Hieroglyphics
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Cleopatra’s education
Cleopatra’s father believed that education was very important and made sure his tutors were incredibly serious and hard on his children . This meant every child had their own tutor and he made sure they had the best teachers, philosophers and priests. Cleopatra was also one of the few girls in her country that was well educated or educated at all. For her and all the other girls in Egypt there was no such thing as weekends and they would only get time off school for ceremonies. As you can probably already guess the tutors were strict meaning long hours and harsh rules. Particularly for the Ptolemy’s discipline was very important and Cleopatra had to inscribe the line “he who is not thrashed cannot be educated” onto her slate. To remind her that being thrashed was the only way to properly be educated. Cleopatra was quite lucky as she had access to the best learning resources and teachers. She would study at the library of Alexandria (one of the best libraries in the world at that time), she attended lectures at the monsieur and she was able to go to her father’s court (where she continuously studied and questioned the pharmacologists and physicians). She also had great teachers Olympus, Timagenes and it is quite likely Philostrates was one of her tutors as he was the best orator and would have helped he gain her excellence in Public speaking and her philological reputation. Cleopatra studied philosophy, astronomy, astrology, geometry, literature, arithmetic, music, medicine. Cleopatra would began her education first by learning and then chanting the Greek alphabet, next she would have traced letters incised by her teacher on a wooden slate. Then Cleopatra would have graduated to syllables. Around this time she would have also been starting to read some of Homer’s work and soon would be able to recite a part of the Iliad and the Odyssey by memory. Cleopatra would have had vocabulary lists with words relating to random things such as the names of gods and rivers. As she got older she would have had more difficult work such as knowing Alexander the Great’s story off by heart. An interesting fact is that during all of this reading and learning words Cleopatra would never have read in her head, as this was not common and if you did read silently you would be considered weird. In 56 BCE when Cleopatra was 13 years old she began her philosophy, rotary and rhetoric training. A tutor taught her that we believe was an Eunuch. They were responsible for training her in various her in various practices and also testing and improving her rhetorical knowledge. Around the same time Cleopatra was taught how to express her thoughts in an artistic manner and deliver them gracefully. When making a speech Cleopatra was taught where she should take a breath, pick up her pace, change her tone, pitch or how loud her voice was. During these trainings but especially during the presentation of a speech she was not allowed to fidget. Her education ended in 5 BCE (around the time of her father’s death) as she had to replace him as the ruler. |