Mark Gagnon

Cleopatra needs Roman military support to secure the throne.

Caesar needs Egypt's wealth and to fund his own political moves back in Rome, everybody wins, right?

But once she isn't back in power, Cleopatra does something unprecedented.

Not only is she like, hey, I'm the pharaoh, I'm ruling everything.

She, according to the records, declares herself the reincarnation of the goddess Isis.

Yes, Isis was the most popular goddess in Egypt, associated with magic and motherhood and protection.

And this does a bunch of things.

It's, you know, not only propaganda, it's a political strategy that solves all sorts of problems.

First, it gives her legitimacy within the Egyptian priest class who never fully accepted this outside, you know, Greek Macedonian Ptolemaic rule.

And this is something you see all throughout, you know, history that you have the ruling priestly class that's connected to the divine.

Then you have.

the monarchical class, the power hierarchy that controls the day-to-day, and they're almost always at odds with each other.

And so as a result, you need to come up with some type of way to fuse both of them.

I mean, Henry VIII is a classic example, right?

He's ruling England, but the Catholic Church has some sway, so he's like, you know what?

Start my own church.

And this happens time and time again, and Cleopatra is no exception.

Secondly, what this does is it sets up a narrative where opposing Cleopatra means you're literally...

opposing Isis.

You're opposing the gods themselves.