The Ancients - The Cleopatras: A Dynasty of Rule Breakers

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Cleopatra. It is one of the most recognisable names in ancient history, made famous by the exploits of Egypt’s controversial pharaoh queen. But did you know that the Cleopatra of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony fame was actually the seventh Cleopatra of her dynasty. From 180 BC, down to the Roman conquest of Alexandria in 30 BC, Egypt was ruled by a line of fiercely ambitious and independent Cleopatras, none of whom were afraid to break the rules…In today’s episode of The Ancients Tristan once again welcomes Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn Jones onto to podcast, this time to delve into the golden age of Ptolmeic Egypt and unpack the tumultuous family drama that brought these Cleopatras to the fore. This episode was produced and edited by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer was Anne-Marie Luff.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and I'm doing today's intro from a very special place. I am in Amman, the capital of Jordan, atop one of the great rocks in the centre of the city. It's known as the Citadel and it's adorned with great architecture from antiquity. I'm standing right next to a second century Roman temple, the remains of it, and it is called the Temple of Hercules because back in antiquity this was a great Roman center in the Middle East. I'm here with History

Hit. We've been creating lots of material for the podcast and also for History Hit TV. It will all be coming to you very soon and I cannot wait to share what we have in store for you. Back to today's episode, something slightly different. We are talking all about the Cleopatros. Now when someone mentions Cleopatra, your mind will immediately go to that powerful female pharaoh of Egypt who oversaw a golden age for a kingdom and had to love affairs with two great Roman statesmen, with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. However, that famous Cleopatra, well, she was the last in a line of great Ptolemaic queens of Egypt who bared the name Cleopatra. She was, in fact, Queen Cleopatra VII. Her six Cleopatra predecessors

are often overlooked, but no longer, because in this fantastic episode, we're going to explore the stories of all seven Cleopatras. It's gruesome but amazing stuff as we delve into the gory details of that extraordinary Hellenistic kingdom, the Ptolemies. Our guest is the one and only Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from the University of Cardiff. Lloyd, he is one of the greatest speakers that I've ever interviewed and he makes this rather confusing topic fun and gripping throughout. Oh, and he's also written a new book all about these queens. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Lloyd.

Lloyd, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Thank you, Tristan. Always great to be here. Thank you very much. You're more than welcome. And we're doing it in your lovely office in person. This is awesome. To talk about your most recent book on the Cleopatra's plural,

because there is more than one queen of Egypt called Cleopatra. Absolutely. The Cleopatra, the Liz Taylor Cleopatra, was actually Cleopatra VII. So there were six more of them besides her. And then there are even more Cleopatras belonging to the same family who became queens beyond Egypt's borders. It's that Hellenistic world. So this is the Hellenistic world, this world after Alexander's death

where we have this incredible merger of things Greek, things Egyptian, things Syrian, things Persian, and this really incredible mashup of cultural norms and identities. Hellenistic, it's a difficult kind of word, but I suppose if I was to pin it down, it would mean Greek-ish, I think is what it means. It is that mesh of cultures. And I've done lots of episodes on ancient Rome.

And I find Roman history really interesting. But for me, at the end of the day, I always say on things that I'm a Hellenistic historian, because I think that period has to be, if not is, the most extraordinary of all of ancient history, because of that great coming together of all these different cultures. I think it is. I'm absolutely in agreement with you. And I've worked on the Hellenistic world for years and years and years, you know, alongside some really great people like Andrew Erskine, Sean Wallace, great, great scholars. But, you know, it's only now, I think,

that the Hellenistic world is coming into its own in scholarship because for many centuries it was considered a kind of also-ran. There was the glory of ancient Greece. Classical Greece was the epitome. And then things went native a little bit and weren't quite so pure any longer. have been redefined and we're starting to take Hellenistic world very, very seriously. And you're writing what you say, you know, we suddenly have an opportunity now to look at what happens when cultures come together, very ancient cultures with their own mores and ways of doing things. And do they clash? Do they merge? What happens to them? It's a fascinating picture of a multicultural world of antiquity. And the name Cleopatra kind of sits right in the centre of it, doesn't it? Because let's talk about almost the origins of the name Cleopatra, because this actually goes back to Alexander the Great and the Macedonians. That's right, that's right. So Alexander's beloved sister, probably the most important woman in his life really, was called

Cleopatra. So it becomes a dynastic name, really, for several of the dynasties that follow Alexander, but it really becomes sort of hijacked by the Egyptians. The name itself is derived from two Greek terms. So there's kleos, which means kind of like glory, renown, that kind of thing. And then there's patros, of course, which means, you know, of the father or fatherland or something like that. So the name means something like the father's renown or glory of the father or glory of the fatherland. But as a diminutive, it can be used in a much more personal way. It comes over something like daddy's girl as well. So, you know, it has all of those meanings to it.

