Cleopatra was the last ruler of millennia-old pharaonic Egypt.

Many stories and myths entwine about her life and her love affairs with her tragic death.

She seduced Caesar the most famous and powerful ruler of Rome and began an affair with his successor Marc Antony after Caesar's assassination. It is said that she left the stage of history with a dramatic suicide by the bite of a cobra.

 

That is how she is portrayed in the Hollywood movie? And .... What more about her?

A female shaman was buried at Bad Dürrenburg, Germany, around 8000 years ago. She was reverently covered with a 30 cm thick layer of red ochre. She probably limped due to an irregularity in her first vertebra.

Her regalia: a headdress with two deer antlers, several boar-tusk plaques, 16 deer incisors, 3 turtle shells, 2 crane bones, and a variety of shells, needles, knives, and microblades. 120 freshwater mussels; and bone needles, flint knives, antler hoe, and a crane-bone container with 31 microliths.

The woman had been buried in an upright posture, as it was typical for the hunter-gatherers.

Prehistoric Shamanism

The fact that most of the neolithic sculptures found in Malta are clearly female, led to the assumption that women had a very important role in society. 

During the final phase of the Neolithic period, 22 major temples were built on Malta and another 6 temples on Gozo. The temple period lasted from about 3800 BC to 2500 BC, ie about 1,000 years. The temples were built by a people, who presumably reached the islands from Sicily from the archipelago about 8,000 to 6,000 years ago.

The Venus of Willendorf is a Venusfigurine from the Upper Palaeolithic, the Gravettian, and can be seen as Austria's most famous treasure piece today at the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

The representation is so realistic that an invention is considered as excluded. Some rests of  paint that remain show, that the sculpture was originally covered with red ocher.

So-called "venus figurines", female nudes standing upright, designed to be stuck in the ground, and then covered with red ochre, were made as an unbroken artistic and symbolic tradition of the Eurasian continent that lastet for at least 30.000 years (between 40.000 B.C-10.000 B.C).

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Themistoclea was a priestess of Delphi, a well known temple in Greece. She is reputed to have been the teacher of Pythagoras, who is often called "the Father of philosophy".

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En-hedu-Ana was revered as the most important religious figure of her day.

She is the first author either gender known by name in human history, because she wrote the first texts that can be attributed to a person. 

She was the high-priestress during the reign of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great). While Sargon of Akkad united Sumer and Akkad and conquered the first empire in history, Enheduanna melded the Sumerian with the Akkadian gods to create the stability the empire needed to thrive.

read here more about ......The Role of Women in Ancient Sumer 

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Puduhepa was a Hittite Queen, a Tawananna - married to King Hattusili III. She has been referred to as "one of the most influential women known from the Ancient Near East."

Queen Puduhepa and King Hatusilli III together with Pharaoh Ramses II, put their seal under the first international peace treaty in human history, between the great powers of Egypt and the Hittites. (Die Hethiter und ihr Reich, Wissenschaftliche Buch Gesellschaft, Germany - Page 71)

What kind of role women had on ancient Thera cannot be said with certainty, since the scripture (Linear A) has not been deciphered, everybody may interpret the images for themselves. Nevertheless the leading role of the illustrated women is undeniable. 

There is some archaeological, seismological, and vulcanological evidence that the myth of Atlantis, described by Plato (Kritias und Timaios) is Thera.

In 1700 or 1600 BCE the probably biggest vulcanic erruption of humanity let one-third of the island sink into the sea. In 1967 Spiridon Marinatos escavated de remains of a well preserved settlement - Akrotiri -  and discover a culture which in technology was centuries ahead of its time.  

The "Minoans" were the first European high culture. The first European throne was found here. They lived among other in a kind of palaces, for example, the palace of Knossos with over 1400 rooms on 3-4 storeys. There was a even a central sewer system, toilets and a type of hot water heating, etc.

 
Their Scripture - Linear A - has not yet been deciphered. Many well-preserved frescoes have been found that give an insight into the culture. Almost all Images are of women. Women in the role of priestesses were in the important social functions.

