Cleopatra the Great

by Joann Fletcher

  Sufficiently secure in his second term in office, Auletes re-established his reign with a traditional jubilee festival and a resumption of temple-building at Koptos, Hermonthis, Edfu and Philae. He also set in motion plans for a whole new temple complex for Hathor-Isis at Dendera, just north of Thebes; as the most senior female royal left alive, Cleopatra must have accompanied her father to lay the official foundation stone on 16 July 54 BC. Planned for the most auspicious day of the year, when the rising of Isis’ star Sothis heralded the start of the Nile flood, the event also commemorated the divine Arsinoe IFs rise to heaven, a potent gesture designed to entice both goddesses to bring forth the waters.

  Despite previous poor harvests, Auletes had also managed to clear his huge debts to the banker Rabirius who had turned up in Alexandria looking for his money. Appointed Minister of Finance and kitted out in Greek dress to blend in as he went about his duties creaming off profits, Rabirius became so rich and so unpopular during his year in office that Auletes was forced to take him into protective custody. He then let him escape back to Rome, where he was immediately prosecuted for illicit gains alongside Gabinius. Both men were also accused of ‘unRoman’ behaviour because they had worn foreign dress. The Republican lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero described Gabinius as a ‘thieving effeminate ballet boy in curlers’, while his defence of Rabirius rested on the fact that Alexandria was well known as ‘the home of all tricks and deceits’.

  Yet it was also the home of all culture and learning, and in the cultural renaissance which accompanied Auletes’ second term, his four remaining children continued to benefit from a truly wide-ranging education. With access to the incredible educational facilities of the Library and Mouseion, home of cutting-edge research for the past two centuries, each of the children had his or her own staff: the elder prince Ptolemy was taught by his personal tutor Theodotus of Chios, while Arsinoe was taught by the eunuch Ganymedes.

  Following her European tour, elder sister Cleopatra likewise resumed her education back in Alexandria, and of all the Ptolemies made by far the greatest use of it. Her Greek title ‘Thea’ meant ‘sage’ as well as ‘goddess’, and indeed Cleopatra’s intellect was her most important quality for later Egyptian historians, for whom she was ‘the most illustrious and wise among women . . . great in herself and in her achievements in courage and strength’. As ‘the last of the wise ones of Greece’ she was ‘the virtuous scholar’, the polymath monarch ‘who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company’.

  Benefitting from her father’s renewed patronage of the Mouseion and the emergence of several new philosphical schools, she attended the lectures of Philostratus and joined in philosophical debate, discussing the ancient pharaonic ‘Ancestor Ritual’ in which she described ‘the dead lying in Hades, waiting for the waters of rebirth to come and revive them so they can be reborn and flower again in the springtime’. She may also have studied under the astronomer royal Sosigenes, and took an active interest in astrology and the new-fangled Zodiac introduced from Babylon.

  Able to consult works in the Royal Library, which housed Alexander’s personal journals and books including his copy of Homer’s Iliad given to him by Aristotle, Cleopatra could have read the famous plays of Athens’ great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in their original hand, thanks to the wheeling and dealing of her canny Ptolemaic predecessors. And although they had been told that ‘there is no Royal Road to geometry’ by the mathematician and royal tutor Euclid, his successors Katon and Photinus both dedicated their works to Cleopatra.

  Following the family literary tradition, which included Ptolemy I’s biography of Alexander, the tragic plays of Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy VIII Physkon’s natural history of birds in the royal zoo, Arab historians claimed that Cleopatra too ‘wrote books on medicine, charms and cosmetics in addition to many other books ascribed to her which are known to those who practiced medicine’. First-century BC Alexandria was a centre of medical expertise where the court physician Dioskurides studied plague, Apollonius researched the works of Hippocrates, and the gynaecological surgeon Philoxenus specialised in the treatment of uterine cancer. Cleopatra’s experiments into foetal development, anticipating her future role, are said to have influenced the Greek doctor Galen. Toxicology was another area of interest for Cleopatra and, perhaps tutored by the pharmacologist Zopyros who Auletes employed to produce antidotes, she is said to have observed the effects of the various poisons used within the Gymnasion’s execution ground and written up her findings.

  Later sources named her ‘Theosebia’, ‘scribe of the god’ — all written works were believed to be inspired by Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and patron of scribes. Her epithet may also refer to the fact that Cleopatra was the first Ptolemy to learn the Egyptian language known as the ‘words of Thoth’, which the god himself had invented. A linguist who could converse in at least nine languages, from the Ptolemies’ familiar Greek to the languages of the Syrians, Hebrews, Medes, Parthians, Arabs, Ethiopians and Troglodytes, Cleopatra had a fluency in the Egyptian tongue which suggests that she may have had an Egyptian mother. She certainly had an Egyptian half-cousin in Pasherenptah III, high priest of Memphis, whose wife, Taimhotep of Letopolis, was described as ‘a worthy young woman, skilled in speech, whose advice is bright’.

  Although such talents would have been deeply unappreciated in most parts of the ancient world, the elite women of Ptolemaic Egypt enjoyed life in a society based on principles of equality which had long suffused the ancient culture. The Ptolemies’ main guide through this culture was the native priest Manetho, whose comprehensive list of every pharaoh since the beginning of Egyptian history included many of the female pharaohs omitted from official lists, but now reinstated alongside their male counterparts as a direct result of Ptolemaic policy. It seems no coincidence that Manetho was working for Ptolemy II and his formidable sister-wife Arsinoe II, the first Ptolemaic female to take equal powers to her brother-husband and assume pharaonic titles.

