THE CLEOPATRAS: THE FORGOTTEN QUEENS OF EGYPT
By Llyod Llewellyn-Jones
Wildlife, Rs 999
The name, Cleopatra, evokes images of grandeur, seduction, realpolitik and the absolute power wielded by Egypt’s greatest queen who brought Roman legions to heel and enticed their greatest dictator and general to bed. Immortalised in literature, music and numerous films, the legend of Cleopatra VII, supposedly ending her life with an asp clasped to her breast, further burnishes the aura of a person whose stories and purported mannerisms have captivated imaginations across the ages and continued to fuel myths and caricatures alongside historical research and archaeological discoveries. Yet, she was only one of seven powerful queens, the last of their line, who dominated the normally patriarchal domain of politics and warfare through chutzpah, charm and cunning. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s insightful book narrates chronologically the stories of these seven queens, each of whom furthered the Ptolemaic dynasty’s power and hold over Egypt before it was subsumed into the Roman empire. Engagingly written, the book reveals the heady conquests, unstinted ambitions and unique vision of these Egyptian queens that helped them break the mould and create their own legacies.
The Cleopatras’ histories arise from and are underlain by complex blood-relationships, multiple instances of royal incest, and the keenness of the Ptolemaic rulers to avoid hypogamy by forging marital ties within a select social circle in keeping with their identities as Hellenistic dynasts. It was through these complex and intertwined strands of filial relations and kinship, which often nurtured secret cliques, begat betrayals, and engendered palace coups, that these women of the royal household subverted the established patriarchal pharaonic monarchy, overcoming inept or infantile male co-rulers to court and align with diverse political entities, encourage and entrap allies and enemies alike, while continually adjusting and shifting their strategies. Each queen paved the path for her successor to dominate even more widely and ruthlessly, culminating in Cleopatra VII nearly overcoming the Roman empire to rule supreme across the ancient world, thereby earning the moniker of antiquity’s most crafty, celebrated or reviled queen.
Ironically, the first Cleopatra, Syra, hailed from modern-day Syria and only entered Egypt through a marriage alliance to Ptolemy V to quell the wars between the Seleucids of Asia Minor and the Ptolemies ruling the Nile valley. After her husband’s poisoning, as queen-regent, she outranked the pharaoh by ruling over both Upper and Lower Egypt. Her daughter, Cleopatra II, married her full-blood brother, Ptolemy VI Philometor. They were equally Egypt’s god-king and goddess-queen before becoming pharaohs in their own right. Their daughter, Cleopatra III, ascended the throne on the death of her uncle-husband and styled herself as a revered goddess. But running feuds over rulership with her son eventually precipitated her murder, even as her enforced divorce of Cleopatra IV caused further estrangement. These and other events would lead the realm into slow decline despite the steadfastness of Cleopatra V, Berenice III, who held Ptolemy X’s reign together even though her own rule was brutally terminated. Thereafter, Cleopatra VI, Tryphaina, kept the throne warm for the Cleopatra that history most remembers, Cleopatra VII, whose own ascension to rule and machinations for power have become legendary principally because of her dealings with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and the ensuing wars with Rome and with Octavian that finally extinguished her reign and lineage.
Llewellyn-Jones contends that while these seven Cleopatras were disparate in their individual personalities, each reflecting the social mores of her time, their interlinked histories and unified abilities of queenship as female figureheads denote them as significant shapers of the Hellenistic political landscape. The narratives and legacy associated with the most famous of them, Cleopatra VII, is thus best understood through the powerful familial and female context that created her. The contextualised and entwined timelines and lucidly-related spatiality of unfolding historical events within Egypt and around the Mediterranean make the book a valuable addition to the field. Detailed family charts, maps and bust photographs of the different Cleopatras are insightful inclusions.
