Myths of Cleopatra

A French exhibition is revisiting the story of the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, writes David Tresilian in Paris

Visitors to the French capital this summer have the opportunity to revisit what is known about the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra courtesy of an exhibition, The Myth of Cleopatra, at the Pinacothèque de Paris in the place de la Madeleine.

Bringing together material evidence from mostly European collections, the exhibition also examines Cleopatra’s afterlife in painting, literature and film. While no new discoveries are on offer, one leaves the show feeling reinvigorated and with interest in the ancient Egyptian queen renewed.

It can never be known what truly lies behind the stories of Cleopatra that have come down from antiquity, but the ancient writers are at one in suggesting that had it not been for Cleopatra’s influence over the Roman generals Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, the most powerful men in the world at the time, Egypt would have lost its independence far earlier than it did. As it was, the country was only annexed by Octavius Caesar after Cleopatra’s military defeat and suicide in 30 BCE.

Whatever else she was, these writers suggest, Cleopatra was supremely clever and a consummate politician. Though the seventeenth-century French writer Blaise Pascal later famously suggested that “had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the face of the world would have changed,” it seems that Cleopatra’s fascination lay less in her physical beauty and more in her quickness, intelligence and cultivation.

Cleopatra: Facts & Biography

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   March 13, 2014

Cleopatra VII, often simply called “Cleopatra,” was the last of a series of rulers called the Ptolemies who ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. She was also the last true pharaoh of Egypt. Cleopatra ruled an empire that included Egypt, Cyprus, part of modern-day Libya and other territories in the Middle East.

Modern-day depictions of her tend to depict a woman of great physical beauty and seductive skills — indeed, her romantic involvements with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony have been immortalized in art, music and literature for centuries. However, a number of ancient records, as well as recent historical research, tell a different story. Rather than some sort of sex kitten, they tell of an intelligent, multilingual, female ruler who affirmed her right to rule Egypt and other territories.

Her “own beauty, as they say, was not, in and of itself, completely incomparable, nor was it the sort that would astound those who saw her; but interaction with her was captivating, and her appearance, along with her persuasiveness in discussion and her character that accompanied every interchange, was stimulating,” wrote Plutarch, a philosopher who lived A.D. 46-120 (Translation by Prudence Jones).

“Cleopatra was no mere sexual predator, and certainly no plaything of Caesar,” writes Erich Gruen, a professor emeritus of history at University of California Berkeley, in an article in the book “Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited” (University of California Press, 2011).

“She was queen of Egypt, Cyrene and Cyprus, heir to the long and proud dynasty of the Ptolemies … a passionate but also very astute woman who had maneuvered Rome – and would maneuver Rome again – into advancing the interests of the Ptolematic legacy.”

Cleopatra: Rome and the Magic of Egypt

Dalu Jones visits an intriguing new exhibition investigating the captivating effects that Cleopatra and Ancient Egyptian culture had on the Romans

Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt (69-30 BC), has recently returned to Rome as 
the inspiration for an exhibition entitled Cleopatra: Rome and the Magic of Egypt. Major museums and galleries worldwide have lent almost 200 works of art to this show celebrating a woman whose appeal and influence remain undiminished even now, 2000 years after her death. 

These include the 'Nahman Cleopatra', a marble head (circa 33-30 BC), on show in Italy for the first time. The portrait, which is still in private hands, takes its name from Maurice Nahman (1868-1948), the most famous of Cairo's antique dealers and collectors in pre-Nasser Egypt. 
The 'Nahman Cleopatra' resembles another head dating from the second half of the 1st century BC, from the Vatican Museums, which is also on view here (circa 45 BC), one of the few portraits thought by scholars to really represent the queen. Found in 1784 at the Villa dei Quintilii on the Via Appia, the young woman wears the royal diadem, a broad band of cloth tied around the head (first adopted by Alexander the Great) that came to symbolise Hellenistic kingship.

Photograph: Musei Vaticani

Both heads may be Roman copies, in marble, of the lost, gilded bronze statue of Cleopatra given by Julius Caesar to the Temple of Venus Genetrix, while she was living in Rome from 46 to 44 BC. Another marble head found in Rome, on the Via Labicana, may be a portrait of Cleopatra in her youth, represented in the guise of the goddess Isis and dating from the 2nd or 1st century BC. The likeness of Cleopatra shown on coins does not do her justice. Men found her extremely attractive, although she may not have been a great beauty in the conventional sense but probably a highly intelligent jolie-laide whose allure was derived from her elegant bearing, notable wit, regal status and undoubted political savoir faire.

