Cleopatra the Physician

Abstract

In an extensive study M. Bar-Ilan² has undertaken to show that Jewish medicine in Palestine in the Tannaitic period drew heavily on the anatomical learning and practice of the Herophilan school in Alexandria.³ The present note will discuss an issue that was left open by Bar-Ilan.⁴

A (somewhat different) Hebrew version of this paper has appeared in Cathedra 92 (1999) 193–198; a visit to the British Museum exhibition (12.4.2001–26.8.2001, previously in Rome and to reopen in Chicago) provided some fresh stimuli, even though the exhibition, and the magnificent catalogue (S. Walker and P. Higgs, Cleopatra of Egypt. From History to Myth, London 2001) failed to address the concerns of the present note. It may be not entirely gratuitous to note here that ‘Cleopatra ... is the only major figure from antiquity from whom we now have an autograph’, in P. van Minnen, ‘An Official Act of Cleopatra (with a Subscription in Her Own Hand)’, Ancient Society 30 (2000) 31. (The next sentence of the paper reads: ‘Her handwriting appears to have been as plain as the nose on her face [with apologies to Blaise Pascal].’)