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Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "In approximately 3100 the independent city-states of the narrow Nile Valley and the broad Nile Delta united to form one long realm..." (more)
Key Phrases: triple uraeus, dynastic age, vulture headdress, Mark Antony, Julius Caesar, Queen of Egypt (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt + Cleopatra - A Biography + The Reign of Cleopatra
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  • This item: Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley

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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.) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."


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

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books (August 25, 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 (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #73,124 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #8 in  Books > History > Ancient > Africa
    #37 in  Books > History > Ancient > Egypt
    #65 in  Books > History > Africa > Egypt

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More About the Author

Joyce Tyldesley
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
In approximately 3100 the independent city-states of the narrow Nile Valley and the broad Nile Delta united to form one long realm. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
triple uraeus, dynastic age, vulture headdress, birth house
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mark Antony, Julius Caesar, Queen of Egypt, The New Isis, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra Selene, New Kingdom, Ptolemy Philadelphos, Pompey the Great, The Macedonian, King Ptolemy, Alexander Helios, New Dionysos, Red Sea, Ptolemaic Egypt, Ptolemy Caesar, British Museum, History Becomes Legend, The Alexander Romance, Late Period, Mistress of the Two Lands, Cornelius Gallus, River Nile, Old Kingdom
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt
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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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12 of 15 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
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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Cleopatra from a Egyptologist's point of view, November 2, 2008
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
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Provides a well rounded background, December 26, 2008
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Formidable Leader
Wonderful insight into Cleopatra's challenges in ruling Egypt. Ms. Tyldesley puts everything in chronological and easy to understand order with how the family relations and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by ookyroo

5.0 out of 5 stars The last queen of the Nile
Of the famous women in history, the one that's either at the top of the list or at least in the top five would be Cleopatra. Read more
Published 12 months ago by mrliteral

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than Fiction
In our odd culture of changing values where truth is often misrepresented, it is no surprise that the commonly-accepted story of Cleopatra is so wrong. Read more
Published 13 months ago by mjmcc61

3.0 out of 5 stars A little too scholarly for the general reader
Cloepatra: Last Queen of Egypt, falls somewhere between a scholarly book and a book for the general reader. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Lance B. Hillsinger

5.0 out of 5 stars A lively yet scholarly survey
Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley offers a new biographical treatment claiming that much of what we know about Cleopatra has been tainted by prejudice. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Midwest Book Review

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