something like daddy's girl as well. So, you know, it has all of those meanings to it. But it becomes, for the Egyptians in the Ptolemaic dynasty, from the second century BC, it becomes the dynastic name par excellence. Every female really born into the royal house gets named Cleopatra, just like every male named Ptolemy. Well, Lloyd, we both know this period really well,

but let's not let that get in the way of an important question first off, which is, as we're focusing on the Cleopatra's of Egypt, how does the name Cleopatra get to Egypt? It gets there from the Seleucids, of all things. So the Seleucids were the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Cucids were the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great's generals. And one of their truly great rulers, Antiochus III, Antiochus the Great, one of the great warmongers of antiquity, he had several daughters, one of whom he called Cleopatra. And this is probably because he wanted to recall in people's minds, of course, the sister of Alexander and therefore a link to Alexander the Great himself. So it's this young woman who we call Cleopatra I or Cleopatra Syra, Cleopatra

the Syrian, as her Egyptian subjects know her, who bears the name for the first time in the historical period that we're dealing with. And she gets married into the Ptolemaic dynasty. Now, these two dynasties were at loggerheads. They were forever warring with one another. Usually the wars took place in the area of Israel, Palestine, Syria. And in particular, they were battling over an area of land called the Kole Syria, which today runs into the Baka Valley of Lebanon. And so it's a very, very fertile, rich land that was always a bone of contention for these two dynasties. And so there's endless fighting there. And in an attempt really to sort of settle this land dispute once and for all, Antiochus marries off his younger daughter, Cleopatra, to the Greek-speaking pharaoh of Egypt,

and that is Ptolemy V. So for the first time, really, in dynastic history, we have a joint union between a Ptolemy king and a Seleucid princess, in the hope that that will calm everything down. And we know that the marriage took place in, of all places, Gaza, where there was a huge ceremony, where the young princess was given her dowry, which included the lands of Koyli, Syria. And that was really interesting on Antiochus' part, because he gives it to Cleopatra as her own personal wealth. The Egyptians can't touch it. The Seleucids, therefore, are barred from it. It just belongs to Cleopatra herself, which is really fascinating.

That's a way to get around something. And we know that the young princess is packed off on a ship, and she sails off to Egypt and is welcomed as the new queen at Alexandria. That's the beating heart of Ptolemaic Egypt, isn't it? It's quite a new city in the whole idea of Egypt. Absolutely. I think probably it's the most important of the cities in the Hellenistic world, in fact.

It is the cultural capital of the Greek-speaking world in the Hellenistic period. The Greeks who lived in Alexandria didn't really see themselves as Egyptian per se. In fact, they called their city Alexandria next to Egypt. They didn't even see it as part of Egypt, even though the Nile Delta itself was densely populated with Greek speakers. And the Ptolemies had given a lot of financial impetus for Greeks to settle in Egypt. So there were land lotteries

and land endowments and these kind of things. So there was a huge Greek population in Alexandria and in the north of Egypt in the Delta. But then as we went down the Nile Valley, as you get down into the traditional Thebide into Upper Egypt, the Greeks don't really penetrate so much down there. So there's quite a sharp divide in the land that Cleopatra I, Cleopatra the Sire, inherited and what became queen of. I don't think she understood any of that when she first arrived, but it becomes more and more obvious to her, I think, as she goes through her life there. With this husband, of course, she doesn't know at all. You know, they're complete strangers.

But the source material for learning about these queens of Egypt, I'm guessing we have literary mentions from the historians, but do we also have depictions of them in reliefs, in coinage? What is our source material? The source material is actually less about Greek sources per se. So there is no convenient Hellenistic history written by one historian like we have Herodotus or like we have Xenophon. There is no equivalent of that surviving today. They get a few mentions in Polybius, but only really at the beginning of our period he's up and running. So what I've had to do really for the book here is to look at as many available Egyptian sources as possible. So this can be from papyrus evidence written in Demotic or Aramaic, through to hieroglyphic inscriptions, to representations in war reliefs of these women, but also their Greek vision or image as well in

coinage, in statuary. There's a kind of like a bilingual approach to these women because they have to present themselves as Egyptian queens, but at the same time, to their Greek population, to their Greek subjects, they have to appear Greek too. And so all the way through the history of the Cleopatras, we're dealing with this kind of, in some ways, opposing representations, but the Cleopatras managed to actually take hold of that and use it to their advantage. So for instance, take hold of that and use it to their advantage. So for instance, they often sold themselves as living goddesses. So the goddess that they represented for the Egyptians was the goddess Isis, or maybe the goddess Hathor. Now her equivalent was Aphrodite and Demeter in the Greek realm. So basically the queens marketed themselves in this double way. So therefore,

