Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator

Hello! My name is Ptolemy XIII, and I was a pharaoh, which means I was a king of ancient Egypt. I was born around the year 62 BCE into a very powerful family. My father was the pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, and our home was the magnificent city of Alexandria. It was a bustling place, full of energy, with a famous, giant library and a towering lighthouse that was known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. Even though we ruled Egypt, my family's ancestors were originally from Greece. We had been the ruling family of Egypt for hundreds of years. I also had a very famous older sister named Cleopatra, whose story you may already know.

When I was only about ten years old, in the year 51 BCE, my father passed away. In his will, he declared that I would become the new pharaoh of Egypt. However, I was not meant to rule by myself. The will stated that I was to share the throne with my sister, Cleopatra. It was a tradition in my family for siblings to rule together as co-rulers. Because I was so young, I relied on powerful advisors to help me make important decisions for the kingdom. One of my main advisors was a man named Pothinus. He and the others taught me about what it meant to be a ruler, but they also had their own strong ideas about how Egypt should be governed. From the beginning, they did not fully trust my sister and were worried about her influence.

As time went on, the disagreements between my side and Cleopatra's side grew larger. My advisors and I believed that she was becoming too powerful and was no longer listening to us. So, in 48 BCE, we made a very big decision and forced her to leave our capital city of Alexandria. For a short time, this meant that I was the only ruler of Egypt. But our kingdom’s problems were about to get much bigger. Far away from Egypt, in Rome, two powerful generals named Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar were fighting a civil war against each other. After losing a huge battle, Pompey sailed to Egypt in 48 BCE, hoping that I would give him safety and help. My advisors saw this as an opportunity. They thought that if we helped Caesar, he would be grateful. They made a terrible choice and had Pompey killed.

Just a short time after Pompey's death, Julius Caesar himself arrived in Alexandria with his army. He was not happy at all when he learned what my advisors had done to Pompey. Caesar was an extremely powerful Roman general, and he decided he would be the one to settle the argument between me and my sister. He made his choice and decided to support Cleopatra. Soon, a war broke out right in the streets of my city. My army fought against Caesar’s experienced Roman soldiers and the Egyptians who remained loyal to Cleopatra. The fighting was fierce, but it all came to an end in a final, great battle by the Nile River in January of 47 BCE. Caesar's army was skilled in warfare, and even though my soldiers fought bravely, we could not defeat them.

My life ended during that battle by the Nile. I lived to be about 15 years old. My time as pharaoh was very short and was filled with conflict and difficult choices. Today, people remember my story mainly as a part of the incredible history of my sister, Cleopatra, and the famous Roman general, Julius Caesar. My reign shows how a struggle for power inside a royal family could change the course of history for a great kingdom like Egypt.