The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  Alexandria had a very sizable Jewish population; some said there were more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem. That always puzzled me, since their great leader Moses had led them out of Egypt long ago, and they were ecstatic to be delivered. Why had they wished to return? In the Greek translation of their holy book—written here in Alexandria—it said that their god had forbidden them to return to Egypt. Why did they disobey?

  We went fishing in the papyrus marshes of Mareotis, the great lake that extended all along the back of Alexandria and then many miles to the west. Another time we got permission to visit one of the lesser embalming shops that clustered like flies outside the western walls of the city, near the tombs. Although Egyptians no longer had the elaborate monuments of former days, people who could afford it still preferred to be embalmed. Greeks had traditionally been cremated, but here in Alexandria these customs, like so many others, mixed, and many Greeks sought the embalming table of Anubis. The shops were busy, and on the day we went, the jolly proprietor had three mortal remains to make ready for the journey to the west.

  “It should properly take seventy days,” he told us. “Forty for the natron-drying, and then there is the wrapping, and—but now we have a quicker service. Everyone is in such a hurry now. Especially the Greeks. The pace of Alexandria extends even to her dead.”

  He showed us the various styles of coffins; many were covered with hieroglyphics, and I was proud that I could read much of it.

  Oh, we did many other things—we collected perfumes and unguents, which Alexandria exported. There was Balm of Gilead, crushed and incorporated into a jelly; a perfume from Mendes called “The Egyptian” that had balanos oil, myrrh, resin, and cassia; one called “Metopion” that had oil of bitter almonds scented with cardamom, sweet rushes from the sea of Gennesareth, and galbanum. Oil of lilies was strong, and combined with other oils and fats to make a popular ointment. We tried to make our own by melting fat and adding crushed roses and a few drops of lotus dew, but it did not smell very strong. The perfumers of Egypt have no equal in the world, and they guarded their secrets well. No shop admitted us to look on as they worked.

  All these preliminary activities were leading up to what we really hoped to do: visit the pyramids. They were situated not far from Memphis, where all the branches of the Nile come together and the Delta ends. It was a long journey from Alexandria, some hundred Roman miles down the Canopic branch of the Nile. We should have asked permission, and notified someone. We knew that, even at the time. But such is the nature of children longing for adventure that they would rather die than invoke the safety and protection of an adult. And it gave me such pleasure, for once, to give them the slip.

  Of course it was necessary to have an adult along, and Mardian’s uncle Nebamun, a low-ranking chamberlain at court, reluctantly agreed to take us, but only because he wished to return to Memphis himself and see his relatives.

  We told our attendants that we were to be going away, on a safe, quiet visit to see the Nile as it began its flooding. Living in Alexandria, we were not on the Nile itself, but some fifteen or twenty miles from its westernmost branch. My chamberlain, who was in reality my keeper (the guards having grown more lax as time went on), deemed it proper, and harmless enough, for me to go. Quietly, all over the palace grounds, the other five young, stalwart explorers were saying the same thing, and their attendants were likewise agreeing.

  We set out in the early dawn, being driven in three royal chariots down the broad street of the Soma until we reached the docks of Mareotis. The docks were busy; fishing boats had already made a run on Mareotis and were unloading their catch. Other vessels, which plied their way bringing the produce of Egypt, by way of the Nile, were crowding in and awaiting their turn to dock. Wine from the vineyards of Mareotis and the Delta, dates, papyrus, precious woods and spices from the lands of Punt and Somalia, porphyry from the eastern desert, obelisks from Aswan—all converged on the lake docks of Alexandria.

  Nebamun had hired a small boat to take us all the way to Memphis. It was large enough that we could sleep on it, for it was several days’ journey there. The prevailing wind at this time of year was in our favor, blowing exactly the way we wished to go, south against the current.

  We set sail eastward over the lake, just as the sun was rising. He—Re, the glorious sun—was emerging from the papyrus thickets and the rushes that bordered the shore, green and bristly. The early breeze swept across the water and filled our sail. We sailed straight toward Re.

  It was late in the afternoon before we reached the far side of the lake, where the canals connect to the Nile. The boatman cast a look at the sky, and indicated that we should drop anchor, sheltering among the reeds and the huge, cup-shaped leaves of the bean plants. It seemed a holiday sort of thing to do, and so we agreed.

  I awakened once in the middle of the night, hearing the gurgle of the water gently slapping the sides of the boat, the rustling of the papyrus stalks all around us, and the cry of a night heron somewhere in the thicket. I had never slept so well on my gilded bed in the palace.

  With the dawn, mists rose from the swamp as if they were night-spirits fleeing. As soon as Re appeared, they scattered. We were soon on the Nile, or what was called its Canopic branch.

  One of our school exercises was to memorize all seven branches of the Nile, and all educated Egyptians can do so: Canopic, Bolbitinic, Sebennytic, Phatnitic, Mendesian, Tanitic, Pelusic. They fan out from the main Nile and (to an ibis flying over them) have the shape of a lotus flower blooming from a stalk.

  The Canopic Nile is small. Date palms and vineyards dotted the fields surrounding it, where all was moist and fertile, with the lush greenness that comes only with living things; the malachite in the palace inlays and the emeralds that glowed in bracelets were dull beside this. Green is the most precious color in Egypt, as it is so hard-won against the desert.

