Personality
The vast majority of Egyptâs many hundreds of queens, although famed throughout their own land, were more or less unknown in the outside world. As the dynastic age ended and the hieroglyphic script was lost, the queensâ stories were forgotten and their monuments buried under Egyptâs sands. But Cleopatra had lived in a highly literate age, and her actions had influenced the formation of the Roman Empire; her story could not be forgotten. Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) was determined that Roman history should be recorded in a way that confirmed his right to rule. To achieve this, he published his own autobiography and censored Romeâs official records. As Cleopatra had played a key role in his struggle for power, her story was preserved as an integral part of his. But it was diminished to just two episodes: her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Cleopatra, stripped of any political validity, was to be remembered as an immoral foreign woman who tempted upright Roman men. As such, she became a useful enemy for Octavian, who preferred to be remembered for fighting against foreigners rather than against his fellow Romans.
This official Roman version of a predatory, immoral Cleopatra passed into Western culture, where it was retold and reinterpreted as the years passed, until it evolved into a story of a wicked life made good by an honorable death. Meanwhile, Muslim scholars, writing after the Arab conquest of Egypt about 640 ce, developed their own version of the queen. Their Cleopatra was first and foremost a scholar and a scientist, a gifted philosopher and a chemist.
Image
In the popular imagination Cleopatra was seductively beautiful, an image that is reflected in portrayals of the queen and has been used to sell a wide range of products, from cosmetics to cigarettes. This vision of her, however, is not necessarily supported by her contemporary portraiture. Coin portraits of Cleopatra show a countenance alive rather than beautiful, with a sensitive mouth, firm chin, liquid eyes, broad forehead, and prominent nose. The so-called Berlin Cleopatra, a bust of Cleopatra VII that is now housed in the Old (Altes) Museum in Germany, depicts her with similar, albeit slightly softer, features compared to those seen in her coin portraits. Classical authors were divided on Cleopatraâs beauty: The Roman historian Dio Cassius, for example, described Cleopatra as âa woman of surpassing beauty,â while the Greek biographer Plutarch stated that, while Cleopatra was quite charming, her beauty âwas in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.â For a fuller discussion, see What Did Cleopatra Look Like?
In the late 20th century Cleopatraâs racial heritage became a subject of intense academic debate, with some African American scholars embracing Cleopatra as a Black African heroine. However, there is scant evidence of Cleopatraâs race, as the modern concept was foreign to classical observers, who understood their social world differently. Her ancestry is not fully known. While her dynasty was largely made up of Macedonians who married close relatives, her father was the son of Ptolemy IX Soter II and a mistress of unknown origin, rather than either of his sister-wives. Cleopatra VIIâs mother is also a mystery. Some scholars have taken the lack of challenges to Cleopatraâs claim to the throne to mean that her mother must have been her fatherâs sister-wife, Cleopatra V Tryphaeana. However, there is no proof of Cleopatra VIIâs motherâs identity. Because ancient Egypt was a heterogeneous society where people from Macedonia to Nubia could be accepted as Egyptian if they adopted Egyptian cultural norms, an argument for Cleopatra having a variety of ethnic backgrounds can be made.
On stage and in film
Plutarchâs Parallel Lives, translated from the Greek into French by Jacques Amyot (1559) and then from the French into English by Sir Thomas North (1579), served as the inspiration behind Shakespeareâs play Antony and Cleopatra (1606â07). Shakespeare dropped some of Plutarchâs disapproval and allowed his queen to become a true heroine. His was by no means the first revision of Cleopatra, nor was it to be the last, but his is the Cleopatra that has lingered longest in the public imagination. From Shakespeare stems a wealth of Cleopatra-themed artâplays, poetry, paintings, and operas. In the 20th century Cleopatraâs story was preserved and further developed through film. Many actresses, including Theda Bara (1917), Claudette Colbert (1934), and Elizabeth Taylor (1963), have played the queen, typically in expensive, exotic films that concentrate on the queenâs love life rather than her politics.
For a list of ancient Egyptian kings, see list of pharaohs of ancient Egypt. For a list of Egyptian dynasties, see list of dynasties of ancient Egypt.
