Cleopatra VII has become the latest historical figure to receive a dedicated volume in Bloomsbury's Significant Figures in World History series, joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill and Henry VIII, according to a review published by The Past.
The new book, Cleopatra: A Reference Guide to her Life and Works, places the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom alongside a roster of names the series describes as luminaries. Its inclusion reflects the enduring public fascination with Cleopatra, whose reign and reputation have been reshaped repeatedly across two thousand years of retelling.
The Significant Figures in World History series is designed as a reference format, gathering the details of a subject's life and works into a single accessible guide. In extending that treatment to Cleopatra, Bloomsbury sets her among modern statesmen and Tudor monarchs, an unusual pairing that speaks to how firmly she has entered the general canon of world history rather than remaining confined to the study of ancient Egypt.
Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt in the first century BC, the final sovereign of a Greek-speaking dynasty founded after the death of Alexander the Great. Her dealings with Rome, and in particular with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, brought Egypt to the centre of Mediterranean politics in her lifetime and have kept her at the centre of literary, dramatic and cinematic imagination ever since. A reference guide gathers the strands of that story, both the historical record and the long afterlife of her image, into one place for readers seeking a reliable starting point.
The appearance of a reference volume of this kind is a reminder that Cleopatra belongs as much to the history of reception as to the history of Ptolemaic Egypt. Successive generations have remade her according to their own preoccupations, and a guide that sets out her life and works offers a way of separating the documented figure from the accumulated legend.
For readers who come to Cleopatra through her Egyptian context, the Ptolemaic period is also the era in which the ancient script was still in use, and in which royal names continued to be written in cartouches on temple walls and monuments. Those who would like to learn to read hieroglyphs for themselves can do so with the Hierolyte app.
The review appears in The Past, which covers new books across archaeology and ancient history.