Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  Although the Greeks worshipped the goddess as Isis, the Egyptians still knew her as Aset, whose name, meaning ‘throne’, evoked her role in maintaining the kingship. The Ptolemies had long realised this when invoking ‘Isis the Great, Mother of the God, the Great One, the powerful, sovereign of the gods without whom no one accedes to the palace, it is at her command the king ascends the throne’. Isis’ takeover of every goddess’ identity had made her ‘Myrionymos’, ‘the one of countless names’, and this assumption of sovereignty over deities and monarchs alike allowed Cleopatra as Nea Isis to claim tremendous power over both the mortal and divine worlds.

  As the most effective way of connecting with subjects who were largely illiterate and had little or no access to the formal portrayals set up within the temples, she would have appeared before them as a spectacular-looking yet instantly recognisable figure. Yet, far more than a silent icon upon a golden throne, Cleopatra spoke to them directly in their native tongue, the first monarch to do so since the last native pharaoh, Nectanebo II, three centuries before. Clearly this was no Macedonian, speaking only Greek to the Mediterranean world, but a true pharaoh who spoke directly to them as Egyptians in their land of the Nile. Her cause was their cause, and, by actively participating as goddess-monarch in rites which had for so long sustained their country, she secured their loyalty.

  Cleopatra travelled on upriver, inspecting the rapid progress of work on the temple at Dendera. When she finally arrived at Thebes on 22 March 51 BC she became the first monarch in living memory personally to oversee the installation of the new Buchis bull, which had been born in Thebes at the end of her father’s reign. Regarded as the earthly embodiment of the sun god Ra, Buchis was also sacred to the war god Montu and fertility god Min, both of whom were aspects of Amun. He represented these ‘male gods united in a bull’, his name Buchis simply the Greek version of Ba-her-khet, meaning ‘soul on body’. The Egyptians called the bull ‘the living spirit of Ra born of the great Cow united with the creator gods, he is Amun who goes on his four feet, the image of Montu, lord of Thebes, the father of fathers, the mother of mothers, who renews the life of every one of the gods’.

  Selected at birth for specific markings on a white body and black head, Buchis, it was claimed, ‘changes colour every hour and is shaggy with hair which sprouts outward contrary to the nature of all animals’. Covered by a beadwork net to discourage flies, he wore a golden crown of sun disc and feathers, and, with his horns gilded and eyes adorned with cosmetics, was liberally doused with ritual perfume. Fortunately for the monarch and those in close proximity, he was also fumigated with precious incense in ceremonials lasting three days and nights.

  His installation ceremony would have been the perfect opportunity for the male gods within the bull to combine with Cleopatra as supreme goddess, their combined powers then being harnessed by the priests to restore the country’s much-needed fertility. Given the ongoing low flood levels and famine, something rather extreme would certainly have been required to kick-start this process. Classical descriptions from Cleopatra’s time describe a forty-day period of ritual incubation for each new bull when ‘only women may look at it; these stand facing it and pulling up their garments show their genitals.’

  Using their sexuality en masse to stimulate and balance this most overt manifestation of male fecundity was a practice that the Greeks called ‘anasyrmene’; it was something that Herodotus had observed among women’s bawdy revels en route to fertility festivals. The sun god’s daughter Hathor had employed this tactic to liven him up, and, to stimulate the sun god’s hidden powers, royal women down the centuries had performed similar rites, from a topless Nefertiti being caressed by the sun disc’s many hands to the ‘Hand of god’ priestess performing manual stimulation for her divine husband Amun-Ra, recreating the moment when the god ‘took his phallus in his fist and ejaculated’ to ultimately create the world. The reigning queen is also known to have starred in Egypt’s ancient harvest rites alongside the sacred bull, dancing around the king with her arms upraised in imitation of cow’s horns, before pressing her hands to her breasts. Then, to the priestly strains of ‘Hail Min who fecundates his mother, how secret is that which you have done to her in the darkness’, the sexual powers of queen and bull came together to create new life. Explicit references to the ‘Bull who copulates with fair ladies’ in the Coffin Texts (funerary spells inscribed on Egyptian coffins) were paralleled by Greek myths of the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull, born to the Minoan queen Pasiphae after her union with a bull. Even at the cultural heart of Greek civilisation, Athens’ most ancient temple contained a sacred cattle shed or ‘bukolion’, in which the high priestess or ‘queen archon’ ritually mated with the bull of Dionysos. Zeus, King of the Greek gods, was even believed to take animal form to impregnate mortal women.