  Although Herodotus had claimed Nitocris to have been Egypt’s only female king, Manetho knew otherwise. He listed a second as Scemio-phris, a Greek corruption of Sobekneferu, who had changed the traditional king’s title ‘son of Ra’ to ‘daughter of Ra’ and had worn the royal headcloth and male-style kilt over her female dress in an innovative case of royal cross-dressing. His third female king was Amensis, the Greek mispronunciation of the title ‘daughter of Amun’ used by Hatshepsut, who succeeded her half-brother husband to rule as regent for his son by a minor wife. With greater claim to the throne, she ruled as king for a further fifteen years, re-establishing trade along the Red Sea coast and initiating a huge building scheme which made Luxor temple the place where each monarch united with Amun in a programme of royal regeneration which included Alexander himself. At nearby Karnak the golden tips of the pink granite obelisks she erected flashed sunlight across the river to her multi-terraced funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari, where scenes portrayed Amun impregnating her mother made Hatshepsut ‘his daughter in very truth’. She wished to be buried with her mortal father in the Valley of the Kings directly behind her Deir el-Bahari temple, and although her body was removed from their joint tomb in ancient times, a mummy found elsewhere in the royal valley was identified as Hatshepsut over a century ago.

  Having drawn on the male garb, false beards and innovative titles of her female predecessors, Hatshepsut herself was the role model for Manetho’s subsequent female pharaohs. The next was named Acencheres in a garbled Greek version of Ankhkheperura, the throne name of Nefertiti, whose masculine-style attire fooled many historians into assuming that she was a he. Nefertiti became king in her own right after the death of her husband Akhenaten, although the couple’s attempts to reduce the power of the Amun clergy caused these priests to obliterate Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their immediate successors of the so-called Amarna Period (c. 1352-1323 BC) from their official records. So Manetho’s evidence for a female ruler at this time was presumably obtained from Thebes�
�� rival Memphis. A hint that these female rulers were still highly regarded in the northern capital is suggested by the fact that Memphis’ high priests continued to marry women with similar names, from the high priest Neskedty who married Sobeknefer and produced a daughter named Nefer(t)iti to the high priest Horemakhet, wed to a woman named Nefer(t)iti who produced a daughter with the same name.

  Nefertiti herself was buried in the Valley of the Kings, most likely in tomb KV.56 close to the Amarna-period tombs of her husband Akhenaten (KV.55) and his successor Tutankhamen (KV.62), but her body was at some stage reburied by the priests of Amun. Brutally damaged around the face, it was placed in a side chamber of another tomb, unwrapped and anonymous, in an attempt to ignore an identity that was too politically sensitive. In fact the entire Amarna period is generally interpreted as a cut-off point whose rulers were intentionally forgotten by succeeding kings.

  Yet women of the Amarna dynasty continued to marry into the royal house, to kings from Horemeheb to Seti II, which explains the jewellery found in Nefertiti’s likely tomb, KV.56, the ‘Gold Tomb’. Inscribed with the names of Seti II and his wife Tawosret, the jewellery was not made for wearing since the rings were far too small for adult fingers and the royal names would have appeared upside-down when worn. So they were presumably votive offerings for an illustrious predecessor: the jewellery’s motifs show Tawosret in the same formal pose adopted by Nefertiti, even standing in front of her husband to take precedence.

  With a name meaning ‘the Mighty One’, Tawosret ruled as regent until 1888 BC before taking full kingly titles as ‘Strong Bull beloved of Maat, Daughter of Ra, beloved of Amun, Tawosret’, combining male and female in names modelled on those of her grandfather Ramses II, whose official dress she also adopted. During a period of civil war, her memory was attacked after her death, her burial in the Valley of the Kings plundered and her empty tomb left open in a final epitaph to the last female pharaoh for almost a thousand years. Yet even though her name had been removed from the official records on the orders of a male successor claiming to have restored order, Manetho still found evidence for ‘King Thuoris’ ‘in whose time Troy was taken’, placing his fifth and final female pharaoh within a timeframe familiar to his Ptolemaic patrons.

  Having clearly learned much from her pharaonic as well as Ptolemaic predecessors, the bookish Cleopatra soon followed them in Auletes’ plans for the succession. In a great public ceremony held in Alexandria on 31 May 52 BC he presented all four remaining children with the title ‘Philadelphos’, ‘sibling-loving’, although only the sixteen-year-old Cleopatra was named Thea Philopator, ‘Father-Loving Goddess’, when she became full co-ruler and her father’s female counterpart.

  Auletes’ thirtieth regnal year was her first, so official documents covering mid-52 BC to mid-51 BC were dated ‘the thirtieth year which is also the first’. The co-rulers’ Macedonian-style marble portraits set up around Alexandria reveal the same gaunt face, wide Alexander-like eyes, prominent aquiline nose and rounded chin. The determined expression of one example identified as the young Cleopatra reveals a teenager who took her new role very seriously, with her Macedonian-style diadem worn low towards her face in the manner of a rather severe-looking Alice band. Yet her first official portraits had been made at Dendera, where work had progressed at such a pace that the subterranean crypts designed to house the temple treasury were finished and decorated within two years. Their walls were adorned with figures of the sixteen-year-old ruler Cleopatra, simply dressed in the finest linen robes and a plain broad collar necklace, the tall feather, horn and sun disc crown of Hathor-Isis over her long hair swept back behind her shoulders. The keeper of the all-important ankh ‘key of life’ symbol, which she held in one hand, she protectively raised the other to support her father as he made offerings to the temple’s gods.

  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 unt
il 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.’