Berenice III
queen of Egypt
120 BCE to 80 BCE
Berenice III (120–80 BCE), sometimes called Cleopatra Berenice, rules as queen of Egypt from 81 to 80 BCE, and possibly from 101 to 88 BCE jointly with her uncle/husband Ptolemy X Alexander I.
She was born in 120 BCE, the daughter of Ptolemy IX Lathyros and Cleopatra Selene I.
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Ptolemy IX Soter II remains entrenched in Cyprus.
Ptolemy X Alexander orders the death of his mother, Cleopatra III, in 101 BCE, and from this point rules either alone or with his niece/wife, Berenice III, the daughter of his brother Soter and either Cleopatra Selene or Cleopatra IV, who he marries following his murder of her grandmother.
The death of Cleopatra III effectively ends the protracted civil war in Syria.
Ptolemy X Alexander, the Macedonian ruler of Hellenistic Egypt’, is expelled in 89 by an insurrection of the people of Alexandria, supported by the army, who believe that he had assassinated the dowager queen Cleopatra III a dozen years earlier.
Ptolemy X Alexander, after gathering a mercenary force in Syria-Palestine, returns in 88, but when he plunders the temple-tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria to pay his troops, the infuriated populace of the city expels him again.
Fleeing with his queen Berenice to Lycia in Asia Minor, he is killed at sea between Lycia and Cyprus.
Ptolemy IX Lathyros returns from Cyprus to reclaim the throne.
Lacking a queen, he brings back his brother's widow Berenice, who is also his own daughter, and associates her on the throne with himself, though he soon becomes sole ruler.
Ptolemy IX replaces the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great with a glass one, and melts the original down in order to strike emergency gold issues of his coinage.
The citizens of Alexandria are outraged at this and soon after, Ptolemy IX is killed.
His strong-willed daughter and widow Berenice III, as his sole successor, takes the throne after his death.
Berenice III reigns over Egypt for about a year.
Ptolemy XI Alexander, who had been carried off to Rome, had been befriended by Sulla; he is now sent to Egypt to be married to his Berenice, who is his stepmother.
Neither the queen nor the people of Alexandria, who greatly admire her, have been consulted about the matter.
When Ptolemy realizes, after about nineteen days of joint rule, that Berenice is loath to surrender her accustomed authority, he unwisely arranges for the murder of the popular queen, for which the enraged Alexandrians kill him in revenge, thus eliminating the last fully legitimate member of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
As Ptolemy XI has died without a male heir, the only available male descendants of the Ptolemy I lineage are the illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX by an unknown Greek concubine.
The boys had been living in exile in Sinope, at the court of Mithridates VI, King of Pontus.
As the eldest of the boys, Ptolemy XII is proclaimed king as Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos and marries his sister, Tryphaena.
However, Ptolemy XI had left the throne to Rome in his will, therefore Ptolemy XII is not the legitimate successor.
Nevertheless, Rome does not challenge the succession of Ptolemy XII because the Senate is unwilling to acquire an Egyptian expansion.
His precarious kingship depends heavily on Roman support.