Long before Shakespeare portrayed her as history's most exotic femme fatale, Cleopatra was revered throughout the Arab world - for her brain. Medieval Arab scholars never referred to the Egyptian queen's appearance and made no mention of the dangerous sensuality that supposedly corrupted Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Instead they marvelled at her intellectual accomplishments: from alchemy and medicine to philosophy, mathematics and town planning, according to a new book. Even Elizabeth Taylor, who played the title role in the 1963 epic Cleopatra, would have struggled to inject sex appeal into this queen. Arab writers depict Cleopatra's court as a place of intellectual seminars and scholarship rather than the more traditional vision of kohl-rimmed eyes and hedonistic intrigue.

"They admired her scientific knowledge and her administrative ability," said author Okasha el-Daly, who is based at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. In Egyptology: The Missing Millennium he writes that "Arabic sources often refer to Cleopatra as 'the virtuous scholar' and cite scientific books written by her as the definitive works in their field". She was also regarded as a great builder, he claims, responsible among other things for a canal to supply Alexandria with Nile water.

View: Full Article | Source: The Australian

I saw this program about her that was pretty much this. And the fact that she killed herself was right out, since that wasn't in her nature.

definitely a different approach to cleopatra. i'm very much interested in knowing more about her from this aspect as unfortunately she is nearly always potrayed as some kind of sex predator of her times

Of course she was a thinker. She was the ruler of Egypt for starters!
She seduced both Ceaser and Mark Antony for the power of the Roman Empire behind her. It was a brillaint plan, not a ploy for sex.