So yeah. Doctor Bob or Mr Mummy as he’s known to his friends made a series of lectures for some well known US home learning company a few years ago. And its fascinating. Bob Brier has this knack of being able to explainthings about ancient Egypt in such a way that it all makes sense, possibly because of his background of growing up in The Bronx maybe?

Each lecture is approx 30-40 minutes long and neatly cuts up Egyptian history into digestable sections. In fact I spent an extra week just going back over the lectures I found most interesting. It’s a great ‘read’. Heartily reccommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in the Period. Even if all you want to do is hear about the Greek Egypt era and Rome.

I get really annoyed when TV shows do this. They claim to be the most historically accurate show produced yet and get alot of thier viewers from saying this.

Now Rome claimed this very thing and to be fair it does look very authentic but they seem to have taken poetic license with everything to do with Egypt. In the series Gaius Julius Caesar goes to Egypt chasing Pompey Magnus because of the civil war in Rome. In reality there was a third person ruling Rome with them called Crassus and they ruled in a coalition called The First Triumvirate. Now I can understand the writers getting rid of Crassus’ position as its easier to have to enemies fighting for Rome rather than 3 folk having a falling out.

The other main problem I have with the series is Cleopatra. They virtually wipe her out of the story after the birth of Caesarion (Caesar’s son by Cleopatra) and the celebrations for his military career (ie over the Gauls, Egyptians, Pharnaces and Juba) when he sends for Cleopatra and his son do not happen. Instead he celebrates his triumph in Gaul…or so it seems and not a hint of Egypt was seen. In fact one of the things that pushed the romans over the edge was Caesar putting up a statue of Cleopatra as Isis alongside the Roman gods in one of the temples. It wasn’t just his dictatorship and opening up the senate to non-noble romans (including those folk of the countries he’d conquered).

This causes huge problems if they try and get a second series going (which I believe they are) as historically Rome is left in Caesars will to Octavian (Caesers nephew and adopted son) rather than his son to Cleopatra. This ends up with a war between Octavian and Mark Anthony after they’d wrestled control from the republicans. But all the while Cleopatra beds Mark Anthony and gives him 2 sons and a daughter (I think) and supports him throughout his fight with Octavian.

Basically the second series would be the war to wrsetle control back from Brutus and his republicans but youd then have the power struggle between Octavian and Mark Anthony. But Cleopatra was apparently such a huge part of this that it seems stupid to ignore it in the first series.

Hmmmm