Cleopatra the Great (9 page)

Their six-year-old son was now declared Ptolemy V and Agathokles and his family became his guardians, holding on to their power through intimidation and violence until matters came to a head when the imperious Oinanthe ordered her bodyguard to attack fellow worshippers who had cold-shouldered her. As the violence escalated, the Alexandrians responded and stormed the palace, seizing Agathokles and taking him to the Gymnasion law courts for execution. His sister, mother and remaining female relatives were likewise taken to the Gymnasion and handed over to the mob, where ‘some bit them, some stabbed them, others cut out their eyes. Whenever one of them fell, they ripped their limbs apart, until they had in this way mutilated them all. For a terrible savagery accompanies the angry passions of the people who live in Egypt.'

As a succession of Greek courtiers now vied for power in Alexandria royal authority in the rest of Egypt ebbed away, and by 200
BC
the Seleucid king Antiochos III had reversed his defeat at Raphia and, allied to Macedonia, was preparing to invade Egypt. Faced with this threat, Ptolemy V's ministers sent an emergency delegation to Rome asking for help. Having finally defeated their own great enemy, the Carthaginian Hannibal, the Romans were only too pleased to assist by attacking Macedonia, which initially fell to them in 197
BC
.

That same year the thirteen-year-old Ptolemy V celebrated his coming of age by moving the royal capital away from Alexandria to the relative security of Memphis, much to the delight of the native priesthood. After royal troops took back Thebes, rebellion in the Delta was ruthlessly put down and its ringleaders condemned by their fellow countrymen within the clergy. The king then ‘had them slain on the wood' in public executions at Memphis — no doubt they were bludgeoned to death with a stone mace in time-honoured fashion. This graphic display formed the climax of the king's traditional-style coronation which was finally held at Memphis on 26 March 196
BC
some eight years after his actual accession. The high priest Harmakhis placed the red and white crown of a united Egypt on his head as Ptolemy V ‘Epiphanes', ‘the One who manifests himself, was named a ‘god, the son of a god and goddess and being like Horus, son of Isis and Osiris', in direct reference to his parentage.

Then Egypt's native clergy and the Greek priest of Alexander came together to issue a joint decree declaring that Ptolemy V had established order and spent large sums on the temples and the ‘sacred animals that are honoured in Egypt'. Written out in both Greek and Egyptian to be as widely understood as possible, copies of the decree were set up all around the country. The most famous version was set up in Neith's temple at Sais and later reused as building stone at Rosetta, became the means by which hieroglyphs were finally translated some two thousand years later.

The coronation was soon followed by a royal marriage after Antiochos III changed his plans. Instead of invading Egypt he requested an alliance, offering the teenage pharaoh his ten-year-old daughter Cleopatra and the whole of Coele-Syria (‘Hollow Syria', between Lebanon's mountain ranges from Cilicia down to Gaza) as her dowry. When the couple were married in 194
BC
at Raphia, Egypt gained Seleucid territory by marital rather than martial means.

The couple took the titles ‘Manifest and Beneficent Gods'. Cleopatra I was named ‘Female Horus' as her husband's equal, and even Rome acknowledged ‘Ptolemy and Cleopatra, rulers of Egypt'. Known as ‘The Syrian', the first Cleopatra to rule Egypt is said to have ‘brought the only important intrusion of foreign blood' into the Ptolemaic house, being a descendant of the Persian Apama, wife of Macedonian Seleucus I, and having a mother from the royal family of Pontus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Yet inheriting neither her father's sharp features nor the ‘ill-favoured looks and boxers' noses' of her mother's side, Cleopatra I had an attractive profile which was further enhanced by her adoption of Berenike II's Cyrene-inspired ringlets combined with the robes of Isis for the full goddess ensemble.

Following a daughter named Cleopatra, the couple's son Ptolemy was born as the royal forces ended twenty years of anarchy by retaking Thebes. Its priests fled to Nubia and the rebel pharaoh was taken prisoner but, on the advice of the Memphis priests, was pardoned to initiate reconciliation. As part of the same PR campaign the royal couple embarked on a state progress up the Nile, making personal appearances before their reconquered subjects before finally reaching Philae in the far south, where the priests formally congratulated them for their success against the Theban rebels and the birth of their son.

