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The Ptolemies: Greek kings with Egyptian names

14 October 2026

The Ptolemies were a Macedonian Greek family who ruled Egypt from Alexandria for nearly three centuries, from 305 BC to the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. They spoke Greek at court. On temple walls they appear as pharaohs, each with two cartouches: a throne name made of Egyptian words, and a Greek birth name spelled out sign by sign for its sounds.

A Ptolemaic cartouche is easy to recognise. If you see a lion lying down inside a royal ring, you are almost certainly looking at a Greek or Roman name: the lion stood for l, a sound Egyptian writing had no letter of its own for.

Scribes spelled Greek names sound by sound

Egyptian scribes had always used one-consonant signs to spell foreign words. Persian kings had already had their names spelled this way, and the Greek rulers got the same treatment. Alexander the Great took Egypt from the Persians in 332 BC. His birth name, ꜣlksindrs, is written with nine signs:

Greek vowels were a problem for a script that wrote consonants. Scribes borrowed weak consonants for them: the vulture for the A, the reed for the i. The reading comes out close to Alexandros, and a carver needed to know only the sounds.

Egyptian vulture: ꜣ, standing for the opening A
recumbent lion: l
basket with handle: k
door bolt: s, so k + s gives the x
flowering reed: i, for the vowel
ripple of water: n
hand: d
mouth: r
a second door bolt: the final s of Alexandros

Egyptian vulture Recumbent lion Basket with handle Door bolt Flowering reed Ripple of water Hand Mouth

Throne names stayed Egyptian

The throne name sat in the first cartouche, and it had to sound like a pharaoh's. Ptolemy I, a general of Alexander, ruled Egypt as governor from 323 BC and took the title of king in 305 BC. His throne name was stp-n-Rꜥ mrj-Jmn, said Setepenre Meryamun: "chosen of Ra, beloved of Amun". The standard king lists give Alexander the same name.

The sun disc writes Ra and comes first out of respect, though it is read after the adze (stp, "chosen") and the ripple of water (n, "of"). Then the hoe (mr, "love") and the reed, game board and water ripple (Jmn, Amun). Every sign here had been used in royal names for well over a thousand years. Thutmose III's cartouches at Karnak use the same sun and game board.

Later throne names grew long. Ptolemy V's begins "heir of the two gods who love their father": his parents, Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III, worshipped as the father-loving gods. It goes on to call him chosen of Ptah, strong in the ka of Ra and the living image of Amun.

Sun Adze Hoe Game board

The Rosetta Stone names Ptolemy V

The Rosetta Stone is a copy of a decree passed by priests at Memphis, dated 27 March 196 BC. The teenage Ptolemy V had been crowned in that city. His birth name fills its cartouches: ptwlmys, Ptolemaios, written with the stool (p), the bread loaf (t), the lasso (wꜣ, for the o), the lion (l), the sign read m, two reeds (the ai) and the folded cloth (s).

Some cartouches on the stone are longer. After the name comes ꜥnḫ ḏt mrj Ptḥ, "living forever, beloved of Ptah". The ankh writes ꜥnḫ, "living". The cobra and bread loaf over a strip of land write ḏt, "forever". The stool, the bread loaf and the twisted wick spell Ptah, the god of Memphis, and the hoe writes mrj, "beloved".

Thomas Young first matched the short ring to the name Ptolemaios in the Greek text below.

Stool Bread loaf Lasso Uncertain object Folded cloth Ankh Cobra Strip of land Twisted flax wick

How the Rosetta Stone cracked hieroglyphs

Every king of the family was called Ptolemy

Every male ruler of the family was called Ptolemy, and many queens were called Cleopatra, Berenice or Arsinoe. The Greek numbers are modern. On a wall, what tells one Ptolemy from another is the throne name and the epithets added to the birth name, such as Ptolemy V's "beloved of Ptah".

Spellings also vary. Cleopatra VII's name appears with a quail chick for the o and also with a lasso, the form Champollion read in 1822 on an obelisk from Philae, in the cartouche of an earlier Cleopatra.

The script itself changed. Priests of this period used several thousand signs, against several hundred in classic Middle Egyptian texts, with new sound values and puns. Edfu and Dendera can baffle readers trained on New Kingdom walls, though their cartouches stay easy to read.

Sandy hill Quail chick Egg

The Ptolemies signed their temples with cartouches

The Ptolemies paid for some of the best-preserved temples in Egypt and signed them with their cartouches. Edfu was begun under Ptolemy III in 237 BC and finished under Ptolemy XII in 57 BC. At Dendera, Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion stand on the outer back wall of the temple of Hathor. At Kom Ombo and Philae, Ptolemaic cartouches share the walls with those of Roman emperors, who were also written as pharaohs.

Look for the lion and the stool: Ptolemy's cartouche nearly always opens with p and has the lion inside. Then try writing a Ptolemaic name yourself, letter by letter, the way the scribes did.

Cartouche

Write Ptolemy's cartouche

Questions

How do you write Cleopatra in hieroglyphs?

Sound by sound: sandy hill (q), lion (l), reed (i), quail chick (w), stool (p), vulture (ꜣ), hand (d), mouth (r), vulture, bread loaf (t), and an egg that marks a woman's name. Her cartouche is read sign by sign, with its second spelling, in Cleopatra in hieroglyphs.

Were the Ptolemies Egyptian?

No. They descended from Ptolemy I, a Macedonian, and mostly married within the family. Cleopatra VII is the only one known to have learned the Egyptian language.

How many Ptolemies were there?

Modern books count fifteen kings named Ptolemy, the last being Caesarion, Cleopatra VII's son, as Ptolemy XV. The numbering is modern and differs a little between books, since some rulers' places in the line are debated.

Why is there a lion in Ptolemy's name?

Egyptian had no separate letter for l. The lion, which normally reads rw, was used for the l of Greek and Roman names such as Ptolemaios, Kleopatra and Alexandros.

Glossary

ankh: The sign of life, ꜥnḫ, a cross with a loop on top. Gods hold it out to kings in temple scenes.
birth name: The name a king was given at birth, written in the second cartouche after the title "son of Ra". Egyptologists also call it the nomen.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
epithet: A title or phrase added to a name, such as "beloved of Amun" after a king's name or "true of voice" after the name of someone who has died.
New Kingdom: Egypt's age of empire, about 1550 to 1069 BC, the time of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.
obelisk: A tall, four-sided stone pillar with a pointed top, usually set up in pairs before a temple and carved with the king's names.
pharaoh: The king of Egypt. The word comes from per-aa, "great house", a name for the palace that came to mean the king himself in the New Kingdom.
priest: A servant of a god in a temple, who washed, dressed and fed the god's statue each day. A high priest led the staff of a great temple.
Rosetta Stone: A stone slab of 196 BC carrying one decree in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek. It helped Jean-François Champollion decipher hieroglyphs in 1822.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.