they became acceptable both to their Greek-speaking and their Egyptian-speaking subjects. Very canny way of doing it. Emphasizing once again that hybrid culture, which was Ptolemaic Egypt. Well, come on, let's talk about number one Cleopatra, Cleopatra I, this Syrian Cleopatra, first of all. She's arrived in Alexandria. Do we know much about her rule as queen alongside Ptolemy V? Quite little during her life with her husband, apart from the fact that there was a huge rebellion in Thebes, which actually stopped any taxes being paid to Alexandria for almost 10 years. So a very, very serious rebellion. We know more about Cleopatra at the end of it, because at the end,

We know more about Cleopatra at the end of it, because at the end, when things are resolved, her name gets put up everywhere. And she is called very clearly in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the king's beloved sister. That's interesting, because of course, she's not his sister, she's a cousin of his. So this term sister is used in the propaganda for two reasons. First of all, in the propaganda for two reasons. First of all, the word sister has a kind of meaning, just beloved. But also, of course, within the Ptolemaic world, it was very common amongst the royalty for brothers to marry their sisters. Incest, royal incest, was a real thing. And I don't mean simply a nod to semantics here. They were genuine, full-blooded, incestuous relationships. It started with Ptolemy II and his sister, Arsinoe II. They did not have a sexual relationship.

But we know that thereafter, the kings who married their sister did have sexual relationships because it was expected that a child should be born from this. It's very hard for us to swallow perhaps, but there's theological rationale behind all of this. And again, the theology goes in two ways. In Egyptian mythology, the great goddess Isis was married to her brother Osiris, and they begot Horus, who was the king. And amongst the Greeks, of course, Zeus was married to his sister Hera. So amongst the gods, this was a precedent that the Ptolemies and the Cleopatras wanted actively to promote. They believed that the purity of the blood resulted in these incestuous relationships. Now, I don't want to suppose that this incestuous way of marriage went throughout the whole of Ptolemaic society,

didn't at all. This was simply for the pharaoh and his queen. But we know that because Cleopatra I was not a blood sister, then she gets the name sister, almost to compensate for that. She gives birth to three children by Ptolemy V, and you're not surprised to hear that one of them is called Ptolemy VI. The next one is Ptolemy VIII, so we jump one, but I'll come back to that. But he was known throughout his life as Potbelly, because he became enormously fat, so I'll continue to call him Potbelly. And also she had a daughter who she called Cleopatra. So we call her Cleopatra II. Now Ptolemy V, her husband, died possibly from poison and possibly with Cleopatra I involved, but we're not sure. And Cleopatra I becomes the regent for her son, Ptolemy VI. And this is the first time we get a queen regent on Egypt's

throne in the Ptolemaic period. So that in itself opens the gates to a kind of female power that develops under the Cleopatras, which is really quite unique to them. So this woman becomes regent for her son. And as he is growing older, she is giving him more and more power, but suddenly she dies when Ptolemy VI was only about 12 years old. But in her will, she ensured that Ptolemy married his younger sister, Cleopatra II. that Ptolemy married his younger sister, Cleopatra II. So she was determined that the rites and observances of Ptolemaic incest should continue after her reign, even though she was unfamiliar with it herself. And so this is what happens. She dies, and we have the reign of Ptolemy VI, who marries his sister, Cleopatra II.

But then there's this strange spare that's going around, this potbelly as well. Doesn't seem to be in a particularly nice character, even as a child. There's a short regency with a few sort of able or less able courtiers to help these youngsters sort of find their way in the world. And we find that there's a strange triad that's set up on the throne of Ptolemy VI, Potbelly, and Cleopatra II all together. So this queen with her two brothers on the throne with her, she only marries Ptolemy VI, not Potbelly. And after a while, Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VI get fed up of him. And so they kick him off the throne.

while, Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VI get fed up of him, and so they kick him off the throne. Probably, in a way, the worst thing they ever did, because it just lights a spark in Potbelly that never dies to get back on that throne at all costs. But anyway, they manage to get him off the throne, and he goes away to North Africa, to Cyrenaica, where Ptolemy's have some possessions too, and he sits and bides his time there. In the meantime where Ptolemy's have some possessions too. And he sits and bides his time there. In the meantime, Ptolemy VI goes to war with his cousin, Antiochus IV, who's now fighting in Syria once again, over the dowry of Ptolemy's mother, of course, Cleopatra I, remember? And has she died by this point?

