Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt

by Joyce Tyldesley

Overview

The Romans regarded her as "fatale monstrum" -- a fatal omen. Pascal said the shape of her nose changed the history of the world. Shakespeare portrayed her as an icon of tragic love. But who was Cleopatra, really?

We almost feel that we know Cleopatra, but our distorted image of a self-destructive beauty does no justice to Cleopatra's true genius. In Cleopatra, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley offers an unexpectedly vivid portrait of a skillful Egyptian ruler. Stripping away our preconceptions, many of them as old as Egypt's Roman conquerors, Cleopatra is a magnificent biography of a most extraordinary queen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465018925
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Dr. Joyce Tyldesley holds a first class honors degree in archaeology from Liverpool University, and a doctorate from Oxford University. She is currently a lecturer in Egyptology at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology, Fellow of the Manchester Museum and Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool University. She has acted as consultant on several television projects and has excavated extensively in Egypt and Europe. Her previous books include a sequence of popular biographies of Egyptian pharaohs, with particular emphasis on the lives of prominent Egyptian women. She lives in Bolton, England.

Table of Contents

Family tree     viii
Maps     x
Author's Note     xiii
Introduction     1
Princess of Egypt     10
Queen of Egypt     41
Alexandria-next-to-Egypt     70
Cleopatra and Julius Caesar     94
The New Isis     109
Cleopatra and Mark Antony     140
Death of a Dream     171
Cleopatra's Children     197
History Becomes Legend     205
Who Was Who?     218
Chronology     239
Notes     241
Bibliography     260
List of Illustrations     266
Cartouches     268
Acknowledgements     269
Index     270

Editorial Reviews

"Times Higher Education Supplement"
"A very readable account of the life of Cleopatra VII, and one that goes some way to redress the way in which she is often viewed. It also provides intriguing insights into life and society in the Egypt of the Ptolemies and the position of Egypt in the world-system of its time."


"Tucson Citizen"
"This is a multilayered biography of one of the most interesting historical figures ever. Tyldesley presents the great queen in such a way that she almost leaps from the printed page."

"Los Angeles Daily News"
"Fascinating and irresistible."

"Sunday Telegraph"
"Tyldesley's strength has always been her storytelling, and here she is on top form. The Ptolemaic court was an in-bred and volatile place where assassination of family rivals was commonplace, and she brings out well the effect of the entry of Rome into this bewildering madhouse.... Tyldesley takes this terrific story on in fine style...a gripping narrative."

"The Mail on Sunday"
"One of the many merits of this sympathetic biography is that [Tyldesley] is able to place Cleopatra securely in Egyptian culture and history."

From the Publisher

This entertaining biography hits the elusive sweet spot between scholarship and readability. British archeologist Tyldesley (Daughters of Isis) is charmingly transparent about the unreliability of her sources. She tells us that when the Roman poet Lucan describes Cleopatra's "ineffable night of shame" with Julius Caesar, he is "writing the equivalent of modern tabloid journalism." In spite of the lack of eyewitness descriptions of Cleopatra, the question, for instance, of what she looked like becomes a fast-moving amusing discussion of statuary as royal propaganda, the modern perception of Cleopatra's nose as way too big and the difference between beauty and sexiness. Writing with an easy mastery of her subject, Tyldesley always seems to be able to lay her hands on the perfect lively detail, whether an excerpt from an obscure bureaucratic document or a description of a kind of giant robot that paraded through the streets of Alexandria pouring libations of milk from a gold bottle. Though she makes it clear we'll never know what Cleopatra was "really" like, Tyldesley provides a memorable journey through the rich and contradictory sources of our knowledge about her. 8 pages of illus., 3 maps. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

British Egyptologist Tyldesley patiently unscrambles a slew of Ptolemys and Cleopatras who ruled wealthy Egypt from 332 to 30 BCE to tell the story of the dynasty's last and best-remembered queen, Cleopatra VII (c.70-30 BCE). Using archaeological and literary evidence, Tyldesley strips away the legend of Cleopatra's debauchery, much of it propaganda by Cleopatra's archenemy, the Emperor Octavian, who renamed the eighth month after himself (August) in part to mark the date he defeated the Egyptian queen. A well-educated and powerful queen of a Greek dynasty, Cleopatra scandalized the Roman world with the independence allowed women in Egypt (she bore children to both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony) and the dynastic custom of marrying within the family (she wed two of her brothers, both Ptolemys). While cultivating her divinity in the millennia-old Pharaonic tradition, Cleopatra also made strategic political (and sexual) alliances in the Mediterranean world to hold onto her shaky throne for 20 years. Cleopatra and Antony's defeat by Octavian at Actium, and the subsequent fall of Egypt, marked the end of the Hellenistic age and the start of the Roman era. This fascinating and scholarly book belongs in all libraries.
—Stewart Desmond

Library Journal

A new biography of the Macedonian ruler attempts to debunk many myths surrounding her legacy. Egyptologist Tyldesley (Egypt: How a Lost Civilization Was Rediscovered, 2006, etc.) digs deeply into Cleopatra's life, piecing together a unique portrait of her successes and failures. In chronological fashion, the author covers the major historical issues surrounding Cleopatra, but she wisely avoids lingering too long on well-traveled ground. Tyldesley examines many of the burning questions that continue to puzzle historians-Was she black? Did she marry her brother? Was she beautiful or ugly?-and that have helped create such a beguiling picture of the queen. Many biographers focus too much on Cleopatra's reputation as a temptress, but Tyldesley gamely analyzes her politically astute nature at work against the backdrop of the bloody, brutal times in which she operated. However, the author doesn't shy away from discussing the many apocryphal tales that swirl around the Ptolemaic ruler: the queen smuggling herself in a roll of linen sheets (or, in more common myth, a carpet) in an attempt to reach Caesar; the presentation of Pompey's severed and pickled head to Caesar as a gift, etc. The various stories about Cleopatra's relationship with Antony are thoroughly dissected, and Tyldesley supplements these with a neat examination of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The most absorbing passages concern her relationship with Antony and her subsequent demise, which are interspersed with (sometimes conflicting) quotations from fellow historians. Tyldesley also includes a welcome guide to the individual characters that Cleopatra encountered during the Ptolemaic period. A satisfying blend ofhistorical fact and strong, informed opinion about one of history's most captivating figures.

Kirkus Reviews