Cleopatra the Great

C
LEOPATRA THE
G
REAT

The Woman Behind the Legend

Dr. Joann Fletcher

For my parents—with love

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As the most famous woman in ancient history, Cleopatra is intimately associated with ancient Egypt and is perhaps its best-known monarch. What is rather less well known is that she was actually European by descent and, like her illustrious predecessor Alexander the Great, traced her origins back to Macedonia in northern Greece. She spoke Greek, her name was Greek and her life was bound up in the fate of the Hellenised world as it struggled for survival against the expansion of Rome.

She was a key player in events which shaped Western civilisation, and even her death was a turning point in Europe's history. Yet the general belief prevails that her life can only be traced through the well-documented careers of the Roman men with whom she dealt. Indeed, it was recently claimed that ‘her celebrity seems to have been due primarily to the fact that she slept with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony — the two most powerful men of her day — and that she was credited with being extremely ambitious'.

Cast in their shadow as little more than an exotic yet flawed appendage, a convenient scapegoat for the men's own shortcomings, Cleopatra appears in Roman sources only when affecting Roman interests. There is little to suggest that she restored Egypt to its former glories by re-creating a great empire at Rome's expense: her astonishing achievements were ignored in Rome's official version of events, with most of the documentary evidence deliberately destroyed, texts suppressed and her name erased from the records.

Having done everything it could to destroy all evidence of the woman herself, Rome's hate-filled propaganda created its own version of Cleopatra which resonates to this day. She was one of only two people whom the Romans ever truly feared, so they repaid her defiance with a blend of lies and misogyny so powerful that she has passed into Western consciousness as little more than a femme fatale, clinging to power until her seductive charms failed her and a dramatic snakebite suicide elevated her to the status of ultimate tragic heroine. With a name now synonymous with tragedy and excess, the popular image of Cleopatra is based on little more than Roman propaganda, Elizabethan drama and Elizabeth Taylor, while the real Cleopatra, for all her fame, was almost completely obscured. For a long time classical scholars seemed unwilling to venture into the ‘exotic' world of ancient Egypt, and Egyptologists were largely dismissive of an era they regarded as ‘un-Egyptian'. Even in the 1960s, her reign was described as ‘a blacked-out landscape illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning when Egypt impinges upon world events'. Yet by this time things had finally started to change in certain quarters. In his landmark biography of Cleopatra first published in 1953, Hans Volkmann referred to the beginnings of new research which had ‘torn away the deceptive web which the hate of her enemies had spun around Cleopatra, and ascertained the truth'. And by the 1980s so much new information had come to light that scholars began to collaborate for a major US exhibition in 1988 followed by a more recent version in Europe in 2001.

Some astonishing new evidence was assembled, ranging from commemorative texts, epitaphs and eulogies to tax records, astrological charts and personal correspondence; even Cleopatra's own handwriting was identified only a few years ago. With the Roman sources now more evenly balanced with Greek and Egyptian evidence, vital clues in archaeological reports from sites now lost can be combined with details of sites which have only recently come to light, including Cleopatra's own palace quarters. Just as her coins, statuary and architecture contribute to the overall picture, so the jewellery, clothing, cosmetics, food, furnishings and all the minutiae of daily life as it was lived in the first century
BC
are able to add a further rich layer of detail to what is now known about the woman herself. By re-creating life within her seaside palace in Alexandria, at her splendid estate by the Tiber or on board her golden cruise ship, details of her famous banquets, vast libraries, exotic wardrobe and even beauty regime can be used to explore and indeed explode a number of long-standing myths, from her first appearance on the world stage as she emerged from a rolled-up carpet to her legendary death by snakebite.

