Why Did Cleopatra Kill Her Siblings? | Absolute History

[Music] Cleopatra queen of Egypt the most famous women in history we know her as the legendary lover who used power and beauty to seduce two of Rome's greatest leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Antony but there was a darker side to this legend the forgotten story of a cold-hearted killer at the behest of Cleopatra Mark Antony had her sister dragged from the Temple of Artemis and there the young our sin away was put to death over the past 2,000 years this dark side of Cleopatra has disappeared [Music] but no our trail has led here to Ephesus a vast Roman city and what we know cold turkey in a 2000 year old tools scientists have uncovered the skeleton of a young woman she was a matter of it she died because she dared to cross someone even more powerful than herself her own sister and Cleopatra to this skeleton the first forensic evidence suits the Apaches story this is a story of power lust and sibling rivalry it takes us on a journey to two of the great wonders of the ancient world what's inside this tomb reveals Cleopatra as you've never seen her before [Music] [Applause] this is the portrait of a killer [Music] our journey starts here in Turkey in the 1920s archaeologists were exploring a tomb here in the heart of Ephesus once a glorious Roman capital ten times the size of Pompeii in a sarcophagus filled with water we found human remains [Music] the skeleton was small with thin bones and a slight frame they appeared to be the remains of a young woman but the custom here was to bury the dead outside the city walls in five hundred years that had only been for exceptions and all of those were men of great importance so who was she and what was she doing here the archaeologists had no idea who they'd found or her importance and they reseal the sarcophagus [Music] the identity of the body remained a mystery until archaeologists dr. hill Couture was drawn to the Forgotten tomb while excavating Roman remains nearby in the 20 years she'd walk to Ephesus she'd never seen anything like it a mysterious octagonal tomb on the most important street in the city the street of the use she was determined to find her answer to the riddle Hill car decided to enter the tomb it would be a momentous decision so Hill K is this the entrance to the tomb yes this is the entrance and I can go in here yes yes yes yes I think so the chance that the skeleton would still be there nearly a century later seems removed but what she uncovered would take her on an extraordinary detective story to the dark heart of The Legend of Cleopatra all right thoughts I is a barrel vaulted chamber nice Luckman shape it's beautifully made isn't it lovely masonry it's just held together by its own weight what did you what did you see just a scrape for them before the scene was like I was very excited and I called so this small entrance and came in and I saw the bones the long bones from the Hamza legs and say Oliva partly in the varnish and partly in Zossen eesh I immediately thought we now have at least the skeleton of the owner of this death chamber how fantastic you know that there was someone in here obviously of some kind of significance and to then immediately wonder you know who why I was somebody what for this was the studious great determined to discover the identity of this mysterious skeleton Hilliker had little to go on it was incomplete she decided to search ancient records for a woman important enough to be buried in such an unusual to [Music] and the woman accounts she found a reference to the horrific murder of Princess our CoA Cleopatra's sister a forgotten what bloody chapter in the legend of Cleopatra in the city of Ephesus at the behest of Cleopatra Marc Antony had her sister dragged from the Temple of Artemis and there in this holy place the young our sin away was put to death these words by Roman historian Cassie's deal describing the mutter of Cleopatra's sister women were written 300 years after the event so was it just a legend or the truth if cassia steel was right an F pill cat had indeed stumbled on the bones of a sin away then this was a huge fight the first ever remains of anyone from Cleopatra's family proof not only of a shocking murder but also the first forensic evidence that Cleopatra was a ruthless killer [Music] if this was our scenery how did she end up in a to a thousand miles from Egypt where she was born to find the answers I need to cross the Mediterranean to Cleopatra's homeland [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're in Egypt at the magnificent temple of Carmack by the time Cleopatra came to the throne this place was already 2,000 years old the Golden Age of Egypt was past its future was hanging in the balance [Music] in 51 BC Cleopatra's father died he had four children he left the throne to be shared equally between his eldest son told