The Real Story of Cleopatra

The Real Story of Cleopatra: How Rome Rewrote History to Erase Female Power

We know Cleopatra as a Halloween costume and Shakespearean tragedy—the seductive queen who tried to bring down mighty Roman men with her feminine temptations. But this story, repeated for over two thousand years, is Roman propaganda so successful that we've forgotten what actually happened. The real story of Cleopatra isn't about a woman's weakness. She was, in fact, powerful enough to frighten the Romans into talking so much about her- even to get the all important Cicero to say “I hate her”. The real story is about the systematic destruction of a worldview where women held divine power, and how Rome needed to rewrote history to justify a new way of life that treated women- and her babies- as property.

The Goddess Before the Virgin

To understand Cleopatra's true significance, we must first understand Isis—the Egyptian goddess. 

In Egypt, the royal family members were living reincarnations of the sun. They were each a god who was embodied in that bright ball in the sky. Think about it: the sun provides light, illumination, a truly life giving force that shines on everyone equally. Egyptian kings and queens had a sole purpose to provide fertility of the empire: for humanity AND for the land. Taking care of the land and water (the life-giving waters of the Nile), was as religious as it was was political.

Every king was a living image of the god Ray (spelled Re/Ra), the literal sun and son god (And the place we get the words sunray and reign of a queen). The queens were the embodiment of Isis (spelled ist, pronounced eest, and known as Ishtar), the mother of god Ray. The hieroglyph for Isis is a literal throne, while Ray is a circle for the sun. Kings and queens were drawn with the familiar sun diadems emanating from their holy heads to display imagery of the sun, along with the iconic golden crown and golden rings Romans would later transfer into Christianity. 

Temples for Isis were being built all over Rome, funded by the state government of Rome, even as Cleopatra, her living image, was being demonized. Isis was no meek virgin mother. She was sexually powerful, renewing her virginity daily with the rising sun, like the idea of newly fallen virgin snow. She was embodied in the life-giving waters of both baptism and birth, and in charge of the annual flooding of the Nile- the thing that made Egypt so prosperous in the first place. Her sexuality wasn't shameful—it was sacred, the creative force of the universe itself.

Kings, at a certain points in Africa’s wider history, were expected to sacrifice themselves if natural disaster struck- their weakness was considered an embodiment of the sun’s weakening powers, needing to be reinvigorated with the youth of the next generation. 

This was the world Cleopatra inherited: one where female bodies weren't objects of male control but vessels of divine creation. The sun and waters of the Nile were sources of creation, mapped into the stories of kings and queens. Men AND women were needed to create life. That is just a fact. 

Women weren't appendages to men because, quite simply, no one originally understood that men contributed to conception at all. Some cultures had women sleep with as many men as possible, so her children would inherit the best from each male. The power to create life was purely feminine, for as many generations as we can imagine, making women the obvious seats of innate wisdom, inspiration, and authority for WAY longer than any patriarchy reigned on earth.

The design of life lived within Her blood. Property and names originally followed Her female bloodline, because Hers was the only one that could be realistically tracked. And this tradition of female inheritance appears to be the original way of life in virtually every ancient city we can trace.

Men had to be initiated into becoming King. Women did not: they were divine by default, by design. 

The Egyptian trinity told this story perfectly, always three: a mother, father and divine child that was as beautiful, and important, as the resurrecting sun. 

This African wisdom passed down into the stories of the Jews, as seen in a single word that is a name, a place and a prayer: Israel. Isis (the Egyptian queen mother), Ra (the African child/sun), and El (the Canaanite father). But notice—this wasn't a hierarchy. It was a cycle. The morning sun of the female births the child, who grows to become the parent with the energy of the noon day sun, becoming the parent and growing old as the setting sun. The mother renews her virginity daily. The pattern continues. Everything was cyclical, just like the sun itself. 

