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By 256 the reclaimed land of the Faiyum had been renamed the Arsinoite nome, and Arsinoë, assisted by the crocodile god Souchos, had become its patron deity. An early death, in c . 270, had merely enhanced Arsinoë’s status. She was posthumously deified as an individual in her own right, with her personal cult based at Alexandria, where she was served by a priestess known as the basket-bearer ( kanephoros ). As temples were raised with shrines to both the deified Arsinoë and Arsinoë as half of the Theoi Adelphoi, the canny Ptolemy taxed Egypt’s vineyards to pay for his sister’s new cult. Arsinoë was now one of the Sunnaoi Theoi (‘Temple-Sharing Gods’), and her statue was officially placed beside that of the main deity in all of Egypt’s Greek and Egyptian temples. The Mendes Stela, recovered near Cairo in 1871, shows a scene of Ptolemy II, accompanied by his second wife and son, offering to a ram, to the gods of Mendes and to the deified Arsinoë. The text beneath details the dead queen’s metamorphosis into a goddess:
    His Majesty [Ptolemy II] decreed that her image be erected in all the temples. This pleased the priests, for they were aware of her noble attitude towards the gods, and of her excellent deeds to the benefit of all the people … Her name was proclaimed as the beloved of the Ram, the goddess Philadelphos, Arsinoë. 16
    Arsinoë’s association with sacred rams (an association with the godAmen and the divine Alexander the Great rather than a specific ram cult) is confirmed by coins which show her with a ram’s horn discreetly curling around her ear. Our best preserved images of the deified queen come from the Philae temple. Here just one scene, in Room V, shows Arsinoë standing alone to receive an offering from her husband. In other scenes she appears as the companion of Isis. Arsinoë wears a sheath dress, a full wig, a vulture headdress and her own red crown. She carries a sceptre and the ankh sign of life. She is entirely Egyptian in appearance and virtually identical to Isis. Two and a half centuries after Arsinoë’s death, Cleopatra VII would occasionally don Arsinoë’s personal crown and display the double cornucopia, the Greek horn of plenty, on the reverse of her coins and on at least one of her (assumed) statues. As the double cornucopia was already strongly identified with Arsinoë II, being found on her coins, statues and vase images, Cleopatra’s choice of symbols suggests that she was deliberately identifying herself not only with Isis, but also with the politically powerful and still-popular Arsinoë II, who was herself identified with Isis.
    Arsinoë II clearly had an enormous influence on the developing political and religious role of the Ptolemaic queen. Cleopatra I expanded the role further, drawing on the traditional Egyptian theology which allowed a mother to serve as regent for her infant son by establishing the tradition of the queen regent. Born a Syrian princess, Cleopatra outlived her husband Ptolemy V (died 180), and ruled alongside her son Ptolemy VI. She became a goddess in her own lifetime, taking the title Thea, and was the first queen to mint her own coins. Her reign marks another substantial increase in the power of the Ptolemaic women, and a corresponding decrease in the power of the Ptolemaic men.
    In 168 the goddess Isis spoke in a dream to Hor of Sebennytos, who recorded his dream on an ostracon. This was discovered in modern times in the ruins of the Sakkara Serapeum, where Hor had lived and worked in the ibis shrine of Thoth:
    I was told in a dream: Isis, the great goddess of Egypt and the land of Syria, walks upon the face of the waters of the Syrian sea. Thoth stands before her and takes her hand. She has reached the harbour at Alexandria. She says ‘Alexandria is safe against the enemy. Pharaoh resides within it with his brethren. His eldest son wears the crown. This son’s son wears the crown after him. The son of the son of the son of this son