Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt

CLEOPATRA

ALSO BY JOYCE TYLDESLEY
For Adults
Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt
Hatchepsut: the Female Pharaoh
Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen
The Mummy
Ramesses: Egypt’s Greatest Pharaoh
Judgement of the Pharaoh: Crime and Punishment in Ancient Egypt
The Private Lives of the Pharaohs
Egypt’s Golden Empire
Pyramids: The Real Story Behind Egypt’s Most Ancient Monuments
Tales from Ancient Egypt
Egypt: How a Lost Civilization was Rediscovered
Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt
Egyptian Games and Sports

For children
Mummy Mysteries: The Secret World of Tutankhamun
and the Pharaohs
Egypt (Insiders)
Stories from Ancient Egypt

CLEOPATRA

LAST QUEEN OF EGYPT

JOYCE TYLDESLEY

A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York

Copyright © 2008 by Joyce Tyldesley
First published in the United States in 2008 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in Great Britain in 2008 by Profile Books Ltd

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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
HC ISBN: 978-0-465-00940-4
PB ISBN: 978-0-465-01892-5
LCCN: 2008921307

British ISBN: 978 1 86197 965 0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to the memory of my late father,

William Randolph Tyldesley

Contents

Family tree

Maps

Author’s Note

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE
Princess of Egypt

CHAPTER TWO
Queen of Egypt

CHAPTER THREE
Alexandria-next-to-Egypt

CHAPTER FOUR
Cleopatra and Julius Caesar

CHAPTER FIVE
The New Isis

CHAPTER SIX
Cleopatra and Mark Antony

CHAPTER SEVEN
Death of a Dream

CHAPTER EIGHT
Cleopatra’s Children

CHAPTER NINE
History Becomes Legend

Who Was Who?

Chronology

Notes

Bibliography

List of Illustrations

Cartouches

Acknowledgements

Index

Author’s Note

P
ersonal names are a potential minefield for the student of ancient history. I have aimed at clarity for those new to the Ptolemaic age, and can only apologise in advance to those who may feel that I have made irrational, inconsistent or unscholarly decisions. Throughout the book I have favoured the traditional spelling Cleopatra rather than the more authentic but less widely known Kleopatra. Similarly, when using Roman names I have opted for the more familiar modern variants: Caesar instead of Gaius Julius (Iulius) Caesar, Antony instead of Marcus Antonius, and so on. Octavian was, as Mark Antony so rudely noted, a boy who owed everything to his name. Soon after Cleopatra’s suicide, Octavian (initially Gaius Octavius; later Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus) took the title Imperator and the name Caesar Augustus. To avoid confusion I refer to him as Octavian throughout. As a general rule, I use the ‘-os’ ending for those of Greek heritage, so that, for example, Cleopatra’s youngest son becomes Ptolemy Philadelphos rather than the Latinised Ptolemy Philadelphus, but I retain the ‘-us’ ending for those, like Herodotus, who are today widely known by the Latin version of their name.

All dates are
BC
(
BCE
) unless otherwise specified. The dynastic Egyptians counted their years by reference to the current king’s reign, each new reign requiring the number system to start again at regnal
Year I. The Ptolemies continued this system. The Romans used a lunar calendar of 355 days but neglected to add in the occasional month that would keep the official calendar in line with the seasons. On 1 January 46 Julius Caesar introduced a new Egyptian-inspired calendar of 365.25 days. His Julian calendar remains the basis of our own modern calendar.

Throughout the text I have used the loose term ‘dynastic Egypt’ to refer to the thirty-one dynasties before the 332 arrival of Alexander the Great.

Introduction