Cleopatra ruled Egypt and is on every Egyptian souvenir from Cairo to Aswan. What was her ethnic background, actually?
The Ptolemaic dynasty was founded in 323 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander the Great's senior Macedonian generals, who took Egypt at Alexander's death. The dynasty ruled Egypt for 275 years and never spoke Egyptian at court — Greek was the language of administration the whole time. Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemy, was the first to bother learning the Egyptian language. She killed herself in 30 BC after losing the war with Octavian, ending three centuries of Greek rule over Egypt.
Read the full facts →Cleopatra VII Philopator (69–30 BC) was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the last reigning Macedonian-Greek monarch of the Hellenistic world. Her political alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony made her central to the closing decades of the Roman Republic. Her suicide in August 30 BC ended both the Ptolemaic dynasty and three centuries of Hellenistic rule in Egypt.
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- Cleopatra VII had two famous Roman political alliances, both producing children. The two Romans were?
- Cleopatra VII killed herself in Alexandria on 10 or 12 August 30 BC, after Octavian had captured the city. The traditional method was?
- Cleopatra and Mark Antony's only daughter survived her parents' suicides in 30 BC. Augustus brought her to Rome, raised her in his sister's household, and at fifteen married her off to a Numidian-Roman scholar-king and gave them a kingdom of their own to rule. Which one?
- In September 31 BC two Roman generals fought a naval battle off western Greece that decided whether Rome would be ruled by a republic or by a single man. The losers fled to Egypt and killed themselves the following summer. Who won the battle?