WomanScape
  • Home
  • Stories
    • ArtScapes
    • Business & Leadership
    • Changemakers
    • Editor’s Note
    • FoodScapes
    • Interviews
    • REEL Talk
    • Sipping Rooh Afza
    • Travel
    • Week In Review
    • WS Cares
    • WS Explores
  • WS Magazine
  • Shop
  • Cares
  • Contact
No Result
View All Result
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

  • Login
  • Register
WomanScape
  • Home
  • Stories
    • ArtScapes
    • Business & Leadership
    • Changemakers
    • Editor’s Note
    • FoodScapes
    • Interviews
    • REEL Talk
    • Sipping Rooh Afza
    • Travel
    • Week In Review
    • WS Cares
    • WS Explores
  • WS Magazine
  • Shop
  • Cares
  • Contact
No Result
View All Result
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

  • Login
  • Register
WomanScape

Cleopatra – The First Female Tycoon in History

Yara Zgheib by Yara Zgheib
04-01-2019 - Updated on 04-15-2021
in Living Library, Uncategorized
Reading Time: 1min read
Home Living Library
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Wealthy women are rare to come across in history books, particularly when one discounts fortunes acquired by marriage or inheritance.

Perhaps that’s why Cleopatra is so captivating.

Reasons for this vary from social roles, assigned domestic roles like childrearing and home care to women,  discriminatory primogeniture rules and property laws that fuel constraints.

But things have changed. Today, headlines and top ten lists laudingly showcase women presidents, CEOs, entrepreneurs, entertainers, as trailblazers shattering glass ceilings left and right across industries. But once upon a few millennia,

Cleopatra VII Philopator was born in the year 69 B.C. At eighteen she was the Queen of Egypt. By twenty, the richest woman in the Mediterranean. Net worth: 2.6% of the GDP of the world.

She inherited a kingdom, but one in economic and political decline. Egypt was in debt, rebellious, and hungry, and Rome was expanding nearby. On the eighteen-year-old’s agenda:

  • Regain former overseas lands.
  • Control or expel foreign troops in Egypt.
  • Resolve debt to Rome incurred by her exiled father.
  • Finesse a coalition with whoever happened to be ruling Rome that month.
  • Pacify the riot-prone southern Egyptians.
  • Pacify the assassination-prone Alexandrians.
  • Regulate food supply.
  • Run the justice system and fix a debased currency.

Cleopatra was then and is known today as many things: beautiful, dangerous, sensual, and thirsty for blood and power. Those may or may not all be accurate. What she did prove to be was intelligent and a cunning and skillful leader.

Within three years, she had transformed Egypt’s economy into one of the most closely controlled in history; all assets were owned by the state, which determined and monitored their use:

“No matter who farmed it — Egyptian peasant, Greek settler, temple priest — most land was royal land,” and the greatest industries – wheat, glass, papyrus, linen, oils, and unguents – were royal monopolies. Through taxation, organization, and strategic trade alliances, notably with Rome, Cleopatra built a sophisticated, effective, highly lucrative system.

Her subjects paid taxes and her partners, hefty prices for oil, grain, and other commodities. Cleopatra personally reaped great profits, her annual cash revenue between 12,000 and 15,000 silver talents.

Unimaginable wealth, “the equivalent of all of the hedge fund managers of yesteryear rolled into one.” By today’s standards, her net worth was as high as $95.8 billion.

Her physique was legendary, as were her love affairs with certain Roman emperors and her confrontations with others. But “whore queen” or not, divine beauty or not, murderess, temptress, or victim, Cleopatra should be remembered as a highly educated woman who knew how to speak at least nine languages, quell a rebellion, feed a nation, build a fleet, re-establish an empire, and brilliantly manage money.

Enrich Your Mind

Find great books to help enrich your mind and soul

Tags: Cleopatramoneywealthwomen and wealth
Share330Tweet206Share58
Previous Post

What Does Wealth Look Like For Women?

Next Post

Nunavut Here We Come

Yara Zgheib

Yara Zgheib

Yara is a reader, writer, traveler, lover of art and jazz. She was born in Beirut and has pieces of her heart in Paris, London, Boston, and one particularly beautiful Tuscan village. She is the author of The Girls at 17 Swann Street and the forthcoming No Land to Light On. Also, every Thursday, she posts an essay on The non-Utilitarian: thoughts on philosophy, art, poetry, science, literature, travel, and culture. On life in its beautiful ordinary. Her writings are neither practical nor useful. They are a way of being. Her writing has also appeared in The Huffington Post, The Four Seasons Magazine, HOLIDAY, The European, HOME Magazine, The Idea List, France Forward, Espresso Economics, A Woman’s Paris, The Socio/Log, and elsewhere.

RelatedStories

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
FoodScapes

The Happiest of Hours

4 months ago
Photo by ARAS Imaging (www.arasimaging.com)

Felicia Gimza A Well Designed Life

4 months ago
Next Post

Nunavut Here We Come

Elizabeth Taylor

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

WomanScape

WomanScape

Changing the world through powerful story-telling

Our WS mission is to revisit and share the extraordinary pursuits of people in artful ways that inspire and connect them to the modern-day stories of other changemakers.

Search Our Archives

Find Your Story

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

Mae Jemison: Don’t Be Limited by Other People’s Limited Imagination

07-12-2019 - Updated on 04-15-2021

Hoelun, the Mother of all Mother’s

05-22-2019 - Updated on 09-22-2020

FEARLESS – Issue 01

Capernaum Nadine Labaki Film Zain Oscar Foreign Film

The Power of Pain in Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum

Hands

The Truth About Good News?

04-04-2021

Time For A Ride & A Rusty Spike!

03-28-2021 - Updated on 04-16-2021
  • My account
  • Cart
  • Orders
  • Downloads
  • Payment Methods

© 2020 WomanScape, LLC., All Rights Reserved.

  • Login
  • Sign Up
  • Cart
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Stories
    • ArtScapes
    • Business & Leadership
    • Changemakers
    • Editor’s Note
    • FoodScapes
    • Interviews
    • REEL Talk
    • Sipping Rooh Afza
    • Travel
    • Week In Review
    • WS Cares
    • WS Explores
  • WS Magazine
  • Shop
  • Cares
  • Contact

© 2020 WomanScape, LLC., All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

*By registering into our website, you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.