Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  Another piece of family statuary set up by the couple was an image of Ptolemy I, together with a basalt statue of the last high priest of Memphis, Petubastis III, a half-cousin who appears to have been close to the royal family. The statue was inscribed with the sixteen-year-old Petubastis’ death date, 31 July 30 BC, when, just like Selene’s half-brothers Caesarion and Antyllus, he had been killed on Octavian’s orders.

  Yet the most spectacular piece the couple set up was a large marble statue of Cleopatra VII herself. A world away from the somewhat soft-focus, unthreatening portraits of Cleopatra made during her stay in Rome as a young woman, ‘the veiled head shows perhaps a different portrait type of Cleopatra VII’. This veritable tour de force captures the essence of this vital, spirited woman whose subsequent achievements were celebrated by the daughter who presumably commissioned it. The head was partly covered by her mantle, and both ears were pierced to take earrings which were likely to be new versions of her famous pearls; the way the curling hair was carved over the brow strongly resembles that of a Roman period head of Alexander the Great also from North Africa, quite possibly Selene’s way of reinforcing her mother’s connections with their dynasty’s renowned ancestor. Indeed, this face of Cleopatra with its ‘prominent but beautiful nose’ is so very strong that some have even claimed it represents a man; given its strong similarities to Cleopatra’s masculine-style coin images and the tremendous achievements influencing its creation, such confusion seems unsurprising.

  The new court also seems to have inspired silverware of equally astonishing quality: a stunning silver dish featuring a central female figure is quite likely to be Selene herself. Her tousled curls above the brow are ‘arranged in no recognisable coiffure’, just as on the marble head she created of her mother, and the same type of pierced ears are visible beneath the elephant-skin cap of Alexander, surrounded by all the emblems of Ptolemaic Egypt from the sistrum and cobra to the cornucopia. Selene’s own crescent moon emblem was coupled with the image of Helios in memory of her brother Alexander Helios, while images of the lyre, grapes and pine cones of Dionysos together with the club and quiver of Herakles paid tribute to her father Antonius.

  Like Antonius and Cleopatra, Selene and Juba used their coinage to put across a political message: Rex Juba appeared on one side and Basilissa Cleopatra on the other. Her portraits suggest that she ‘inherited her mother’s strong prominent nose but leave us with the impression that she was probably prettier than Cleopatra VII’ — or at least less threatening-looking. Often representing Isis by means of the crescent moon emblem, Selene’s coins also featured the Egyptian sistrum, crown of double plumes and sun disc and the image of a crocodile as a characteristic emblem of Egypt. The couple certainly kept live crocodiles within the capital’s great Isis temple, adorned with statuary of the goddess, and the cult was sufficiently popular to inspire Apuleius, a Romanised North African (from modern Algeria) whose famous second-century AD work Metamorphoses is the only complete Roman ‘novel’ to have survived, complete with superb details of the workings of the Isis cult.

  The strong continuity with Selene’s homeland of Egypt was also reflected in the architects, painters, writers and scholars who flocked to her court, while Juba’s personal physician Euphorbus was the brother of Antonius’ Greek freedman Antonius Musa. Both were leading practitioners in hydrotherapy treatments, presumably carried out in Caesar-ea’s luxurious bath complex which was supplied by a colossal aqueduct. The couple also built a grand theatre and hippodrome alongside a great library which developed as a centre of learning.

  Juba himself was described as being ‘even more distinguished for his renown as a student than for his royal sovereignty’, and his passion for philology, history and geography was reflected by the expeditions the couple sent out across their sphere of influence. These travelled as far west as the Atlantic islands dubbed ‘Canaria’ (from Latin cants) after the large dogs to be found there and brought back a pair of hounds for Juba himself; the Canary Islands’ date palms and papyrus evoked Selene’s homeland while sophisticated forms of mummification also developed.

  In trying to forge ever stronger connections with Egypt, they also sent out an expedition to find the mysterious source of the Nile. Herodotus had claimed that Egypt’s great river ran horizontally west to east across North Africa, Alexander’s tutor Aristotle had suggested that its source might indeed lie to the west, and it had been a problem that Juba’s protector Caesar had once wrestled with himself. Obviously keen to find out for themselves, the couple despatched their explorers who believed they had discovered the source of the Nile in the mountains of their kingdom of Mauretania, ‘so far as King Juba was able to ascertain’.

