Cléopâtre et la chora égyptienne : problèmes économiques et sociaux

Plutarch (Life of Antony 27, 3-5) describes Cleopatra as the first of Ptolemies which spoke Egyptian, as well as many other languages. This observation could suggest that the last queen of Egypt was interested in the autochthon culture and civilisation of her kingdom. This hypothesis is here analysed under two main points of view: Cleopatra’s representations in pharaonic forms inside Egyptian temples (Dendera and Hermonthis in particular), as the expression of the Egyptian idea of kingship. Measures (ordinances, privileges, asylia concessions etc.) aimed to afford the economic, agrarian and fiscal crisis of the country during many of the years of Cleopatra’s reign. Epigraphical, iconographic and papyrological sources suggest that the queen choose as her interlocutors the Alexandrian élites, the autochthonous clergy, the important minorities, as the Jews, and the Romans more than the Egyptian population of the chora. She seems to be a Hellenistic queen (as well as her predecessors) more than an Egyptian queen.