  Although belief in the fecundity of the divine bull remained so strong in Egypt that as recently as 1851, local women still straddled one of the life-size statues of the Apis bull at Sakkara in their attempts to conceive, the act itself in ancient times involved penetration by divine heat or light. This might range from a lightning-type heavenly fire to ‘generative light falling strongly from the moon’, the celestial body identified with Isis whose horned crown linked her to the moon’s lunar crescent. It seems, therefore, that some form of nocturnal ritual would have been required to activate the hidden powers of fertility during Cleopatra’s three-day event at Thebes and Hermonthis.

  Although previous bulls had been installed with little more than a perfunctory ceremony at Thebes, led by officials acting in the king’s name, on this occasion Cleopatra was not only present in person but took an active part, bringing with her some of the famous Ptolemaic glitz she would employ for theatrical-style events throughout her reign. Following the preliminary ceremonials at Thebes, the Egyptian sources state that ‘the Lady of the Two Lands, the goddess Philopator, rowed him in the barque of Amun, together with the royal boats, all the inhabitants of Thebes and Hermonthis and the priests being with him and he reached Hermonthis, his dwelling-place’.

  This astonishing description of Cleopatra rowing the sacred bull along the 9 km stretch of the Nile from Thebes to Hermonthis would suggest considerable physical strength, since she would have had to row against the prevailing south-north current. Yet even if her role was simply a ceremonial one involving little more than touching an oar — in much the same way that official tree planting in our own times involves little more than waving a shovel while minions do the physical work — the event nevertheless reveals a clear understanding of Egypt’s multi-layered mythology. For Cleopatra was re-enacting the legend of King Snofru, Egypt’s greatest pyramid builder, who was worshipped for centuries after his death as the earthly representative of the sun god. In one story, he was propelled across the waters by a rowing crew of young women, priestesses of the sun god’s daughter Hathor — a goddess inextricably linked with Isis, goddess of sailing par excellence and Cleopatra’s alter ego.

  So after the glamorous black-garbed teenager had boarded the golden boat of Amun and taken her place beside the great shaggy bull with its painted face and crown, perhaps reaching out to touch a golden oar to signal the start of the proceedings, the rowers themselves would have manoeuvred the sacred vessel out on to the water, accompanied by a flotilla of priests and local officials. As the local population crowded the banks for a glimpse of this extraordinary regatta, it was said that ‘Hermonthis and beautiful Thebes were united in drunkenness and the noise was heard in heaven’, and ‘as for the ruler, everyone was able to see her’.

  When the vessels finally reached the quayside at Hermonthis, a welcoming party of priests would have accompanied Cleopatra and the bull up to his new home within the war god Montu’s magnificent temple. Purified with sacred water and incense, Cleopatra would have performed the necessary rites before Montu, Buchis’ mother the sacred cow, and finally Buchis himself, whose anthropomorphic, Minotaurlike figure on the temple’s wall scenes suggests that h
is part was played by a masked priest. There was even a sound-bite from Cleopatra herself, announcing, ‘I adore thy majesty and give praise to your soul, O great god, self created’, recorded in a small vertical column of text placed between the figures of god and ruler.

  Yet there was still no mention of her supposed co-ruler and brother Ptolemy XIII in any of the Hermonthis events of late March 51 BC, and he was also missing when Wennefer, chief priest of Isis the Great, erected a Greek stela (inscribed stone slab) in the Fayum’s Arsinoite region on 2 July ‘on behalf the female king [basilissa] Cleopatra, goddess Philopator’. Presenting offerings to the seated Isis feeding her son Horus, Cleopatra was shown as sole ruler here too, this time as a traditional pharaoh with double crown, stiffened linen kilt and flat, bare torso in a form of female monarchy not seen for more than a thousand years.

