The Regnal Years of Ptolemy II Philadelphos

Abstract

SOMETIME DURING the spring of 1902, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt obtained a large and important group of papyri dating from the third century B.c. from the Ptolemaic necropolis of El-Hibeh (Grenfell and Hunt v). Those papyri included letters, receipts, and accounts dated by a series of Egyptian or Macedonian months and regnal years, so that the editors attempted the task, apparently mechanical, of placing the documents in chronological order (Grenfell and Hunt 332-367). In fact, neither Grenfell and Hunt nor any other scholars have completely sorted out the chronological problems raised by these documents in the last eighty-five years of study. We now know that Ptolemy II first reckoned his reign from Soter's death in 282 B.c. and that he later renumbered his regnal years from some point in 285, when, he alleged, he got the reins of power from his parent. This essay will review the divers kinds of evidence for regnal years and submit two dates for Ptolemy II's reform: 282 for the Macedonian calendar and 267 for the Egyptian calendar.