Page 4 - Kleopatra

pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she
could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she
answered by an interpreter; to most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes,
Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and many others, whose language she had learnt;
which was all the more surprising because most of the kings, her predecessors, scarcely gave
themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue, and several of them quite abandoned the
Macedonian. ...
Quelle: Excerpted from Plutarch, "Antony." in The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, John Dryden and Arthur
H. Clough, tr. and ed., vol. 3 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1902).

Die Ptolemäer sind stolz auf ihre makedonische Vergangenheit -
war das Kleopatra auch?

War Kleopatra bekennende Makedonierin? Diese Frage wird mit Sicherheit nicht zu beantworten sein.
Zwischen ihrem Dynastiebegründer der ca. 367 vor Christus geboren wurde und Kleopatra selbst, die
vermutlich um 69 v.Chr. geboren wurde, liegen somit 300 Jahre.

Einen möglichen Hinweis finden wir in dem Buch "Hellenistic Egypt: monarchy, society, economy,
culture" von Jean Bingen und Roger S. Bagnall - Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

In Kapitel IV nehmen die Autoren die Umbenennungen der Kleopatra und Ptolemaios XV Cäsarion in den
Jahren 37/36 v. Chr. ausführlich in betracht. Gerade bei Kleopatra die den Beinamen "Philopatris" annahm.
Übersetzt nach heutigem Standpunkt bedeutet es frei übersetzt "Vaterlandsliebe" oder "Das Land seiner Väter
das man liebt/ehrt". Nur, welches Land erkannte Kleopatra als das Land ihrer Väter an? Schließlich waren
ihre Ahnen von dem Zeitpunkt nach Alexanders Tod im Jahr 323 v.Chr. bis zu ihrer Geburt fast drei
Jahrhunderte lang in Ägypten. Manche Wissenschaftler sehen dieses Land um die Stadt Alexandria,
Kleopatras Heimat. Jedoch wird in dem genannten Werk davon abgesehen, es scheint als sei Kleopatra bei
der Namenswahl sehr wohl stolz auf ihre makedonische Abstammung (rot markiert):

Under Ptolemy II, in certain official Ptolemaic texts, like the collection of regulations called P. Revenue
Laws or a Prostagma like C. Ord. Ptol. 21, it is prescribed that identity, when a full name was
required...that one has to add to the name of a person the name of his father and that of his
homeland...remained throughout the Ptolemaic age; the death penalty would punish any ‘change of
homeland and names’. In Egypt hundreds of regulated identities allow us to draw up an extraordinary
picture of immigration: someone is a son of so-and-so, Cretan or Polyrrhenian from Crete or Achaean
or Athenian, Thracian...and in the most prestigious case, Macedonian. On the strict plan of personal
identity, one is as a rule neither Greek, nor Egyptian, because these two mark a very wide social
status. One would perhaps acquire one of these broader statuses because he gives his full identity.
The Macedonian contingent was particularly important...and access to this prestigious group was
certainly jealously protected. The socially preeminent place of the Macedonian cavalry katoikoi in the
chora explains why Makedon would, quite exceptionally, survive as an individual and private marker
during the first half of the first century AD. It is the only identity mark with a patris connotation that
did not disappear with the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Let us abandon, then, the idea that the homeland for which Cleopatra proclaims her love could be