Cleopatra

Starred review from June 9, 2008
This entertaining biography hits the elusive sweet spot between scholarship and readability. British archeologist Tyldesley (Daughters of Isis
) is charmingly transparent about the unreliability of her sources. She tells us that when the Roman poet Lucan describes Cleopatra’s “ineffable night of shame” with Julius Caesar, he is “writing the equivalent of modern tabloid journalism.” In spite of the lack of eyewitness descriptions of Cleopatra, the question, for instance, of what she looked like becomes a fast-moving amusing discussion of statuary as royal propaganda, the modern perception of Cleopatra’s nose as way too big and the difference between beauty and sexiness. Writing with an easy mastery of her subject, Tyldesley always seems to be able to lay her hands on the perfect lively detail, whether an excerpt from an obscure bureaucratic document or a description of a kind of giant robot that paraded through the streets of Alexandria pouring libations of milk from a gold bottle. Though she makes it clear we’ll never know what Cleopatra was “really” like, Tyldesley provides a memorable journey through the rich and contradictory sources of our knowledge about her. 8 pages of illus., 3 maps.

June 15, 2008
British Egyptologist Tyldesley patiently unscrambles a slew of Ptolemys and Cleopatras who ruled wealthy Egypt from 332 to 30 BCE to tell the story of the dynasty's last and best-remembered queen, Cleopatra VII (c.7030 BCE). Using archaeological and literary evidence, Tyldesley strips away the legend of Cleopatra's debauchery, much of it propaganda by Cleopatra's archenemy, the Emperor Octavian, who renamed the eighth month after himself (August) in part to mark the date he defeated the Egyptian queen. A well-educated and powerful queen of a Greek dynasty, Cleopatra scandalized the Roman world with the independence allowed women in Egypt (she bore children to both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony) and the dynastic custom of marrying within the family (she wed two of her brothers, both Ptolemys). While cultivating her divinity in the millennia-old Pharaonic tradition, Cleopatra also made strategic political (and sexual) alliances in the Mediterranean world to hold onto her shaky throne for 20 years. Cleopatra and Antony's defeat by Octavian at Actium, and the subsequent fall of Egypt, marked the end of the Hellenistic age and the start of the Roman era. This fascinating and scholarly book belongs in all libraries.Stewart Desmond, Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2008
Though you might think everything you need to know about Cleopatra has already been written, think again. The life story of Cleopatra has become so distorted and embellished through the multiple lenses of history, legend, film, fiction, and archaeology, it is often difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Egyptologist Tyldesley undertakes the daunting task of separating myth from reality in this slightly revisionist biography of the last of the Ptolemies. By juxtaposing her reign with the decline of the Egyptian Empire rather than the rise of Rome, the author is able to place Cleopatra firmly into historical and cultural context. What emerges is a portrait of a cunning political operator ruthlessly attempting to reestablish Egyptian supremacy in a rapidly shrinking world overwhelmed by the vast power of the mighty Roman Empire.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)