She's gone. She's died by now. And that is finally settled. And for a good 20 years, Ptolemy VI is on the throne with his sister wife, Cleopatra II, who gives him a brood of children. So we have, are you ready? Yet another Cleopatra, who we know as Cleopatra Thea. She's the eldest. We have two sons called Ptolemy. And we have another daughter called Cleopatra, who we call Cleopatra III. They love their same names, don't they? Honestly, it becomes an obsession.

It really does. This is where it gets very, very interesting, though. Because Ptolemy VI dies in battle in Palestine, actually, and Cleopatra II finds herself alone on the throne. And this is something that suits her very well because, in fact, she is a very fine monarch. The people love her, and in particular, in Alexandria, she is supported by the huge Jewish population there, really, really do support her. And that's because she has given refuge to the Jews who are trying to flee from Seleucid oppression in Syria and in Palestine and Israel at the time. And she has a

very secure power base in that case. She manages to marry off her eldest daughter, Cleopatra Thea, to the Seleucid royal family. So Cleopatra Thea becomes a queen of Syria. So there's one out of the way. And she has these two sons, one of whom dies unexpectedly, but through natural causes. So she has one son and one daughter. This is when she thinks everything is sorted for her. Her second brother comes back to Egypt. Potbelly returns. Oh, Potbelly returns. Return of the Potbelly.

And he is determined to claim that throne again, which he does. Cleopatra II has nothing really she can do about this. He has all the power. She hates the idea, but she marries her second brother and sits on the throne with him, and she becomes pregnant by him as well. And at the city of Memphis in Lower Egypt, at the time of Ptolemy's, Potbelly's coronation, she gives birth to a boy, and they call him Memphites. So now she has two sons, one by her first husband, one by the second brother-husband.

one by her first husband one by the second brother husband the first son poor Ptolemy is actually murdered by his uncle Potbelly on the night of the wedding which isn't good not a good start so the relationship is obviously going downhill very quickly but now she's Cleopatra II's got this little baby Memphites who at least will guarantee her future as queen mother. But this is when Potbelly notices the charms of his niece, Cleopatra III, who at this time must have been about 16 or 17. Stories are told very differently in different sources, but essentially somehow Potbelly and Cleopatra III get together and he marries his niece.

So at the same time, Potbelly is married to his sister, Cleopatra II, and also to his niece and stepdaughter, Cleopatra III, who is the daughter of Cleopatra II. This does not make, as you can imagine, for harmony in the palace. Suddenly, the name Potbelly seems too generous to give him now. It's getting very, very horrific in the kind of way it's talked about.

Absolutely. And that's the way he was seen. There's this wonderful Roman report. The Roman ambassador coming to Alexandria can't quite believe what they see with Potbelly because they say he's like some kind of like walking blancmange. And he says that he wears this diaphanous caftan, like a muumuu sort of thing to walk around the streets of Alexandria. But the king insists on

walking with this Roman ambassador, whereas he's usually carried in a sedan chair. And because he's so unused to exercise, he sweats profusely. It's a grotesque scene that's depicted in our sources. That's the kind of man that we're dealing with. Ptolemy, Jabba the Hutt. Indeed he was. He called himself by the title Eurgites, which means the beneficent one. But the Alexandrians, who always had a ready rapport, called him Kakurgites, which means, well, basically the shitty one.

They weren't much better with Cleopatra III either. They didn't much like her. They called her koke, which is a really, really nasty slang word. So they weren't a popular couple, but Cleopatra II was. So the elder woman on the throne was popular. And she used that popularity to drive her daughter and her husband off the throne. And she got them exiled to Cyprus. And for five years, we have Cleopatra II on the throne of Egypt by herself as a sole ruler.

She's a very, very able administrator, a very fine monarch in all ways. With Cleopatra II ruling on her own for so long, it's an amazing story. Has she got any kind of role models to do this before her that inspires her? Because you mentioned it's Arsinoe II, who I know is an extraordinary figure. There's Cleopatra, Alexander, the Great Sister. Would she have been looking back at any of those figures to inspire her when she's ruling on her own? I think so. There were already a line of very able Ptolemaic queens in the centuries before her. And if she knew her history, then she would have realised

that there were trendsetters like Assiniwi II, Berenike II, Berenike III, in fact, who had gone in the generations before her, who were very capable. I don't think, however, she would have heard of Hatshepsut or Tawesret. I don't think that would ever have been on her radar at all. But what she did really remarkably was pretty much on her own. She ruled Egypt as a very, very capable monarch in her own right. And then we hear of an incident. It was her birthday, her 50th birthday. A series of presents arrive from abroad, including one, which is a chest. And the little sort of tag on it says, happy birthday, lots of love, Ptolemy and Cleopatra.