Remaining on good terms with the Romans, the royal couple also renewed their alliance with the Greek city states. At the formal banquet renewing the treaty, the main topic of conversation was the pharaoh's physical prowess and his ability to hit a bull with a javelin from horseback. Yet in his last years Ptolemy V became increasingly unpopular with his subjects, taking back financial concessions made to the Egyptians and seeking hefty donations from his Greek courtiers to fund a campaign against Syria. In the spring of 180
BC
, still only twenty-nine, he was poisoned by his generals. The first of his dynasty to be mummified, and presumably interred within the mausoleum of Alexander and the Ptolemies, he was succeeded by his widow, the twenty-four-year-old Cleopatra I, who maintained the male-female dual monarchy by taking her eldest son, six-year-old Ptolemy VI, as her co-regent. Formally acknowledged as ‘the Pharaohs Cleopatra the mother the manifest goddess and Ptolemy son of Ptolemy the manifest god', he took the Greek title ‘Philometor', ‘Mother Loving', and the pair were equated with Isis and her son Horus.

Terminating all plans for a campaign against her Seleucid relatives in Syria, Cleopatra I pursued a peaceful domestic policy and became a greatly loved figure. Her Macedonian name became a popular choice for children around the country: one proud new grandmother wrote to her daughter, ‘Don't hesistate to name the little one “Cleopatra”, your little daughter.' When she died suddenly in April 176
BC
, aged only twenty-eight, Cleopatra I was honoured with her own clergy based at Thebes in contrast to the Alexandrian-based cults of her predecessors, suggesting that some in the royal city had not supported her pro-Syrian stance.

Courtiers swiftly married off the ten-year-old king Ptolemy VI to his slightly older sister Cleopatra II so as to prevent marriage to any foreigner with designs on Egypt. The young monarchs' advisers then recommended war on Syria where Antiochos IV, brother of the late Cleopatra I, was preparing to use his position as the monarchs' uncle to seize their throne. Then, to prevent him using the youngest Ptolemy as a pawn, the child was made co-ruler with his two older siblings in a three-way rule presenting a united front.

After invading Egypt in 169
BC
, Antiochos IV swiftly took Memphis, placed his teenage nephew Ptolemy VI under the ‘protection' of his Seleucid family, and had himself crowned co-regent ‘following Egyptian custom'. Yet the Syrian pharaoh had a very short reign and would be mainly remembered for his outrageous parties at which he ‘was brought in by the mime performers entirely wrapped up . . . when the symphony sounded, he would leap up and dance naked and act with the clowns.'

Following his coronation, this colourful monarch then marched on Alexandria where Cleopatra II and her younger brother had set up a rival monarchy, backed by the citizens who were able to repel Antiochos' attack. Needing Egypt and Syria to remain neutral while they reconquered Macedonia, a Roman delegation then arrived in Alexandria and, ordering Antiochos IV to leave Egypt at once, drew a circle around him in the sand and demanded that he agreed before stepping out. Left with little choice, he pulled out of Egypt on 30 July 168
BC
, leaving the country a virtual protectorate of Rome. The Roman ambassadors told the young monarchs somewhat ominously that they ‘should always consider the trust and good will of the Roman people the supreme defence of their kingdom'.

Under the theatrical-sounding epithet the three ‘Theoi Philome-tores' (Mother-loving Gods), the trio of young monarchs Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII worked together until famine started to cause widespread unrest and Thebes again declared independence. Marching south to deal with the rebels, Ptolemy VI was overthrown in a coup led by his younger brother Ptolemy VIII and the Alexandrians. Although ex-king Ptolemy travelled to Rome to put his case for unfair dismissal before their governing body, the Senate, it proved unnecessary since the Alexandrians soon deposed the power-mad Ptolemy VIII and begged their former king to return. Yet, having seen for themselves how weak Egypt had become, the Romans ensured the kingdom remained divided by insisting that Ptolemy VIII should receive Cyrene while Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II kept Egypt.

Resuming their co-rule, ‘Pharaohs Ptolemy and Cleopatra, manifest gods' were keen to maintain relations with their Egyptian subjects: they took up residence in the royal palace at Memphis, received petitions at the ‘window of appearances' and dined with the local elite. During a progress south in 156
BC
they attended ceremonials for the Buchis bull in Thebes, carried out work at Edfu, Esna and Philae, and founded a new temple at Ombos (Kom Ombo). It was dedicated jointly to the crocodile god Sobek and Horus the Elder (‘Haroeris'), and its sanctuary was partly paid for by the local garrison, demonstrating their loyalty to the popular royal couple.