me the 13th and his eldest daughter Cleopatra aged 18 also and then the custom of Egyptian royal families both rulers brother and sister were to be married to each other [Music] but behind the scenes they were family defitely to me and there was one issue above all that split the brothers and sisters the new and emerging superpower of the age [Music] the Roman Empire was expanding across the Middle East and for the first time Roman troops had established a foothold in Egypt so the ruling dynasty here had a big decision to make should they try and resist or make some kind of alliance with Rome both strategies involved a sizeable risk by siding with the Romans they might provoke open rebellion in Egypt but resisting the Romans could involve going to war with the most powerful military machine on earth Cleopatra wanted to be rooms friend but her brother told me the 13th disagreed and he was supported by their sister or sinewy they believed it was time for Egypt to stand up to rule the family argument rapidly goat out of hand it so happened that the king of Egypt whose name was Ptolemy and who was but a boy of the time was engaged in a vicious war with his own sister and queen Cleopatra with the support of those loyal to him the boy key expelled Cleopatra from the kingdom and sent her away [Music] Cleopatra was banished from the Egyptian capital Alexandria she found herself in exile but Cleopatra wasn't finished yet there was one sure way to get back at Ptolemy and that was with the help of Rome Cleopatra was her father's daughter and he was a friend of Julius Caesar he had written in the Royal will that if there was conflict over the succession Rome should be the impartial judge [Music] in 48 BC Caesar arrived in Egypt with a small force he soon found himself mediating in the family feud [Music] Cleopatra knew she had to get to Caesar before her brother and she had one key advantage over him Cleopatra believed that Caesar might well yield to her charms for she was a woman of surpassing beauty in the flower of her youth Cleopatra decided to seduce Caesar a move which would have fatal consequences for her brothers and for her sister our sin away two thousand years later it's time to test the astonishing feeling that this might be the skeleton of princess our sin we armed with state-of-the-art forensic science dr. Fabian Cannes is brought in to examine the skeleton if the bones from the octagonal tomb are mailed the theory will collapse at the first hurdle so Fabian what can you tell from a first analysis of a skeleton from the first analysis I think our I'm sure that it was a female but I can show you for comparison from yes other skeletons to pelvics one from a male and one from a female all right well you can be as clearly that's a much bigger space there isn't it and so the female pelvis is basically about room for a baby yeah and if you take the pelvic bone from the skeleton from the Octagon you can see it's a white white angle and also it from the morphological point of view it must be have been a female okay so it's a woman but can Fabian discover anything else from the bones the next after the sex what you try to establish is the age at death and in this case you can see on the long bones that they are still not completely grown because the epiphyses and the diaphysis are not fused together plate so the bones started in in pieces and then gradually we have 1/8 grow in this game actually to you before with the fully developed adult skeleton where even this gap is completely ready to come this quaint it was quite clear isn't it yeah so this the skeleton here is female and her young I would say between 15 and 17 maybe 18 such as a youngster we also know our sinawe was Cleopatra's younger sister and that Cleopatra was 18 when she came to the throne so this too fits with Hill cos DD so the bones are the right age and sex to be a sin away [Music] but is the skeleton from the right period next Fabian carbon dates the bones the tests should this is a body from a period between 200 BC and 20 BC I think this is striking because the carbon dating was consistent with being a scene where the carbon dating to matches the dates of the Cleopatra story and there's more what about just the general appearance over you know what does the the skeleton as a whole suggests it's it's very delicate it's very thin so it's very G minutes of a small slightly build person yeah petite person a petite person yet so our skeleton belongs to a young female of slender frame history suggests that our sinuous older sister Cleopatra was slim to [Music] famously she used her size to smuggle herself back from exile into the royal palace here's what the rumen rates are Plutarch has to say Cleopatra sailed into Alexandria in a little skiff and landed close to the palace just as it was getting dark and she was able to enter undetected she rolled herself up in a bed