We see all of this in the way we structure our calendar and hours in a day. Egypt gave us a year, and the number of hours based on light in a day. This can be seen by the simple celebration rituals: Birth was celebrated in Egypt. Death days were celebrated in Rome. The first time we see a date given to Jesus (to be celebrated) was his guessed birthdate, listed among a bunch of death days of saints: hundreds of years after the story supposedly took place. This is not to say that any of it was not real, just that it is all a rehash of the same stories of the sun and how it is connected to humanity and life on earth.

The name Israel reflects this ancient understanding: Is (Isis) + Ra (the sun child) + El (the father) = the balance of forces needed to create life. Israel created Christianity. But the Jewish story starts as the Jews leave Egypt. Our Christian stories miss so much by ignoring both Jews and Africans- where our shared story truly starts.

When Chariots Carried Goddesses

The shift from goddess-centered to male-dominated power didn't happen overnight. It began with technology. The chariot, first used in celebration was weaponized. The tool used to parade life-sized statues of Inanna through Mesopotamian cities, was later pullling soldiers for conquest. Tools of reverence became tools of war, and the societies that mastered this transition began to spread a new story about who deserved power. It was as if mankind was just finding out about new tools, new toys, and needed to go through a phase where brute strength won out - for a time. Until they realized that was not really civilized at all. (We see this incredibly poignently in the case of the start of Rome- a bunch of rogue men warriors who tool only 4 years to realize they needed women too, as you cannot survive very long at all as a society without women, and babies. But we will get back to that soon enough. 

But even as late as Cleopatra's time, the old ways persisted. The first known author in human history was Enheduanna, a woman writing poems in songs to Inanna in 2279 BC in the Middle East - for the same goddess the chariots were invented for. Museums—from "muse"—were originally temples to female sources of inspiration. Spirit has always been a feminine term. Muses and Museums were always associated - science was considered a feminine domain because creation itself was feminine.

The Crown Jewel of the Mediterranean

Rome didn't hate Cleopatra because she was weak or seductive. They feared her because Egypt was the crown jewel of the Mediterranean, and she controlled it absolutely. And Rome did NOT like the idea of a woman in power. Queens were limited in Rome absolutely. But in Egypt, Rome’s biggest rival, Her country flourished with grain, her treasury overflowed with gold, and her capital housed the world's greatest library. Even if her city of intelligence was considered a Greek town, it was founded by a man who chose to build it in Egypt, rather than Greece. 

Cleopatra dissolved pearl earrings in vinegar at dinner banquets, drinking immeasurable wealth, giving away gold table settings as party favors, she wasn't just showing off—she was demonstrating the kind of wealth that made Rome's elite salivate with envy.

Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, the first two Roman emperors, both had sons with Cleopatra. This wasn't coincidence. They understood that alliance with Egypt meant access to unimaginable riches and the legitimacy that came from association with a land Romans themselves considered the source of divine wisdom: of science AND religion.

Here's what else Roman-descended historians have not contemplated: Cleopatra produced those children, sons of Roman Emperors, in an age when child mortality rates reached 50%. She even had twins—a sign of such extraordinary fertility that it would have been seen as divine blessing. 

And she named those twins after the sun and the moon: Celine and Helios.

In a world where women's bodies were understood to be connected to the fertility of the land itself, Cleopatra wasn't just politically powerful. She was magically powerful. She birthed the sun and the moon.

Augustus and the Great Rewrite

The third Roman Emperor needed to think of some way to spin all of this to gain power. 

In 31 BC, the Queen of Egypt merged Egyptian divine bloodline with Roman authority with at least 3 sons: with both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. 

Augustus (then Octavian) needed to consolidate power, he faced a problem. How do you compete with Egypt's wealth and divine authority? How do you prevent future Roman leaders from making the same alliances that empowered Caesar and Antony AND Alexander the Great?

Augustus chose a brilliant strategy: he rewrote the story. Instead of presenting Egypt as a valuable ally, he painted her as a dangerous seductress that corrupted Roman virtue. He made it illegal for senators to visit Egypt without permission— to prevent anyone from using Egypt's wealth and amassing their own power against Rome. He banned Roman men from marrying foreign women, cutting off the alliance-building that had made his predecessors so powerful.

