Sally-Ann Ashton

The so-called “Hellenistic” period (c. 330-30 BCE) traditionally begins with the most famous king in Ancient History – Alexander III of Macedon – and ends with the most famous queen in the history of the world: Kleopatra VII.

In “Cleopatra and Egypt”, Sally-Ann Ashton has admirably brought together the archaeological traces that Kleopatra left in Egypt. No other textbook I know of is as complete and coherent in this respect as this one. Unfortunately, the book in so doing also reduces Kleopatra to merely a queen of Egypt. That is not new or surprising. From her Roman enemies to the present-day popular views, this has been the traditional western view of Kleopatra. And in spite of what the author claims on p. 25, modern scholarship has interpreted the nature of Ptolemaic kingship almost exclusively from an Egyptian perspective since at least the 1980s.

As a result of this one-sided focus on Egypt, we learn little about Kleopatra’s significance in world history or the place of her kingdom in a wider world of Afro-Eurasian kingdoms and empires. At the heart of this view seems to be a modernist understanding of ancient Egypt as a European-style nation state. For instance, on p. 3, the inhabitants of ancient Egypt are described as a “nation”; in Kleopatra’s time, the country’s population in fact was far more diverse than modern admirers of pharaonic Egypt would admit, for in addition to ethnic Egyptians, Kleopatra’s Egypt counted among its inhabitants Libyans, Nubians, Greeks, Macedonians, Lykians, Karians, Judeans, Idumeans, Nabateans, Thracians, and others. Nationalism was not yet invented in the first century BCE.

Moreover, as her own representation clearly shows, Kleopatra saw herself as the ruler of an empire: a hegemonial system of indirect rule that extended to the Levant, to the Nilotic regions to the south of Egypt, and via the Red Sea towards the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean. There is no evidence that the kingship she had inherited from her ancestors was in any way linked to the idea of the nation. This is why at the height of her power she was proclaimed “Queen of Kings” in an inauguration ritual known as the Donations of Alexandria (34 BCE), and why at public ceremonies she sometimes spoke in many different languages. Why she was “Isis” in Egypt but “Aphrodite” in Asia Minor.

Kleopatra was neither Egyptian nor Greek. Her identity was dynastic (Ptolemaic, to be precise). But the author makes a point of claiming that Kleopatra’s identity was Egyptian and therefore “African”. She means well but that, too, is an anachronism. Though to some extent deriving from Ancient Greece, presenting continents as meaningful cultural containers is a modern, and originally colonialist, way of thinking about the world. No singular “African” culture existed in the Ancient World, just as there was no singular “Asian” or “European” culture. To think of Africa as a bounded, monocultural entity is to do injustice to both the rich cultural and linguistic diversity that characterized (and still characterizes) this huge continent, as well as to Egypt’s connectedness to a wider Afro-Eurasian world (so in addition to its obvious Libyan, southern Nilotic and Ethiopian contexts, also the Mediterranean, the so-called Near East, the Arabian peninsula, and, from c. 525 BCE, even Iran and India). In Kleopatra’s time, Egypt was not a peripheral country on the margins of Africa, but a hub of economic and cultural exchange right in the middle of the Ancient World. The strict juxtaposition of “Greek” and “Egyptian” throughout the book is what anthropologists call the “billiard ball” theory of culture, it projects modern cultural categories upon the ancient past and thereby unwittingly supports the modern western appropriation of Ancient Greece as a “European” culture (while in fact ancient Greece, like ancient Egypt, was part of a wider Mediterranean/Near Eastern world).

Despite this criticism, “Cleopatra and Egypt” is an excellent resource for students and scholars – in particular because of the evidence from the interior of Egypt catalogued in Chapter 4 and elsewhere – and perhaps the best starting point for studying the queen and her reign available.… (mais)

Ashton writes a good biography of Cleopatra that rescues her from the role of femme fatale or oriental seductress. She situates Cleopatra within the Ptolemaic dynasty and its powerful queens. The queen is rehabilitated as a conscientious and effective ruler of Egypt when she had secured her position. Her relationships with Caesar and Antony are interpreted on political terms. Much of the latter part of this book investigates how Cleopatra portrayed herself. This makes good use of physical remains and liberates us from the prejudices of ancient Roman authors and the romantic myth-making of Shakespeare. Nevertheless, readers may get bogged down in the discussions about statues, coins and temples.… (mais)