sack tied with a thick cord and had it carried indoors to Caesar in this week she was already in caesar's bed alone with him in his quarters ready to reveal herself at the moment that would have the most impact it refused the clear and calculating mind of Cleopatra a woman able and willing to do whatever was required to get her what she wanted Caesar was 52 years old she was only 22 [Music] the story of Cleopatra seduction of Caesar is at the heart of a romantic legend but it was also a calculated act of betrayal [Music] others have written long before I that her hair was must with so depth to touch as to give the air that she had been tearing at it her face the picture of sorrow and yet not a tiered been spilled and how she pleaded to the Roman leader mighty Caesar I have been driven from my father throne I shall be an aside forever unless your guiding hand restores me to my rightful destiny and therefore I agree they got you feel hearing her speak but a few words season was instantly captivated such that he spent the whole night with her in infamy by getting into bed with Caesar Cleopatra was in effect stabbing her brothers and her sister of scenery in the back not expecting to see his sister within the palace the boy King was filled with wroth he told his diadem from his head and cast it to the ground before rushing out to his people crying out that he had been betrayed the young King felt Cleopatra had sold out to rule leaving him and his country to pay the price [Music] in modern-day Ephesus Fabiana is still working with an incomplete skeleton last summer he decided to go back into the tomb with a slim hope of finding new evidence he struck lucky in this niche over the door to the grave chamber there have been some bounce it turned out that there's human bones and that they belong to the individual from the grave chamber the chance to find additional pounds in this grave was nearly nothing I think it was a great day I couldn't believe it so [Music] now the skeleton is nearly complete but there's one big problem the most important part of the skeleton remains missing the skull well here at least our modern-day archeologist Hill Couture found an answer in the archives in the 1920s the skull had been taken from Turkey back to Germany it was lost in the chaos of the Second World War but before its disappearance an archaeologists have recorded its dimensions cryptically he revealed another clue as to the identity of the occupant of the tomb the skull long and with a low forehead reminded him of others he'd seen in Egypt by a stroke of luck his precise notes photos and measurements of the skulls survived using the latest scientific technology a world renowned British facial reconstruction team believed they can use this evidence to rebuild the skull in virtual reality well this has been a challenge but it's been quite interesting to take in these two-dimensional images and we create a 3d model within the plains created by the images and we can take a template skull of a similar age sex and ethnicity into the space and then alter that to fit the morphology the shape that you can see of the skull on the images so what make the 3d reconstruction reveal about the identity of its [Music] the eye sockets quite large in relation to the upper face and that's something that's quite common in children it's also something that's common in young females but I think proportionally the cranium suggests this is the young adult the virtual skull confirms fabulous findings that this belongs to a young female and so perhaps our princess RC noe if this is hard can the skull tell us anything about her looks it was difficult to call a skull beautiful but certainly it's magical it's balanced it's got quite delicate features and those are all things you would associate with a beautiful face in a woman so far the age and proportions of the skull are consistent with what's known about our scenery but we can now go one stage further using the shape of the skull and the bite of the upper jaw the team can estimate the shape of the lower jaw recreating the mouth and muscles on the face we all have the same muscles in our face and they all have exactly the same origins and they're exactly the same attachment points it's just the proportions of the skull that make a different face shape we can then look at facial feature detail so we can work out the prominence and position of the eyeballs and then we can put on big structures like the neck because we can see where the neck muscles attach we can look at the bones on the edge of the nasal aperture and the nasal root here between the eyes to tell us about the prominence and width and shape of the nose she had a very prominent nasal root kind of like ancient Greek sculpture that kind of classical no shape she's got quite a distinctive nose which is very straight and I think it's something that now we found