Cleopatra: She Ruled the Men Who Ruled the World

Culture

A 13,000-square-foot exhibit featuring the largest collection of Cleopatra-era artifacts ever assembled in the U.S. can currently be seen at Milwaukee Public Museum through April 15. It will open at the California Science Center near downtown Los Angeles in late May.

The exhibit, prepared by National Geographic, focuses on one of the most mysterious figures in history. She has been immortalized by Renaissance artists, had numerous plays and books written about her and in modern times has been glamorized on the silver screen. Yet, according to exhibit organizers, we only know a fragment of her real story.

Cleopatra VII became the queen of Egypt in 51 B.C. At the age of seventeen she was thrust into power over a country on the verge of crumbling under the mighty Roman Empire. She charmed and seduced two of ancient Rome’s most powerful leaders, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and bore children with both of them. Then, barely two decades after coming to power she took her own life. Still, the full story of Cleopatra’s enigmatic life has yet to be solved.

According to exhibit organizers, 150 priceless artifacts that had been swallowed by the sand and sea after a series of earthquakes and tsunamis nearly 2,000 years ago. Unearthed by two of the world’s leading archaeologists Franck Goddio and Zahi Hawass, the exhibition features colossal statues, jewelry, coins and handwritten notes from Cleopatra’s lost palace in Alexandria, and reveals the excavation process involved in recovering these hidden treasures. Walk among towering monuments and glittering jewels that may have been part of the queen’s daily life. Learn how these Egyptian relics reveal mysteries of this past era. A complimentary audio tour, told in her voice, provides compelling insights into Cleopatra’s time.

Modern explorers Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's pre-eminent archaeologist and Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Franck Goddio, French underwater archaeologist and director of IEASM. Goddio's search has resulted in one of the most ambitious underwater expeditions ever undertaken, which has uncovered Cleopatra's royal palace and two ancient cities that had been lost beneath the sea for centuries after a series of earthquakes and tidal waves.

On land, Hawass and a team of archaeologists continue to search for the tomb of the ill-fated lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony. Never-before-seen artifacts referencing Cleopatra, excavated by Hawass' team at Taposiris Magna in Abusir, west of Alexandria, will be featured in the exhibition.

"Queen Cleopatra has captured the hearts of people all over the world. Remembered as a beautiful, charismatic and powerful woman, many things about her life are still shrouded in mystery. In 2005, we began to search for the tomb where she was buried with her lover, Mark Antony, which we believe was in an ancient temple near Alexandria," said Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. "So far, we have found coins, statues, and even shafts that are leading us closer to what would be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history. I dream of the moment when we will enter this hidden tomb, and reveal secrets and treasures that have been lost for millennia. This exhibition, which includes objects found in our current excavations, will give the American people the chance to learn about our search for Cleopatra, and will share with them the magic of this fascinating queen."

Screenshot: Artifacts excavated pulled from the seam bed near ancient Alexandria The exhibition showcases artifacts from Franck Goddio's continuing underwater search off the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, begun in 1992 and sponsored by the Hilti Foundation. Goddio's finds bring visitors inside his search for the lost world of Cleopatra, including remnants from the grand palace where she ruled. Visitors see underwater footage and photos of Goddio's team retrieving artifacts from the ocean and bringing them to the surface for the first time in centuries.

"The aim of our work is to reveal traces of the past and bring history back to life. We are delighted to present our underwater archaeological achievements and discoveries off the coast of Egypt to the American public," said Franck Goddio."Cleopatra is one of the most fascinating figures of ancient Egypt, and we are delighted to be able to share her true story with the world," said Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs.

Artifacts on display include magnificent black granite statues of a queen of Egypt dating from the Ptolemaic era in which Cleopatra ruled, which Goddio's team pulled from the sea.

Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times, “From the start Cleopatra’s story was larger than life: epic in scale, mythic in symbolism and operatically over the top in its grandeur and its spectacle. As Stacy Schiff describes it in a captivating new biography, Cleopatra’s meeting with Julius Caesar was “a singular, shuddering moment,” when “two civilizations, passing in different directions, unexpectedly and momentously” touched.