So this comes from her husband and daughter. And she opens the chest. And what's inside but the dismembered body of her son, Memphites. Oh, gosh. Pothbelly kills his own son in order to, first of all, of course, upset, to say the least, Cleopatra II, but also to end her progeny. She has no more offspring. Therefore, all of the future for the Ptolemies lies in Cleopatra III,

which is hideous, really, isn't it? That's really playing. Obviously, Cleopatra now at 50, which is quite an advanced age in ancient history, don't forget, is not able to produce any more children. So that's it. Her role really is over with. Somehow, remarkably, they manage to make a kind of amnesty between them. And Ptolemy, Potbelly and Cleopatra III return to Alexandria. And we have this very strange, again, sort of triad sitting on the throne.

And in the inscriptions, it's really interesting to see how Potbelly deals with this because he shows both of the women and they're always shown identically. Age and, you know, sort of physical structure never really matter to Egyptian artists. Of course, it's an idealized world.

Cleopatra II is always identified as Cleopatra the sister and Cleopatra III always as Cleopatra the wife which is interesting and that's the way they get around that but these two women are mentioned on everything in kind of equilibrium in equal size equal status all of the time which must have been galling for both of them to to tell you the truth, because if anything, Cleopatra III turned out to be a stronger personality even than her mother. Quite a remarkable woman. She gave Potbelly another brood of children. We have Ptolemy IX, Ptolemy X, and we have three Cleopatras. Cleopatra IV, Cleopatra Trofina, and the youngest of the girls, Cleopatra Selene. Now, Ptolemy Potbelly dies.

Thank God. And as his last black joke, macabre joke, he tells Cleopatra III that she can choose from her sons whichever one she wants to rule. Potbelly does this because he knows he's going to put the cat among the pigeons, because the order of the boys, of course, was that the first son was Ptolemy IX, the second one was Ptolemy X. Cleopatra III, for some reason, cannot stand her elder son, Ptolemy IX,

whom everybody calls Chickpea, by the way. Okay, Lathiros. She hates him so much, but she adores her son, Ptolemy X, who in every way is like his father, Portbelly. I mean, facsimile of his father, really. And so she puts her younger son on the throne. And this is exactly what Portbelly knew would happen. And the Alexandrians rise up in revolt and they kick Ptolemy X out of Egypt. And they insist that Chicopee, Ptolemy IX, take up the throne instead. Just at this moment, as Ptolemy IX comes to the throne,

Cleopatra II, his grandmother, dies. So now she's out of the picture. So now Cleopatra III really is the most powerful individual in the land, and she has complete control over her son, Ptolemy IX. Now, Chickpea has been married already to his sister, Cleopatra IV, because we're just expecting that generation to continue. This is what we do, okay? And they have a daughter. Guess what her name is? Wow, I would love to say something like Wendy or Miriam,

but I'm guessing it's another Cleopatra. Bingo, Cleopatra. But to reduce the power of this couple, Cleopatra IV and Chicopee, Cleopatra III, the mother, forces them to divorce, even though this is one of the rare occasions when our sources say it was a love match. And so Cleopatra IV makes her way to Syria, and she has her own spectacular career marrying and killing various Seleucid kings.

And also the second daughter, Cleopatra of Trafina, is sent off to Syria to do her own thing in marrying and killing Seleucid kings, and in fact manages to kill her younger sister as well. But that's for another time, Tristan. Let's go back to our Cleopatra's in Alexandria at the moment. So now we have Chicpe on the throne and his domineering mother. And when I say domineering, she really does. On all of the relief images we have of this royal couple, Cleopatra always stands in the front position and her son, the pharaoh, has to stand behind her. Now, in this hierarchical world of Egyptian art, that's unheard of. You know, the king goes first and the queen stands behind. But Cleopatra III completely overturns the system. And during her reign, she acquired for

herself more royal titles than any other woman in Egyptian history. She kind of manufactures them, churns them out. She creates for herself priestesses, cult rituals for herself. She becomes the new Aphrodite and the new Isis, she calls herself. She has enormous rights and regulations, and her son has nothing to do whatsoever. She becomes so powerful, of course, that she is able, in the end, to bring her much beloved son, Ptolemy X, back from Cyprus and get rid of Ptolemy IX. They switch positions. In fact, their ships cross in the Mediterranean, and Ptolemy X is brought back. But he doesn't turn out to be the boy that Cleopatra thought he would be, because as a ruler, he's a lot more like his father, Potbelly, very, very headstrong. He is forced to marry his niece.

