Jane Draycott - Cleopatras Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen

THE PTOLEMIES:
AN ABBREVIATED GENEALOGY

JULIO-CLAUDIAN FAMILY TREE

H OW DOES ONE DARE to attempt to write a biography of any ancient historical figure, let alone an ancient woman? Unlike their medieval and modern counterparts, in the vast majority of cases ancient historians have no letters, certainly no diaries, and only very rarely the historical figures own words, recorded verbatim, to rely on as source material. The literary, documentary, archaeological and even bioarchaeological evidence that one might attempt to use as source material is highly suspect. It is buried deep under thousands of years of chauvinism, sexism and even outright misogyny, and broad-brush stereotypes based on ideas about what women should or should not be, and what they should or should not do, not on detailed information about how they actually were or what they actually did.

How well known is it today, for example, that many ancient women wrote works of literature, across all genres, that were extremely well received in classical antiquity? Starting with the most high-profile, the poet Sappho in the late seventh century BCE , but certainly not stopping there, we have evidence of around one hundred women writing and disseminating works written in Greek and Latin. There were surely many more, working in the numerous other languages in use around the ancient Mediterranean world, whose work unfortunately has not survived, or at least has not survived via manuscript transmission.

Nor is it widely known that ancient women produced magnificent works of art across all media. Another fresco, dating from around the same time but discovered in a different location, the House of the Surgeon, at Pompeii, depicts a woman painting a portrait while her peers look on in fascination. It indicates that women living at the time were artistically inclined, not just in private but also in public, and that some even worked as professional artisans.

The type of ancient women about whom someone might actually want to attempt to write a biography, or be interested in reading a biography about, are particularly difficult to come face to face with. Successful women that is, women who were considered successful in the eyes of their male peers are virtually invisible in the ancient historical record because, if all went to plan, and they discharged their duties appropriately, there was no need for anyone to mention them. Cleopatra Selene, who as an Egyptian princess, a Roman prisoner, and finally an African queen, lived her entire life in the public eye, is one such figure who is both visible and invisible. I knew, then, that when I embarked upon this adventure of writing the first modern biography of her, it was going to be a challenge.

So, in addition to the literary, documentary, archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence that one might expect an ancient historian and archaeologist such as myself to use, I have also included a lot of contextual information in an attempt to fill in the inevitable gaps. This comparable material, sourced from the lives of other significant Hellenistic, Roman and Egyptian women, is reliable and it enables a qualified reconstruction of Cleopatra Selenes life as something more than just a glorified timeline.

I began researching Cleopatra Selene in 2009 as a PhD student at the University of Nottingham and started working on this biography in 2018 as a lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow. I had no idea then that current events would catch up with me to the extent that they have. It is only in the last couple of years that a sustained campaign of intimidation orchestrated and executed by members of the British media has driven the first biracial member of the royal family to leave not only the institution but also the United Kingdom; and that the Black Lives Matter movement has gained sufficient momentum as to cause the world to begin to reflect in earnest on its history and the actual rather than perceived place of Africa and people of African descent within that history. She will undoubtedly never reach the heights of fame, and infamy, and sheer name recognition of her mother, Cleopatra VII, but perhaps that is a good thing, as she can instead be judged on her own merits as an individual rather than as an idea or an archetype. And an individual with a trajectory like Cleopatra Selenes who was born a princess of one of the most ancient kingdoms in the classical world, only to lose her entire family, her birthright and her rank and become a Roman prisoner, and succeed in being crowned queen of an entirely different and brand-new kingdom and rule it successfully for two decades must have had merit indeed. What follows is her story.

O NE DAY IN 1895 archaeologists were excavating at the site of what they had designated the Villa della Pisanella at Boscoreale, just outside Pompeii. It was one of many buildings around the Bay of Naples that had been buried under layers of ash and pumice in the wake of the eruption of Vesuvius on 24 August 79 CE . The villa was reburied once the excavations were complete and there is little sign of it today (the modern Via Settetermini actually cuts across the north-west corner of the site), but should you wish to get a sense of what life was like here prior to the eruption, items recovered during the excavation can be viewed in a range of museums including the Antiquarium of Boscoreale, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the Louvre and the British Museum.