Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene: A Cautionary Tale About Ambitious Women

Summer of 2014, I boarded a plan and traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel for a nine-day tour of the country. A few days after landing in Israel, my tour arrived to Magdala, a village in the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. I browsed through the archeological site when my tour guide explained how Magdala was Mary Magdalene’s hometown and this ancient figure came from a wealthy family. Another surprising fact, Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute.   

  So, when did Mary Magdalene become a prostitute? Some five hundred years after her death. The reason? Because she was a powerful figure in Jesus’s ministry, and strong and influential women became social pariahs who developed labels such as prostitute, whore, and more.

  Mary Magdalene traveled with Jesus and his disciples, and according to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus drove out seven demons from Mary Magdalene. Not only did Mary travel with Jesus and his disciples, but she supported them financially, which backed the knowledge I discovered while visiting Israel, Mary Magdalene was a woman of means and wealth.

This ancient woman is mentioned twelve times in the gospels, more than most of the other disciples. All four gospels confirmed she was present at the crucifixion and was the first (either alone or with other women) to find Jesus’s tomb empty. However, she was the first person to see Jesus resurrected.

  In other canonical texts, Mary is remembered as one of Jesus’s closest companions, and was quite possibly an early Christian leader. For three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus, church services were held in the home. The home historically is a woman’s place, and it was in this woman’s domain where Christianity developed, and with women leaders. Women were leaders, discipling, and managing resources. According to several tombs found in France, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Yugoslavia, some women were priests.

  Why, after nearly three centuries of women playing an active role in spreading Christianity, were they removed from leadership roles? Women lost influence in the fourth century under Emperor Constantine when he legalized the religion, and built grand basilicas. The decision to construct basilicas shifted the early religion from the woman’s domain, to the man’s realm. The church removed women from any positions of power, and even shifted some Biblical characters from female to male.

The apostle Junia, whom Paul hailed in Romans 16:7, was transformed into Junias, a male name, and this spelling error remains in some Bibles. Instead of transforming Mary Magdalene into a man, in 591 CE, Pope Gregory I blended her with the “sinful woman” in Luke 7:36-50 who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume and her tears, and dried them with her hair. Overtime, Mary Magdalene became a prostitute.

 Mary Magdalene was not the first ancient woman to suffer from history’s lascivious labels. Others have been labeled as ambitious, selfish, slutty, unlikable, untrustworthy, and sexually immoral. Although many of our strong modern-day women leaders have suffered from these labels, Queen Cleopatra endured centuries worth of name calling in attempts to taint her reputation and undermine her as an effective and well-like queen.

  This infamous queen continues to capture our attention, and we associate her with two of Rome’s most famous generals and leaders: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Prior to becoming famous for who she slept with (as far as we know, she only had two sexual partners) Cleopatra received an education in rhetoric, science, history, economics, medicine, and fluency in nine languages. In addition to her native Greek, she spoke Hebrew, Arabic, Parthian, Ethiopic, and the local Egyptian language, which no other member of the Ptolemy family bothered learning. She was the descendant of the famous Alexander the Great and was crowned queen in 51 BCE at the age of eighteen years old.

  Cleopatra possessed more wealth and education than any Roman of her time, and this was her gravest transgression with the Romans. How dare a woman have more wealth and power than them?

Men almost operated everything in ancient Egypt, but Egyptian women were ensured rights: to own property, operate businesses, initiate lawsuits, make contracts, and divorce their husbands with their assets intact. Egypt’s contemporaries to the north (Rome), trapped well-to-do women. This means that Cleopatra was a threat to Rome in every facet of her life. Her Roman enemies nicknamed her meriochane, in Greek this means, “she who parts for a thousand men.”

 Queen Cleopatra may have intimidated the Romans, but she was a celebrity among her people and an effective ruler. Her people considered her to be the daughter of the Egyptian goddess, Isis. She was divine and a goddess. By the age of twenty-one, she raised armies, controlled a complicated economy, bestowed justice, and made treaties with foreign relations. I must mention that Cleopatra was also a mother who expressed zero issues with murdering her siblings to keep her right to the throne to ensure her children’s future. Yes, she executed her enemies (her siblings who conspired against her), but unlike Egyptian pharaohs, or her Roman lovers who executed enemies, she is remembered in infamy.

  Mary Magdalene and Queen Cleopatra remind us that women in positions of power and influence have always been characterized as untrustworthy, and the conversation eternally attacks her sexuality. An ambitious woman must have slept her way to the top. Current women politicians are criticized for more than just their votes and stances on issues, but their hair, shoes, dress, the sound of their voice, the size of their hips and breasts, and their personal lives. We are thousands of years removed from Queen Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene’s time, and yet, women continue to engage in the same societal wars.

As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” We are capable of change, support, and regarding women like the true professionals and intellectuals they are. It’s acceptable for women to not be “well-behaved”, because that’s where change happens.

Works Cited

Herman, Eleanor. Off With Her Head: Thee Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power. William Morrow, 2022.