The Ptolemies [Hardcover]

Duncan Sprott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2004

A wildly imaginative yet historically accurate, intensely dramatic yet often hilarious, re-creation of the early years of the House of Ptolemy (323—30 B.C.)–the forgotten ten-generation dynasty of Greek Pharaohs of Egypt.

And what a dynasty . . .

The Ptolemies is a story so layered, so dark and glittering and disastrous, that perhaps only Thoth the Ibis–the irreverent, riotously pompous narrator who is also the god of Wisdom and Patron of Scribes–could do it justice.

It begins with Ptolemy Soter, the Macedonian general who, after the death of Alexander the Great, takes all Egypt for himself–and hijacks Alexander’s body to serve as his lucky mascot. Of humble origin, Ptolemy now becomes Satrap of Egypt, and he is soon to be Pharaoh, a god in his own lifetime. We follow this rise to divinity as it takes him from Memphis to Alexandria, and through a string of wives and concubines, bad-seed sons and tragic daughters, conniving High Priests and oracle-giving sacred bulls. And around him: a constantly shifting cast of Greeks and Egyptians–high and low, powerful and weak, honorable and evil–whose lives unfurl against a dense and vividly drawn backdrop of increasingly bizarre dynastic drama and turmoil.

The triumph of The Ptolemies is its often unexpected but always masterly combination of narrative sweep and riveting historical detail, of fact and invention, of gravity and humor. It will take you by surprise at every turn.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sprott chronicles the calamitous, ill-fated reign of the first Greek pharaoh of Egypt in his fascinating but overstuffed third novel, a historical reconstruction that traces the rise and fall of Ptolemy, the alleged son of King Philip of Macedonia. The initial chapters chart Ptolemy's ascension from soldier to leader in Egypt, where he becomes a satrap, keeping the body of the late Alexander the Great around as a good luck charm. After consolidating his power, Ptolemy agonizes over the decision to declare himself pharaoh while facing military challenges from a parade of enemies; he also must overcome emotional fallout from his exhausting relationship with his two wives, Berenike and Eurydice. Sprott's sardonic style serves him particularly well in the over-the-top battle for succession that develops during Ptolemy's decline, with the tone of the clash determined by the incest between his daughter, Arsinoë Beta, and his violent, unpredictable son Keraunos. Sprott's scholarship and his command of the material is formidable and impressive, and structurally the novel hangs together despite the author's insistence on documenting much of the historical minutiae of Ptolemy's reign. But readability suffers: Sprott writes largely in summary with almost no dialogue, and the combination of too many secondary characters and subplots and Sprott's insistence on revisiting over previously covered material turns an entertaining story into a long, monotonous trudge. With a narrowed focus this might have been an impressive novel, and amateur scholars will find the book a worthwhile addition to the body of work on this underexplored period. But mainstream readers face a difficult, tedious read, and many will find themselves hard-pressed to stay the course. 12 maps.
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From Booklist

The Ptolemy dynasty, founded by Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy Soter, ruled Egypt after the dissolution of Alexander's vast but unstable empire. The 300-year tale of this Greek line of pharaohs "drips with blood from end to end." It is a larger-than-life yarn of family dysfunction, disorder, and dissipation as each generation of the Ptolemy family succeeded to the throne, which they seated in Alexandria, the city the great Macedonian king and conqueror founded. Of course, the Ptolemy family history includes the reign of the famous Cleopatra, who is not alone among her kin in her drive and chicanery. The novel's conceit is quite imaginative and effective: that "this book you are holding in your hands" is an account written by Thoth, the Egyptian god who serves as scribe to the other gods and chief chronicler of Egypt's history. Consequently, the prose style is rather grand and formal, but an accurate sense of the violence of daily life--on domestic and military levels--is masterfully presented. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st ed edition (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041546
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041541
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,803,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars same novel...different title, September 12, 2006

By 

adorian - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ptolemies (Hardcover)

Someone needs to point out that "The Ptolemies" and "The House of the Eagle" are the exact same novel. Amazon should not be offering them together as two-novel deal. I would be reluctant now to order "Daughter of the Crocodile" since it might be the same novel again under a third title.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Too much niceness is the best way to destruction.", July 9, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ptolemies (Hardcover)

Narrated by Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and magic, who was also the scribe of the gods, the almost-forgotten story of the Greeks' rule of Egypt unfolds. Ptolemy Soter, the first Greek Pharoah, is thought to have been the "unnatural" son of Philip of Macedon, and, therefore, the half-brother of Alexander the Great. When Alexander dies in 323 B.C., after he has conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean in battle, his empire is divided among his many generals, who spend the next fifty years fighting each other. Ptolemy Soter, who was always at Alexander's side, becomes Satrap of Egypt, Libya, and part of Arabia, and he and his heirs retain that territory, ruling as the Greek Pharaohs of Egypt, for almost three hundred years.

