Join the CAMS department for the final lecture in the 2024/25 series “Connected Histories of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East.”

Catherine Bonesho (UCLA) will deliver a talk entitled:

“The Rabbis' Queens: Cleopatra and Zenobia in Talmudic Literature”

Friday, April 18, 2025 at 4:00 p.m.

102 Weaver Building and via Zoom

Abstract:
The famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra and the Palmyrene Queen Zenobia each ruled at and within the intersections of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Polemical Roman sources like those of Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta have loomed large in scholarship and in the public perception of the queens; however, they do not represent the only kinds of sources and approaches to the queens. Indeed, my analysis will focus on the handful of references to Zenobia and Cleopatra in the classical rabbinic texts of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds and will emphasize the need of a large scope study that contextualizes the rabbinic passages in the rich afterlives of Cleopatra in the late antique world. Using the Palmyrene queen Zenobia as an exemplar, I show how those living under and responding to Roman rule in the third century CE and later appropriated Cleopatra and her persona. Similarly, the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud use Cleopatra’s portrait toward a variety of goals. First, they tell stories of Cleopatra’s knowledge of embryology and the human body to support certain rabbinic concepts, including resurrection and menstrual impurity. Second, they elevate and include the rabbis themselves in the famous struggle of Cleopatra versus Rome, East versus West, with the goal of further authorizing the rabbinic project itself.