The entire Western pop cultural canon of ancient Egypt was created by a culture that ground mummies up for soup. It's not surprising that a lot of complexity and subtlety got lost in translation.
Well, the part about grinding up mummies is true enough. Natural resources get processed.
"The Western pop cultural canon of ancient Egypt" seems to be a red herring, though; Cleopatra is not part of or associated with ancient Egypt. She would be at the tail end of the Hellenistic period or the beginning of the Roman Empire. The New Kingdom ended a thousand years before she came to power.
Being fair to krapp and their comment above, I don't think the popular western notion of Egypt that started with the mystic of mummies and proceeded through tomb raiding as "archeology" and included stories of Anthony & Cleopatra, milk baths and asps really didn't clarify much between truly ancient Eygpt and the later era under Rome.
Some people care, of course, and many are better informed today, but there's a body of "common knowledge" out there that just runs it all together in a melange of pyramids and funny walks.
The gory history of Europe’s mummy-eating fad https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/mummy-eat...
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-...
but people generally don't like to be reminded.