This is the Cleopatra that we have, the daughter of Chickpea and Cleopatra IV, a young woman at this point. And they have a child as well called... Cleopatra. Thank you. And at that point, Cleopatra III dies after a very long reign.

Probably she was about 75 to 80, which is a big age in antiquity, and it's highly likely that she was murdered by Ptolemy X. He used to like to drink and dance, and there are some stories that in one drunken episode, he took off the scarf that was around his waist, and he strangled his mother with it. I think it's understandable why he did it. But he suddenly becomes the king and his niece, Cleopatra V, Berenice III, that's how we know her, she becomes queen for him.

He doesn't last too long, Ptolemy X, and so we have the next queen to ascend the throne, Cleopatra V, Berenice III, on her own terms. And she's remarkable. She's my favourite Cleopatra, in fact. We only know of her for about 10 years of her rule, that's all. But it was an independent rule for a long time. seen her parents divorced and exiled, her mother killed when she was abroad, her domineering grandmother, her incompetent husband. And she comes out of it extremely well. And again, much, much loved by the Egyptians, especially the Alexandrians. She was an amazing builder too, in the temple of Edfu in Southern Egypt. We have these 30 foot high images of her on the rear wall of the temple looking like you know a proper egyptian goddess wearing the falcon plumed headdress and how can they tell that it's that cleopatra i know in hieroglyphs there is a particular name for cleopatra but all they have the number that always the epithets it's the it's the epithet so that all the numbering i should say is a modern invention of course and if you go to some history books, you know, they'll bear no resemblance to the numbers I'm giving them. What I've given them

is most pragmatic, in my opinion, but there are debates about that. So we know them by their epithets more than anything else. This Cleopatra ruled independently for a while, but even she thought, really, she needed a husband as well. You know, there was no such thing in the ancient world, even amongst these powerful women, as thinking that they can do it independently. And so a search begins to find her a suitable heir or suitable match, I should say. And they do find one, a son of Ptolemy IX, so her half-brother, this would be, who has never been to Egypt. He's been brought up in Rome, and he comes there, and he knows nothing about Egypt whatsoever.

He doesn't speak the Egyptian language. He speaks Greek really badly. She hates him straight away. He hates her. And in what must be the shortest honeymoon period ever, after 11 days, he murders Cleopatra V. And that night, he is killed by the Alexandrian mob. Oh, God. that's terrible so now

egypt has no royal family there's nobody around who can they possibly have so the priests and the officials of the court they start searching the globe for who is going to be the next pharaoh and the next queen and they find a forgotten son that had been sent away from Egypt by his grandmother, Cleopatra III. And he, of course, is called Ptolemy. And he has a brother called Ptolemy. And they are invited back to Egypt, where they've not been since they were three or four years old. So the elder Ptolemy becomes Ptolemy XII. And the younger Ptolemy is given the name Ptolemy of Cyprus, and he becomes the king of Cyprus for the first time. Cyprus is given over to him completely. So he goes off and does that.

But of course, we need to find a wife now for Ptolemy, and they find it in the daughter of Cleopatra V and Ptolemy X. And her name, of course, is Cleopatra, Cleopatra Trofina. So I've called her Cleopatra VI Trofina. And she is the woman who is often missing on the genealogical tables of the famous Cleopatra. You might know that there was this tremendous sort of uproar when Netflix produced its series on a documentary on Cleopatra VII a few months ago. There they were saying, you know, we do not know the mother of Cleopatra VII, you know, was she a concubine, was she African, whatever. We do know. We do know the mother of Cleopatra VII. We do not hear of her in the classical sources, that's absolutely true,

but she is there in the Egyptian evidence. And if we don't look at the classical sources, that's absolutely true. But she is there in the Egyptian evidence. And if we don't look at the right places, we're not going to get the right answers. She's there on the walls of Philae. She's there on the walls of Edfu. We know perfectly well that she was a proper princess from the Egyptian royal house. Cleopatra VI, Drophina, that's her name. And we know that she gave birth to Cleopatra VII, to her sisters, two sisters, and two brothers. And she seems to have died around about 47 BCE, so having given birth to the last of the heirs. So, you know, a successful marriage and a successful queenship, doing what queens are supposed to do, and that's giving royal heirs, of course. So there's no

reason really for us to keep scratching our heads about the parentage of Cleopatra VII we know exactly who they were now Cleopatra VII herself of course comes to the throne not immediately upon her mother's death because her elder sister Berenice IV tries to get in there first now Berenike IV, tries to get in there first. Now, Berenike IV is a real chip off the old lock. Yeah, she's a cunning one, isn't she? She really reminds me of her great-grandmother, Cleopatra III. They're made in the same mold, and she's determined to hold on to the throne. Of course, Ptolemy XII manages to get the throne back with the help of the Romans.

