[4] According to Strabo (16.4.7), Ptolemais was founded as a base to support the hunting of elephants by a certain Eumedes (Ancient Greek: Εὐμήδης), who had been sent there by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, king of Ptolemaic Egypt.
[3] Eumedes, "secretly enclosed a kind of peninsula with a ditch and a wall, and then, by courteous treatment of those who tried to hinder the work, actually won them over as friends instead of foes."
Ptolemais was only one of a series of such elephant-hunting stations along the Red Sea coast of Africa, Adulis being perhaps originally another.
Cut off from any possibility of acquiring Indian elephants, they founded and actively sought to capture them from the neighboring regions of Africa.
Unlike most of the stations the Ptolemies established to the south of their kingdom, Ptolemais had enough fertile land immediately around it to sustain it as a town.