We can thank William Shakespeare for the popularity of Cleopatra in the West. It's such a great story, and she is like a beautiful femme fatale whose powerful boyfriends end up dead. The vast majority of people don't know enoungh ancient history to write a paragraph about it, but they know about Cleopatra and that snake. To popularize the queens of Nubia, someone needs to make a great big budget movie about them. Of couse most of the story will have to be made up, just like Shakespeare and Hollywood did with Cleopatra.