One of the assertions one sees about Cleopatra – indeed, it is central to the recent Netflix documentary – was that she loved the Egyptian people and Egypt. And there’s not nothing there to this point, but there’s also a bit less than you might think and more than a few reasons to doubt Cleopatra “patriotism”, as it were, and deep attachment to Egypt.

The factors usually pointed at to demonstrate Cleopatra’s attachment to Egypt are that she learned the language, engaged with Egyptian religion and represented herself in Egyptian fashion in royal artwork and commemoration meant for consumption in Egypt. And that’s true, she did those things! But the context often missing from using that as a clear indicator of Cleopatra’s cultural “Egyptianness” is that, apart from learning the language, those were common things for Ptolemaic rulers to do, despite the fact that the dynasty maintained a pronounced ethnic hierarchy in Egypt and aren’t generally regarded as being particularly attached to its people or culture. Nevertheless, there’s not nothing here in the sense that Cleopatra showed – or at least wanted to show – more than the normal Ptolemaic attachment to Egypt as a place and the Egyptians as people, which is to say almost any at all.

Let’s start with languages, because I think this fact can be presented in a somewhat distorted way. The language of the Ptolemaic court was Greek, initially Macedonian Greek (the Macedonians had a pronounced accent), though Plutarch notes that some of the later Ptolemies had lost their Macedonian accent (Plut. Ant. 27.3-4). Cleopatra, by contrast, was the first of the Ptolemies to bother to learn Egyptian (which should tell you something about the character of Ptolemaic rule; imagine if King Charles was the first English king since George I and kings from the House of Hanover to bother to learn English). The problem with this fact is that it is incomplete, presenting Cleopatra as a Greek-speaker who learned the language of her people out of sincere devotion, but that’s not what Plutarch says. Plutarch says:

She could turn [her voice] easily to whichever language she wished and she conversed with few barbarians entirely through an interpreter, and she gave her decisions herself to most of them, including Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes and Parthians. She is said to have learned the languages of many others also, although the kings before her did not undertake to learn the Egyptian language, even though some of them had abandoned the Macedonian dialect.¹

So let’s unpack that. This isn’t a native speaker of Greek who learned just the language of her subjects, but a spectacularly skilled linguist who learned a lot of different languages, quite regardless of if she ruled the people in question. Running through the list, she evidently learned Ethiopian, the language of the people on her southern border, the speech of the Troglodytae, the people who lived on the coast of the Red Sea (a hinterland of her kingdom). The “language of the Hebrews” here is probably Aramaic rather than Hebrew (which would also cover much of Syria), while the language of the Medes and Parthians might mean both Old Persian and the Parthian language. To which we must add Egyptian, implied by that last sentence; it also seems fairly clear Cleopatra knew at least some Latin.² This is part of why I find arguments that use Cleopatra’s knowledge of Egyptian as strong proof either for her Egyptian ancestry or deep attachment to Egypt less than fully compelling; she was surely not Parthian and did not have a deep attachment to Parthia, but she learned their language too. Again, there’s not nothing here, but it’s not a slam dunk either.

What of Cleopatra’s role in Egyptian religion? The recent Netflix miniseries makes quite a fuss about how Cleopatra’s first action as queen – that we know of, because this is simply the first moment she is visible in the sources to us at all – is to partake in a religious festival installing a new sacred bull in a shrine at Hermonthis, close to Thebes in Upper Egypt and how this was indicative of a deep love of Egyptian religion. And it may well have been, but it’s also worth noting that Ptolemaic rulers had been taking part in Egyptian religion for a long time. Most of the massive temple complex at Philae, for instance – even farther from Alexandria than Hermonthis, I might add – was built in the Ptolemaic period, with major expansions by Ptolemy II and III. Even more relevantly to our subject, this was a [devotion] to Isis; Cleopatra was not the first Ptolemy by any means to claim that goddess for the dynasty.³

