Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt

She was the last effective ruler of the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies who had ruled Egypt for three centuries from their magnificent multi-cultural capital of Alexandria, the largest city of the Mediterranean world. The images on the front and back of this jacket show the two faces of Cleopatra -the Egyptian living goddess and the Macedonian queen. Highly intelligent, Cleopatra spoke many languages and was rumoured to be the only Ptolemy to read and speak Egyptian. Her famous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were as much to do with politics as the heart. Ruthless in dealing with her enemies, many within her own family, Cleopatra steered her kingdom through difficult times. She very nearly succeeded in creating an eastern empire to rival the growing might of Rome. Stripping away our preconceptions, many of them as old as Egypt's Roman conquerors, Joyce Tyldesley uses all her skills as an Egytologist to give us a rich picture of a country and its Egyptian queen in this engrossing biography.