Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2025
The Ptolemaic basilissa’s body was a significant subject in royal art, appearing across various kinds of visual and material culture. In this chapter, I explore the different ways that Ptolemaic royal women “wore” the female body in their representations. By attending to how the royal female body was conceptualized, visualized, and materialized, I examine the importance of corporeality to Ptolemaic queenship. By the first quarter of the third century, figural representations of Ptolemaic royal women were proliferated via objects that circulated across the waterscapes and landscapes of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean and were carved onto surfaces of colossal architecture for various viewing communities. One of the most striking aspects of the material record for the Ptolemaic dynasty is the relatively large number of extant figural representations of royal women – consisting of temple reliefs, statues in the round, mosaics, glyptic arts, and other luxury portable objects – compared to that of other Hellenistic dynasties.
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