When I think of Miss Cleo, I immediately hear something that goes like this:

Caaaaalll meee noooow for your freeeeee reeeeading.

Anyone else know who I’m talking about?

We spent many a late college night catching Miss Cleo’s tv ads. We — being my Delta suitemates and I — actually called one night. Didn’t really get anywhere. Or more like go anywhere.

Too much fishing around for info. Tsk Tsk, Miss Cleo.

I’ll have to follow up, see if Miss Cleo is still out there, reading the stars. Sharing the word.

Miss Cleo. While she is a psychic, I’m now making reference to the single most powerful female ruler in history.

Anyone? Anyone? Buellar? Who am I talking about?

Well done, if, you guessed Cleopatra.

I’ve always been interested in the Egyptians. The Pharoahs. The amazing $hit they did. In short: the bad asses the Egyptians were.

What a fabulous way to sum them up, huh? Badass. Gotta love my Taurean historical summaries.

I happened across Stacy Shiff’s novel on Cleopatra, while going through some of my dad’s books. He has quite the collection and is my go-to man for something to read.

His discerning, historical mind is more inclined to non-fiction – which I usually find BORING, big yawn, but … BUT … the first page of this book got me:

“Among the most famous women to have lived, Cleopatra VII {sidenote: at this point I was all: there were six others before her? Who knew?! My dad unfortunately heard me and rolled his eyes, in a look of, will she ever know anything from history?} ruled Egypt for twenty-two years. She lost a kingdom once, regained it, nearly lost it again, amassed an empire, lost it all. A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen, a celebrity soon thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, gossip and legend, even in her own time.

At the height of her power she controlled virtually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, the last great kingdom of any Egyptian ruler. For a fleeting moment she held the fate of the Western world in her hands. She had a child with a married man, three more with another. She died at thirty-nine, a generation before the birth of Christ.”

How could anyone not be intrigued with an intro like that?

Powerful. Kicked some serious ass. Controlled an army. Sexy. And got around with some other powerful hotties. Sounds like my kind of woman.

The more I read in this book, the more my awe continues of who Cleopatra was. From her brilliance of military and government affairs to her masterful ceremonies to the way she united an entire people.

At the height of its time, Alexandria was the place to be. Home to one of the most well known and greatest libraries in the world. Ever. Their people were some of the most well educated, studied and celebrated – in science and in the arts.

I knew the Egyptians were advanced, yet I had no idea these advances reached so far as things with such “mechanical wonders as automatic doors and hydraulic lifts, hidden treadmills and coin operated machines.”

Seriously?! Hydraulic lifts. I had no clue.

Maybe I should be embarrassed about that, but hey, let’s face the facts: world history isn’t really all that strong of a focal point. We go over whatever historian has deemed as the important facts, and unless otherwise curious, that’s as far as it goes.

Ancient civilizations have always fascinated me since a small child. Egypt especially speaks to me.

Highly advanced cultures that met catastrophic ends. I think of all that has been lost, yet recovered at the same time. All that remains to be discovered and revealed.

Such as where Cleopatra is buried. There a number of theories and thoughts on this … yet still, we don’t know. In fact, we don’t even know what she looked like, and most likely, isn’t near the beauty and sex symbol she has been portrayed as.

There always has been and will be something very inspiring about a powerful woman, one who was so prevailing in times of great peril and whose vision changed a world.

Outwitting and outcharming all of her rivals.