Cleopatra’s handwriting

Although this is an older article, it is an interesting finding. This Egyptian document possibly bears what is thought to be Cleopatra’s only known hand writing.  Below is thought to be Cleopatra's signature on an official document written by an Egyptian official.

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A single Greek word, ginesthoi, or "make it so," written at the bottom of a Ptolemaic papyrus may have been written by the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII herself, says Dutch papyrologist Peter van Minnen of the University of Groningen.

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Received in Alexandria on Mecheir 26 (February 23, 33 B.C.), the papyrus text, recycled for use in the construction of a cartonnage mummy case found by a German expedition at Abusir in 1904, appears to be a royal ordinance granting tax exemption to one Publius Canidius, an associate of Mark Antony's who would command his land army during the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. The text reads as follows:

We have granted to Publius Canidius and his heirs the annual exportation of 10,000 artabas [300 tons] of wheat and the annual importation of 5,000 Coan amphoras [ca. 34,500 gallons] of wine without anyone exacting anything in taxes from him or any other expense whatsoever. We have also granted tax exemption on all the land he owns in Egypt on the understanding that he shall not pay any taxes, either to the state account or to the account of me and my children, in any way in perpetuity. We have also granted that all his tenants are exempt from personal liabilities and from taxes without anyone exacting anything from them, not even contributing to the occasional assessments in the nomes or paying for expenses for soldiers or officers. We have also granted that the animals used for plowing and sowing as well as the beasts of burden and the ships used for the transportation [down the Nile] of the wheat are likewise exempt from 'personal' liabilities and from taxes and cannot be commandeered [by the army]. Let it be written to those to whom it may concern, so that knowing it they can act accordingly.
Make it so!

 

https://greekreporter.com/2023/09/20/cleopatra-handwriting-greek-word/

https://archive.archaeology.org/0101/newsbriefs/cleopatra.html

That outrageous sounding giveaway may be the very bribe that Cleopatra used in order to have Antony influenced against everyone's better judgement:

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Smith, W. (Ed.). (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology (Vol.1, p.872). On the outbreak of the war many of Antony's friends advised him to remove Cleopatra from the army, but [Publius Canidius] Crassus who was bribed by the queen, opposed this plan, and she accordingly accompanied her lover to the fatal war. Shortly afterwards, however, Crassus also advised Antony to send her back to Egypt, and to fight the decisive battle on the land and not on the sea. This time his advice was disregarded.

There may be a parallel to today's world of politics. Some claim that in modern democracies the elite team up with the poor, with tax loopholes for the rich combined with increasing freebies for the poor so that the tax load mainly crushes the election-losing middle class.