aesthetically pleasing it's a beautiful feature so the owner of the skull was young and classically beautiful if this is our scenery it ties in with ancient accounts of her sister Cleopatra as a beautiful Queen 2,000 years ago back in Egypt Cleopatra's loops may have conquered Caesar but sex with the Roman was seen as treason [Music] sister took up arms palace which season headquarters [Music] they said Caesar on every side missiles fell upon the palace [Applause] into Fantasyland her brother rightful king leading a loyalist uprising massive to them hostage season 1 all of the Manus to the next dragon all the while the king by his side he took some consolation in holding the boy hostage if he could not return the fight with fire bans and missiles of his own then at least we could hold the Egyptians the head of their barricaded inside a palace complex Caesar sent for reinforcements but they would take weeks to arrive by sea Caesar and Cleopatra to desperate measures to draw the Egyptians away from the palace the Roman general set fire to the ships in the harbor consumed by they sank without trace the flames and tongue set fire to the city the wind Fanning the flames until a strict across the roofs as fast as meteors this Inferno do the Egyptians away from the palace as they rushed to rescue the city Caesar did not waste a moment seizing the opportunity Caesar led his bodyguard to the mouth of the harbor [Music] there by touting up from the center of an island to warn approaching ships of rocks and reefs was the seventh wonder of the ancient world the white house of Pharaohs the lighthouse of Pharaoh's Caesar described it soaring in height a work of unimaginable construction it stood on an island at the mouth of the harbor and whoever controlled this island control the traffic of all ships into Alexandria so in all haste Caesar dispatched his group's to seize the island and the great lighthouse itself the 300-foot lighthouse had a distinctive eight-sided tower from the top centuries could see for 30 miles out to sea workmen stole giant crazy us to keep the lighthouse torch burning [Music] it was an emblem of Cleopatra's family and was about to take center stage in an epic chapter of the story [Music] as the battle raged the young princess Arsenault a stolen for the Egyptians Deering escaped from the palace [Music] free from seizes touches our sin away was brought to the leaders of the rebel Harley once again the Egyptians had at their head a member of the royal dynasty of little eNOS [Music] the rebels proclaimed of sinawe their queen to lead them in rebellion against Caesar and Cleopatra [Music] back in Ephesus Hill current our team are searching for further clues to link their mysterious skeleton with Egypt over a thousand miles away that investigation turns to the tomb itself Hue's tombs and ethicists all carried symbols which told the story of who was buried inside 2,000 years ago everyone would have known who they were today we have to decipher our tomb like a secret code only the burial chamber and its octagonal base remain intact but there is one further piece of the tomb that is preserved because the original archaeologists to get back to Vienna [Music] nearly 20 feet high it's still only a third of the height of the whole building it reveals a vital clue about the tools owner this pieces have been found right beside the Octagon it must have been something like a torch probably where you can put up a light in the top of this little column so it looks like a bundle of Pyrus leaves you know from from Egypt as an image as the type of this column everyone would recognize at once papyrus bundle and they chipped so the stone imagery strongly suggests the tombs owner was Egyptian but to decode the building in fool the team would have to rebuild the whole thing it survives only as 170 scattered stores Austrian archaeologists and colleagues of Hill Couture have painstakingly been piecing together fragments of the tomb the skull of the site for those fragments hoping one day to put it all together again like pieces of a giant jigsaw a team of engineers is brought in to scan each and every stone into a computer and rebuild the tomb in virtual space this is just kind of a heap of stones right here it's kind of a virtual stone yard we have plenty of objects looking quite similar and we have to figure out where they could learn to then the scanning reveals another clue invisible to the naked eye a tiny diagram that gives away the shape of the tomb this potentially is a drawing of the base the columns and the roof on top of it nobody knew about this drawing up to this summer armed with clues like this the tune begins to teach sheep and we can now see what it would have looked like two thousand years ago [Music] then it stood 50 feet high and 13 feet wide the most prominent tomb in Ephesus and most important of all it had eight sides hELCO