According to Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life, “Cleopatra was born a goddess, became a queen at 18 and at the height of her power, “she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands.” Having inherited a kingdom in decline, Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all.

“She was a resourceful leader: disciplined, self-assured and shrewd in her management of her country’s affairs; a sovereign who “knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine.”

“She would go down in history, however, not as “the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play a role in Western affairs,” Ms. Schiff writes, but as the consort of Caesar and later Mark Antony: a woman depicted by historians and poets as a wanton temptress symbolizing “insatiable sexuality” and unlawful love.”

Also,“Ms. Schiff also creates a portrait of an incestuous and lethal family in which sibling marriage and the murders of parents, children, spouses and brothers and sisters were common practice — a portrait as bloody and harrowing as anything in “Titus Andronicus.” And by drawing on scholarship about social and political practices of the day, she provides us with a keen understanding of the relative freedom and power enjoyed by women in Cleopatra’s day, as well as the sort of enlightened schooling the queen-to-be would have received as a girl. Like Caesar, we learn, she would have had a traditional Greek education that included Herodotus and Thucydides, instruction in the art of speech-making and perhaps nine languages too.

According to Smithsonian.com, “The image of young Cleopatra tumbling out of an unfurled carpet has been dramatized in nearly every film about her, from the silent era to a 1999 TV miniseries, but it was also a key scene in the real Cleopatra's staging of her own life. "She was clearly using all her talents from the moment she arrived on the world stage before Caesar," says Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, author of Cleopatra the Great.

“Like most monarchs of her time, Cleopatra saw herself as divine; from birth she and other members of her family were declared to be gods and goddesses. Highly image-conscious, Cleopatra maintained her mystique through shows of splendor, identifying herself with the deities Isis and Aphrodite, and in effect creating much of the mythology that surrounds her to this day. Though Hollywood versions of her story are jam-packed with anachronisms, embellishments, exaggerations and inaccuracies, the Cleopatras of Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh and Claudette Colbert do share with the real queen a love of pageantry. "Cleopatra was a mistress of disguise and costume," says Fletcher. "She could reinvent herself to suit the occasion, and I think that's a mark of the consummate politician."

“Though Cleopatra bore him a son, Caesar was already married, and Egyptian custom decreed that Cleopatra marry her remaining brother, Ptolemy XIV. Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., and with her ally gone Cleopatra had Ptolemy XIV killed to prevent any challenges to her son's succession. To solidify her grip on the throne, she dispatched her rebellious sister Arsinoe as well. Such ruthlessness was not only a common feature of Egyptian dynastic politics in Cleopatra's day, it was necessary to ensure her own survival and that of her son. With all domestic threats removed, Cleopatra set about the business of ruling Egypt, the richest nation in the Mediterranean world, and the last to remain independent of Rome.

“Cleopatra's foreign policy goal, in addition to preserving her personal power, was to maintain Egypt's independence from the rapidly expanding Roman Empire. By trading with Eastern nations—Arabia and possibly as far away as India—she built up Egypt's economy, bolstering her country's status as a world power. By allying herself with Roman general Mark Antony, Cleopatra hoped to keep Octavian, Julius Caesar's heir and Antony's rival, from making Egypt a vassal to Rome. Ancient sources make it clear that Cleopatra and Antony did love each other and that Cleopatra bore Antony three children; still, the relationship was also very useful to an Egyptian queen who wished to expand and protect her empire.

Read "Who was Cleopatra?" at Smithsonianmag.com.

The search for Cleopatra from National Geographic.

Visit your local library to obtain these resources:

Cleopatra
Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford, (2000).

The reign of Cleopatra
Stanley M. Burstein, (2004).

Cleopatra: The Life and Death of a Pharoah
Edith Flamarion and Alexandra Bonfante-Warren, (1997).

The Search for Cleopatra
Michael Foss,(1999).

Ptolemaic Alexandria
P.M. Fraser, (1972).

Cleopatra
Jack Lindsay, (1972).

Cleopatra
Don Nardo,(1994, 2001).

Women in Hellenistic Egypt : from Alexander to Cleopatra
Sarah B. Pomeroy, (1984).

Cleopatra : a biography
Duane W. Roller,(2010).