Similar feelings were displayed by their Jewish troops after the couple gave sanctuary to the Jewish high priest Onias IV following the sacking of Jerusalem's Temple by their mutual adversary Antiochos IV. Ptolemy and Cleopatra gave him the ancient Delta site of Leontopolis (modern Tell el-Yahudiya, ‘Mound of the Jews') and permission to replace an ancient temple of the cat goddess Bastet with a scaled-down version of the Jerusalem Temple. This clever move brought Jewish settlers into the vulnerable border region and harnessed their military prowess to guard the route to Memphis.

With military bases around the Aegean, the couple were held in high regard throughout the Greek world, although over in Cyrene their younger brother Ptolemy VIII continued to gain Roman support by leaving his possessions to Rome in his will; he even proposed marriage to a hugely wealthy Roman matron, but she turned him down. Becoming a father when his partner Eirene gave birth to his eldest son, Ptolemy Apion, the eighth Ptolemy was nevertheless written out of the Egyptian succession when his elder siblings produced children of their own, appointing their eldest son Ptolemy Eupator (‘of distinguished lineage') as their heir and then, on his early death, his younger brother Ptolemy VII. Yet it would be the couple's two daughters who produced the future monarchs of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid houses in a family tree so complex that it is best described as a ‘genealogical cobweb'.

After a determined Ptolemy VI finally took Syria he married his eldest child, Cleopatra Thea, to the Seleucid king Balas — who proved so ineffectual that Ptolemy VI annulled the marriage and accepted the throne for himself. Crowned at a great ceremony in Antioch, he then gave his daughter away for a second time to Balas' rival; Balas himself was soundly defeated by Ptolemy VI and his new son-in-law. But at the moment of his greatest triumph the forty-one-year-old Ptolemy VI, king of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria, was thrown from his horse and fell into a coma, only gaining consciousness to see Balas' severed head just before he died.

Although Cleopatra II immediately made her seventeen-year-old son Ptolemy VII co-regent, news soon reached Cyrene. So Ptolemy VIII invaded Egypt, his promise to spare the new king if Cleopatra II married him ending at the wedding feast when the young king was murdered ‘in his mother's arms'. Then, in a mass purge of all those who had supported the previous regime, Ptolemy VIII ‘murdered many of the Alexandrians; not a few he sent into exile, and filled the islands and towns with men who had grown up with his brother'. Inevitably Ptolemy VIII has been portrayed as a monster of epic proportions. His official title of ‘Euergetes' or ‘Benefactor' became ‘Kakergertes', ‘Malefactor', and although the Alexandrians also knew him as ‘Tryphon', meaning ‘the Opulent' or ‘the Decadent', they usually called him ‘Physkon', ‘Fatty'.

Spectacularly obese and very short of stature, Physkon's unfortunate physique was on full display when receiving a Roman delegation in 139
BC.
Having magnanimously refused his usual carrying chair, he had personally met his visitors at the harbourside to accompany them the short distance to the palace. Yet, far from being humbled in the presence of the pharaoh, the Romans were highly amused, declaring that ‘already the Alexandrians have derived some fun from our visit. Thanks to us they're finally seen their king walking!' And instead of admiring the quality of royal robes made of the finest gauzy linen, his guests recoiled at the sight of a body ‘utterly corrupted with fat and with a belly of such size that it would have been hard to measure it with one's arms'.

Following the removal of Rome's own monarchy almost four centuries earlier, its Republican ideals were completely at odds with the Ptolemies' opulent display, not to mention the make-up, perfume, wigs and jewellery which had long been favoured by Egyptians of both sexes. As the delegation reported back to the Senate, they had been ‘astonished at the number of inhabitants of Egypt and the natural advantages of the countryside', adding that ‘a mighty power could be sustained — if this kingdom ever found capable leaders'.

Yet for all his obvious flaws, Ptolemy Physkon realised that the future lay within Egypt. Whereas his brother had lived by Greek values, he promoted native culture by placing Egyptians in the highest offices and bringing the crown's relationship with the priests of Memphis to its ultimate conclusion with a dynastic marriage between church and state. As an internal matter ignored in the classical sources, Physkon seems to have married one of his younger daughters, Berenike, presumably born to a minor wife, to the son of the high priest Petubastis I who had crowned him at Memphis in 145
BC
. And when Physkon's co-ruler Cleopatra II gave birth to a son, they named him Ptolemy ‘Memphites' to strengthen the ties with Egypt's spiritual capital. The lad then appears as their heir in wall scenes at Edfu temple, a place which was finally inaugurated on 9 September 142
BC
in the presence of brother and sister monarchs ‘the Two Horus'.