  Apparently separating North Africa from Ethiopia, since ‘the Nile above the 3rd cataract, together with its tributary, the Atbara, can indeed be envisaged as dividing Ethiopia from Egypt’, this apparent discovery was referred to by the poet Crinagoras of Mytilene. In his epigram to celebrate Juba and Selene’s marriage, he announced, ‘Great neighbour regions of the world, which the full stream of Nile separates from the black Aethiopians, you have made common kings for both by marriage, making a single race of Egyptians and Libyans. May the king’s children hold from their fathers in their turn firm dominion over both mainlands.’

  When Selene and Juba had their first child some time between 13 and 9 BC they named him Ptolemy. Although few personal details have survived, Selene clearly exerted a powerful influence given the overtly Egyptian style of her court and ‘the unusually elevated status of women at Caesaraea in the centuries following her death’, when educated women such as the grammarian Volusia Tertulfina were part of a prominent female elite. When Selene died aged around thirty-five, perhaps in childbirth, her passing was linked to a lunar eclipse. Once more inspired, the poet Crinagoras claimed that ‘when she rose the moon herself grew dark, veiling her grief in night, for she saw her lovely namesake Selene bereft of life and going down to gloomy Hades. With her she had shared her light’s beauty, and with her death she mingled her own darkness.’

  Presumably mummified in the manner of her dynasty, Cleopatra Selene was buried in the royal necropolis some 20 miles east of the capital Iol Caesarea within ‘the public memorial of the royal family’. This was most likely the huge circular tomb which Juba II is believed to have built, measuring over 200 feet in diameter. Its exterior facade set with sixty Ionic columns featured at each of the cardinal points an elegantly carved ‘false door’, recalling a traditional Egyptian feature favoured by Cleopatra VII herself and above which a series of stone steps of diminishing diameter rose 75 feet towards the summit.

  By combining the Eastern circular mausoleum with ancient Egyptian funerary architecture, Juba and Selene had created a step pyramid with a twist. The tomb’s concealed entrance, located below the false door on the eastern side to face the rising sun, opened onto a vaulted passage which led through to a rectangular ante-chamber, from which seven steps gave access to a circular, vaulted gallery running anti-clockwise for some 500 feet. At the end of the gallery as it spiralled back towards the centre of the tomb, an Egyptian-style sliding limestone portcullis mechanism sealed the burial chamber ‘which could have held only two or three inhumation burials’; although ransacked at some time in antiquity, the chamber entered in 1885 still contained traces of the original contents, from carnelian beads and an Egyptian pendant to a few scattered pearls, so beloved of Selene’s famous mother.

  Juba long outlived his wife, travelling around the East and briefly remarrying before returning to Mauretania in AD 5. In AD 21 he took as his co-regent his son Ptolemy, who following Juba’s death in AD 23, became king of Mauretania in his own right. His titles were confirmed by Tiberius and the Senate, who declared him a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people’, while a senatorial delegation presented him with an ivory sceptre and the triumphal purple toga known as the ‘toga picta’, embroidered with stars.

  A superb marble head from the royal capital reveals Ptolemy t
o have been as handsome as his father Juba, his lightly bearded face and neat hairstyle clearly influenced by his Roman contemporaries. Although little is known about Ptolemy’s personal life, with no official records of a wife or children, mention of ‘Regina Urania’, assumed to be a court lady with royal pretensions, may perhaps refer to a royal relative who chose to follow her illustrious Ptolemaic predecessors by taking the name ‘Ourania’ by which Aphrodite herself was known.

  Having apparently amassed great wealth, Ptolemy felt sufficiently independent of Rome by his eighteenth regnal year to issue gold coins featuring his triumphal regalia and ivory sceptre, perhaps reflecting his success in dealing with intermittent rebellions within his kingdom. He also spent time abroad, travelling to Greece and being honoured at Athens with a statue inscribed ‘son of King Juba and descendent of king Ptolemy’, which was set up in the Gymnasion of the early Ptolemies.

