Battle of Raphia

On 22 June 217 BCE, near the town of Raphia (modern Rafah) on the coastal road between Egypt and Palestine, the Egyptian king Ptolemy IV defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III. With well over 100,000 soldiers engaged, it was among the largest battles of the Hellenistic age. Ptolemy's victory kept southern Syria in Egyptian hands for a time, and the large part played by native Egyptian troops had lasting effects inside his kingdom.

Both kingdoms had emerged from the wars among Alexander's successors. Through the third century BCE the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire, based in Syria and Mesopotamia, fought a series of conflicts, the Syrian Wars, for control of Coele-Syria, the contested borderland between them. The fourth of these wars broke out in 219 BCE. Antiochus gained much of the region when Theodotus, an Aetolian officer in Ptolemy's service, changed sides and handed it over.

In 217 BCE the two kings advanced with their full forces. The Greek historian Polybius, the main source, gives Ptolemy 70,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 73 elephants, and Antiochus 62,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and 102 elephants. Both armies were remarkably mixed. Antiochus had Macedonian-style pikemen, including the elite Silver Shields, alongside Arab, Median, Persian, Cretan and Thracian troops. Ptolemy, after a major recruiting and training drive, fielded 25,000 Macedonian-style phalanx soldiers and, for the first time, some 20,000 native Egyptians armed and drilled in the same way.

The camps were pitched within about a kilometre of each other, and for five days the armies skirmished. One night Theodotus is said to have slipped into the Ptolemaic camp to kill the king, but Ptolemy was not in the tent he attacked.

Raphia is the only recorded battle in which African and Asian elephants fought each other. Antiochus's animals came from India; Ptolemy's were African elephants of a smaller type. When the two lines met, Polybius reports, the African elephants could not stand the smell, noise and sight of the larger Asian ones, turned and ran back through their own infantry.

Each king took his place on a wing: Ptolemy on his left, Antiochus on his right. Antiochus charged past the fleeing elephants, broke the Ptolemaic cavalry facing him, and pursued it off the field, believing the battle won. On the other wing, however, Ptolemy's cavalry got the better of their opponents. In the centre the two phalanxes collided, and Ptolemy rode across to urge his men forward. The Egyptian-reinforced phalanx drove the Seleucid infantry back. By the time Antiochus returned, his army had broken and could not be rallied.

According to Polybius, the Seleucids lost nearly 10,000 infantry, about 300 cavalry and 5 elephants, with 4,000 men captured, while Ptolemy lost 1,500 infantry, 700 cavalry and 16 elephants. Antiochus withdrew to Gaza and asked for the usual truce to bury the dead.

The victory secured Coele-Syria for Egypt, but not permanently: in 200 BCE Antiochus defeated the forces of Ptolemy's young son at Panium and took the region. Within Egypt, the battle proved a turning point. Polybius believed the confidence the Egyptian soldiers gained contributed to the rebellion that split Upper Egypt from Ptolemaic rule from about 207 to 186 BCE. A decree issued by priests meeting at Memphis in November 217 BCE, inscribed in Greek, hieroglyphs and demotic, honoured Ptolemy for the victory and for the first time gave him full pharaonic titles in the Greek text as well, a practice that became standard. Native Egyptian influence in Ptolemaic government and culture grew through the following century.

Our 200 BCE map shows the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean shortly after the battle, around the time Coele-Syria changed hands.