Ptolemaeus son of Glaucias

Ptolemaios son of Glaukias (, fl. 2nd century BC) was a katochos (an unclear word roughly translatable as hermit) who lived in the Temple of Astarte in the Serapeum at Memphis, Egypt for 20 years. Many details about his life and associates, such as his younger brother Apollonios and the two twins under his care, are known thanks to the survival of an extensive archive of papyri belonging to the katochoi of the temple. He was the eldest of four sons of a certain Glaukias, a Macedonian lot-holder at the village of Psichis in the Heracleopolite nome, with his brothers being Hippalos, Sarapion and Apollonios. Around October 172 BC, he moved to the Serapeum of Memphis as a katochos in the Temple of Astarte, after being commanded to do so by Serapis in a dream or prophecy. The meaning of katochos is unclear, but it entailed a strict restriction against leaving the temple. Glaukias was killed at Psichis in 164 BC, possibly by rebels.

From February to September 158 BC, Ptolemaios was briefly joined in katoche by his adolescent brother Apollonios, whom he taught to read and write in Greek and Egyptian. Apollonios' misspellings in Greek reveal that he spoke it with an Egyptian accent, indicating that his first language was Egyptian. Unlike Ptolemaios, Apollonios was fiery and rebellious, as demonstrated by his conflict with a local shopkeeper's sons. He held unconventional views on the gods that at times bordered on atheism, in sharp contrast with his deeply religious brother. On 3 October 158 BC, Ptolemaios successfully appealed to Ptolemy VI Philometor to have Apollonios enrolled the Ptolemaic army. However, as Apollonios' position there was seemingly unpaid, he supplemented his income by becoming a police informant.

Ptolemaios also had custody of three Egyptian girls who lived in asylia in the temple: the twins Thages and Thaous (also known as Tawê and Taous) and their probable sister Tathemis. According to several petitions written by Ptolemaios in their defense, the twins' mother Nephoris left their father, who was a friend of Ptolemaios, and went to live with a Greek soldier in Memphis named Philippos. She then ordered Philippos to kill the twins' father with a knife. Their father fled from the attack but died soon afterwards from the injuries. Their mother took possession of his property, forcing the twins to flee to the temple. There they performed the sacred funerary rites of the Apis bull, for which a pair of twins was ritually necessary to play the roles of Isis and Nephthys. and was seemingly so obsessed with numbers and totals that he often dreamed about them.

Ptolemaios wrote numerous petitions to various officials during his katoche, including Ptolemy VI Philometor and Cleopatra II. He frequently appealed to his local nomarch, Dionysios, about injustices and crimes committed against him, including an occasion on which he claimed to have been nearly murdered by temple workers for being Greek. Ptolemaios, Apollonios and the twins also recorded their dreams, which were regarded as having prophetic significance.

The archive abruptly ends on 20 September 152 BC, during Ptolemaios' twentieth year in katoche. It is unclear how much longer Ptolemaios remained in katoche, and whether he was ever released from it.

In popular culture The twins Taous and Tawe, and their half-brother Pachrates, appear in a main quest in the 2017 video game Assassin's Creed Origins.