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In the Hellenistic empires of Alexander the Great and his successors in Greece, Egypt and the Near East, new forms of court culture and political ideology developed during the last three centuries BCE. Appropriated by Parthian kings and Roman emperors alike, the culture of these Macedonian courts eventually influenced the evolution of royal ideology and court culture in both western Europe and the Islamic East. In this first all-embracing study of the Hellenistic royal court the author endeavours to explain, among other things, the success and long life of Hellenistic royal culture. This study has a broad set-up. It discusses the social, cultural and formal aspects of court society, palace architecture, royal patronage of the arts and sciences, and monarchic representation. The focus is on the three principal Macedonian dynasties: the Antigonids (Macedonia and Greece), Ptolemies (Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean) and Seleukids (Asia Minor, the Near East and Iran)., In Chapter 1 (titled 'Court, kingship and ideology') the methodological en theoretical framework is set out, using recent literature about court culture, state formation and political representation in varying cultures and periods. Hellenistic kingship is defined by the centrality of war and conquest in both ideology and practice. Chapter 2 ('Palaces') discusses the architecture and decoration of royal residences, accentuating the ideological implications, particularly regarding the connection of (royal) palace and (autonomous) city. Chapter 3 ('Court society') discusses the social, formal and political aspects of the court: the courtiers (the so-called 'friends of the king'), the royal family, giving i.a. new interpretations of the position of the queen and the crown prince, as well as the dynamics of faction and succession strife. In Chapter 4 ('Cultural and scientific patronage') a new explanation is given for the remarkable fact that the artistic and scientific life, notably, but not exclusively