31 B.C. he was
ready to depart, and led his forces away to Phoenicia. A granite gateway
to the temple of Khnum at Elephantine bears his name in hieroglyphic,
and demotic documents are found dated in his reign.

_The Ptolemaic Period._--On the division of Alexander's dominions in 323
B.C., Egypt fell to Ptolemy the son of Lagus, the founder of the
Ptolemaic dynasty (see PTOLEMIES). Under these rulers the rich kingdom
was heavily taxed to supply the sinews of war and to support every kind
of lavish expenditure. Officials, and the higher ones were nearly all
Greeks, were legion, but the whole system was so judiciously worked that
there was little discontent amongst the patient peasantry. During the
reign of Philadelphus the land gained from the bed of the lake of Moeris
was assigned to veteran soldiers; the great armies of the Ptolemies were
rewarded or supported by grants of farm lands, and men of Macedonian,
Greek and Hellenistic extraction were planted in colonies and garrisons
or settled themselves in the villages throughout the country. Upper
Egypt, farthest from the centre of government, was probably least
affected by the new influences, though the first Ptolemy established the
Greek colony of Ptolemais to be its capital. Intermarriages, however,
gradually had their effect; after the revolt of the natives in the reign
of Ptolemy V., we find the Greek and Egyptian elements closely
intermingled. Ptolemy I. had established the cult of the Memphite
Serapis in a Graeco-Egyptian form, affording a common ground for native
and Hellenistic worshippers. The greater number of the temples to the
native deities in Upper Egypt and in Nubia (to 50 m. south of the
Cataract, within the Dodecaschoenus) were built under the Ptolemies. No
serious effort was made to extend the Ptolemaic rule into Ethiopia, and
Ergamenes, the Hellenizing king of Ethiopia, was evidently in alliance
with Philopator; in the next reign two native kings, probably supported
by Ethiopia, reigned in succession at Thebes. That famous city lost all
except its religious importance under the Ptolemies; after the
"destruction" or dismantling by Lathyrus it formed only a series of
villages. The population of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I. is put at
7,000,000 by Diodorus, who also says that it was greater then than it
ever was before; at the end of the dynasty, in his own day, it was not
much less though somewhat diminished. Civil wars and revolts must have
greatly inj