Having replaced such myths with more rational explanations, the same range of evidence also makes it possible to pinpoint Cleopatra's specific whereabouts at precise moments in her life. On 25 March 51
BC
, only days into her reign, she appeared as a precocious seventeen-year-old astutely reviving ancient rites by rowing the sacred bull, the earthly incarnation of the sun god, along the river Nile. Then at midnight on 28 December 47
BC
, having given birth to her first child, she would have stood within the rooftop shrine of Dendera temple and in moonlit rites assumed the powers of the mother goddess Isis. Even her death on 10 August 30
BC
, accompanied by a full supporting cast, was designed to leave the very longest of lasting impressions. Very much the performer staging spectacular events to emphasise a divinity she had held since birth, Cleopatra literally transformed herself into a goddess for every occasion. Adapting her image to appeal to audiences at home and abroad, she appeared as Venus in the heart of Rome, sailed across the Mediterranean as Aphrodite and restored Egypt's former empire as Isis, having absorbed all the attributes of the feminine divine.

She was a frequent traveller, and detailed examination of the ancient sources makes it possible to follow her from Egypt to Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia and Italy. For although Cleopatra had been born and raised in the Greek city of Alexandria on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, she had also lived in Rome for two years and spent many months in Athens, Ephesus, Antioch and Tarsus. Her regular journeys by sea reflected her upbringing within the ancient world's busiest and wealthiest port. Created by Alexander the Great in 331
BC
to transform Egypt from an inward-looking backwater into a vibrant cosmopolitan centre, the magnificent city of Alexandria lay at the heart of world affairs and its greatest asset was unquestionably Alexander himself. His mummified body on permanent display was a constant symbol to Cleopatra of her own potential greatness, and her determination to reassemble his vast empire stretching as far as India saw her withstand Roman expansion for over twenty years, successfully maintaining Egypt as the last of Alexander's kingdoms to remain independent.

Although much of Cleopatra's reign was devoted to the world beyond Egypt, her ancient kingdom formed the exotic backdrop for the traditional rites needed to maintain her status as divine monarch. Appearing before her subjects on regular state journeys up and down the Nile ensured both their support and the financial resources necessary to implement her ambitious foreign policies. Even her coinage, depicting a stern, almost masculine-looking profile and purposefully manufactured to appeal to vast areas of a world ruled by men, was valuable propaganda. Such images are regarded by the modern world as evidence that Cleopatra was no great beauty, and in the apparent absence of any true portraits it was even claimed that while ‘Nefertiti is a face without a queen, Cleopatra is a queen without a face.'

But this is no longer true of Nefertiti, and the case for Cleopatra too has changed in recent years. Her image has been identified in a whole variety of media, including at least three stunning marble portrait busts which compare most favourably with contemporary images of women then considered leading beauties. Yet Cleopatra's impact was based on far more than facial aesthetics and, fully deserving the same epithet as her predecessor Alexander, Cleopatra the Great can now finally be acknowledged as ‘a figure whose brilliance and charisma matched Alexander's own'.

My own fascination with Cleopatra began, like so much else, in childhood. I began to develop an abiding interest in those individuals in history who had made their mark, especially if they had had a mixed press or indeed acquired a negative public image. Cleopatra's close connections with Alexander only increased my desire to learn more. As I grew up I continued to read all I could about both of them, visiting the places they visited and trying to get my head around their special relationships with ancient Egypt. My interest went into overdrive when I began studying for my first degree in ancient history and Egyptology in 1984. It was then that I was introduced to Cleopatra's flamboyant family the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty who controlled Egypt for the three centuries between Alexander and Cleopatra herself. And, although these rulers are usually passed over as effete, ineffectual and of little relevance to Egypt's true pharaonic past, the Ptolemies' contribution to Egyptology was immense.

With their mania for historical research, the Ptolemies created the Great Library at Alexandria and employed teams of scholars to collect and study texts from all over the ancient world. It was here the Egyptian scholar Manetho compiled a list of names of every pharaoh from the beginning of Egyptian history three thousand years earlier, organising them into a system of dynasties which is still used today. Written details of that most Egyptian of practices, mummification, only survive in two Greek accounts, one of which was composed in Cleopatra's lifetime, and even the names used for the country and its ancient culture are predominantly of Greek derivation; they range from the standard Egyptological terms ‘hieroglyph', ‘obelisk', ‘pyramid' and ‘sarcophagus' to the names of their gods Isis, Osiris and Anubis, their kings Tuthmosis, Amenophis and Sesostris, the river Nile and even the land of Egypt itself.