searches in vain for tombs from this period with the same peculiar octagonal shape once again she Thomaston a story of Cleopatra and her sister are seen away and uncovers the story of the battle for the Pharos lighthouse Hill Kerr is immediately struck by the eight-sided tombs resemblance to the lighthouse the symbol of Cleopatra's dynasty the pharaohs was the most prominent octagonal building in the ancient world this is a Eureka moment the Pharos lighthouse and the destiny of asana we were about to become inextricably linked the queen of Egypt still an adolescent now to con the might of rule Caesar pinned over the island of files but trip to Russia surprise attack catching him completely off guard [Music] whose back for the lights drop - inhaling - bottles to swing his like weighted down as he was by these thick ropes and being pelted by the Egyptians his cloak being purple made for an easy target my de Paris miserably had he not thrown off his clothing but succeeded in swimming forever how to see [Music] Cesar barely escaped with his life and staggered back to Cleopatra at the palace the hero of Rome had been defeated by a sinewy barely a teenager the Pharos lighthouse now became a symbol of her famous victory when Caesars cloak was hoisted above the battlements the message was clear princess of sinawe had shamed the might of Rome there was an incredible moment when it looked like that might be the start of a new dynasty if things had continued along this path apart our sinner we might reasonably have hoped for we would know remember the legend of Queen our sinewy not Cleopatra but the alternative future didn't last long the rebels began to argue among themselves Caesar used the breathing space to bring in reinforcements from Syria he launched a counter-attack Caesar had promised to restore his lover to the throne and now he was to honor his word the young Ptolemy was pursued by Roman troops and we don't buy his gold armor and he was drowned trying to escape across the Nile Cleopatra's first rival for the throne had been dispatched without her having to lift a finger Caesar had done the work for her [Music] our scenery was taken prisoner Cleopatra's greatest rival our own little sister was in her grasp Caesar was victorious but he didn't take over Egypt he placed Cleopatra and whose name he'd fought the war back on the throne by tradition she was to marry her last surviving younger brother he was around 12 years old as for princess our sin away she was taken to Rome in Chains a captive of Caesar she must have felt a world away from her moment of glory [Music] in 46 BC Caesar celebrated his Egyptian triumph in Rome top of the bell of entertainments was an effigy of the Pharaohs and a parade of the Egyptian prisoners captured in Alexandria at the head was our sin away Caesar had a special treat in store for the crowd the custom was to take the main prisoner at the end of the parade and strangle her to death imagine what that must have felt like for our sin away did she know that that was what was intended for her and whatever else she was whatever else she might have done she was just a young girl but in Caesars eyes she was the teenage rebel who had taken on rule and this would be her just desserts when he returned at last her Rome a glittering festival was held to honor Julius Caesar our sin away was to be paraded along with the other captives it was a spectacle which had never before been seen in Rome a woman and one once considered a queen now in Chains [Music] behind her Cesar paraded a burning effigy of the lighthouse of Pharaohs once the embodiment of her greatest victory it was now a symbol of her humiliation [Music] [Music] the octagonal symbol that he'll cut is no convinced as the key to the code of r2 [Music] to the onlookers our scenery would more like a child than a rebel leader to execute barbarians was one thing but to strangle a young princess as a circus act was quite another the triumph delighted the spectators but the sight of our sin away that out amongst the captives displeased them exceedingly [Music] she's of stunt backfired it aroused to create sympathy amongst the people to be certain it was for that that her life was spared the crowd forced seized his hand and he had to spare our sin away but he could never allow up to the top to Egypt instead he banished her a thousand miles from Rome and a thousand miles from Egypt to Ephesus in modern-day Turkey [Music] Ephesus was a vast imperial capital rubes gateway to Asia [Music] try and imagine what Ephesus was like 2000 and more years ago this was no room in backwater this was one of the most exciting and cosmopolitan capital cities anywhere in the known world a glittering jewel that attracted the great and the good the famous and the infamous everybody who was anybody came here to them Ephesus was a place of pilgrimage and pleasure but for our sin away it