Battles with other satraps--in Syria, Gaza, Cypris, and Phrygia--occupy much of Ptolemy's life, his maneuvering for power sometimes facilitated through the marriages he arranges for his daughters--to the King of Thrace, the King of Macedon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, and the ruler of Syria. His own succession, however, is uncertain, since neither of his sons, Ptolemy Keraunos and Ptolemy Mikros, possesses the qualities of kingship that he himself espouses. His sons, daughters, and his wives, all of whom become well known to the reader, have a penchant for assassination, and the bloody violence which occurs in the wake of Ptolemy's own death, after forty years in power, is not surprising.

Author Duncan Sprott focuses on the political, social, and religious life of Alexandria and Memphis during Ptolemy's rule, using the sometimes mischievous voice of Thoth to tell informal tales about his characters, filling them with gossip, sex, and violence, and presenting a vivid picture of everyday life in the highest levels of power. When he thinks that details may overwhelm the reader, Thoth, the narrator, berates and cajoles, while controlling the pace and continuing the historical background--"Pay attention, Pupil-of-Thoth. The god would have you know everything," he says at one point.

With maps, a chronology, a list of main characters, genealogies, and even a comprehensive glossary, Sprott and his editors have provided everything a student of the period needs to keep track of the characters and their fates. Readable, often exciting, but filled with more characters and detail than some readers may want, this novel should keep those with an interest in post-Alexandrian history pleasantly occupied for hours. Mary Whipple

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes fascinating, sometimes slow, always the glass is half empty, September 15, 2005

By 

Ramesh Gopal (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ptolemies (Hardcover)

The Ptolemies is a novel chronicling the lives of the first two rulers of this dynasty. It contains a wealth of detail that is sometimes fascinating and sometimes distracting. The two most famous Ptolemies are the first (Ptolemy I) and the last (Cleopatra VII; THE Cleopatra). Therefore, the dynasty is circumscribed and defined by the history of Alexander at the beginning and Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony at the end. This book does not deal with the later Ptolemies (although a sequel apparently will), but since Ptolemy I rose to prominence as a comrade in arms of Alexander the Great, a familiarity with Alexander is ESSENTIAL. The recently dead Alexander is a brooding presence hanging over the whole story and the book is neither adequate nor optimal source material regarding him. Readers with a serious interest should read either Steven Pressfield's short and fast-paced novel Virtues of War (not one of his best), the longer 3 book cycle Alexander by Valerio Massimo Manfredi or the scholarly biography by Robin Lane Fox (all available at Amazon.com). All of them are good and will provide the sense of perspective required to appreciate this book. Without Alexander, the name of Ptolemy would be obscure.

The story is told through the eyes of the Egyption god Toth, and here lies the major problem with the book. The god is cynical and contemptuous of the characters in his own novel. This is a problem. Modern readers are not accustomed to cynicism and contempt from a deity, perhaps because ours are universal and should see all men as equal. Toth, though, being a parochial Egyption deity has a very poor view of non-Egyptians - and almost all the characters are non-Egyptians, since the Ptolemies were Macedonians. The repeated denigration of everyone and everything is particularly pronounced in the first hundred pages or so, but after this begins to abate somewhat. Around this time too the reader begins to realize that Toth, god or not, is just about as ignorant and short sighted as the characters he despises, irrespective of his claims to the contrary. Another problem is the deliberately stilted archaic style. I am familiar with this device as used for Arthurian legend, but here the style is quite unique and whether this is how translated Egyptian would read I do not know. In any case, this stylistic choice together with the god's use of four letter words (!) is distracting.

Once you get past these artistic choices, the book is interesting because Egypt under the Ptolemies is far less familiar territory than say ancient Greece, Rome or Egypt before the Greeks. As such, the book fills an important gap in the popular historic literature. Many readers will particularly enjoy learning about the details of daily living in Egypt in the 4th century BC. At times the pace is too slow and Ptolemy's thoughts are repeated over and over again. This is too bad, because reconstruction of the thoughts of historical figures is generally the most questionable part of historical fiction, and here there is too much of it. To me the most fascinating part was the latter half of the book in which the focus shifts to the offspring of the first Ptolemy.

Great books involve their readers because they are written with a love of the period and its people (see Elizabeth Kostova's bestseller The Historian, for example). In The Ptolemies there is not much love to go around. From beginning to end we are told that the story is one of misfortune, blood and death. Really, the story is no different than that of any other dynasty of ancient or more recent times, with neither more nor fewer assassinations, deaths and intrigues. Yet the Ptolemies had their glories too, so the preference for calling the glass half empty is unnecessary, because it could just as well be half full. I think the material is fascinating, I just wish the tone could have been different.