Imperial cult of ancient Rome Scipio Africanus' time. The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids claimed godhood as long as they lasted; they may have been influenced in this by the Persian and Egyptian traditions of divine kings – although the Ptolemies had separate cults in Egyptian polytheism, as Pharaoh, and in the Greek. Not all Greek dynasties made the same claims; the descendants of Demetrius, who were kings of Macedon and dominated the mainland of Greece, did not claim godhead or worship Alexander (cf. Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great). The Roman magistrates who conquered the Greek world were fitted into this tradition; games
Cup of the Ptolemies E. Babelon proposed the more general idea that the cup had been carved during "the time of the Ptolemies"a wide range stretching from 305 to 30 BC. However, there is no particular evidence for this, and other scholars, such as John Henry Middleton or Martin Conway, suggest that the cup was carved later, during the first or second centuries AD by Romans. Determining the exact date of the cup has been problematic largely because similar pieces are rare, making any possible comparison difficult. The exact history of the cup is largely unknown, although Conway suggests that the cup probably belonged