was a prison for the rest of her life home would be a religious sanctuary the Temple of Artemis another ancient wonder of the world in ancient times the building was visible from miles out to sea even at night and this is what princess our sinawe would have seen as she approached by bolt she was just a teenage girl but she knew that she would be spending the rest of her life here in the care of eunuch priests and that she would never see Alexandria again [Music] these ruins might not look like much today but 2,000 years ago this place was the reason for the fame of the city this was the Temple of Artemis one of the seven wonders of the ancient world [Music] [Music] the roman historian Pliny tells us at the temple alone was 425 feet long 225 feet wide with 127 columns each 60 feet high supporting a massive roof [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it was here 2,000 years ago the apart tres sister came to cease actually [Applause] dr. Sabina lot Stata knows just her and Optimus Wars to political exiles like our sin away it was a common practice that you may ask for political asylum if you got the asylum here you could stay here as long as you want people lived here for years for decades and they were safe because the Artemisium had his own administration and had its own jurisdiction so nobody was allowed to interfere in the automation [Music] our sinoese crew had failed but her life had been spared under the protection of the temple and the watchful eye of Rome her days as a rebel were over but at least no one could harm her here or so she thought [Music] just two years later in March 44 BC the man who had spared her life Julius Caesar was stabbed today [Music] with Caesar dead a sinner his future was thrown into jeopardy for Cleopatra there was no one left to carper ambition to be soul queen of Egypt even at the cost of her own family with Caesar gone what would she do the bloody answer came within weeks she had her husband cool ruler and last little brother muttered [Music] only us noe was now out of Cleopatra's reach then the Roman Empire in the east got a new governor his name was Mark Antony his seat of power was Ephesus a city of a sinoese exile and he used the city as a place for his expensive personal pleasures even in Ephesus with the vast reserves of wealth the city had to offer mark Antony's lice anxious lifestyle soon left him broke he had enemies on his borders in Iran and in Armenia and his Wars were expensive it wasn't long before the new governor's lifestyle met that he too had to look across the sea to the wealth of Egypt and Egypt meant Cleopatra until he summoned her to Tarsus in modern-day Turkey a Cleopatra played hard-to-get if she did come it would be on her terms she was older now I'm savvy she had received several letters from Antony still she refused to come then as if in mockery of them she sailed to Tarsus to meet him the people poured from the town to catch but a glimpse of her the throng streamed away to the last just anta Lee was left seated alone on his chair she herself they under a canopy of golden cloth adorned like Venus while beautiful boys stood either side of her in adoration of their queen [Music] Mark Antony held the key to a prize that until now had been beyond Cleopatra's grasp the life force Inouye Antony was now as valuable to Cleopatra as Cleopatra Wars to aunty the honeymoon period in the year that followed became legend every day that would hold even more lavish feasts for one another Cleopatra constantly flattering him meeting out each day some fresh new delight some enticing little way to charm him releasing him neither night nor day she watched him as he exercised himself in arms she drank with him she played a dice she hunted with him but behind the romance both knew they had an agenda from Antony needed the resources of Egypt to pay his debts and fight his Wars Cleopatra craved absolute security and that meant removing her last remaining rival to the throne of Egypt her younger sister our sin away but at the temple of artemis under the care of priests the princess was surely no longer a threat to anybody least of all Cleopatra [Music] stone once in Alexandria Cleopatra saw it differently back in the present as one final question for Fabian to answer how did the lady in the Octagon tomb die I have seen hundreds of skeletons in Ephesus more than 500 and if just two juveniles in the whole sample and this is astonishing because it's very unlikely to die in the juvenile age she have been treated well her whole life I think he's quite healthy at the time of death we also don't have any design for for the why she died and there's also no sign of any kind of long-term degenerative illness no there's no sign of of long illnesses even a short illness sister's just perfectly smooth propotion bones this was not a individual wilt had to do hard labor work so it seems to be