  She was again named sole ruler on a document dated 29 August 51 BC and this seems to be how things remained for the first eighteen months of her reign. Although Rome did not pose an immediate threat on account of its own internal problems, it was certainly a difficult time for Egypt when resources were at full stretch. Having inherited no money from her father, a series of low Nile floods and bad harvests had forced her to bring in a period of heavy taxation which only her strong relationship with priests and people prevented from turning into rebellion. Yet, combining tax revenues with the profits from ongoing foreign trade, Cleopatra was eventually able to recoup around 12,500 talents per year, demonstrating a skill for wealth creation which equalled if not exceeded the fiscal achievements of her Ptolemaic predecessors.

  Yet her brother’s advisers remained as determined as ever to remove her from sole power, and his former nurse Potheinus and tutor Theodotus joined forces with the Egyptian military commander Achillas to launch a coup. Despite a lack of detail, the unlikely combination of temple architecture and documents dealing with bean cargoes gives clues to a likely scenario, since recent examination of a Zodiac scene from Dendera temple has revealed a portrayal of the night sky as it appeared in August 50 BC. Cleopatra is likely to have travelled south to inaugurate this spectacular piece of innovative carving, and her absence may well have been used as the perfect opportunity to demote her.

  It would have taken little effort to convince the Alexandrians that Auletes’ daughter spent far too much time with her Egyptian subjects while neglecting them, and, as food shortages led to rationing in the royal capital, Ptolemy’s advisors had managed to gain control of food supplies by 27 October 50 BC, depriving Cleopatra’s supporters in the rest of Egypt. All wheat and pulse cargoes were to be diverted to the great warehouses of Alexandria ‘on pain of death’ by order of Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, who now was named second. Official documents naming ‘Pharaoh Ptolemy and Pharaoh Cleopatra, the gods who love their father’, were also dated to ‘year 1 which is also year 3’, as Ptolemy placed his first year as king in prime position.

  Yet, regardless of these ongoing difficulties in her power struggles with her brother’s faction, Cleopatra did not forget her responsibilities to the native religion. When the Apis bull died at Memphis in her third regnal year, 49 BC, she funded the funeral rites and paid 412 silver coins to cover votive offerings for the bull’s spirit and supplies of food for its clergy. Thousands of people from all walks of life came together at Memphis’ great cemetery Sakkara as the bull’s great body was taken from its golden stall, washed and cleansed in a tent of purification, then transferred to the house of embalming within the temple complex. Accompanied by the dirges of mourners who held a constant vigil outside, the body was placed on a great limestone embalming table for evisceration. After forty days drying out beneath natron salts the carcass was anointed and wrapped in best-quality linen from the temples of the Fayum, with specific amulets inserted into the wrappings at key points. Then, laid out in an unnatural kneeling position, the bull was lowered into its coffin.

  As one of the priests of the god Ptah who apparently undertook the bull’s embalming went outside and tore a cloth to signal to the faithful to intensify their grief, the coffin was brought out in procession on a heavy golden barque, pulled along to its Serapeum tomb by the country’s highest officials and accompanied by two priestesses representing Isis and her sister-goddess Nephthys. A tantalising hint that Cleopatra herself may once again have taken a direct role as Isis in the sacred bull cult is possibly revealed by an uninscribed limestone stela portraying the mummified Apis mourned by Isis and Nepthys. Although the fact that Isis wears the red crown of northern Egypt has previously been dismissed as a sculptor’s mistake, it seems equally possible that this was meant to show Cleopatra as Living Isis, appearing in public ceremonials and wearing the red crown to symbolise her determination to keep hold of the region it represented. Although her presence at such rituals ensured native support, she remained locked in a vicious power struggle against her brother’s advisers in Alexandria. In Rome too, matters had reached crisis point and the fall-out would soon reach Egypt.

