Egypt — the Two Lands in 218 B.C.

Egypt — the Two Lands — Ptolemaic Egypt.

The Nile valley itself, from the Delta to the First Cataract — the sovereign heart of the realm, surveyed nome by nome and worked by a peasantry whose grain is the kingdom’s strength. Greek and Macedonian settlers hold land in cleruchies while the old temples and priesthoods endure beneath the Greek crown. Egypt is the Two Lands of immemorial pharaonic theology — Upper and Lower — and the Ptolemies rule it as both Greek kings in Alexandria and divine pharaohs at Memphis, drawing on the most minutely administered economy of the ancient world.