Most importantly, all of the Egyptian/Roman bloodlines were killed off: all of Cleopatra's sons, and even Alexanders from 300 years earlier that had earlier threatened the Greeks. Only one daughter, Cleopatra Selene, survived—though she too was described by ancient sources as remarkably intelligent. But intelligence in women was now dangerous. It had to be contained, controlled, or eliminated.

Like Mary, her body had to be controlled before she could make an informed choice. Egypt HAD to become a Roman vassal state. Her treasures stolen, and her virtues buried deep in the earth. When Rome was done with her, her gold and grain would be gone, and she would not remember her own voice. Nobody would be able to read Her hieroglyphs (the “words of the gods”) for another 2,000 years.

The Swift Transformation: From Isis to Mary

The religious transformation that followed was so rapid it's stunning. For 200 years, archaeologists literally cannot tell whether tomb artwork depicts Isis or the Virgin Mary—the iconography was identical. But the meaning had been completely inverted.

Isis was the sexually powerful creator goddess who renewed herself daily, whose life-giving waters represented both baptism and birth, whose sexuality was sacred and life-affirming. Mary was the virgin mother who gave birth without ever allowed the pleasure of sex, or informed consent at an age we would consider old enough, whose purity was defined by the acceptance of pain, whose body was holy precisely because it had been untouched by a man.

This was not a religious epiphany. It was strategic replacement. Rome needed Egypt's grain and gold, but it couldn't allow Egypt's worldview to survive. The goddess had to become the virgin. The powerful had to become the pure. The creative had to become the controlled. The Egyptian people would need to be controlled, output curtailed, but their identity would have to be stripped.

What Rome Really Stole

Augustus didn't just conquer Egypt—he performed cultural genocide. He stole Egyptian symbols of divine authority while destroying the people who created them. The purple sails of royal ships on the Nile, the birthday celebrations that honored the sun and birth together, bringing the prayers of smoke of candles up to the gods, the very concept of divine rulers and birth being celebrated at all—all became Roman innovations, their Egyptian origins carefully erased.

Even the concept of marriage was Egyptian- the golden wedding ring representing eternity, given to women to show a man’s devotion to her. Isis was used to help make marriage seem acceptable to a society that had a rising middle class. 

Christianity, which would later claim to have "brought" civilization to Africa in the 1700’s after the slave trade, was actually written on African shores. The Old and New Testaments emerged from the libraries of Alexandria. The religion that would eventually declare women naturally inferior was built on the theological foundations of a civilization that saw women as divinely powerful.

Why This Story Matters Now

We live in a world where women and children are still legally considered appendages of men in many places. Where women's bodies are sites of political control rather than personal freedom. Where the capacity to create life is seen as a burden- and punishment! - rather than power, needing to be hidden away. 

But Cleopatra's story proves this wasn't inevitable. For thousands of years, human societies operated on completely different assumptions about gender, power, and divinity. “This is just the way it’s always been,” we are told, countless times in countless ways. Women weren't always fighting for equality—our ancient societies evolved around equality. They weren't seeking access to power—they were SOURCES of power. SHE was the rising sun and healing waters of the river. Her birth waters produced life, sustained it, then helped inspire a rebirth in later life to a personal, spiritual acceptance.

I am not saying anyone did it perfectly either: Egypt seems to have held a remnant of this even more ancient African wisdom, while already falling into a patriarchal model themselves. But they preserved enough of the divine family to influence our own - albeit simplified and perverted - modern view of a single man creating all of life alone; and of a trinity with a man, his son, and a ghost. That ghost? That spirit? In language, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek, that spirit has always been feminine. The ghost is one of the divine female that the modern church has to keep emphasizing is not divine without her sun child. 

The systematic erasure of this history wasn't accidental. It was necessary for systems that required women to be controlled, that needed clear paternal lineages for property inheritance, that demanded half of humanity accept secondary status as natural law.

