Who Was Cleopatra?

[Peter1469]

Here is an interesting article about Cleopatra, the pharaoh of Egypt in the age of Roman dominance in the Mediterranean region.

What kind of pharaoh was Cleopatra? The few remaining contemporary Egyptian sources suggest that she was very popular among her own people. Egypt's Alexandria-based rulers, including Cleopatra, were ethnically Greek, descended from Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy I Soter. They would have spoken Greek and observed Greek customs, separating themselves from the ethnically Egyptian majority. But unlike her forebears, Cleopatra actually bothered to learn the Egyptian language. For Egyptian audiences, she commissioned portraits of herself in the traditional Egyptian style. In one papyrus dated to 35 B.C. Cleopatra is called Philopatris, "she who loves her country." By identifying herself as a truly Egyptian pharaoh, Cleopatra used patriotism to cement her position.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...pZKj2cPWll0.99
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[Gerrard Winstanley]

She wasn't a stunner, that's for sure.

[Peter1469]

The article mentions that. She had power, and that was likely a large part of the attraction that Julius Caesar and Marc Antony had for her.

[Alyosha]

Coins of that age aren't exactly the best representation of what people looked like due to the minting process and the fact that they made everyone look to that age's standard of beauty. What we know of her through historians is that she had large eyes and a big nose, but that when she began to speak she was captivating.



Arsinoe was found to be of mixed race, so she was probably the same.

[Private Pickle]

She wasn't a stunner, that's for sure.

That's a MAN baby!

[Dr. Who]

This is a computer generated image. Pieced together from images on ancient artefacts, including a ring dating from Cleopatra's reign 2,000 years ago, it is the culmination of more than a year of painstaking research

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz3BtUUFq9U
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[PolWatch]

I always thought she looked like this image (then I found out it was Nefertiti)

[Peter1469]

Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Greek. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and put a general of his in charge. Ptolemy I Soter. I would doubt that anyone in line to rule was of mixed race.

[Dr. Who]

Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Greek. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and put a general of his in charge. Ptolemy I Soter. I would doubt that anyone in line to rule was of mixed race.

The family was mixed with Persians and no one knows the identity of her mother or maternal grandmother, but odds are that Cleopatra wasn't dark skinned.

[The Sage of Main Street]

She wasn't a stunner, that's for sure.

Meaningless. Eroded, poorly made, or ugly because she became an enemy of Rome. But it is politically correct to say that she didn't use her looks to seduce Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. I bet she looked like Elizabeth Taylor!