The average person speaks one, or maybe two languages, but there are those among us who have an ability to master multiple languages. Whenever we hear of someone who can speak multiple languages, most of us are rather surprised actually. It’s hard to wrap our minds around the idea that someone can speak and comprehend more than a couple of languages. Nevertheless, there are a number of people who can do just that. For me, one extra language, while not overly difficult, was enough. I suppose a lot depends on how motivated you are too, as was proven through other monarchs of the era.

One of the first people on record, at least that I have ever heard of was Cleopatra. She was the Queen of ancient Egypt from 51 BC to 30 BC. I think what really surprises me on that is the fact that in those days, many women were not even educated at all. Still, I suppose that her stature allowed Cleopatra to receive an education that many other women of that era could not. Cleopatra was the first member of her dynasty to speak Ancient Egyptian. That wasn’t enough for her though. She was also able to speak eight other languages including Ancient Greek, Ancient Iranian, Ancient Parthian, Syriac, Ethiopian, Troglodytae, Hebrew, and Arabic. That is so shocking to me. My mind would probably jumble the different languages mid-sentence. I’m not a dummy, but I guess my mind just isn’t geared toward multiple languages.

So, why would Cleopatra choose to learn so many languages? Apparently, she wanted to restore the territories that once belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom across North Africa and West Asia. In addition, she wanted to be able to converse directly with the people in her kingdom. I guess that would be that mark of a good monarch. Cleopatra could easily switch between languages, and she rarely needed an interpreter even when speaking with her subjects who usually spoke their own language. She spoke to her subjects unassisted and replied to them in their own language. This was very unusual, because the kings of Egypt before Cleopatra had never made the effort to learn any of the native languages. Whether or not she was a good monarch or even actually spoke that many languages, I can’t say, nor can anyone else, considering the years she was a monarch, but I think it says something that she tried to communicate with the people she served over.

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