Romans realized in 4 years they could not live without women. But they did not bring her in freely. They brought her in- literally kicking and screaming- from her family’s arms in the guise of a fake picnic, made her raise his children, all the while telling her a new story, generation after generation, until she believed it all. This is the true story of the Sabine Women in the founding of Rome. This is our story today, in a society that idolizes Rome. And this story has everything to do with our modern struggles: for young boys searching for purpose, young girls not knowing her role, and modern families fighting to be seen in a society that sees children, health and food, as means of profit. 

The Truth That Survived

Despite centuries of rewriting, the truth survived. Arab historians during Europe's "Dark Ages" wrote about Cleopatra as a brilliant scientist, astronomer, and linguist who spoke nine languages. They had no problem with female authority because they weren't threatened by her legacy the way Romans were.

Medieval Islamic scholars preserved what Roman historians tried to destroy: the memory of a world where intelligence and power weren't gendered, where creativity was sacred, where the ability to give life made you divine rather than disposable.

Side note: We do not know who Cleopatra’s mother was, and I choose to believe she was still part Egyptian. In her day, Egypt had been ruled by Greeks for 300 years, since the time of Alexander in 333 BC. Greeks liked to marry within the family, taking literally what Egyptians had been doing in story: marrying brothers and sisters to preserve blood line. But Egyptians also tended to have many other partners. I choose to believe Egyptians married siblings, but had children with local women. Because men traveled while women stayed to raise babies. Women taught religion, food, music and celebration. Women kept local culture alive in ancient societies, as men fought in distant wars. It was a Greek/Egyptian Queen who chose to read Egyptian language for the first time in 10 generations, or 300 years. It would be hard to believe NONE of her predecessors had any Egyptian blood. Any names remembered of women tend to be the celebrated Greek/Roman ones. So the fact that no name for her mother remains, tells me her mother was most likely Egyptian. My imagination sees Cleopatra as distinctly African, in heart and soul. No historian can say they know any better- as the debate rolls on.

Reclaiming the Story

When we see Cleopatra as costume and caricature, we're seeing her through Roman eyes. When we reduce her to seductress and suicide, we're accepting the propaganda of men who needed her to be small so they could appear large.

The real Cleopatra commanded the wealth of nations, spoke the languages of empires, and embodied a goddess tradition that saw female sexuality as sacred power. She wasn't defeated because she was weak. She was destroyed because she was too strong, and her strength represented a way of organizing human society that Rome couldn't allow to survive.

Her story isn't ancient history. It's the blueprint for understanding how we got trapped in systems that diminish half of humanity—and the proof that these systems aren't natural, inevitable, or permanent. They're choices that were made by specific people for specific reasons, which means they're choices that can be unmade. And those people can feel powerful for the very identity used to once control them.

The woman who dissolved pearls in vinegar and gave away gold as party favors wasn't showing off. She was demonstrating what power looks like when it doesn't need to diminish others to sustain itself. That's a lesson we're still learning to remember.

The Modern Consequences: When Children Become Expendable

The Roman inversion of sacred feminine power didn't just reshape how we see women—it fundamentally altered how we value children and family life. In societies where women's bodies were understood as connected to the fertility of the land, children weren't just family members. They were the literal future of the community, the stem cells of humanity who would carry forward all wisdom and care for all elders.

But when Rome shifted to linear conquest narratives instead of cyclical renewal, children became something different: future soldiers, future property holders, future economic units. The sacred nature of childhood was lost in favor of its utilitarian potential.

Today, we see the devastating results of this ancient shift. Child mortality rates globally still favor boys, reflecting deep-seated beliefs about whose lives matter more. In America, we've created a particularly cruel paradox: we claim to elevate motherhood while systematically destroying the conditions that make good mothering possible.

The Impossible Burden of Modern Mothers

American women today carry what anthropologists call a "double burden"—they've been pushed into the workforce for economic survival while retaining full responsibility for childcare, eldercare, and household management. This isn't progress; it's exploitation with better marketing.

