Dated to the 1st century BCE an Egyptian document on which, according to the researchers, there is the only preserved handwritten signature of queen Cleopatra VII. Papyrus has survived to our times, because it was used in the first century CE to wrap the mummy in the ancient cemetery of Busiris (200 km southeast of Alexandria).
As it turns out, Cleopatra’s writing has a mistake in the phrase ginesthoi – an additional iota – which we can translate from Greek as “so be it”.
In the manuscript, the Queen grants an exemption from the tax on the sale of imported wine to Roman merchant Publius Canidius, a friend of Mark Antony. The document was written by a court scribe for bureaucratic needs.
