pig played no part in the food offerings made to Egyptian gods. It was into the
Thesmophorion that Oenanthe, the mother of Ptolemy IV’s favorite Agathocles, fled
to escape violence in the troubles that followed the king’s death. This did not stop her
being lynched by the mob along with the rest of her family (Polybius 15.27, 29, 33).
It has been supposed that the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore could have been
celebrated at Alexandria, because one of Alexandria’s quarters was called Eleusis,
and because the Eumolpid Timotheus took the role of religious advisor to Ptolemy
I. This cannot be proven, but the Eleusinian legend was clearly widespread in Egypt
in the hellenistic period. Frescoes recently discovered in the Kom esh-Shugafa ‘‘cata-
comb’’ show, in two parallel registers, (1) the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys
lamenting for the dead Osiris and (2) the rape of Persephone by Hades: two images
of death and rebirth that clearly exhibit the coexistence (and not the fusion) of the
cultures (Empereur 1998). The ‘‘Tazza Farnese,’’ a most beautiful cameo made in
Alexandria towards the end of the second century, or perhaps at the very start of
the first century BC, represents the king in the guise of Triptolemus, resting on the
handle of a plow and accompanied by a Demeter-Isis who is queen both of the Nile
and of the seasons, figures symbolic of the fertility of the ground and the abundance
of crops. Imperial coins from Alexandria often portray Triptolemus in his chariot, snakes
in harness, an image well known from Greek vase painting. But it is clear that, despite
Diodorus’ claims (1.29), the Mysteries of Demeter did not originate in Egypt.
Dionysus
More important still was the place reserved for Dionysus. From the beginnings of
the Ptolemaic dynasty there was a direct relationship between the god and the king.
The Adoulis inscription from the reign of Ptolemy III claims Dionysus, alongside
Heracles, as an ancestor of the Lagid family (OGIS54). The Lagid kings, down to
Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos (r. 80–51 BC), had themselves portrayed by turns with
the attributes of the god and consciously sought his patronage, not least because
Alexander himself had chosen him as a model.
Ptolemy IV seems to have had a particularly strong relationship with Dionysus. He
founded a festival in his honor in which he participated himself, sporting an ivy-leaf
tattoo and carrying a tympanum (Plutarch,Cleomenes33–6). He also founded a
society of drinkers,sympotai, who probably made up a Dionysiac thiasos (Athenaeus
276a–c). Further, aprostagmadating from Ptolemy IV’s reign requires all those
celebrating Dionysiac rites to come and register themselves in Alexandria, where
their sacred books (hieros logos) are to be examined (BGU1211). This measure
perhaps expresses the desire of the throne to control the doctrine and particularly
the rituals it favored, because had a significant potential to be subversive. The ideal of
tryphe ̄embodied by Dionysus seems, furthermore, to have constituted one of
the central themes of Lagid ideology and propaganda:tryphe ̄in its positive aspect
is abundance, the prosperity that the Lagid king is supposed to dispense to his
subjects, the symbol of which is the cornucopia, the favorite attribute of the queens
(Heinen 1978).
Callixenus’ description of the Dionysiac procession organized in the Alexandrian
stadium in the context of the Ptolemaia of 274 or 270 BC illustrates the prevalence of
256 Franc ̧oise Dunand