Photo: Werner Forman (Getty Images)


Wiki WormholeWe explore some of Wikipedia's oddities in our 5,664,405-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This week's entry: List of pharaohs, Ptolemaic Dynasty

What it's about: An unbroken line of Egyptian pharaohs stretches from the mists of time (the earliest kings are believed to have ruled around 3100 B.C.) until Cleopatra's death in 30 BC. The Egyptian kingdom stood for so long that Cleopatra is closer in time to Star Trek: The Next Generation's 24th-century setting than to the construction of the Pyramids of Giza. As a result, the list of Egyptian kings is so long that it makes for the rare Wikipedia page that we can't cover in one entry. So this week, we focus on the tail end of that line, the Ptolemaic Dynasty, so named for Ptolemy, the Greek general who took over Egypt after Alexander The Great's empire collapsed.\

Biggest controversy: Just your garden-variety incest and murder (more on that later). In fact, Ptolemy I might be the least controversial pharaoh of the bunch, as he left his second wife for her cousin, but at least neither of them were related to him. He was a childhood friend (and possibly half-brother) to Alexander The Great and one of his most trusted generals. When Alexander's empire broke apart after his death, Ptolemy moved swiftly to take over Egypt and defend it from Alexander's other would-be successors. He succeeded, and his heirs ruled Egypt until it was absorbed into the Roman Empire 275 years later.