Cleopatra, The Most Interesting Woman In The Ancient World
credit: third party image reference
credit: third party image reference
- Cleopatra is definitely one of the most well-known names out there. She was the last Egyptian pharaoh and without a doubt one of the most influential women in the history of humankind but because the story of the Queen's life has been told in so many books and movies it's hard to separate historical facts from fiction.
Cleopatra's story starts 300 years earlier. When a Greek kid named Alexander decided that he wanted to own the entire planet.so he marched eastward beat the Persians and conquered everything in sight. Later he died without a clear line of succession.
His Generals scrambled to claim their corner of the fragmenting Macedonian Empire. The general Ptolemy got his hands on Egypt and became King Ptolemy. kick-starting a kingdom, the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Early Life
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| beauty of Cleopatra |
Cleopatra was one of four children born to King Ptolemy the 12th and his wife Cleopatra the six Travin who was probably his cousin or maybe his sister. This sounds weird but this incestuous practice was a common and normal thing for most royal dynasties of the past and the Ptolemies were no different. The reasoning was that marrying within the family kept the bloodline pure. Unfortunately people back then didn't know about the array of genetic disorders that result from incest.
Career
when Cleopatra was 14 her father chose her to be his Co ruler after her mother suddenly passed away under
Mysterious circumstances. Over the next four years, the young girl served as a deputy of the king and his Regent gathering all necessary experience to become a future ruler. After her father died, she took the
throne but to keep it the 18-year-old Queen had to have a cool ruler that's how she ended up marrying her little brother Ptolemy the eighth who was just ten at the time but that's not all after his death which occurred several years later she married her other brother Ptolemy the fourteenth.
There was political turmoil before she came to power but Cleopatra kept Egypt together during her reign and Egypt remained an independent kingdom and not a vassal of the Roman empire.
Cleopatra had the best education possible in the entire Greek world— and unlike a lot of her party crazed ancestors, she actually put in the effort. Cleopatra wasn't described as spellbindingly gorgeous. She was captivating. She was the ultimate Conversationalist, and that's how she won people over. None of her ancestors before her were exceptionally intelligent and none of them bothered to even learn how to speak Egyptian but Cleopatra could charmingly convince anyone of anything in one of ten different languages.
Fond of Perfumes
Cleopatra owned a perfume factory. The Queen's knack for chemistry also explains her belief that fragrances
could become a tool of persuasion. Therefore she took full advantage of their powers.
Marc Antony could smell her coming from miles away even before she arrived at the shores of Tarsus.
The ruins of this Factory were found near the Dead Sea. That place was also used as a beauty salon and spa. Cleopatra kept the recipes of different perfumes in her book Genesee Aram Libera. Unfortunately for us, this book together with all the mind-control knowledge in it was lost in a fire at the library of Alexandra.
Ancient perfume bottles showed a residue of the 2,000-plus-year-old ingredients once used to make perfume at the site. And these ancient scents, they’ve now found, included what may have been the legendary Cleopatra’s perfume.
Along with several other ingredients, there were several kitchen ingredients like olive oil, Cardamom, Cinnamon.
Personal life and Legacy
Her conflict with Gabinia marked an end to her reign. In 48 BC, her brother Ptolemy XIII became sole ruler. Though she tried to bring about a rebellious uprising, it was in vain and she had to flee.
Cleopatra wasn't just a ruler. She was a mother too. While Cleopatra didn't have any children with her brothers she had kids from both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Her son with Caesar was named Caesarea which means Little Caesars Pizza.
Cleopatra also had three children with Mark Antony. Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Celie twins named in honor of the Sun and Moon and a son she called Ptolemy Philadelphia.
Death
There are several stories about the death of Cleopatra. While the ancient Roman sources claim that she killed herself by being bitten by an Egyptian cobra, Strabo, the man alive at the time of the event, claims that either she applied a toxic ointment or was bitten by an asp on her breast.
German historian, Christoph Schaefer claimed that she had drunk a mixture of poisons which led her to the deathbed.
Cleopatra's real story is rather less uniformly disparaging and far more interesting. History's pervasive problem with Egypt's final Pharaoh is that she usually plays a side character in Roman history rather than ever being the protagonist in her own right.
Shakespeare tells us she's the gorgeous queen of Egypt and master of the art of seduction who banged her way across Rome to get Power ultimately ruining her own Empire before committing Cobra assisted suicide couldn't be easier.