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What remained for Ptolemy II was to control the Hellenic group who were a mixture of Greeks, Macedonians and others who had come with Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies after him from other corners of the Hellenic land. The first step Ptolemy II took in this direction was making himself a god as Alexander the Great had done by claiming that he was a descendant of Hercules, the Greek god. At the beginning, Ptolemy II faced tough resistance from the side of the occupying Greeks and Macedonians because they were not used to worshipping persons. Yet, after great effort, he was able to reach his goal of establishing himself as a god for the occupiers. Hence, we find that he considered himself a god for the Egyptians by being a descendant of Ra, and at the same time the object of worship by Greeks, Macedonians and others who have come from the Hellenic land, settled in and controlled Egypt due to him being a descendant of Hercules. Therefore, Ptolemy II was a god for the occupiers worshiped according to their own way and a god for Egyptians worshipped on their own way. There is no doubt in that each of those two groups had their own religion and their own way of worship that followed their teachings. Due to this, we find that from the time of Ptolemy II, and perhaps before him, there had been two groups of clergy: the group of Egyptian clergy and the group of Hellenic clergy. At first, competition was high among the two groups of clergy. Ptolemy II exerted great effort to please both groups either by providing offerings or by erecting religious buildings.

The policy of the Ptolemies from the beginning was to unify the Egyptian and Macedonian Greek object of worship by encouraging them to worship a single god.