What a strange, unexpected tale. I’m used to the same families constantly reappearing in ancient history, and the importance of marriage in Roman politics. But still: Cleopatra’s children raised by Augustus’s sister, ex-wife of Antony, his greatest rival. And when she grows up they marry her to the son of another of Rome’s great enemies and send them off to rule a kingdom together.
Great and informative post, I haven't heard about Cleopatra Selene before.
Some random thoughts inspired by this article & topic:
* Ancient persons, like Cleopatra (Cleopatra VII), are good examples of problems related to how the meaning of proper names are related to their referents. Most people, when asked who Cleopatra was can only say that she was the lover of Caesar, Marcus Antonius, queen of Egypt, etc., all descriptions of the referent. What if I was referring to the daughter mentioned here, or to Alexander's sister? Or what if, in a parallel world, she never met Caesar? To delve further into this fascinating topic that has CS impact (i.e. how should an AI system dereference a proper name) start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptivist_theory_of_names or https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reference/. See also "The plays of Shakespeare were not written by Shakespeare but by another man of the same name." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/19/same-name/#google_v...
* Along with Ptolemy (Ptolemy V), Cleopatra's name were the first two hieroglyphic words deciphered by Champollion on 22 September 1822. Their task was made simpler because foreign names were spelled out, similar to how Katakana is used in Japanese writing.
* Her name means "renown/glory of father", a really nice name for a daughter! The first part, kleos comes from kluein, "to hear", which in turn derives from the same IE root as the English word loud.
* There's an island in Gökova Bay called Sedir Island, where, according to legend, Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra had a tryst after which he brought in shipfulls of sand from Alexandria or the Red Sea. Although it sounds like a touristy made up story, recent research suggests there may be truth to this story: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02668082.
* Cleopatra was depicted as an alien, promiscuous, and immoral woman starting with Romans (perhaps continuing the well-known Medea stereotype), up to perhaps mid-20th century. In the past couple of decades, especially in the US, she has been adopted as a Black cultural icon for complex reasons. The debate about the color of her skin and her race became heated after the Netflix series had a Black actress (Adele James) depict her. One interesting way to delve into this debate is to examine an earlier debate on the controversial book Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Athena)
> * Her name means "renown/glory of father", a really nice name for a daughter! The first part, kleos comes from kluein, "to hear", which in turn derives from the same IE root as the English word loud.
Which is not even an egyptian name, since ancient egyptian is an afro-asiatic language, not an IE language like greek. It's funny seeing africans and middle easterners fighting over who cleopatra belongs to when in actuality, cleopatra was a european woman of greek ancestry. Not african. Not afro-asiatic.
> * Cleopatra was depicted as an alien, promiscuous, and immoral woman starting with Romans (perhaps continuing the well-known Medea stereotype), up to perhaps mid-20th century.
Starting with the victorious romans. The romans who lost had different views of cleopatra. It's almost like the victors write the history.
> The debate about the color of her skin and her race became heated
It shouldn't have been because there is no question about who cleopatra was. Cleopatra was no more black than elon musk is. She was a ruler of egypt but she was not an egytian ruler. No more than queen elizabeth was an indian ruler of india.
I think language partly to blame for the confusion. There is a difference between an eqyptian queen or egyptian ruler and queen of egypt or ruler of egypt. The latter doesn't necessarly have to be eqyptian.
