Aegyptus

According to Greek mythology, Aegyptus (/ᵻˈdʒɪptəs/; Ancient Greek: Αἴγυπτος, Aígyptos) is a descendant of the heifer maiden, Io, and the river-god Nilus, and was a king in Egypt.

Aegyptus, King of Egypt and Arabia

Aegyptos was the son of Belus and Achiroe, a naiad daughter of Nile. He ruled Arabia and conquered nearby country ruled by people called Melampodes and called it by his name. Aegyptus fathered fifty sons, who were all but one murdered by forty nine of the fifty daughters of Aegyptus' twin brother, Danaus, eponym of the Danaids.

A scholium on a line in Euripides, Hecuba 886, reverses these origins, placing the twin brothers at first in Argolis, whence Aegyptus was expelled and fled to the land that was named after him. In the more common version, Aegyptus commanded that his fifty sons marry the fifty Danaides, and Danaus with his daughters fled to Argos, ruled by Pelasgus or by Gelanor, whom Danaus replaced. When Aegyptus and his sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus relinquished them, to spare the Argives the pain of a battle; however, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night. Forty-nine followed through, but one, Hypermnestra ("greatly wooed"), refused, because her husband, Lynceus the "lynx-man", honored her wish to remain a virgin. Danaus was angry with his disobedient daughter and threw her to the Argive courts. Aphrodite intervened and saved her. Lynceus and Hypermnestra founded the lineage of Argive kings, a Danaid Dynasty.

Aegyptus (disambiguation)

Aegyptus can refer to:

Egypt (Roman province)

The Roman province of Egypt (Latin: Aegyptus, pronounced [ajˈɡʏptʊs]; Greek: Αἴγυπτος Aigyptos [ɛ́ːgyptos]) was established in 30 BC after Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) defeated his rival Mark Antony, deposed his lover Queen Cleopatra VII and annexed the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Roman Empire. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai Peninsula (which would later be conquered by Trajan). Aegyptus was bordered by the provinces of Creta et Cyrenaica to the West and Iudaea (later Arabia Petraea) to the East.

The province came to serve as a major producer of grain for the empire and had a highly developed urban economy. Aegyptus was by far the wealthiest Roman province. In Alexandria, its capital, it possessed the largest port, and the second largest city, of the Roman Empire.

Roman rule in Egypt

As a province, Egypt was ruled by a uniquely style Augustal prefect, instead of the traditional senatorial governor of other Roman provinces. The prefect was a man of equestrian rank and was appointed by the Emperor. The first prefect of Aegyptus, Gaius Cornelius Gallus, brought Upper Egypt under Roman control by force of arms, and established a protectorate over the southern frontier district, which had been abandoned by the later Ptolemies.