And this is when we see the Roman world really wading into Egypt's affairs at this point. Berenike is executed, and rather than looking for a new queen, Ptolemy XII instead places Cleopatra VII, his second daughter, on the throne as a co-regent with him. So this is Cleopatra VII's first taste of power, really. And when Ptolemy XII dies, it is written into his will, which is overseen by the Romans, the will is actually lodged in Rome, that Cleopatra must marry, in the tradition of the Ptolemies, her eldest brother, Ptolemy XIII. But of course, as we know, this is where Cleopatra had very much her own ideas

about what she should do. But you see, this is why I'm so fascinated about the backstory to the Cleopatras, because I think when we understand this dynastic group of women, Cleopatra VII becomes so much richer as well, because she is a descendant, she's in the direct line of these really quite remarkable women. Cleopatra VII is often depicted as this kind of lone wolf figure almost, you know, out of place, out of time, you know,

she does her own thing. But actually, when you see her as a continuation of these feats of these remarkable women in her family you see her actually in far more of a an interesting context i think but also with that ptolemy the 13th and then ptolemy the 14th because ptolemy the 13th and cleopatra the 7th doesn't last very long there's no surprises there but in those previous cleopatras you have had figures like potbelly, who is just horrific, but he also does seem to be right at the top. These later Ptolemies don't seem to be anything like Potbelly, so Cleopatra VII can take more advantage. Absolutely. She understands this. I mean, if she knew her history, and again, I think she did,

if anybody knew her history with Cleopatra VII, then of course, these role models are all there for her. And her own mother, her own grandmother, therefore, she had witnessed or certainly heard of how they really had dominated the political world of the time. These Cleopatras, from Cleopatra III on, really become kingmakers all the way through. And the Ptolemies themselves just sort of morph into one thing, you know, but the Cleopatras, they have personalities. They are the policymakers as well, quite remarkable women. So how does Cleopatra decide to kind of break from tradition and rather than always eyeing another Ptolemy or so on and so forth, she really starts looking towards Rome and taking that step of getting in bed, quite literally, with big statesmen,

first Julius Caesar, and then, of course, Mark Antony. I think she realises that if Egypt is to last, then she has to play a far more international game. Now, this had been known before. Cleopatra III, actually, was very adept at securing the goodwill of senators, for instance. They would often come to Egypt on kind of pleasure tours, and she would go out of her way to make sure they saw the splendors of Egypt, knew how much the wealth was of Egypt, how much wheat it was producing. Way, way back, several generations before, the Cleopatras had noted the rise of Rome. Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra VII's father, couldn't get away from it because he owed them money. The way in which he retained

his office as king was basically by paying senators enormous amounts of money. It's quite clear she loved her father, but also I think she was frustrated by the way in which he indebted himself to Rome. And she realized that there's another way of dealing with this superpower that's growing in the West. Also, of course, this is where fortune and destiny set its foot into the story as well, because she is literally delivered at the feet of Julius Caesar. And it's that night, the very first night of their meeting, that they become lovers as well. You know, she could never have steered that course of history, I don't think, if she'd ever wanted to. But she seized on the good fortune.

And when she found herself pregnant by him, of course, and then delivered his child, this is when she realized that her future lay not just in Egypt, for which she was always passionate. That name of hers, Cleopatra, the glory of her fatherland, the glory of her country, it means so much, I think, in this context. But she also realized that this is the chance now to play the bigger game, the Roman game at the same time. And Ptolemy XV, that is, Caesarian, of course, as we know him, little Caesar, 15th, that is, Caesarian, of course, as we know him, little Caesar, is her everything. He is the reason for Cleopatra's life after his birth. It's not for her own power that she does these things, you know, later on with Antony and, you know, gets quite literally into bed with him and the power politics there. It's always for the security of the throne for her son, Caesarian. That's the only thing that matters for her, which is interesting because I think in that way she's different from say Cleopatra III,

who really was all about herself all the time. Cleopatra was aware, I think, of her ancestor, Cleopatra III, and also of even some of her ancestors like Cleopatra Thea, who went to Syria, because when Cleopatra, at the Donations of Alexandria, takes on these extra sort of names and titles, she calls herself Thea Notera, you know, the new goddess. So almost like, you know, one step further than Great Granny ever went as well. So I think she's definitely playing on that. But she's also quite different in some of the tactics that she uses, because times have changed it's so interesting and the whole purpose of this podcast is not to kind of explore just the famous Cleopatra's

story in detail which I've done in the past but as you've mentioned to kind of end the episode with her but by looking back at the people who came before her to understand more color to her story and I must admit one other question I'd like to ask about her life before ultimately the legacy of the name Cleopatra, is her as an administrator, as governing, as being queen of ruling Egypt, how effective is she, especially when you look back at other Cleopatras before her? Can you see clear ways, maybe with temples and so on, where she is once again regurgitating what previous Cleopatra's have done? To a certain extent, yes. When it comes to the actual bureaucracy of Egypt, she wasn't very good. It used to be said some 20 years ago, you know, that she was on the ball because we found a signature of hers, allegedly, you know, where she signs, make it so. But actually, that's just to do with a land grant for one of Mark Antony's friends.

