Arsinoe (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: ) was a city of

ancient Crete The history of Crete goes back to the 7th millennium BC, preceding the ancient Minoan civilization by more than four millennia. The palace-based Minoan civilization was the first civilization in Europe. After the Minoan civilization was devasta ...

controlled by

Lyctus Lyctus or Lyttos ( Greek: or ), was one of the most considerable cities in ancient Crete, which appears in the Homeric catalogue. Lyttos is now a village in the municipality of Minoa Pediada. Lyctus in mythology According to Hesiod, ''Theogon ...

according to the Stephanus of Byzantium. This town is believed to belong to the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

. According to some scholars, it was adjacent to (and perhaps overlaying) the older city of

Rhithymna Rhithymna or Rithymna ( grc, Ῥίθυμνα) or Rhithymnia (Ῥιθυμνία), was a town of ancient Crete, Greece, which is mentioned by Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder as the first town on the north coast to the east of Amphimalla, and is spoken o ...

, but this identification is not really certain. The city was named after Arsinoe II of Egypt, sister and wife of

Ptolemy Philadelphus ; egy, Userkanaenre Meryamun Clayton (2006) p. 208 , predecessor = Ptolemy I , successor = Ptolemy III , horus = ''ḥwnw-ḳni'Khunuqeni''The brave youth , nebty = ''wr-pḥtj'Urpekhti''Great of strength , gol ...

. It was under Ptolemaic influence, along with Itanos city. Berkelius supposes that an error had crept into the text, and that for we should read . Its identification with

was first proposed by

Eckhel Joseph Hilarius Eckhel (13 January 1737 – 16 May 1798) was an Austrian Jesuit priest and numismatist. Biography Eckhel was born at Enzersfeld, in Lower Austria. His father was farm-steward to Count Zinzendorf, and he received his early edu ...

. Georges Le Rider in 1968 established from numismatic evidence that the city of Rithymna was refounded at some point in the 3rd Century BCE as Arsinoe. The evidence entails similar series of coins with the names of each city as well as find spots for the Arsinoe coins being in the regions around Rithymna. The exact refoundation date is less sure but Le Rider puts it in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer. Roger S. Bagnall notes that this may be the same Arsinoe that appears as a Cretan city in a Magnesian inscription (I. Magn. 21 8) of 200 BCE. Bagnall says that the city of Rithymna reverted to its original name by the time of the Delphic ''Theorodoktoi'' lists of the early 2nd century BCE. There remains a possibility of another place being the Arsinoe in Crete as per the testimony of Stephanus of Byzantium, noted in Le Rider's article. Getzel M. Cohen suggests some other possible locations.Getzel M. Cohen
''The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor''
(Volume 17 of Hellenistic culture and society). University of California Press, 1995 p132

References

Populated places in ancient Crete Port settlements in ancient Crete Hellenistic Crete Former populated places in Greece Ptolemaic colonies {{AncientCrete-geo-stub