  Then in AD 39 he was summoned by his cousin the emperor Caligula to Rome, perhaps in his capacity as grandson of the Living Isis, to celebrate the consecration of the new Isis temple on the Campus Martius. The ancient sources claim that Ptolemy’s appearance in a resplendent purple cloak, perhaps worn over the star-studded toga picta he had been awarded by the Senate, ‘attracted universal admiration’, and that, greatly disliking being upstaged in this way, Caligula had Ptolemy arrested and executed.

  Since he was the only client king whom Caligula dispatched in this manner, there was probably more to it than Ptolemy’s flashy dress sense: the story may perhaps conceal the fact that Ptolemy had been implicated in a major plot against the emperor led by one Gaetulicus, whose father had been an ally of Ptolemy’s own father, Juba. Ptolemy may have hoped that, if the conspiracy was successful, he would regain territory including the emperor’s personal domain of Egypt. Or maybe he had simply become too powerful and wealthy to be a mere client king and Caligula wanted to make Mauretania a Roman province.

  When Caligula himself was assassinated in AD 41 his successor, Claudius, did absorb Mauretania back into the Roman empire, but, sufficiently moved by the death of Ptolemy who had been his cousin through their common grandfather Antonius, ordered statues of both Ptolemy and Juba II to be set up in their capital, Caesarea. Both were dedicated to Venus in the goddess’ temple in the city as Claudius’ knowledge of history perpetuated a practice which kept faith with their shared predecessor Julius Caesar.

  It seems quite ironic that the last known descendant of Cleopatra the Great, her grandson Ptolemy, should have been executed by the self-confessed Isis devotee Caligula, himself a great-grandson of Antonius. Yet Cleopatra VIFs influence was very much kept alive, both through her Isis persona and quite possibly through other royal descendants. Although details are sparse, with only seven Mauretanian royals known by name over a sixty-five-year period, Selene and Juba II are known to have had a daughter some time around 8 BC since she is mentioned in an honorary inscription set up in Athens. Roman sources also refer to a granddaughter of Cleopatra and Antonius named Drusilla who married Tiberius Claudius Felix, a freedman of the emperor Claudius, who in the fifties AD became procurator (revenue official) of Judaea, the kingdom Cleopatra VII had so desired for herself.

  Drusilla’s husband was also an associate of Paul of Tarsus, the very place where Cleopatra had sailed to meet Antonius in the guise of Aphrodite, and, like Antioch and Ephesus, a cult centre of Isis. Following Paul’s conversion to the new faith of Christianity, his zealous missionary work throughout Syria, Asia Minor and Greece brought him into close contact with Isis’ many devotees who remained a dominant religious power in the ancient world; even the ship in which he sailed from Malta to Puteoli and Syracuse was an Alexandrian vessel named the Dioskuri, the divine twins Castor and Pollux who had been ‘made saviours’ by Isis herself. And as her worship had spread way beyond Egypt, transcending ethnic and political barriers as far as Britain, the image of mother Isis with her divine son was adopted by the early Christians as they attempted to compete with her all-embracing appeal.

  Although Drusilla herself seems to have died some time in the thirties AD, legend claims that the line carried on for several more centuries to emerge again in the third century AD as the forceful figure Zenobia of Palmyra. Known in Syrian inscriptions as Bat-Zabbai, ‘the one with beautiful long hair’, the twenty-seven-year-old Zenobia had become regent for her son following the death of her husband in AD 267. Famed for her intellect and beauty, she claimed descent from Cleopatra, and, emulating this great role model, is even said to have owned a collection of her predecessor’s drinking cups, presumably obtained from their shared city of Antioch.

  When the self-styled ‘New Cleopatra’ challenged the power of Rome, adopting the royal diadem and taking imperial titles including the name ‘Augusta’, the Roman Senate appealed to the emperor Claudius Augustus to ‘set us free from Zenobia’ as she expanded her Syrian territories into Asia Minor. She then invaded Egypt. The fighting which accompanied her invasion of Alexandria in AD 272 caused such destruction that ‘walls were torn down and it lost the greater part of the area known as the Brucheion’, the Palace Quarter, when the Great Library itself may even have been destroyed.

