Ariens 931016 S-12 User Manual download pdf (Page 25)

theories. Although Cleopatra was also praised in poems, plays and songs by great writers,

it is safe to assume that the broad mass of the Egyptian population and peasants, who can

neither read nor write, do not relate to Cleopatra because of such elitist works. Most of

those simple Egyptians who speak the ancient queen’s name today or name their

daughters for her hardly know the true story of Cleopatra, as they do not read the historic

sources.

Is it the tragic story of Cleopatra’s life which found its way into the popular consciousness

through the centuries, and stuck there? Or was she always venerated to such an extent

because she associated herself with the mother-deity Isis and claimed to have descended

from her? Perhaps there is no ultimate answer to these questions. However, the fact

remains that the Egyptians always regarded her as their true queen – perhaps also because

they held Cleopatra’s wish for independence from Rome and her cleaving to the Egyptian

deities and the Egyptian religion in the same high esteem as the Egyptian lifestyle she

cultivated.

Possibly the most important heritage of the Ptolemaic queen for women in Egypt to this

day is not what is visible in fashion, accessories and similar aspects, but the strong female

personality which is still much in evidence, especially in the Egyptian countryside.

Cleopatra’s impressive figure influenced Egyptian women through the centuries to this

day. Many peasant women working side by side in the fields with their menfolk,

sometimes with tools that may have been in use since Cleopatra’s time, have extremely

strong characters, and often it is they who are the true decision-makers in the home, even

if the announcement of those decisions is left to the men, due to social or religious

tradition – for as the Koran says: “Men are superior to women.” Thus, adherents of political

Islam try to wrest from the women the power they have inherited from Cleopatra. Their

attacks are aimed at women especially, trying to displace her from society and reduce her

to the role of a sexual object and a mere child-bearer.

And yet: Egypt’s women insist on the magical strength of their queen. Cleopatra spoke

not only ancient Egyptian, but eight other languages, she governed the nation and was a

powerful political leader, and she was a woman who loved until death. Her character lives

on to this day in the consciousness of Egyptian women who fight for education, social

participation and self-determination.

During the revolution of January 25, 2011, Cleopatra was resurrected in the women of

Egypt. They passed the nights on the asphalt of Tahrir Square in Cairo with the youthful

revolutionaries, they withstood the bullets of the police state, they courageously

confronted the Mubarak dictatorship, and they died martyr’s deaths like men, for love of

their country.

Through Cleopatra, in the past, Egypt offered the world a concept of a patriotic public

spirit whose connotations are charged with current meaning. A narrow interpretation of

ethnicity and geography alone cannot define nationalism. Instead, first and foremost it is

love that can unite people and found communities.

Translated from the German by Alexa Nieschlag

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Ariens 931016 S-12 User Manual Page 25