Q 01/05

Which famous object in the British Museum carries a decree of 196 BC honouring Cleopatra's ancestor Ptolemy V?

A) The Cyrus Cylinder

B) The Rosetta Stone

C) The Black Obelisk

D) The Flood Tablet

Answer · why

B) The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone. Priests, apparently at Memphis, had the same decree carved in three scripts, and matching the one scholars could read against the o...

Q 02/05

The founder of Cleopatra's dynasty, Ptolemy I Soter, had been a general and companion of which conqueror?

A) Alexander the Great

B) Pyrrhus of Epirus

C) Philip II of Macedon

D) Cyrus the Great

Answer · why

A) Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great. When the king died in 323 BC, Ptolemy took Egypt as his share of the empire and even hijacked the royal corpse on its way home to...

Q 03/05

What was Cleopatra's first language?

A) Classical Latin

B) Imperial Aramaic

C) Koine Greek

D) Old Persian

Answer · why

C) Koine Greek

Koine Greek. Her dynasty were Macedonians who had run Egypt for almost three centuries, and even Roman visitors, with Latin of their own, would have a...

Q 04/05

Which French thinker wrote that the face of the world would have changed had Cleopatra's nose been shorter?

A) Voltaire

B) René Descartes

C) Michel de Montaigne

D) Blaise Pascal

Answer · why

D) Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal. In his Pensées he used her nose to show how a trifle can steer history: a passing attraction too slight to explain, he wrote, shakes pr...

Q 05/05

What does the Greek name Cleopatra mean?

A) She who rules the sea

B) Daughter of the Nile

C) Glory of her father

D) Beloved of Isis

Answer · why

C) Glory of her father

Her adopted title Thea Philopatora means goddess who loves her father.