Hello and welcome to Home School History. I'm Greg Jenner and I've spent my whole career

making history fun on the TV show Horrible Histories and more recently on the BBC podcast

You're Dead To Me, though that's mostly for the grownups.

With everyone being cooped up in the house, I thought I'd deliver a snappy history lesson

to entertain and educate the whole family, who says that homeschooling can't be a bit

of fun.

This week we're off on an adventure all the way back to Ancient Egypt to meet the famous

Queen Cleopatra. Cleopatra was probably born in Ancient Egypt around the year 69 BCE,

nearly 2,100 years ago. Amazingly, Egyptian civilization lasted for so long that by the time

she was born, Egyptians had already stopped building pyramids 1,500 years beforehand,

meaning Cleopatra is closer in time to us than she was to the great Pyramid of Geiza.

Isn't that weird? The pyramids were already ancient history to her and she's ancient

history to us.

Another confusing thing is that Cleopatra was descended from Greeks. 260 years before her

birth, Alexander the Great had conquered the kingdom and one of his generals, T'olami,

had taken over when Alexander died. Lots of T'olami's ruled after him until we get to

T'olami the 12th, who was Cleo's dad. And explains why Cleopatra spoke Greek and had

a Greek name, because Cleopatra is Greek for famous like her father.

In 52 BCE, Pharaoh T'olami the 12th decided to make Cleopatra his co-ruler when she was

about 17. He soon died and since she was a girl, she wasn't allowed to rule on her own.

Instead, she had to co-rain with her 10 year old brother, T'olami the 13th.

Cleopatra was not happy about this. If you think that sounds awkward, well, their co-rain

...