Posted on 03/15/2005 8:10:16 PM PST by nickcarraway
LONG before Shakespeare portrayed her as history’s most exotic femme fatale, Cleopatra was revered throughout the Arab world — for her brain.
Medieval Arab scholars never referred to the Egyptian queen’s appearance, and they made no mention of the dangerous sensuality which supposedly corrupted Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Instead they marvelled at her intellectual accomplishments: from alchemy and medicine to philosophy, mathematics and town planning, a new book has claimed.
Even Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played the title role in the 1963 epic Cleopatra, would have struggled to inject sex appeal into this queen. Arab writers depict Cleopatra’s court as a place of intellectual seminars and scholarship rather than the more traditional vision of kohl-rimmed eyes and hedonistic intrigue.
“They admired her scientific knowledge and her administrative ability,” the book’s author Okasha el-Daly, who is based at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, said.
In Egyptology: The Missing Millennium he writes that “Arabic sources often refer to Cleopatra as ‘the virtuous scholar’ and cite scientific books written by her as the definitive works in their field”. She was also regarded as a great builder, he claims, responsible among other things for a canal to supply Alexandria with Nile water.
Cleopatra was born in 69BC, the last of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great’s invasion in 332BC. The few images of her that survive suggest that she was not a great beauty by modern standards. Despite this she succeeded in seducing Caesar and his former ally Mark Antony, who left his Roman wife Octavia for her.
European scholars finally learned to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822 with the help of the Rosetta Stone. But Dr el-Daly believes that a ninth-century Arabian alchemist, Ibn Wahshiyah, got there first, opening up original Egyptian sources to medieval Arab writers.
“There has always been a snobbery which suggested that medieval Arab scholars only cared about science and engineering,” he said. “They wrote about everything they found interesting. I even found one medieval scholar who had written a book on sex.”
Kate Spence, a lecturer in Egyptology at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Oriental Studies, described Dr el-Daly’s work as very important.
“Everybody has known that these Arab sources were around for ages.” she said, “but most of us working in this field don’t know enough Arabic to use them properly.”
I wouldn't know...I only buy it for the intellectual articles.
Beauty and brains will do it every time. And I implicitly believe everything you post, so if you say she was a Conservative, then she was a Conservative.
Now I have you under my spell... come power wash my house!
Strictly speaking, the position of "emperor" did not yet exist. However, the Republic had broken down into alternating dictatorship and chaos, and the title of "imperator" (army commander) was usually associated, for obvious reasons, with whoever was dictator at the moment. It became the definitive title of Augustus and his successors (they took all sorts of Republican offices to maintain the pretence that the institutions of the Republic still existed), leading to the modern term "emperor".
Stop it. You guys are killing me with those pictures!
Under your spell, perhaps...but I haven't lost my mind!! Would you settle for a test of your smoke detectors?
Shame on you.
Greek woman with money?
These folks don't understand how the MIND of males work.
Trust me ... it wasn't her "mind" that seduced them. It was her looks and what she did with her body. Of course the mind had a hand in it but the intelluctual aspect they are trying to promote wasn't what seduced them.
This looks like an add for radical feminism.
For Antony, at least, the relationship should be seen first as a political one. Cleopatra was not just some cute bimbo, nor was she just an amazing conversationalist: she was the powerful ruler of one of the wealthiest regions in the world. Of course, it seems that Antony did develope a real love for her, and Caesar's relationship with her is open to interpretation, but Antony's original motivation for the relationship seems to have been a political/military alliance, which would allow him to further pursue his aims to the east.
BUMP!
No argument from me. The mind of the male (I say as one of their number) can descend from the rarefied heights very quickly, empire or no empire.
And she'd know TKD and be handy with firearms too.
Flattery will get you everything! ;)
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I remember reading (years ago) that Cleopatra had suffered from smallpox or cowpox as a child, and had a pockmarked face.
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