians of Asia Minor).

- There evidence where these Epigovoi were living. According to M. Launey, in his book Rechers sur les armess hellenistiques (2 vols, 1949 and 1950) the was an entire colony of Celts living in and or near Alexandria. Some of their graves have been found in the cemetery of Hadra southeast of Alexandria. Pottery inscribed with Celtic names has been found such as a vase with the name "Dadorgion." Several of the males buried in the cemetary have Greek names. Celtic names are still prevalent, such as Adiatorix, Epossognatus, and Toredorix, while the women nearly all had Celtic names,such as Boudoris (an eastern Celtic version of the name Boudicca?) This could mean the random Hellenisitic name adoption was practices on the whole by only the men.

- A revolt in Upper Egypt was put down by Gauls with "red and blond hair" who were settled in the Fayum.

- (Maybe the Celts in Egypt could have some kind of tan lines, considering they did not walk around naked all day).




A shield and figurine found in Egypt. The shield was make of a type of ancient plywood, and its bands/strips of wood were glued together, but combat worthy. The dry climate of Eqypt preserved it.

[tone]

Interesting article about elephants at the Battle of Raphia 217BC.
It seems the majority of Ptolemies elephants were forest elephants (non-turreted) like those of Carthage (we need to change these), but they had a small supply of Indian elephants....
http://journals.cambridge.org/downlo...67dab8427fc72d

We could do something like this for the Ptolemies - a small stock of Indian elephants available at the start of the game, but they only can be recruited in the Eastern part of the Seleucid empire?