As generous patrons of their adopted heritage the Ptolemies also implemented a massive building programme throughout the country, including most of the temples still standing in Egypt today. Their wall inscriptions detail rituals often unknown from any other source, and it was the Ptolemies' frequent use of multilingual inscriptions, in Greek and Egyptian, that provided the modern world with the means by which hieroglyphs were finally translated. The names ‘Ptolemy' and ‘Cleopatra' were, appropriately, the first to be read aloud since ancient times.

Using riches from their foreign empire, Egypt's Greek monarchs greatly embellished their kingdom; and, although Rome's inexorable expansion saw their eventual decline, Ptolemaic fortunes were dramatically reversed by Cleopatra. As the last of their line, yet the first to learn the Egyptian language, it was she who restored Egypt's empire to the size it was over a thousand years earlier; Egypt was once again a world superpower, and its people were rightly proud of a pharaoh whom they worshipped for centuries after her death.

Although she is still very much an icon in modern Egypt, a significant number of Egyptologists remain unconvinced. Recently it has been claimed that Cleopatra might be the most famous woman from ancient Egypt, but ‘far more significant was Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who reigned for nearly twenty years in the 15th century
BC'.
Yet significant for whom?

Not only did Cleopatra reign for the same length of time, she transformed Egypt from a petty client kingdom within Rome's grasp into a power so great that she almost gained the whole of the known world. So while Hatshepsut was indeed a phenomenal character who was certainly influential to her Ptolemaic successors, her significance to both Egypt and the rest of the ancient world was far less than that of Cleopatra, whose impact and influence were felt over great swathes of the region for centuries.

This influence has become increasingly apparent during our own extensive research at the University of York, combined with longstanding involvement with television. One of our first projects examined Egypt's links across North Africa as we followed the fortunes of Cleopatra's daughter, whose sophisticated court owed much to her mother's lifestyle, and whose pyramid-inspired tomb in modern Algeria once contained the closest physical link with Cleopatra to survive.

Subsequent projects took us to southern Arabia, a land famous for its own female ruler the Queen of Sheba, where Cleopatra is said to have visited in brief exile and whose long-term trade with Egypt almost certainly inspired their own mummification practices. Then in Rome, where Cleopatra lived for several years, the mummified burials of a wealthy Isis devotee and her son from the first century
AD
provided further evidence for Egypt's not inconsiderable influence in Europe. Even beyond the limits of the known world, the first eyewitness description of Britain and its people were written by Cleopatra's partner Julius Caesar.

The long-running search for Nefertiti has also thrown up significant clues. As we continue to discover ever more about this earlier female pharaoh, evidence from the Valley of the Kings and its environs has revealed that such women were long remembered and indeed venerated by their female successors down to Cleopatra's time. But whereas my own research into Nefertiti began with an unidentified body rather than any particular interest in her as an individual, the fascination with Cleopatra lies firmly with the extraordinary abilities and achievements of the woman herself.

As more and more pieces of the historical jigsaw appeared, the desire to try to piece them all together finally became too strong to resist. I had already collaborated on a popular biography of Alexander but my fascination with Cleopatra was not so easily dealt with, bound up as it is with three millennia of female pharaohs who are key to an understanding of their ultimate successor. Although many biographies of Cleopatra begin with the woman, then examine the way she has been portrayed in later centuries from Plutarch via Shakespeare to Hollywood, this approach can often reveal more about subsequent cultures than about hers. The historical Cleopatra is best sought out among contemporary historical evidence.

Yet even then it is always a struggle to root out the real personality, especially in the case of Cleopatra who even in her own lifetime was many different things to many different people. This determined leader, brilliant politician, erudite scholar and mother of four was a multi-faceted character who could really be all things to all people: to the Romans she was a deluded and drunken whore, to the Greeks and Middle Eastern peoples a beneficent and glorious liberator, to the Egyptians their living goddess and monarch, and in her own mind Alexander's true successor. And in amongst the spin and propaganda from so many diverse sources, attempts to reach the woman herself have proved challenging to say the least.