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Ptolemy V in hieroglyphs: the boy king of the Rosetta Stone

25 October 2026

Ptolemy V's name is spelled ptwlmys, Ptolemaios, with eight signs in a cartouche: a stool, a loaf, a lasso, a lion, a sign read m, two reed leaves and a folded cloth. On the Rosetta Stone the longer form adds ꜥnḫ ḏt mry ptḥ, "living forever, beloved of Ptah".

He became king at about five, in 204 BC, after his parents died in a palace plot. The Rosetta Stone is a copy of the decree the priests passed the day after his crowning at Memphis, in March 196 BC, when he was about fourteen.

Eight signs spell Ptolemaios

The stool (Q3) is p and the loaf (X1) is t. The lasso (V4), read wꜣ, stands in for the o. The lying lion (E23) writes l, a sound Egyptian did not have. A sign of uncertain origin (Aa15), read jm or m, gives the m. The two reed leaves (M17) give the ai of Ptolemaios, and the folded cloth (S29) ends the name with s.

Every male king of the family bore the name, so the cartouche alone does not tell you which Ptolemy you are reading. The epithets after it, and the throne name in the second cartouche, do.

Stool Bread loaf Lasso Recumbent lion Uncertain object Flowering reed Folded cloth

Write Ptolemy in a cartouche

Ptah gave the boy king his throne name

His throne name is long, as Ptolemaic throne names are: "heir of the two father-loving gods, chosen of Ptah, strong is the ka of Ra, living image of Amun". It names his parents, Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III, worshipped as the Father-loving Gods, then adds Egypt's three great gods.

Ptah of Memphis comes first. Memphis, not Alexandria, was where Egyptian kings were crowned, and its high priests crowned Ptolemy V. The Greek title Epiphanes, "god made manifest", was added after the crowning.

Adze Raised arms Ankh

Regents ruled while the king grew up

Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III died in 204 BC, in circumstances kept hidden for months. The courtiers Sosibius and Agathocles ruled for the child. In 203 or 202 BC a crowd in Alexandria rose against Agathocles and killed him. Other regents followed.

Abroad, Antiochus III of the Seleucid empire took Egypt's lands in the Levant. At home, Upper Egypt rose in revolt under two native rulers, Horwennefer and then Ankhwennefer, and Thebes was lost to Alexandria for nearly twenty years. In 197 BC the young king was declared of age.

The Memphis decree praised him in three scripts

The priests met at Memphis for the crowning on 26 March 196 BC. The next day they passed a decree thanking the king for gifts to the temples, tax remissions and his capture of the rebel town of Lycopolis in the Delta. Copies were to be set up in temples, in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek.

One copy, broken, was found at Rashid in 1799 and became the Rosetta Stone. The hieroglyphic part has lost most of its lines, but the cartouches of Ptolemy survive. Comparing them with the Greek name Ptolemaios gave Thomas Young and then Champollion their first sound values.

Cartouche Hoe

Read the Rosetta Stone

Philae shows him beside Cleopatra I

In 194 or 193 BC Ptolemy V married Cleopatra I, daughter of Antiochus III, as part of a peace. She was the first Cleopatra of Egypt. On the temple of Isis at Philae, near Aswan, reliefs show the king with her, both named in cartouches. Thebes was retaken in 186 BC, and the last rebel leader was captured.

Ptolemy V died suddenly in 180 BC, not yet thirty. Ancient writers say courtiers poisoned him, fearing the cost of a war he planned against the Seleucids. Cleopatra I ruled for their young son, Ptolemy VI.

Read Philae

Questions

Which Ptolemy is on the Rosetta Stone?

Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The decree was passed by priests at Memphis in 196 BC, the day after his crowning.

How old was Ptolemy V when he became king?

About five. He was born in 210 BC and became king in 204 BC, after the deaths of his parents.

What does Epiphanes mean?

"Manifest" or "god made manifest", in Greek. His full Greek title was Epiphanes Eucharistos, "manifest and gracious".

Where can I see Ptolemy V's cartouche?

On the Rosetta Stone in Room 4 of the British Museum, and on the temple of Isis at Philae, where he appears with Cleopatra I. Other copies of his decrees, in Cairo and elsewhere, carry the same cartouche with "living forever, beloved of Ptah".

Glossary

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.
demotic: A fast joined-up script that grew out of hieratic around 650 BC, used for everyday documents. It is the middle script on the Rosetta Stone.
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.
hieroglyphs: The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
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.
regent: Someone who rules for a king who is too young. Hatshepsut ruled so for the boy Thutmose III before she was crowned king herself.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
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.
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.
Upper Egypt: The south of Egypt, the narrow Nile valley from around Memphis to Aswan. It is called upper because it is upstream.