6 things you never knew about Cleopatra
She was a tactful politician who used her wit, not her beauty, to become the most powerful woman in the world
She is one of the most recognizable people in human history, but we know so little about her actual life. She's been immortalized in literature and on the silver screen, but in entirely the wrong way. Cleopatra was one of the savviest and most powerful rulers of her time, but her real story has been lost in most historical accounts.
In Searching for Cleopatra, a documentary from The Nature of Things, we come face-to-face with the real woman who ruled a vast empire 2000 years ago. Here are a few things you probably didn't know about the Egyptian queen.
She wasn't Egyptian
Cleopatra was the last queen of Egypt, but she came from a long line of non-Egyptian rulers. She was the last of the "Ptolemaic" rulers.
When Alexander the Great invaded in 332 BCE, Egypt came under Macedonian and Greek control. After Alexander's death, Ptolemy, a Macedonian nobleman, took control of Egypt, establishing a dynasty that would rule the empire for 10 generations.
She married both of her brothers
The "Ptolemaic" rulers distinguished themselves by marrying their siblings. The queen herself was actually Cleopatra the VII, and her parents were almost certainly brother and sister. But that's where the familial love ended. If they weren't marrying each other, they were murdering each other — some squabbling siblings killed each other off and mothers decapitated their children — all for the glory of power.
After the death of their father, Cleopatra ruled Egypt alongside her brother, Ptolemy VIII, who was eight years younger and thought to be her husband. But the two quickly became enemies and Cleopatra, at 21 years old, found herself in the Sinai desert, trying to raise an army to regain control. She received some help from a very powerful source.
To take back control of Egypt, Cleopatra joined forces with the Roman ruler Julius Caesar and in the process, bore him a son. With Caesar's troops, she managed to reclaim her throne from her younger brother and ruled once more, alongside her other brother, Ptolemy XIV, who she also later married.
She was a scholar who spoke nine languages
The Ptolemaic rulers may have been war-mongering and brutal, but they loved their books. In Alexandria, Egypt's capital at the time, an incredible library housed original written works from around the world. Young Cleopatra spent her youth studying and became a scholar, scientist and gifted chemist, and was known to experiment with different poisons.
She spoke nine languages and was the first Ptolemaic ruler to speak Egyptian. All that knowledge and language skill was put to good use as ruler of Egypt.
Cleopatra was no 'beauty'
Cleopatra has been portrayed as a beautiful seductress who bent powerful men to her will by sheer force of her attractiveness, but it's not the truth.
The "temptress" image was created by the Romans after Cleopatra's death, who wrote their own version of history, and was perpetuated over the years by the likes of Shakespeare, centuries of famous painters, and more recently, Hollywood.
The reality was, Cleopatra was no beauty. Just like today, rulers of Egypt had their image cast into the currency.
On coins found from her time, Cleopatra's face is forged in gold, with a hooked nose, high forehead and wide, sunken eyes, very different from the vixen we've seen on the silver screen. "Cleopatra was much more concerned to have a strong and dominant appearance ... than to be pretty or beautiful by any feminine standards of the day," says Sheila Ager, professor of classical studies at the University of Waterloo.
"She was sending the message that she was as good as and as valid a ruler as any of the men who had gone before her."
She was probably the richest person in the world
At the height of her power 2000 years ago, Cleopatra's empire stretched across the Mediterranean, from modern-day Libya in the West, through Egypt to Syria in the East — the largest amount of territory any woman has ever ruled.
She was the absolute ruler over seven million people and the richest woman in the world. Worth 95.8 billion dollars in today's currency, she was probably the richest person in her time.
It's likely that an asp bite didn't kill her
After his defeat, Cleopatra's lover Marc Antony ended his life and Cleopatra's suicide became the stuff of legend.
Soon after her death, rumours began circulating that she allowed a venomous asp to bite her breast. "The snake is a symbol Egyptian royalty and Egyptian queens have snakes on their brow," says Joyce Tyldesley, senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. "It was very symbolic. It was a good death." In essence, the story of an asp bite killing Cleopatra was fitting and symbolic. A "perfect end" to Cleopatra's incredible story.
But some archeologists don't buy that tale. Cleopatra was a gifted chemist and knew her way around poisons, but the actual circumstances of her death are unclear, as is her final resting place.
After her death, Egypt became a province of Rome, and the country would not regain its autonomy again until the twentieth century.
Over time,Cleopatra's legacy has become part of our pop culture. It's time that the real woman's history was told, as it's more impressive than we ever thought.
Watch Searching for Cleopatra on The Nature of Things.