Sappho was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Sappho's poetry centers on passion and love for various people and both sexes. The word lesbian derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos, while her name is also the origin of the word sapphic; neither word was applied to female homosexuality until the 19th century.

An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina ascribed to Plato states:

Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!

Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.

Blenda is the heroine of a Swedish legend (Blendasägnen) from Småland. Blenda led the rural women of Värend in an attack on a pillaging Danish army and annihilated the invaders.

Hypatia was a philosopher and scientist who in the fourth century AD. taught mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at the then famous University of Alexandria, the Museion.

She has invented the astrolabe, with it the position of the stars, the planets and the sun can be determined.

Cynisca or Kyneska was a Greek princess of Sparta. She became the first woman in history to win at the ancient Olympic Games.

Cynisca's win in the Olympics had a great impact on the ancient Greek world as other women, especially Lacedaemonians, later won the chariot racing like Euruleonis, Belistiche, Timareta, Theodota and Cassia. However, none of them was more distinguished for their victories than she was.

This Spartan princess is frequently used until today as a symbolic figure of the social rise of woman.

Docu about the spartans, in it the story of Cynisca is told

Approximately 10,000 years ago began a new era for humanity. Agriculture, the domestication of animals and first fired ceramic, etc. allow a new way of life.

Çatalhöyük is an excavation in present day Turkey. It is a settlement from the Neolithic period, located on the plateau of Anatolia and had up to 8000 inhabitants. It was a cultural center. Stone blades, mirrors and fired ceramics were found there.

It is seem certain now, that women had a central role. Statues represent goddesses, priestesses or queens. Central is a belief about the woman and the bull. 

Hatshepsut  meaning Foremost of Noble Ladies was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt. She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty.

According to Egyptologist James Henry Breasted she is also known as "the first great woman in history of whom we are informed."

"Beloved of the god Ptah" c. 2700 BCE

Merit Ptah was an early physician in ancient Egypt. She is most notable for being the first woman known by name in the history of the field of medicine, and possibly the first named woman in all of science as well.

Her picture can be seen on a tomb in the necropolis near the step pyramid of Saqqara. Her son, who was a High Priest, described her as "the Chief Physician."

Co-Regent of upper and lower Egipt together with Echnaton at the time of the biggest revolution in the ancient egypt   1370 BCE – ca. 1330 BCE

Nefertiti  was the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a religious revolution, in which they worshiped one god only, Aten, or the sun disc.

After Akhenaten death,  Nefertiti ruled briefly as Pharaoh Smenkhkare.

Nefertiti (Beauty of Aten, the Beautiful one has come) is best known by the bust in limestone and gypsum, which is exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.  The name bears the title of Great Royal Wife and mistress of the Two Lands. 

In the grave of Akhenaten she appears as mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt.

After the death of Akhenaten Nefertiti rules as pharao Semenchkare.

The Venus of Hohle Fels (also known as the Venus of Schelklingen) is an Upper Paleolithic Venus figurine hewn from ivory of a mammoth tusk found in 2008 near Schelklingen, Germany.

It is dated to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago, belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the assumed earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe (Cro-Magnon).

It is the oldest undisputed example of Upper Paleolithic art and figurative prehistoric art in general.

Agnodice 3rd Century BCE is probably the first physician of antiquity, who has worked as a gynecologist.

Wencheng has brought Buddhism to Tibet, she is part of the foundation story of Tibet. 

Today she is revered as the white Tara, the female Buddha. 

Wencheng was the daughter of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, she was married as a pledge of peace with Songstan Gampo the first Dharma King of Tibet.

Boudicca was a Queen and a Britannian army leader who in the early years of the Roman occupation led the Boudicca uprising and if they would have won, she would have changed the destiny of Europe.

A sibyl is a prophetess, who, unlike other divinely inspired seers foretells the future unsolicited. 

It is documented that since 700 BC.  there existed Sibyls in Cumae near Naples.

They were the authors of the Sibylline books. These books were used during the Roman Emire by the senate on matters of importance.