Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt [Hardcover]

Joyce Tyldesley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2008

The Romans regarded her as “fatale monstrum”—a fatal omen. Pascal said the shape of her nose changed the history of the world. Shakespeare portrayed her as an icon of tragic love. But who was Cleopatra, really?

Cleopatra was the last ruler of the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies. Highly intelligent, she spoke many languages and was rumored to be the only Ptolemy to read and speak Egyptian. Her famous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony had as much to do with politics as the heart. Ruthless in dealing with her enemies, many within her own family, Cleopatra steered her kingdom through difficult times, and very nearly succeeded in creating an eastern empire to rival the growing might of Rome.

Her story was well documented by her near contemporaries, and the tragic tale of contrasts and oppositions—the seductive but failing power of ancient Egypt versus the virile strength of modern Rome—is so familiar we almost feel that we know Cleopatra. But our picture is highly distorted. Cleopatra is often portrayed as a woman ruled by emotion rather than reason; a queen hurtling towards inevitable self-destruction. But these tales of seduction, intrigue, and suicide by asp have obfuscated Cleopatra’s true political genius.

Stripping away our preconceptions, many of them as old as Egypt’s Roman conquerors, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley offers a magnificent biography of a most extraordinary queen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This entertaining biography hits the elusive sweet spot between scholarship and readability. British archeologist Tyldesley (Daughters of Isis) is charmingly transparent about the unreliability of her sources. She tells us that when the Roman poet Lucan describes Cleopatra's ineffable night of shame with Julius Caesar, he is writing the equivalent of modern tabloid journalism. In spite of the lack of eyewitness descriptions of Cleopatra, the question, for instance, of what she looked like becomes a fast-moving amusing discussion of statuary as royal propaganda, the modern perception of Cleopatra's nose as way too big and the difference between beauty and sexiness. Writing with an easy mastery of her subject, Tyldesley always seems to be able to lay her hands on the perfect lively detail, whether an excerpt from an obscure bureaucratic document or a description of a kind of giant robot that paraded through the streets of Alexandria pouring libations of milk from a gold bottle. Though she makes it clear we'll never know what Cleopatra was really like, Tyldesley provides a memorable journey through the rich and contradictory sources of our knowledge about her. 8 pages of illus., 3 maps. (Sept.) ""
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From Booklist

Though you might think everything you need to know about Cleopatra has already been written, think again. The life story of Cleopatra has become so distorted and embellished through the multiple lenses of history, legend, film, fiction, and archaeology, it is often difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Egyptologist Tyldesley undertakes the daunting task of separating myth from reality in this slightly revisionist biography of the last of the Ptolemies. By juxtaposing her reign with the decline of the Egyptian Empire rather than the rise of Rome, the author is able to place Cleopatra firmly into historical and cultural context. What emerges is a portrait of a cunning political operator ruthlessly attempting to reestablish Egyptian supremacy in a rapidly shrinking world overwhelmed by the vast power of the mighty Roman Empire. --Margaret Flanagan

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465009409
• ISBN-13: 978-0465009404
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #886,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cleopatra from a Egyptologist's point of view, November 2, 2008

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Hardcover)

Joyce Ann Tyldesley is a lecturer of Egyptology at Liverpool University and the author of several books on ancient Egypt. She writes that most authors have written about Cleopatra either from a Roman perspective or from a popular culture perspective. She claims that most Egyptologists consider Cleopatra part of the 300 year Ptolemaic Empire, an Empire that is something of a footnote to true Egyptian history. Of course, Cleopatra VII is best known for her role in the Roman political battles between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and later between Octavian and Mark Antony.

Tyldesley is a terrific story teller and as Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor and a host of others have proven, Cleopatra's story is full of twists and turns and many wonders. Tyldesley fills her book with interesting Egyptian details, putting her a bit more firmly into ancient traditions. She argues against suicide by asp bite, for example, based on an ancient tradition of death by poisonous ointments.

By the end of the book, though, I didn't really see a Cleopatra very different from the one I found in Cleopatra by Michael Grant, a book I greatly admire. After all, almost all we know about Cleopatra was written by Roman authors, focused on the great battles over Egyptian riches and Imperial power. Moreover, Egypt itself had been ruled from time to time over 700 years by Libyans, Nubians and Persians before the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Finally, as Helen Brown points out in her review quoted in full in the first Comment: "After defeating the last queen of Egypt, Julius Caesar's adopted son was determined to destroy her reputation. He smashed the images made to glorify her and ensured his pocket historians cast her as a greedy, incestuous, adulterous whore who used her foreign, feminine wiles to emasculate the Roman Empire."

This is a terrific story, very well told by an excellent historian. But don't look for any new and ground breaking insights into Cleopatra's fascinating life.

Robert C. Ross 2008

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provides a well rounded background, December 26, 2008

By 

P. Novak - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Hardcover)

I bought this book as an introduction to Cleopatra after watching the Rome mini-series. I wanted to get an idea if the story was accurate. This book provides a great introduction, but left me with the impression that her life is shrouded in mystery. The author often went off on tangents to fill in a complex background that most readers (including myself) are not familiar with. These tangents include Egyptian geneology, the layout of cities, and the history of Egypt. These deviations were generally interesting, but I often found myself wondering how this all fit back into Cleopatra's life, and why they were included.

I found the sections of the book where the author explained the myths surrounding Cleopatra and broke down the possible origins, and debunked them the most interesting. I felt these left the best impression of what her life must have been like, and the complex world she maneuvered in.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book if you want to START learning about Cleopatra, September 5, 2008

By 

ILizbeth - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Hardcover)

As a starting point for learning about Cleopatra, this is a great book. However, if you want to go beyond the basics and what was reported by historians two thousand years ago, I would buy Cleopatra: A Biography by Michael Grant. Grant's book examines Cleopatra's life on a deeper level and with more speculation as to whether this and that might have happened, whereas Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt reports speculation as fact and doesn't examine all facets of disputed events (such as her suicide). Overall, a good book, although given my vast readings on ancient Rome, I do question some of the facts, such as what became of Cleopatra's two surviving sons with Mark Antony.