Nor had this even been a new practice for the Ptolemies. Alexander was presumably crowned pharaoh in Memphis in the traditional manner, visited the oracle of Amun at Siwa and dedicated a major set of construction works in the temple of Amun at Thebes. The Ptolemies followed this model. Ptolemy II went to Mendes to personally conduct the ritual of the process of the Ram of Mendes and then extended the temple, he presided over the inauguration of a temple at Pithom, and so on.⁴ And on it went with Ptolemy III and on down the line (indeed, becoming a bit more pronounced as we move into the later Ptolemies, beginning with Ptolemy V Epiphanes, potentially as a result of the increasing weakness of the Ptolemaic dynasty both internally and abroad). Ptolemaic kings were regularly in and out of Memphis, the religious capital of Egypt, building new Egyptian temples, attending Egyptian religious rituals and so on. The reason is that the job of Pharaoh was as much (if not more) a religious job as it was a political one and it was a job that only the Pharaoh could conduct. And the idea that a Ptolemaic pharaoh with a legitimacy problem might consecrate some temples to help fix that wasn’t new either; Ptolemy VIII Physcon is out doing that thing in the mid-second century. Consequently, involvement in Egyptian religion was a requirement of the position, quite apart from the question of how much the holder of that position cared.

Cleopatra, like any Ptolemaic ruler, engaged in this sort of building, though it seems striking how much of her building program was composed of Hellenistic structures in Alexandria, even as Duanne Roller admits, “the queen was not a major builder”.⁵ She restored the gymnasium of Alexandria, made major repairs to the Lighthouse, built a new precinct in honor of Julius Caesar called the Kaisareion, and apparently built a monumental tomb for herself, also in Alexandria. Examples of her building outside of Alexandria are fairly thin: the completion of a temple at Dendera begun by Ptolemy XII, extensions to the temple at Hermonthis (where she visited early in her reign), never entirely finished and a temple to Isis in Ptolemais Hermiou in Upper Egypt. Cleopatra could hardly be accounted the great renovator of Egyptian religion or religious sites.

Likewise the assertion that Cleopatra represented herself in Egyptian artwork in Egyptian style and dress; that too was true of all of the Ptolemaic rulers from the very beginning. Indeed, Cleopatra’s self-representation as Isis was very much not new, but in fact the normal way Ptolemaic queens were represented (to match Ptolemaic kings being represented as Osiris). Here, for instance, is Ptolemy II Philadelphos (r. 284-246) with his queen Arsinoe II represented in Egyptian style on a relief now in the British Museum.

Like all Ptolemaic rulers before her, Cleopatra presented herself in an Egyptian form, conforming to Egyptian style, in Egyptian contexts. And, like all of the Ptolemaic rulers before her, she presented herself in a Hellenistic form in Alexandria and on her coinage. While you will see people point to various busts and frescos as being images of Cleopatra, it is only her coins where we can say for certain that an effort was made to capture her likeness (her Egyptian portraiture, though labeled, follows Egyptian stylistics, not her actual likeness); we have no idea if, for instance, later Roman artists had any information about what she actually looked like or if the busts we suppose to be of her actually are. Be wary also of Greek and Roman frescos showing fair-skinned women reported to be Cleopatra; almost all women in Greek and Roman fresco are shown as fair-skinned; it’s a standard artistic convention. Coins, of course, record no skin color and neither do our sources for Cleopatra; anyone who thinks they can tell you what color her skin was is unduly certain.⁶

Now this isn’t to say Cleopatra is doing nothing new. She does seem to have been somewhat more involved in Egyptian religion than her predecessors, though the exact degree to which this is true is hard to see because we don’t have anything like a full accounting of their actions; if it is a difference it is a different in quantity, not kind. Certainly her building program wasn’t anywhere close to the scale of the early Ptolemies, but perhaps she took more direct personal involvement. Once again, the unknowns here are formidable. Dorothy J. Thompson in the the Cambridge Ancient History⁷ takes this, along with Cleopatra switching her regnal name from “philopator” (“loves-father”) to “philopatris” (“loves-homeland”⁸) to be indicative of a clear effort by Cleopatra to be, “indeed queen of Egypt”, particularly in the context of dynastic struggles with her brothers: outflanking them by getting the favor of the people.