somebody who lived quite well at an easy life and then unexpectedly enough teens gone [Music] the Roman sources were in no doubt our scenery died a sudden death and they knew who was responsible at Tarsus a deal had been struck between Antony and Cleopatra and our sin away was to find out what this meant for her [Music] [Music] [Music] in the city of Ephesus at the behest of Cleopatra Marc Antony had her sister dragged from the Temple of Artemis and there in this holy place the young our sin away was put to death it was not only a shock in Ephesus it was a shock in Rome in everywhere you know it was unbelievable that somebody interferes in a sanctuary and especially in the automation of Ephesus it was the biggest crime in this period the carbon dating of the Bulls the sex build an age of the skeleton at the time of death and the fact it belonged to someone of high birth point to one thing [Music] experts are know convinced that this skeleton is the first forensic evidence of Cleopatra's family ever found the shape of the tomb its similarity to the Pharaohs these are all parts of a court and the whole of it comes together to make a complete picture at last we can solve the mystery beyond doubt of who the skeleton actually is none other than Cleopatra's sister RC no a Egyptian rebel queen of Egypt murdered on the sacred ground of the Holy Temple of Artemis by Mark Antony on the orders of his lover but of course what we haven't known until now is what she looked like although the forensic team have all an incomplete skeleton using our virtual template we can now rebuild the skull [Music] he'll come and Fabian thought the skull was lost forever so I'm dying to see how they'll react then looking for the skull for a long time for but I don't have the real thing but we've got the next best thing which is a very exact replica cool may we touch it if you have cool this is really cool yeah brilliant perfect it's really like looking in her face yes but this is quite another thing to have the skull of her in your in your hands this is this is a really enormous big feeling the forensic team are convinced they've proved beyond doubt that these are the bones of Princess our sin away but rebuilding the skull has unlocked an incredible secret about her ancestry until recently Cleopatra's dynasty was thought to be Greek European Caucasian but some scholars now believe Cleopatra and her siblings had African blood could the answer be in this skull the distance from the forehead to the back of the skull is long in relation to the overall height of the cranium and that's something that you see quite frequently in certain populations one of which is ancient Egyptians another would be black African groups we'll also show you that characteristic this one certainly looks more white European but it has got this long head shape it could suggest a mixture of ancestry our revelation backs up the controversial theory that the princess and therefore her sister Cleopatra also had African blood eleven years after a sinner is dead Antony and Cleopatra made a bed to take over the Roman Empire but the forces were annihilated [Music] the ruthless queen who had dispatched her own brothers and ordered the murder of her sister of sinewy was now left with no option but to kill herself [Music] by killing her sister Cleopatra ensured that her last rival was dead but she also ensured that there would be no more descendants of her father's lying to do battle with rule cleopatra thought she could use the Roman Empire first in Julius Caesar then in Mark Antony to keep her on the throne but she was wrong Egypt became just another province of the Roman Empire allo Cleopatra succeeded in murdering of sinawe she couldn't erase her entirely from history so only one last question remains fought did she look like [Music] now that we've remade the skull of the lady from the Octagon we can finally rebuild her face lost for 2,000 years this computer-generated image shows what she would have looked like [Music] scientists are convinced this is Cleopatra's sister princess arson away this may be as close as we'll ever get to see him Cleopatra in the flesh the picture it paints is a very different one from the romantic legend [Music] not just a cunning politician a beautiful Queen for an amorous seductress this is the portrait of a killer [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 102,368

Rating: 4.8011427 out of 5

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, history documentary, full length documentaries, full documentary, documentary history, absolute history, cleopatra documentary, cleopatra documentary national geographic, cleopatra documental national geographic, cleopatra history, cleopatra history channel, cleopatra history buff, ancient rome, ancient egypt, ancient egypt documentary

Id: lN0E1CvGUZo

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019