This is John Batchel, a conversation with the Egyptologist, Professor Toby Wilkinson of

Cambridge University, about the Ptolemaic dynasty. Telemic dynasty between the pharaohs and the

Romans, considered too late for Egyptologists and too early for Roman historians.

There were seven Cleopatra's.

Cleopatra the third is my favorite,

and Professor Wilkinson agrees the one for a dinner party.

Here he explains, why?

Well, she was an Egyptian queen, married to a pharaoh,

and then she was the mother of pharaohs.

155 to 101 BC.

Her granddaughter, great-granddaughter, Cleopatra the 7th.

That's the one we're familiar with.

Caesar, Mark Antony, the asp, the death, the end of Cleopatra.

But Cleopatra the Third, she must have been an inspiration to Shakespeare's Cleopatra.

Here's Toby Wilkinson talking about Cleopatra the Third.

Much more of this tonight, all of the Ptolemy's, but especially the Cleopatra's.

You had all of those things, but I think what shines through the pages of history here is her sheer force of personality. Cleopatra the third, more so than the first or the second, is really such a force of nature. She is a person to be reckoned with. She has

absolute conviction in her own ability to run things. She has all of that confidence that comes

from being a member of an ancient dynasty, but also real strategic ability in her own right.

She, yeah, if you've got to play fantasy ancient dinner, dinner party,

then the person you'd really want to meet is Cleopatra the third.

I mean, she would be an interesting dinner companion.

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