  Her rebellion was eventually crushed in battles at Antioch and Palmyra by Claudius’ successor Aurelian, and the jewel-bedecked Zenobia is said to have been brought to Rome, bound in golden chains, to walk in Aurelian’s Triumph. She was then spared and allowed to live out the rest of her days on Aurelian’s estate near Tivoli. Yet Arab tradition ignored the Romans and had Zenobia escape her enemy ‘King Amr’ by committing suicide, consuming poison she had concealed in a hollow ring while declaring ‘bi-yadi la bi-yad Amr’ — ‘I die by my own hand, not that of Amr’, a widely used Arab proverb.

  The conflation of Zenobia’s fate with that of Cleopatra, even down to the concealment of fatal poison within a form of adornment, very much reflects the long-lasting influence of Cleopatra VII for centuries after her death. With her gold statue still standing in the temple of Venus in Rome’s Forum as late as AD 220, Cleopatra remained a figure of veneration in Egypt and was worshipped throughout the country, from Alexandria to Hermopolis and beyond. Egypt was said to praise and extol ‘her Cleopatra’, whose statuary remained a focus of veneration in the furthest southern reaches as late as AD 373, when a temple scribe could write ‘I overlaid the figure of Cleopatra with gold’ within Isis’ cult centre Philae.

  As the last Egyptian temple to remain active in the face of Christianity well into the sixth century AD, Philae’s monarch-goddess maintained a tremendous appeal. In AD 453, when the people of the region concluded a treaty with Rome which allowed them to take the temple’s cult statue across the Nile in celebration of the annual ‘Sailing of Isis’ Ship’, they were re-enacting the journeys of Egypt’s greatest female pharaoh as she travelled the world in pursuit of her dream, the restoration of the empire of Alexander the Great.

  As the last of his Successors, her suicide had proved to be a turning point for western civilisation. Having come so very close to achieving her goal, accommodating Rome in order to keep Egypt independent while using the Romans themselves to help her do so, Cleopatra had proved so terrifying to her enemies that their hostility still resonates to this day. Yet despite all attempts to erase her story, she had proved too memorable a figure to be so easily destroyed and, like Alexander himself, became a legend. Even her most venomous critics were forced to admire the sheer courage of this legendary descendant of so many kings, Cleopatra the Great, whose spirit, inherited from Alexander himself, had ultimately proved unbreakable.

  Notes

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Introduction

  1 ‘her celebrity seems to have been due primarily to the fact that she slept with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony — the two most powerful men of her day — and that she was credited with being extremely am
bitious’. Garland 2005, p.30.

  2 ‘a blacked-out landscape illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning when Egypt impinges upon world events’. Skeat 1962, p.100.

  2 ‘torn away the deceptive web which the hate of her enemies had spun around Cleopatra, and ascertained the truth’. Volkmann 1958, p.176.

  2 For the 1988 exhibition Cleopatra’s Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies see Brooklyn 1988 and more recent version, Walker and Higgs (eds.,) 2001. Although for some Cleopatra’s story still depends ‘on a perilous series of deductions from fragmentary or flagrantly unreliable evidence’ (Beard 2003), others claim that ‘for nearly half a century, the confrontation between literary testimonies and new documentary evidence . . . has continually revised the history of Queen Cleopatra VII. . . Every day we find . . . Cleopatra further upstream from her myth’. Bingen 2007, p.63. Hermonthis’ Birth House demolished in 1861, Alexandria’s royal quarters only recently located, see Empereur 1998 and 2002, Goddio (ed.) 1998 etc.

  4 Debate over coin portraits created headline ‘Ugly? Our Cleopatra was a real beauty, not like your Queen: Egyptians hit back at slur’. Sunday Express 15.4.01, p.44.

  4 ‘Nefertiti is a face without a queen, Cleopatra is a queen without a face’. Malraux 1969 in Goudchaux 2001.b, p.210.

  4 ‘a figure whose brilliance and charisma matched Alexander’s own’. Green in Getty 1996, p.19.

  5 ‘far more significant was Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who reigned for nearly twenty years in the 15th century BC’. Roehrig et al. 2006, front flap of dust jacket.

  7 ‘great potentate’. Sandys 1615 p.99.

  7 ‘a lass unparalleled’. Shakespeare 1988, Act V, Scene II, p.183

  Chapter 1

  11 Alexander’s mummy and tomb in Saunders 2006 and Chugg 2004; the tomb ‘returned to the centre-stage of world history in the time of Cleopatra’. Chugg 2004, p.x.