You know, we don't actually find a pile of documents of her, you know, that she's poured over and looked at the, dotted the I's and crossed the T's of everything. So we don't think she was a particularly brilliant bureaucrat. But what she was, was an incredible self-publicist and a publicist for her dynasty and her country, I think. And that's what she really sold to Rome. You know, when Cleopatra went to stay in Rome, Cleomania just gripped the whole city.

And I think that's what she played up on. In terms of her kind of iconography and so forth, we do see her drawing on examples of, for instance, her grandmother, Cleopatra Berenice V. So that huge 30-foot sculpted image is of her at the back of Edfu Temple, is reiterated this time in Dendera, the temple of Hathor in Dendera in Middle Egypt, with Kaisarian, who at this time was only a little boy, but he's depicted as an adult.

But she gives the position of privilege to him. He stands in front of her. So there she's reverting back to the traditional norms of Egypt, that she is the mother promoting her son, which of course is in complete contrast to what Cleopatra III did, where she stands in front of her son and tries to ignore him as best she possibly can. So Cleopatra is picking and choosing her way through various things. But again, drawing on absolutely the moment, what happens in the situation, when Julius Caesar is murdered, for instance, we might think all is lost for Cleopatra,

but she makes the most of it in theological terms because she promotes Caesar as the murdered Osiris so that she can be the grieving Isis and their son, Caesarian therefore, can be the rightful heir to the throne as Horus. So you see, she uses mythology constantly to appeal to her Egyptian people, whereas to her Greek-speaking and Roman people around her, she presents herself as Aphrodite and Venus, the ancestors of the Julio clan and all of this kind of thing too.

So she's playing the long political game, but it's the kind of game that the other Cleopatras had opened up for her. Well, Lloyd, this has been amazing. First off, round of applause for you being able to tell that super complicated story.

So many Ptolemies, so many Cleopatras, throwing a few Bereniques and Arsinoes in there as well. And that is just the Ptolemaic line, not even the Seleucid line, which is quite similar in its own kind of way.

It is. Lastly, the legacy of the name Cleopatra. Does it end with Cleopatra VII when she dies after Actium with Mark Antony? Or does the royal name of Cleopatra, does it endure? Not for long. There's one more Cleopatra, and that's her daughter, Cleopatra Selene. Yes. Mark Antony's daughter, of course.

And she marries Juba, an African king. But thereafter, the name seems to drop out of circulation, at least amongst royalty. But it does keep going. In the documentary evidence I've looked at from Greek and Roman Egypt, Cleopatra stays a popular name. And in fact, one of the earliest attestations I found of it as a name amongst the common people is right the way back with Cleopatra I, Cleopatra Syra, who was so popular with the Egyptians that a woman writing to her daughter, the daughter had just given birth, said, I'm sending you some jars that you need and some towels. Oh, and don't forget,

I'd be delighted if you call the little girl Cleopatra. Well, there you go. And a fun bit of trivia to wrap it all up. A more recent history, but a shout out to my awesome former producer, Elena Guthrie,

who earlier in her career did a show and was called DJ Cleo, DJ Cleopatra. So there you go. The name Cleopatra is still alive and kicking in some films. Sorry, Elena. Lloyd, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which goes into even more detail. It's an amazing tale of these Cleopatra. It is. It's a soap opera of a tale, but it's a true one. And, you know,

fact is so much more interesting than fiction. And yes, between those covers, you'll find out all of this and a lot more. Well, it just goes to me to say, as always, such a pleasure talking to you. Lovely that we can do it in person. And thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. You're very welcome.

Anytime. Well, there you go there was professor lloyd llewellyn jones talking all the things the cleopatras these seven queens of ptolemaic egypt i hope you enjoy today's episode as mentioned lloyd he is a fantastic speaker and he made this rather, it must be said, confusing and complicated topic with all the similar names. He made it fun and really enjoyable for me to listen to. So I really do hope you enjoyed today's episode. Lastly for me, wherever you listen to The Ancients, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following the podcast so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me, signing off from Oman in Jordan, and I will see you in the next episode.