Cleopatra was a ruler of Egypt in the 1st century BC. She inherited the throne jointly with her brother, Ptolemy XII, in 52 BC. With the help of a Roman army, led by Julius Caesar, Cleopatra ousted her brother. After the death of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra involved herself in the civil wars of the Roman Empire. She hoped to gain greater power and influence for herself and Egypt. Instead, she suffered humiliating defeat. In 30 BC, to avoid the terrible fate of being dragged to Rome in chains, Cleopatra died by her own hand. It has been said that she allowed herself to be bitten by a deadly snake, although this is not confirmed.
The vast majority of Egypt’s 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 queens’ stories were forgotten and their monuments buried under Egypt’s 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 Rome’s official records. As Cleopatra had played a key role in his struggle to 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 honourable 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.
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