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This lecture is the first in the ISAW Libraries events series for the 2024-2025 academic year. It will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The fabled reign and tragic death of Cleopatra loom large in the Western imagination, but they can only be properly understood in the context of the queen’s inheritance: the preceding three centuries of Ptolemaic rule over the Nile Valley. In advance of the publication of a major new history of the period, Egyptologist and best-selling author Toby Wilkinson revisits Ptolemaic Egypt, with its dazzling mix of Greek and Egyptian cultures, exploring how Egypt under the Ptolemies became the greatest of the Hellenistic kingdoms.