Representing the queen's illustrious Macedonian ancestry there is the 'Guimet Alexander', a masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture from the Louvre. Alexander the Great was the founder of Alexandria, where he was reputedly buried by Ptolemy Soter I (circa 367 BC-circa 283 BC), one of his generals, the initiator in 305 BC of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ended with Cleopatra's death in 30 BC. Cleopatra's lovers Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) and Mark Antony (83-30 BC) are also represented, as is Caesarion (47-30 BC), her son by Julius Caesar, who became Ptolemy XV.

The ancient coin of Cleopatra: There could have been pyramids in Paris

Found in an archaeological dig in Bethsaida, this rare bronze coin tells of love, trade ties and globe-shaking jealousies. And what if Marc Antony had won the war?

By Miriam Feinberg Vamosh | Aug. 4, 2013

Great rulers come but a rare few leave a mark echoing down the millennia. Two such were Cleopatra and Marc Antony, who fleetingly placed Egypt at the center of the ancient world, only to unleash unrest and eventually war on the region.

A few thousand years is a mere blink of an eye when it comes to the vital ties between this land and Egypt, as attested by a rare coin carrying historical weight far greater than its 7.59 grams, which depicts the notorious lovers – and which emerged last year from the ruins of a first-century house at Tel Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee.

Tel Bethsaida rises from the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee, but the coin was minted in another city by another sea – the Mediterranean port of Akko - today better known as Acre. The coin, made of bronze, is about the size of a quarter, being 21–23 millimeters in diameter (it is not perfectly round, at least not any more). Its date shows that it was minted in the last half of the year 35 or the first half of 34 BCE.

Cleopatra and Antony's children rediscoverd

Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi 

Cleopatra's twin babies now have a face. An Italian Egyptologist has rediscovered a sculpture of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, the offspring of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

Discovered in 1918 near the temple of Dendera on the west bank of the Nile, the sandstone statue was acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but has remained largely overlooked.

                  Credit: Giuseppina Capriotti.

The back of the the 33-foot sculpture, catalogued as JE 46278 at the Egyptian museum, features some engraved stars -- likely indicating that the stone was originally part of a ceiling. Overall, the rest of the statue appears to be quite unusual.

"It shows two naked children, one male and one female, of identical size standing within the coils of two snakes. Each figure has an arm over the other’s shoulder,‭ ‬while the other hand grasps a serpent," Giuseppina Capriotti, an Egyptologist at the Italy's National Research Council, told Discovery News.

The researcher identified the children as Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, Antony and Cleopatra's twins, following a detailed stylistic and iconographic analysis published by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

Capriotti noticed that the boy has a sun-disc on his head,‭ ‬while the girl boast a crescent and a lunar disc. The serpents, perhaps two cobras, would also be different forms of sun and moon, she said. Both discs are decorated with the udjat-eye, also called the eye of Horus, a common symbol in Egyptian art. ‭

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff

"It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life"

By Gamal Nkrumah

Stacy Schiff

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Alexandria lets you indulge in its collective allegories and epics. From one particular historical point of view the legends are intact. From another no less academic viewpoint everything is unraveling -- from Rome to Tarsus, and Saint Mark could be turning in his grave. A heroic queen can become a coward and a saucy but stern blue-blood, a seductress. The story of the city lingers long at this historical juncture as the author takes up the narration, and in her version of Alexandria, Cleopatra's first encounter with Ceasar isn't so seamless. She isn't even one of his fans. As for Mark Anthony, he is an object of devotion, even prodigious desire.

There is sometimes a 'message in a bottle' allure about political personalities that elude their proper place in history. Cleopatra was born in 69 BC, the second of three daughters was the celebrated and legendary last queen of Egypt. She is remembered to this day as an illustrious temptress of mighty Roman men of war. Cleopatra VII's sisters -- the elder Berenice and the younger Arsinoe -- were two such no less wily women who somehow eluded their proper place in history. Why this is so is left, I suppose, to the reader's conjecture. However, questions of historical relevance must be addressed.

As a pretender to the Ptolomaic throne in the absence of her father in Rome, the elder sister was executed upon Auletes' triumphal return. His fame as a fabulously wealthy Ptolomy did not however ensure a proper place for him in history. He was after all, Auletes the Piper. He was "the pharaoh who piped his way while Egypt collapsed."

Yet it was his dutiful daughter who presided over the Ptolemaic dynasty's ruin. A feat that ironically assured that she acquired a proper place in history. Cleopatra VII ingratiated herself with her father, playing the devoted daughter and winning his affections. She was the apple of Auletes' eye.