Ptolemy hijacked Alexander the Great's funeral procession to claim Egypt
In Macedonian custom, burying the previous king strengthened a claim to the throne. So when Alexander the Great's body was passing through Syria toward Macedon, around 322 or 321 BC, his old general Ptolemy seized it and carried it to Egypt. The corpse was laid at Memphis and later moved to a new tomb in Alexandria.
Ptolemy was a Macedonian Greek born around 369 BC, son of Arsinoe and a nobleman named Lagus. Some ancient writers said he was secretly a son of Philip II, making him Alexander's half-brother, but that is regarded as a later myth invented to glorify his dynasty. He did serve as one of Alexander's seven bodyguards, fought at the Battle of Issus, joined the journey to the oracle at Siwa and took part in the campaigns in Afghanistan and India.
After Alexander died in 323 BC, the empire was carved up at Babylon and Ptolemy became governor of Egypt. Taking the body alarmed Perdiccas, the imperial regent, who invaded Egypt in 321 BC. The attempt to cross the Nile was a fiasco costing some 2,000 men, and Perdiccas was killed by his own officers. Ptolemy promptly crossed over to supply the army that had just been fighting him, and when offered the regency himself, he turned it down.
That restraint defined him. Through decades of war among Alexander's successors, he put holding Egypt first and outlying territories second, repeatedly occupying and abandoning Syria as the fighting shifted. He won and lost Cyprus, took Cyrenaica and placed it under his stepson Magas, and after other generals declared themselves kings, he did the same. When he helped lift a siege of Rhodes, grateful Rhodians granted him divine honours. His claim to southern Syria sparked a century of recurring war with the rival Seleucid dynasty.
Ptolemy also wrote history and invested in culture, ordering the construction of the Library of Alexandria and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, later counted among the ancient world's Seven Wonders. Remembered as Soter, the Saviour, he died in 282 BC, succeeded by Ptolemy II, his son with his last wife Berenice I. His descendants ruled Egypt until 30 BC, turning Alexandria into a leading centre of Greek culture.
Source: Ptolemy I Soter