The result is exhausted mothers managing impossible loads while fathers—despite often wanting deeper connection with their children—find themselves pushed to the economic periphery of family life, valued primarily as providers rather than nurturers. Both parents lose, but most importantly, children lose.

We've created communities where children are superficially important—featured in political rhetoric and social media posts—but systemically neglected. Childcare is unaffordable, schools are underfunded, and childhood itself has been colonized by academic pressure and digital distraction. We rush children toward adult responsibilities while failing to provide adult protection and guidance.

When Sacred Sexuality Becomes Perverted Power

The church abuse crisis reveals what happens when systems built on the erasure of sacred feminine power try to control sexuality itself. Priests, positioned as the sole intermediaries between humans and the divine, are denied the very thing that was once considered most sacred: consensual, life-affirming sexual connection.

In societies that honored the divine feminine, sexuality wasn't shameful or dangerous—it was holy. The Greek word for orgy shares its root with "organization," "organism," and even "priest"—all stemming from org, meaning sacred work or divine energy. Sexual union was understood as participation in the creative force of the universe itself.

But when Rome inverted this understanding, making sexuality sinful rather than sacred, they created a dangerous paradox. They positioned celibate men as authorities over the very life force they were denied access to. Instead of seeing the CHILD as the sacred goal of love creating life, they made themselves the goal—the ultimate authority that all families must serve.

This inversion has created the horror we see today: men in positions of religious authority who prey on children instead of protecting them. Without appropriate, consensual adult sexual outlets, without understanding sexuality as sacred rather than shameful, they've become predators of the very beings they should consider most precious.

Sex as Heaven or Hell: Our Choice

Sexuality, like fire, can be beautiful or horrible depending on how we approach it. It can be a sacred connection between consenting adults that honors the creative force, or it can be a tool of domination and abuse. It can be heaven or hell—literally our choice.

In sacred feminine traditions, sexual education wasn't about shame and prohibition but about understanding the profound responsibility that comes with participating in creation itself. Young people learned that sexual energy was divine energy, to be honored and channeled appropriately.

Today, we desperately need this kind of education, especially for boys and men. Instead of teaching them that sexuality is either forbidden or something to be conquered, we need to show them how life and women are sacred, how sexual connection at its best is about mutual pleasure and potential creation, not domination or consumption.

Breaking the Cycle of Terror

The current system creates a vicious cycle. Boys raised without understanding the sacred nature of sexuality, without appropriate models of consensual intimate connection, without being taught to honor rather than dominate—these boys grow into men who perpetuate the same dysfunction.

Meanwhile, girls are taught that their sexuality is either dangerous or irrelevant, that their primary value lies in purity rather than power, that their choices don't matter as much as social expectations.

Both boys and girls need love, not eye-rolling dismissal of their needs and confusion. Boys aren't naturally predators any more than girls are naturally victims. But when we fail to teach appropriate connection, when we shame natural desires instead of channeling them wisely, when we position some humans as authorities over others' bodies and choices, we create the conditions for abuse.

The Path Back to Sacred

We need to remember what Cleopatra's world knew: that appropriate, consensual sexuality between adults is not just acceptable but divine. That the goal of love is life—both the immediate joy of intimate connection and the potential for creating and nurturing children who will carry forward all that's best in humanity.

This means teaching young people that sexuality is sacred energy to be honored, not shameful urges to be suppressed or conquered. It means showing boys that their masculinity is expressed through protection and support of life, not domination of it. It means ensuring girls understand their sexual autonomy is sacred, their choices matter, and their pleasure is as important as anyone else's.

Most importantly, it means recognizing that we all need each other. Men and women, boys and girls, all of us together in the great work of creating and sustaining life on this planet. The terror cycle stops when we remember that love creating life is the point of everything—and that this sacred work belongs to all of us, not just to those who claim authority over it.

