The Story of Unsolved Mystery about Cleopatra's Death

Egypt – Cleopatra, also known as Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. She is one of the best-known women in history, famed for her supposed beauty and intellect and her relationship with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. 

She was born to Egyptian king Ptolemy XII Auletes and an unknown mother in 69 B.C., Cleopatra was a member of an ancient Greek dynasty that had taken over Egypt in 305 B.C.

Though the Ptolemaic Kingdom had adopted some Egyptian religious traditions, it ruled from the largely Greek city of Alexandria. As a result, Cleopatra grew up speaking Koine Greek, though she was reportedly the only one of her lineage to also learn Egyptian. 

Her life would be inextricably bound to unrest in Egypt – and the politics of the Roman Empire.

However, there's something that still a question to this day; about the Cleopatra's death. The story of her death appears  to have played out as dramatically as the life she lived.

After the Egyptian queen and her longtime lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, saw their combined forces decimated in the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., they retreated to an uncertain future in Alexandria. Months later, with the Roman army of Octavian at the city’s gates, a desperate Antony fell on his sword.

Faced with the prospect of losing her kingdom, Cleopatra herself committed suicide on August 10, 30 B.C., by allowing a venomous snake to bite her and her two handmaidens.

Or did she?

Solid historical evidence relating to Cleopatra’s death, as with much of her biography, is thin. Those who compiled the most comprehensive accounts of her life, notably the Roman writer Plutarch, lived generations after her death. 

Poets, playwrights and filmmakers later drew on these sources to build Cleopatra into an almost mythical figure, defined largely by her powers of seduction and her relationships with two Roman leaders, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.