Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2025
In the late fourth and early third centuries, Alexander III’s generals and philoi established new Hellenistic dynasties, several of which included the daughters of the most noble families of the former Achaemenid world throughout western Asia as their new dynastic wives. In addition to their diplomatic significance, these women were important in visual and material articulations of dynastic identity and dynastic rule. The public honors, coinage, and luxury portable objects associated with these women not only provide evidence for their physical movement across continents but also give us a glimpse into their roles in the making of Hellenistic queenship. This chapter examines select assemblages left by Roxane, Apama, and Amastris – all of whom were born into royal or noble families in Iran or central Asia, married Macedonian dynasts, and moved westward – as well as Stratonice, the daughter of a Macedonian king who moved eastward after marrying into the Seleucid dynasty. These case studies offer an art-historical and materially focused examination of Macedonian encounters with western Asia while demonstrating the ways that non-Macedonian and non-Greek women of the late fourth and early third centuries contributed to public expressions of imperial power and dynastic consolidation via objects of queenship across the Hellenistic world.
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