  Julius Caesar had by now returned from his long absence in Gaul to challenge Pompeius’ supremacy. No longer connected by marriage, the two men began to form new alliances, appointing relatives and supporters to key government posts. In Caesar’s case these appointees included the young Marcus Antonius, who ‘grew up a very beautiful youth’ and became ‘the firebrand and tornado of the age’ but had been forced to flee Rome to escape his debtors. After studying in Athens and Rhodes, he had been taken on by Gabinius as cavalry commander in Antioch. Setting out from here to Ephesus and his first meeting with the teenage Cleopatra in 55 BC, he had made a great name for himself in Alexandria before returning west to serve with Caesar in Gaul. His youthful looks, much admired by at least one tribune and most of Rome’s female population, were matched by his ‘gladiatorial strength’ — one of the few positive things Cicero could find to say about him during a long-standing feud initiated by Cicero’s execution of Antonius’ childhood guardian following a political conspiracy, but temporarily patched up by Caesar to maintain political harmony.

  As the arms race between Caesar and Pompeius spiraled out of control, the Senate ordered both to give up their powers. When Pompeius failed to respond, Caesar decided to force the issue and march on Rome. Leaving his Italian HQ at Ravenna on the night of 10 January 49 BC, he ordered offerings for the gods to counter fears that they were about to invade the homeland, then led a single legion across the River Rubicon, sacred boundary between Gaul and Italy and the point at which all campaigning generals were required to disband their forces. Once over the border, they met up with Antonius who had managed to escape from Rome disguised as a slave after his support for Caesar had proved unpopular.

  As Caesar began his rapid advance on Rome, Pompeius’ indecision was taken for weakness and the Senate refused him the post of commander-in-chief of Rome’s forces. Although these far outnumbered those of Caesar, the speed of his invasion had taken everyone off guard, and as Pompeius made a tactical withdrawal south to Campania, many senators, mindful of previous civil wars, kept a low profile. Yet Caesar decided against mass executions of his political opponents, and adopting the novel approach of leniency explained that ‘this is a new way of conquering, to strengthen one’s position by kindness and generosity’.

  Not only a superb general in the mould of his hero Alexander, Caesar was also a gifted writer whose Commentaries on the Civil War covering the events of 49-47 BC were published in annual instalments. He wrote as he spoke, in the style of an official communique, and even Cicero was forced to admit that ‘Caesar wrote admirably: his memoirs are cleanly, directly and gracefully composed, and divested of all rhetorical trappings.’ He also kept official transcripts of Senate meetings, public gatherings and key political speeches; fascinated by the politics of past regimes, he was keenly aware of history and his own place within it, using his writing to answer critics who claimed that his ambition alone had destroyed the Republic.

  When Caesar failed to bring Pompeius and the Senate into discu
ssions he lost patience, stating, ‘I earnestly invite you to join with me in carrying on the government of Rome. If, however, timidity makes you shrink from the task I shall trouble you no more. For in that case I shall govern it myself Rome was on the brink of civil war.

  In order to take Caesar on, Pompeius went east to build up his forces: once again he requested military support from Egypt, sending his eldest son Gnaeus to the brother and sister monarchs in Alexandria. Later Roman sources hinted at a romantic liaison between Cleopatra and Pompeius’s son, although friendly relations had probably begun in their childhood when Auletes and Cleopatra had been Pompeius’ guests in Rome. So to honour this debt of guest-friendship Cleopatra and Ptolemy contributed five hundred Gallic and Germanic cavalry from the Gabiniani and a squadron of sixty warships to be used against Caesar, the man who had once tried to take Egypt from their father.

  While Pompeius gained ground in the east, Caesar did so in the west. After taking Spain he crossed to North Africa to tackle Pompeius’ other African ally, King Juba I of Numidia (Algeria). Although Juba had supplied Pompeius with the grain that Rome needed to feed its growing population, many Romans regarded him as a sadistic barbarian who had defeated two Roman legions and executed the survivors.