It was never a topic that actually has intrigued me to discuss or to find out more about her before. She was probably the last pharaoh of Egypt as history has told us that the Roman Empire has conquered Egypt, which then thus brought the death of Cleopatra. Because she refused to be paraded and humiliated by Octavius, her captor, she committed suicide by smuggling the venomous Egyptian cobra.
By chance, I was waiting for my house-mate to get ready to get to work, and I just happened to switch on the Discovery Channel - The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra. I didn't know why it was mysterious. We all know the history of her death. Her lover, Julius Caesar, was assassinated. Then the Romans cam a-knockin' led by Octavius and Cleopatra and Mark Antony lost the battle, which led to Mark Antony's suicide. Imprisoned and about to be humiliated, Cleopatra chose death over the Roman's triumph.
But there was more to the Egyptian Queen than what was merely mentioned.
She came from an incestuous marriage. Her parents were brother and sister. She later married her own brother, and then murdered him and thereby inherit the throne of Egypt at age 17. So basically, she was trouble from the start. If you can commit such heinous crime, killing your own brother or husband or something ... you must have been rotten to the core. Just because you're rotten, doesn't mean you can't climb to great power. Because of just that, I believe you are willing to do anything to be in power.
Although, Cleopatra can't be fully blamed because her family ties were filled with murder and mayhem. So I suppose, it's just in her blood. Anyway, what Discovery Investigates had to show was that was Cleopatra's death really by suicide or homicide? Pat Brown, a leading FBI Criminal Profiler, and a team of experts from fields as diverse as archaeology and toxicology, goes deep into the mind of Cleopatra and the minds of those who were connected to her untimely death.
People commit suicide because they no longer want to be alive. They are so emotionally-pained and distraught that they simply cannot continue to live, believing that death and only death will rid them of this pain. According to Pat Brown, this does not fit Cleopatra's personality or behavioural pattern at all. Cleopatra was a strong woman, who stared defeat right in the eye, refused to back down and always continued fighting. Therefore, it is impossible for her to be so out of character to end her own life.
Even in her family history, there was no history of suicide. There was plenty of murder, but no suicide. Pat Brown flew all the way to Egypt to investigate history - what caused her death. She allegedly committed suicide by allowing a deadly snake to bite her arm, thus allowing the venom to seep through her body hence ending her life. The primary suspect - the Egyptian cobra.
According to an expert in venomous snakes, a grown person can die from the snake's bite in a matter of a few hours. Therefore, this eliminates the snake as being the cause of Cleopatra's death. This is because, as history wrote it, Cleopatra wrote a suicide note which she had the guards to send to her captor, Octavius. The timeframe from her writing the suicide note to Octavius finding her dead was merely a matter of minutes, therefore it was impossible for Cleopatra to die from a snake bite.
Another version of history was that Cleopatra drank poison from a poisonous plant, smuggled through her haircomb. An expert in toxicology advised that for a person to die from this poison, she would have had to drank at least 30 millimetres of the poison, which also eliminated this theory as the comb only allowed a few millimetres at least.
Therefore, the only conclusion would be homicide. But the question was, who murdered Cleopatra and why? Octavius seemed the only likely candidate, but he did not seem to have a motive to murder Cleopatra because he wanted to humiliate Cleopatra in front of Rome.
We later learned that carved deep into the walls of ancient temples in Egypt were reliefs that symbolised Cleopatra and her son from her liaison with Julius Ceasar, Caesarion. The reliefs showed that Cleopatra had wanted Caesarion to take the throne of Egypt. He was supposed to come in power, and thus was a threat to Octavius.
Knowing Cleopatra's intention for her son, Octavius then ordered Cleopatra to be murdered. Octavius had all the power now that he was the ultimate ruler of Egypt and Rome, he had the power to re-write history as we know it. He had Cleopatra murdered, spread the word that she committed suicide, then had Cleopatra's son murdered as well.
It just goes to show, we cannot 100% trust history as they can be manipulated into lies, truths can be hidden, tales can be exaggerated.
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