Ptolemais Ace
Ptolemais Ace, located in modern-day northern Israel, is a coastal city with a rich historical background. Originally known as Ace, it was an important trading hub in ancient Phoenicia, recognized in Egyptian records dating back to the 15th and 14th centuries BC. The city was strategically significant, serving as a mint for Alexander the Great and later refounded by Ptolemy II Philadelphus around 261 BC, adopting the name Ptolemais while maintaining a predominantly Phoenician population. Throughout its history, Ptolemais was controlled by various powers, including the Seleucids, who used it as a base against the Maccabean regime, and later by the Romans, who established a colony there under Emperor Claudius.
The city minted coins that depicted various deities and significant structures, illustrating its cultural and religious diversity. Notably, Ptolemais is associated with the river-god Belos and featured a gymnasium built by Herod the Great. The city's public baths were even mentioned in Jewish texts, highlighting its blend of cultures and traditions. Today, Ptolemais Ace is known as Akko (Acre), a site that reflects its historical transformations and enduring legacy in the region.
Subject Terms
Ptolemais Ace
formerly Ace and Antiochia in the Ptolemaid, later Germanicia (Akko, Acre)
A coastal city in southern Phoenicia (now northern Israel), with an acropolis overlooking the mouth of the river Naaman (Belos), which contained sand employed in the manufacture of glass. The place (Akka) is mentioned as a commercial center in Egyptian documents of the 15th/14th century BC, and in the fourth century an Athenian trading community at Ace is mentioned by Demosthenes and Isaeus.
It served Alexander the Great as a mint, and its importance as a strategic site prompted its refoundation by Ptolemy II Philadelphus c 261, under the name of Ptolemais, although the population remained, for the most part, Phoenician. Taken by the Seleucids, Ptolemais Ace became their main base against the separatist Maccabean (Hasmonaean) Jewish régime, and coined as Antiochia in the Ptolemaid from c 175 until c 44, when the name Ptolemais was revived. In 33/32 BC an issue bore the heads of Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Under Claudius (AD 41–54) the city coined as Germanicia in the Ptolemaid—still in Greek—but then became a Roman colony for the settlement of ex-soldiers from four legions, under the designation of Colonia Felix Stabilis Germanica Ptolemais (52/54).
Coins show the river-god Belos or Bel, and an array of Greco-Roman and Egyptian deities. Other coin types include a flat-roofed shrine of the Semitic god Hadad with carry-bars (Macrinus, 217–18), and elaborate views of buildings on the acropolis, as well as a sketch of the colonnaded harbor (Elagabalus, 218–22). The representation of a nymphaeum (fountain building), fronted by a pavement, on another of his coins, recalls a story in the Mishnah recounting that the rabbi Gamaliel saw no objection to bathing in the city's public baths beneath a statue of Aphrodite. A gymnasium built by Herod the Great of Judaea (37–4 BC) cannot be traced. For the successive provincial allegiances of the city, seePhoenicia.