Who_Was_Cleopatra_

Who was Cleopatra' It should be noted that in the study of Cleopatra there is typically an emphasis on the Romans’ point of view. This is due not only to the primacy of the Roman empire in the western tradition but also to the relative lack of any Egyptian evidence with which to counter this viewpoint. Cleopatra entered the history of the West largely through her incorporation into the written records of Roman authors, and there are no narrative histories or biographies of Cleopatra written by ancient Egyptians that we can set beside the Roman accounts. Even the brief outline of Cleopatra’s historical background and life that follows is largely put together from bits and pieces of information from Roman authors. What we do have, however, is some material evidence in the form of statues, inscriptions and coins, which we will examine in the section ‘Cleopatra’s images of herself’ below. The last of the Ptolemies What is often lost in the modern Cleopatra story is an accurate understanding of the real historical figure. Cleopatra has become legendary, but the legends that surround her have a tendency to obscure and distort the actual Cleopatra of history. One important aspect of Cleopatra, which is underplayed in the Roman sources and also in modern representations of her, is her status not only as an Egyptian but also as a member of a Hellenic (Greek) of the generals (Ptolemy) of Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek who conquered the Persian empire and acquired Egypt in the fourth century BCE. Like all the Ptolemies, Cleopatra was both a pharaoh and a Hellenistic monarch. This is deliberately underplayed in Roman portraits of her which prefer to represent her as the figurehead of a strange and barbarous Egyptian culture. This portrayal is, of course, in itself a deliberate perversion of the ancient and significant culture of Egypt. The reason behind this is that it was much easier for the Romans to draw a picture of radical differences between themselves and Egypt than between themselves and the Greeks, for Rome saw itself as the heir to the intellectual culture of ancient Greece. Modern portraits of Cleopatra have tended to reinforce this promotion of the Egyptian rather than Greek side of Cleopatra. In part this has been an uncritical following of the Roman lead, but it is also because in media such as films it is more dramatically effective: native Egyptian culture simply provides a better visual contrast to the world of ancient Rome. It is important that we bear in mind that Cleopatra was in fact the head of a Greek-speaking elite that had ruled Egypt for three centuries, but whose members had only ever assimilated themselves to native practices to a certain degree. That these rulers were both kings/queens and pharaohs indicates that they were careful to respect traditional Egyptian practices (for instance, they were crowned in the traditional way as pharaohs, officiated at Egyptian religious cult practices, and even married brother to sister as did the earlier pharaohs) as a means of cementing their own authority and not alienating the native population. Nevertheless, there was a distinct division in this society between a Greek population that was privileged and a native Egyptian population that was largely an underclass. It is well worth bearing in mind that Cleopatra was reputed to have been the first of the Ptolemies who could speak Egyptian, and this was after nearly three hundred years of Ptolemaic rule. We also tend to think of Cleopatra as the unique name of one specific individual and it perhaps comes as a bit of a surprise to discover that ‘our’ Cleopatra was actually the last of seven Ptolemaic queens who bore that name. The rule of the Ptolemies was centred not at the old sites of Egyptian rule, such as Memphis, but at the city that Alexander the Great had founded in Egypt as its new capital and named after himself, Alexandria. This city was a great metropolis of the ancient world. It possessed stunning architecture – like its famous lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world – and was also a great centre of culture and learning. Its library was famous in antiquity and housed the largest collection of scrolls in the ancient world; it was also a hive of artistic and intellectual activity. The Alexandria of Cleopatra was in many ways a more urbane, sophisticated and intellectually refined place than Octavian’s Rome. Although the propaganda of Octavian makes it seem that Egypt was an alien and debased culture, in fact the Egypt of the Ptolemies was a direct heir to the Hellenic culture that was so prized among Rome’s aristocratic eliteelite within her own country. Cleopatra was the last ruler of the last dynasty of the pharaohs of Egypt, the Ptolemies (pronounced ‘tol-e-mi-z’). The Ptolemies were not native Egyptians, but rather descendants of one