The Path Forward: Remembering What We Lost

Understanding Cleopatra's story isn't just about historical justice—it's about remembering what functional human societies actually look like. In cultures that honored feminine creative power, children weren't burdens or accessories or future economic units. They were the most precious manifestation of life's creative force.

Mothers weren't isolated with impossible responsibilities because mothering was understood as sacred work that benefited everyone. Communities organized around supporting the creation and nurturing of life because they understood this was literally the most important work humans could do.

We don't need to return to ancient Egypt, but we desperately need to remember that our current systems aren't natural or inevitable. The fact that modern parents feel overwhelmed and unsupported, that children are vulnerable to institutional abuse, that families are fracturing under economic pressure—none of this is the natural order of things.

It's the result of specific choices made by specific people who needed to break the connection between women, children, and sacred power in order to build empires. We can make different choices.

The woman who gave birth to twins in an age of 50% child mortality and was seen as divinely blessed shows us what's possible when a society truly values the creation of life. Her story is a roadmap back to sanity—if we're brave enough to follow it.

Raising Children in the Sacred Feminine Worldview

Today, we must actively work to give our boys meaning beyond the convenience traps that Roman-style systems offer them—endless food, social media dopamine hits, violence as entertainment, video games as escape, and pornography as substitute for real intimacy. These aren't harmless distractions; they're the modern equivalent of bread and circuses, designed to keep half the population pacified and disconnected from their deeper purpose.

Boys in sacred feminine societies weren't raised to dominate or consume. They were taught to honor the creative force, to see their role as protectors and supporters of life rather than conquerors of it. We need to show our sons that their masculinity isn't threatened by feminine power—it's completed by it.

For our daughters, we must do the opposite of what Rome did to Egyptian women. Instead of limiting their choices to marriage and motherhood, we need to show them they can have education, careers, and economic independence. Most crucially, we need to protect their right to choose life partners based on their own instincts—the hormones and pheromones that guide healthy genetic selection—rather than the social pressures that push them toward "suitable" matches before they even reach puberty.

When girls can choose based on genuine attraction and compatibility rather than economic necessity or family pressure, they choose better. They choose partners who will actually support them through the profound physical and emotional work of creating and raising life.

Healing the Land, Healing Ourselves

This shift in how we raise children has profound implications for how we treat the planet. The same Roman mindset that turned children into economic units also turned land into a resource to be exploited. The tools of World War I and II—the chemical weapons that became pesticides, the explosive techniques that became industrial mining—were repurposed to create our modern agricultural system of monoculture crops: soy, corn, wheat, canola oil, and processed sugar.

These aren't foods; they're industrial products designed for shelf life and profit margins, not human health or ecological balance. They represent the complete opposite of sacred feminine agriculture, which understood that humans and land exist in reciprocal relationship.

In societies that honored the divine feminine, farming wasn't about conquering nature but about partnering with it. The land wasn't property to be owned but a living being to be respected. The breath we exhale feeds the plants; the oxygen they release feeds us. We are literally one living, breathing ecosystem that needs each other to survive.

Return to the Mother

The Egyptian understanding of death captures this perfectly. To be buried meant "to return to the earth," which in the symbology of Mother Earth simply meant "to return to the mother." Death wasn't separation from life but reintegration with the source of all life.

This worldview changes everything. If the earth is literally our mother, then poisoning her soil is matricide. If the air and water are our shared breath and blood, then polluting them is suicide. If children are the stem cells of humanity, then failing to protect and nurture them is species betrayal.

But if we can remember what Cleopatra and her predecessors knew—that the feminine creative force is sacred, that life-giving is the highest form of power, that we are all interconnected parts of one living system—then we can make different choices.

We can raise boys who see their strength as protective rather than destructive. We can raise girls who know their worth doesn't depend on male approval. We can create communities that actually support families instead of just claiming to. We can farm in ways that heal the land instead of depleting it. We can build economies that serve life instead of consuming it.

The woman who commanded the wealth of nations while embodying a goddess tradition shows us it's possible. Her story isn't just about what we lost—it's about what we could choose to remember.