Cleopatra Meets Caesar Carpet

As outlined in amy crawford s smithsonian article it is often said that cleopatra came up with a scheme to sneak herself into the palace where caesar was staying by hiding inside a rolled up carpet.

Cleopatra meets caesar carpet.

In 48 bc the resourceful cleopatra forbidden by her brother ptolemy xiii to meet with the roman general had herself wrapped in a carpet or according to some historians a linen sack and smuggled into caesar s quarters. A decree in demotic a shorthand version of hieroglyphs was set up in the serapeum at saqqara and his lineage proclaimed on monuments across egypt including a famous scene in the temple of dendera caesar seems to have been very proud that he had finally had a son. Consider the dramatic way she introduced herself to julius caesar and mark antony. After wrapping her up her servant apollodoros presented the carpet to caesar.

As i explain in this article i wrote in january 2020 the famous story of cleopatra rolling out of a carpet when she met julius caesar for the first time comes from a mistranslation of a passage in the biography the life of julius caesar written. Cleopatra and caesar french.