We had just booked a vacation to Egypt and I quickly realized that I had almost no knowledge of Egyptian History. I had heard of the famous queens like Cleopatra and her entanglement with Caesar and Mark Anthony, but really didn’t know much of the details. I knew that there have been tomes written about these historical figures and didn’t know where to start. So I found a book that was recently published and had Cleopatra in the title
Given that there’s isn’t much written history about Selene, it ended up being a lot of speculative stories based on a handful of paintings and artifacts. The first few sections of the book deal with Cleopatra and to me that was very educative as I had almost no knowledge of Cleopatra’s life. Since Roman historians were quite prolific during that time period there is plenty of material about Cleopatra and her lovers from which to draw from. Egypt in the first century BCE was a vassal state to Rome. Ptolemy XII Auletes (Cleopatras father) ascended the throne in 80BC and ended up paying significant bribes to Roman politicians to remain in power. These bribes were a significant burden on the Egyptian Treasury and Ptolemy was forced to significantly increase taxes to raise money to pay the Romans. There was widespread discontent in Egypt over this tax burden and it culminated in Ptolemy XII being forced to step down from the throne and fleeing to Rome for safety. Rome restored him to the throne but he died a few years later and had stipulated that brother and sister, Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII would jointly rule Egypt.
It was common practice for Egyptian rulers to marry their siblings, and probably equally common for them to fight each other for the throne. It was no different with Ptolemy XIII, who seemed jealous that Cleopatra VII was getting more attention, and so managed to depose her and force her to flee to Syria. Later, when Julius Caeser pursued Pompey to Egypt, he joined forces with Cleopatra VII and forced Ptolemy XIII to flee the city and he eventually drowned while attempting to cross the Nile.
Cleopatra now was free to ascend the throne and co-opted her younger brother Ptolemy XIV to rule with her. In this short while Cleopatra got pregnant and bore Ceaser a son, Caesarion. She quickly got rid of Ptolemy XIV and traveled to Rome to be close to Caesar. After Caesar was assassinated, Mark Anthony fell in love with Cleopatra and she returned to Egypt for her safety. Mark Anthony was fighting some wars in the East and needed money and help from Cleopatra. She showed up in style and charmed the pants off him — literally. The rest is history.
After both Cleopatra and Mark Anthony die, her daughter Cleopatra Selene II and her siblings were taken to Rome as prisoners. They were raised by Octavia, Anthony’s former wife and sister of Octavian Caesar. Cleopatra Selene was then married to King Juba II of Numidia and they ended up ruling Mauritania and large swathes of northern Africa. There’s little written documentation on these parts, so the author devotes just a few pages of speculative history to make her case that Cleopatra Selene was an awesome Queen. To be fair she and Juba ruled Mauretania for almost two decades!
In summary, this was a good introduction to me of Egyptian history. However, it was rather dry and there are probably much better books on Egyptian history of this period.
