CAIRO - Having watched three episodes of a TV drama that depicts the life of Queen Cleopatra, Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass is left to boil in anger. Hawass says what he has seen in the serial so far has nothing whatsoever to do with Cleopatra, the beautiful woman who conquered the world's most powerful men with her irresistible sexual appeal. “What I've seen in the serial so far, doesn't hold any relationship with either Cleopatra or her age,” Hawass says. “This isn't the unique version of life the mix between the culture of the Pharaohs and the culture of the Greeks had created,” he writes in a recent article in the weekly Al-Musawar magazine. To this day, Cleopatra remains a popular figure in Western culture. Her legacy survives in several works of art and the many dramatisations of her story in literature and other media, including William Shakespeare's tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, Jules Massenet”s Opera Cleopatra and the 1963 film Cleopatra. In most depictions, Cleopatra is put forward as a great beauty and her successive conquests of the world's most powerful men are taken as proof of her aesthetic nature and sexual appeal. In this serial, which features budding Syrian actress Solaf Fawakhergi, neither the clothes nor the decorations have anything to do with the age when Cleopatra lived. “I got the impression that the scenes of the series were shot in total darkness,” Hawass says. “There isn't any kind of professionalism in the way the serial was made‚” he adds in his article.This is perhaps one of few times when Egyptian TV drama ventures into the thorny realm of the life of Cleopatra, her emotional conquests and the twists of her personality. It is also one of few times when an Egyptian production comes close to the Ptolemaic Dynasty, which was full of political schemes, fights, and intrigues. “I've always objected to such a kind of productions,” said Abdel Halim Nour Eddin, a professor of ancient history and the former chairman of the Supreme Council for Antiquities. “They're full of historical mistakes,” he told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. In his Pensees, philosopher Blaise Pascal contends that Cleopatra's classically beautiful profile changed world history. “Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed,” he said. Such a degree of greatness is what makes Hawass angry even more. He says serial managers, producers, and director should have sought assistance from experts on the history of Cleopatra so that the serial would have become a truer representation of that history. “Perhaps the only good thing these people have done was that they choose Fawakhergi to star in the serial‚” Hawass said. “But I really hope this serial wouldn't turn into something ridiculous by its end,” he added.
