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Despite the hundreds of years and thousands of miles that distance their reigns, Egypt’s Cleopatra and China’s Wu Zetian offer unique insights into leadership and legacy that are worth further investigation. Iconoclasts alone for having ascended the highest seats of political power as women, these two rulers exercised statecraft to serve their people domestically, negotiate affairs abroad, as well as establish cultural memory in their honor. This paper explores the manners in which the two women rulers navigated their own styles of leadership via cultural knowledge and religion to reinforce their legitimacy and thus power, as well as establish legacies that survive today.
Aligning themselves with religious hierarchies and cultural projects, Cleopatra and Wu Zetian’s pragmatism led to statecraft informed by socio-cultural values that they could use to their strategic advantage. In the case of the former, the Egyptian pharaoh struggled for power given her initial co-leadership with her brother (Harold, Anton, Duca, & Henefin, 2009, p. 29). Yet her conscious decision to gain cultural proficiency in her people’s language, Egyptian, as opposed to solely Greek of the high courts, meant that she could assert her role as pharaoh while connecting to the general populace (Harold et al., 2009, p. 28). Given that Egyptian society deified pharaohs, Cleopatra was able to bridge both her high birth with linguistic knowledge of her people despite the threat that her brother posed.
In contrast, Empress Wu Zetian was not distinct for sharing a language with the common people. However, her take on cultural competence was through embracing Buddhism, which was popular during the time, “Identifying herself with the Indian universal sovereign or Cakravartin, she worshipped the relics, vowing to build 840,000 stupas” (Karetzky, 2002, p. 114). In this way, the Empress cultivated harmony between her position at the head of the administrative court and contemporary spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, she promoted scholarship, particularly in the service of translation of sacred texts, which simultaneously augmented her legitimacy, “[the] announcement of her incarnation was in part substantiated by the discovery ofthe Dayunjing, which describes a female deity, who because of her devoted study of the Mahaparinirvana sutra, was born as a universal monarch” (Karetzky, 2002, p. 117-118). Inheriting an aristocratic tradition that, just as in Cleopatra’s Egypt, associated royalty with godliness, Wu Zetian exercised influence over modes of cultural production that not only promoted academic exploration but also cemented her role as empress.
Coincidentally, these two women rulers share also their ascent to power via their male counterparts. Whereas Cleopatra famously leveraged Caesar’s influence, Empress Wu solidified her role in the court with the passing of her husband—the former emperor. Peng, Yu, and Mills (2015) explain, “Wu used her power to change some of the meanings and understandings of women and men of the time but in doing so she resorted to existing forms of power that convey dominance and the ability to punish/reward in the hands of few” (p. 80). At a spiritual level, Wu Zetian revolutionized Buddhism by capitalizing on its notion of reincarnation and fusing it with the existing social hierarchy in China that positioned the ruler in line with the gods. As for the Egyptian pharaoh, “[based] on the historical context of Roman influence, Egyptian unrest, and disjointed brother-sister rule, Cleopatra used the resources available to herand did what she had to do to remain in power. She used Rome to regain control, just like her predecessors” (Harold et al., 2009, p. 33). Cleopatra took advantage of her connection to Caesar and thus Rome to ensure her esteemed position as leader of Egypt.
Curiously, Wu Zetian and Cleopatra’s juxtaposed reigns provide us a case study that yields insights into navigating social hierarchies, in addition to the power of cultural production. Both eras of Egypt and China held regard for religion, which at the same time created a useful social template to utilize from the perspective of a ruler. Concretely, both regions’ religions coincided with a privileging of heads of state as deities. While Cleopatra used her knowledge of the common vernacular to connect with the common folk, Wu Zetian promoted knowledge of the common religion to reinforce her cache throughout her empire. Although religion and spoken language do not encompass entire cultures, we can glean from research that the cultural values of Egypt and China at the time nonetheless gravitated toward male authority such that these two women rulers had to strategically determine the best methods for remaining in power.
In terms of contemporary leadership, Cleopatra and Empress Wu give us a snapshot of methods that incorporate creative adaptability and pragmatic leadership. While much of the developed world is increasingly secular, we might understand more intimately the cultural values and still-existing social hierarchies that were especially apparent in the times of Cleopatra’s Egypt and Wu Zetian’s China. As opposed to polytheism and Buddhism, we might instead look to the values of popular democracy and capitalism to determine how to best navigate professional and institutional organizations in terms of decision making, as well as professional and personal development. What remains quite similar is the importance of cultural knowledge, particularly in our increasingly globalized contexts where understanding others’ linguistic, cultural, and social values continue to inform leadership within dynamic environments.
References
Harold L., Anton K., Duca K., & Henefin C. (2009). The Influence of Context on the
Leadership of Cleopatra. Mid-Atlantic Review, 2, 27-34.
Karetzky, P. E. (2002). Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art of the Tang Dynasty. Tang
Studies, 2002(20-21), 113-150.
Peng N., Yu T., & Mills A. (2015). Feminist thinking in late seventh-century China: A
critical hermeneutics analysis of the case of Wu Zetian. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal, 34, 67-83.
