What contributions did queen cleopatra vii made?

Question

What contributions did queen cleopatra vii made?

Answer 1

Basicly none, she had enough work preserving what legacy her ancestors had bequeathed... unless you count her using her charm and diplomatic ability to stave off Egypt officially becoming a Roman province... but let's not fool ourselves, even if it remained nominally independant, it still was a vassal state.

Answer 2

She successfully handled the governing of her country, including problems like periodic famine, as well as the day to day planning of aqueducts etc.  

She gave much support to scholars and research at the great library of Alexandria,  including noted scientists and mathematicians. She seems to have studied with them herself and in fact the great mathemetician Photinus called one of his works "Cleopatra's Canon".  She influenced Julius Caesar to change the awkward illogical calendar currently in use in Rome for one based on what was used in Egypt, and had the astronomer Sosigenes lay out the calendar which became the  "Julian calendar" .  

She paid much more attention than her predecessor to the native population (the real Egyptians - - Cleopatra herself  was of a ruling family, the Ptolemies, that were not Egyptian by blood, but Greek/ Macedonian). She was the only Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language, and to go through all the religious ritual to be a true pharoah. This helped her popularity with the people outside the Greek dominated capital of Alexandria, and in Upper Egypt; where she was worshiped as a god.

She was extremely talented at foreign languages and according to the historian Plutarch, "Plutarch said of her "It was a pleasure merely to hear her voice, with which, like the instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another, so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; to most of them she spoke herself, as to the Aethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians and many others whose languages she had learnt."  This aided her in diplomatic negotiations.

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It is true she definitely had her hands full with trying to find a way to preserve in some form her country's independence - -which was indeed nominal - - in fact her father Ptolemy XII had  asked Rome to sort of play Godfather to his children when he died. It was just a matter of time before the rich prize of Egypt became part of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra realized this very well, and she gambled twice on alliances with Roman leaders in an effort to assure that the future empire would be more of Roman-Hellenistic union, and that her descendents could still play a major role in governing. Unfortunately for that dream, she lost both times,

Since she had her time cut short when Egypt was conquered and she committed suicide,  it is impossible to know what she would have done if she had lived longer - - and one can really only imagine how history might have been different if she and Antony had succeeded and the Roman Empire had turned out more an Eastern-oriented Greco-Roman Empire.