Cleopatra the Great (13 page)

Stating in his will that Kleopatra should remain ruler at his death and that the position of co-ruler should be taken by her eldest half-brother Ptolemy, Auletes called on the Senate to ensure the stipulated co-regency was carried out. Yet as Rome's Republican government headed for political meltdown, Julius Caesar noted that ‘one copy of the will had been taken to Rome by his envoys to be placed in the treasury, but had been deposited with Pompeius because it had not been possible to place it there owing to the embarrassments of the state; a second duplicate copy was left sealed for production at Alexandria'. And then, having proved the most tenacious of monarchs by clinging to the throne of Egypt despite spending half his life abroad, Auletes died in Alexandria in his mid-fifties. A partial solar eclipse on 7 March 51
BC
dramatically marked his passing.

Cleopatra immediately suppressed news of her father's death to all but her inner circle. Her royal cousin Pasherenptah III was given the title ‘prophet of King Ptolemy, justified', indicating Auletes' deceased status, and as he oversaw the funerary arrangements, the body underwent the traditional ten-week mummification process which, as always, would have been carried out in private. She herself continued to issue official documents in the joint names of herself and her late father, with no mention of her ten-year-old brother Ptolemy whose advisers, if they had known the true position, would simply have assumed power and ruled through him. She also knew that Rome would immediately intervene and force her to accept her brother as co-ruler, so the Senate only received official confirmation of Auletes' death on 30 June 51
BC,
almost four months after the event.

Meanwhile Cleopatra had brought together her own group of advisers, whose seal rings would have been engraved with her cartouche and portrait to signify their loyalty. Encouraged by Pasherenptah and his fellow priests, she established her position as her father's true heir by continuing and refining his building projects at Dendera and Hermonthis. Her generous patronage of the temples would be a vital means of maintaining the loyalty of a native population who were heavily taxed for the first five years of her reign to keep her regime viable. So, to keep them on side, she decided to risk leaving Alexandria while her young brother's courtiers were still unready to challenge her, and travel south to make personal appearances before her Egyptian subjects.

On reaching Memphis, she would surely have made a state visit to the city's temple for some form of official recognition by Pasherenptah, and, despite there being no surviving record of her coronation, Cleopatra Thea Philopator was given the official title ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt'. Clearly the equivalent of a male king, she was named as ‘Female Horus, the Great One, Mistress of Perfection, Brilliant in Counsel, Lady of the Two Lands, Cleopatra, the Goddess who Loves her Father, the Image of her Father', with a specially created title hailing her ‘Upper Egyptian King of the land of the white crown, Lower Egyptian King of the land of the red crown'.

As a means of emphasising her direct link with the land, she publicly demonstrated this title by adopting the red and white combined crown of a united Egypt in place of the simple Macedonian diadem. Another traditional form of headgear which she favoured in appearances before her Egyptian subjects was the ancient crown of the earth god Geb, featuring Amun's ram's horns and the cow horns, sun disc and two tall feathers of Isis-Hathor. It reflected her status as ‘daughter of Geb': Geb, being the father of Isis, was a means of underscoring Cleopatra's links with the goddess. Her use of both the crown and the title also linked her to three previous female pharaohs, Arsinoe II, Nefertiti and Hatshepsut.

Beneath such elaborate headgear, and equally essential to her power dressing, Cleopatra's hair was maintained by her highly skilled hairdresser Eiras. Although rather artificial-looking wigs set in the traditional tripartite style of long straight hair would have been required for appearances before her Egyptian subjects, a more practical option for general day-to-day wear was the no-nonsense ‘melon hairdo' in which the natural hair was drawn back in sections resembling the lines on a melon and then pinned up in a bun at the back of the head. A trademark style of Arsinoe II and Berenike II, the style had fallen from fashion for almost two centuries until revived by Cleopatra; yet, as both traditionalist and innovator, she wore her version without her predecessors' fine head veil. And whereas they had both been blonde like Alexander, Cleopatra may well have been a redhead, judging from the portrait of a flame-haired woman wearing the royal diadem surrounded by Egyptian motifs which has been identified as Cleopatra.

Although her wavy red hair swept back in the melon-style bun and topped by the band-like royal diadem would be complemented by the simple lines of her Greek dress, Cleopatra's role within the Egyptian world would have required the assistance of her wardrobe mistress, Charmion, to create intricate costumes of ancient design — traditional-style, tight-fitting sheath-dresses of finest linen embellished by gold sequins, precious stones, beading and feathers. One of the ancient costumes particularly favoured by the Ptolemaic royal women was the iridescent vulture-feather dress; the bird's wings enfolded the torso and abdomen to offer symbolic protection to the area responsible for producing the next generation.

As a form of dress worn by figures of Isis herself, it was presumably adopted by Cleopatra when early in her reign she further underlined the links with her father by paralleling his title ‘Neos Dionysus' with her own ‘Nea Isis'. From then on, she ‘gave audience to the people under the name of the New Isis' and ‘appeared in public dressed in the habit of the goddess Isis', the traditional white linen worn by both goddess and acolytes covered with an outer layer of black to transform her into Isis ‘the black-robed queen'. Her ‘black raiment' was duplicated by her clergy, the Melanephoroi or ‘Wearers of Black'. The Ptolemies' invention of mordants to fix dyed colours transformed ancient Egypt's off-white linens into the sea-greens, violets, hyacinths, flames and crimsons described in contemporary texts. Isis herself was imagined as wearing a voluminous black mantle over a ‘many-coloured robe of finest linen . . . but what caught and held my eye more than anything else was the deep black lustre of her mantle. She wore it slung across her body from the right hip to the left shoulder, where it was caught in a knot resembling the boss of a shield; but part of it hung in innumerable folds, the tasselled fringe quivering.'

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'.