The problem with this narrative is the timing: Cleopatra makes that switch in titles in 36/5 BC, which is to say in year 16 of her 21 year reign, eight or nine years after her last serious competition for the throne, her youngest brother, had died. Instead, Bingen⁹ argues that the homeland Cleopatra is professing love for is the greater Macedonian empire – the empire of Alexander – which she may have seemed in 36 on the verge of reclaiming.¹⁰ Antonius was just about to give her (through her children) sweeping portions of Roman Syria, Cilicia, Cyrenaica and Armenia; he would also give them titles to Medea and Parthia, which he didn’t control (though perhaps in 36 he hoped to) but would represent collectively the whole of the old Seleucid Empire near its height. Bingen notes the other change to Cleopatra’s titulature at this point was rather than just being “the goddess who loves her father” she becomes “the young goddess who loves her father and her country”; the added νεωτέρα (“young”) perhaps being intended as a link to Cleopatra Thea, Seleucid queen-consort of Syria from 150 to 126 BC and Cleopatra’s own great-grand-aunt. Cleopatra, after all, was about to achieve the long Ptolemaic dream of controlling all of Syria.

Strikingly the sources do not tell us that Cleopatra was seen as any more distinctively Egyptian than her father or that she had some groundswell of popular support in Egypt. Indeed, Cassius Dio implies the opposite (Cass. Dio 42.34-6) that the Egyptians favored Ptolemy XIII in the succession dispute and it was only the force of Caesar’s arms that turned the issue to Cleopatra. Of course we have to be somewhat skeptical of this account too: Dio is marinating in a literary tradition that is very hostile to Cleopatra and also makes no effort to distinguish between the Alexandrians and the rest of Egypt, two very distinct groups. In any case it is clear that Cleopatra achieved no groundswell of support in Egypt in those early years: she had to raise her army in Syria and in the event it wasn’t the stronger force as she and Caesar spent the winter of 48/7 besieged in Alexandria by Ptolemy XIII’s then larger army (Caesar had not brought his full field army), until the arrival of an army out of Roman Syria led by a collection of Caesar’s allies tipped the balance. Julius Caesar was never a particularly cautious commander, so if he looked at whatever force Cleopatra still had and said, “we need to wait for reinforcements”, it could not, at that point, have been very substantial. Afterwards, Caesar would leave four legions in Egypt to secure Cleopatra’s rule, which seems not to indicate her great popularity or any great faith in her ability to hold the kingdom. After 44, she’s able to rule without direct support, but of course after 44, she and her children are the only dynastic options left, her brothers and sisters all being dead (some at her hand). Finally, when Octavian comes for her, there is no major effort by anyone to stop him militarily. If Cleopatra had the love of the Egyptian people at that point, we sure don’t see it.

In my view then, it seems like an argument can be made that Cleopatra had a fairly modest propaganda effort towards presenting herself as more in touch with Egyptian religion, but the extent and quality was at most only a modest improvement over the previous Ptolemies and apart from keeping her on the throne (with Roman backing), it doesn’t seem to have achieved much.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: On the Reign of Cleopatra”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-05-26.

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1. Trans. from Jones (2006).
2. On this, see Roller (2010), 48-9.
3. On this sanctuary and its inscriptions, see J. Bingen (2007), 31-43.
4. On this, see Hölbl (2001), 77-90.
5. op. cit. 108.
6. Though, contra Netflix, we can say something about her hair. I was rather confused when one of their talking heads posited that he liked to imagine Cleopatra with hair like his – his hair was very tightly curly and indeed that is how the Netflix documentary opted to do Cleopatra’s hair. We can see her hair on her coins and it is wavy, pulled together into a bun in Hellenistic style with short draping curls (loose, not tight) and a Hellenistic diadem. I think it is pretty fair to suppose this is how Cleopatra actually wore her hair – or at least, how she wanted people to think she wore her hair.
7. The second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History; in this case CAH2 IX, 320-1.
8. Literally “loves her fatherland”. To save myself some audio pain in the future, I often hear “philopator” pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable (phi-LOPE-a-tor), but the accent is on the alpha, phi-lo-PA-tor, because that o is an omega, a long-vowel, so the accent can fall no further back.
9. op. cit., 58-62 and 76-79.
10. Bingen argues that in an Egyptian context, it would have been clear that Cleopatra’s patris was, in fact, Makedon – the most prestigious and useful possible patris to have in Ptolemaic Egypt.