Cleopatra VII Philpator, who was the last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt and known around the globe simply as Cleopatra, ruled Egypt for 21 years.
Her reign and legacy made her one of Egypt's most iconic figures, and her story has intrigued people ever since and is the center of many controversies.
Her death was one of those controversies. However, to fully grasp the queen's last days, the story must go back to the time when she met Julius Caeser .
Cleopatra, though extremely loved and respected by many, was believed to be a cunning and conniving queen. Her relationship with Ceaser, which further strengthened her grip on the throne, was believed to be just another calculated moved.
Their relationship angered many people in both Egypt and Rome. However, the power couple paid little attention to their peoples' concerns and reservations and instead, the couple birthed a son, Caesarion.
Following Caeser's assassination in 44 BC, the queen aligned herself with Mark Anthony, a Roman general and politician who played a significant part in transforming Rome into the Roman Empire.
Cleopatra first had a set of twins with Anthony and the couple named them Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios. She later gave birth to their third child, Ptlomey Philadelphus.
The love the couple shared came to an abrupt end when Anthony killed himself after losing the Battle of Actium to the forces of Caeser's adopted nephew, Octavian. The queen decided to follow her lover's footsteps.
This is where the controversery begins. The story that is commonly told is that Cleopatra, in 30 BC, ordered her servants to hide snakes in a basket full of figs as to not see or know when death is about to come. She allegedly died, along with two of her servants, from a snake bite.
However, Egyptologists and snake experts at the University of Manchester have dismissed the tale and deemed it impossible, due to the fact that the snake, which is believed to have been a cobra, could not have fit in a basket.
Furthermore, snaked bites are rarely fatal, which is yet another reason experts doubt the mythical legend of Cleopatra's death. Andrew Gray, a renowned Egyptologist and curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum, told BBC that "not only are cobras too big, but there's just a 10 percent chance you would die from a snake bite: Most bites are dry bites that don't inject venom."
"That's not to say they [snakes] aren't dangerous. However, the venom causes necrosis and will certainly kill you, but quite slowly," he clarified. "It would be impossible to use a snake to kill two or three people one after the other,"casting further doubt on the whole tale.
Perhaps whatever killed Cleopatra will remain a mystery. However, her life and death will always spark the wildest of imaginations and she will always be one of Egypt's supreme and exemplary historic figures.