  The river took on a greenish hue, which I was told is actually called “Nile green,” because there is no other shade in the world exactly like it.

  “But as the Nile rises, the color changes,” said Nebamun. “The life-giving material is brown, and Hapi, the Nile god, brings it from the source of the river far to the south. When it settles on our fields, it mixes with our old soil and rejuvenates it, by a miracle. Soon the rise will begin. It always happens just after the rising of Sirius in the eastern sky.”

  I smiled. Did he really believe in Hapi, the Nile god, with his pendulous breasts? I knew that one of my ancestors, Ptolemy III, had tried to discover the source of the Nile. Greeks believed in science, not gods, to explain things. Or, rather, they tried science first, and gave credit to the gods only when they could not find out the answers for themselves. Ptolemy III had failed in his quest. So perhaps it was Hapi after all.

  I lay back, trailing my hand in the water as we moved gently along, a boat seemingly sailing in green fields. As far as the eye could see, it was flat, and so fertile it looked like paradise. A thousand irrigation canals spread the Nile water everywhere, and the slow turns of the donkeys pulling the water wheels kept bringing the water up.

  There were clusters of mud-brick houses here, there, everywhere. The fields were full of people. It was all so different from Alexandria, with its blue sea and white marble; here the colors were green and brown. It was different in another way as well: the people looked all alike. They had the same skin color, the same hair, and wore the same type of clothes, whereas in Alexandria we had so many different nationalities that every street resembled a bazaar.

  The river was full of boats of all sizes: little reed ones with curved prows; wide, workaday barges carrying grain and building-stone; fishing boats with tiny sails; and cabin-boats with reed awnings for shelter from the sun. There was a holiday air on the river, as if we were all at the same party.

  Suddenly, Nebamun pointed to a trampled area of a vineyard. “Hippopotamus damage. Look!”

  A big swath indicated the path of something as big as an oxcart. “How do you know?”
asked Mardian.

  “Ah, my nephew, I see you are now truly a creature of the court. Had you grown up alongside the Nile, where you began, you’d know a hippo’s tracks well enough! Look how it came out of the water, see the path—it headed straight for the fields. Then you can see it doubling back again, turning—it must have been chased. Then, far ahead of us, see where it returns to the water. We’d best be careful. This means it could be waiting for us up ahead. I hate hippos! They make river travel so dangerous!”

  “Aren’t crocodiles worse?” asked Olympos.

  Nebamun looked amused at our ignorance. He pointed to where some brownish green shapes were lying, half invisible, in the reeds by the riverbank. I also saw some eyes looking out above the waterline; whatever was attached to them was well hidden. “Look where they lie, sunning themselves. They are dangerous for swimmers, or for anyone walking along the riverbanks, but not for boats. But the hippos! They lie half submerged, and suddenly rise up and overturn a boat! And when they are disturbed, or perhaps only hungry, they decide to go marauding in the fields! A croc will gobble up a swimmer, but he doesn’t invade your territory and wreck your boats and your crops. Give me a crocodile any day.”

  “If a hippo is so nasty, why then did you Egyptians make a hippo the goddess of childbirth?” asked Olympos, the young scientist-mind.

  “Taueret,” said Nebamun. “I really don’t know. I must admit, I don’t think of a hippo, even a pregnant one, as very motherly.”

  “Then what about the crocodiles?” Olympos persisted. “Isn’t there a crocodile god?”

  “I think there’s even a place where they’re kept, and worshiped!” cried Mardian. “Tell us!”

  Nebamun had to think. “That’s near Memphis, in the Moeris Oasis,” he finally said. “I have never been there. I have heard, though, that pilgrims go to make offerings at a lake with sacred crocodiles, where some of the animals wear gold and jewels on their forelegs and head-bumps.”

  We all began to laugh, uproariously.

  “Sobek is the name of the god who is manifested in the sacred crocodiles,” said Nebamun. “And the name of the landing where the temples are, and where the sacred creatures are fed, is Crocodilopolis.”

  Now we began to scream with laughter. A crocodile bedecked in jewels—imagine its crafty eye peeping out from under a golden bauble—its wrinkled, crooked legs wearing bracelets! And living near Crocodilopolis!

  “You are teasing us,” I finally said. “There is no such thing as a place called Crocodilopolis.”

  “I swear, by Amun himself, that it is true!” cried Nebamun.

  “Then you must promise to take us there!” said Mardian. “Yes, prove it to us!”

  “We won’t have time,” he said.

  “You just said it was near Memphis!”

  “The place where the Nile has a small branch going to the Moeris Oasis is more than fifty miles upstream, and then one has to go to the far side of the oasis. It would be almost as far as going back to Alexandria. We do not have that much time. People will begin to question our absence.”

  “But if we do have time?” said Olympos.

  “We won’t,” said Nebamun. “And once you see the pyramids and the Sphinx, you won’t care about Crocodilopolis.”

  At the sound of the name, we burst out into laughter again.

  We stopped that evening by the banks of the river, near a waterwheel and a well-trodden pathway leading down to the water. It looked as though it would be safe from crocodiles, for there was too much human activity. The hippo Nebamun had been on the lookout for remained submerged.

  Just at sunset, we clambered over the side of the boat to swim. In the past year I had become a respectable swimmer. The water was moving slowly past us as it made its unhurried way to the sea; we floated little reed boats on it and then tried to outswim the current. It was easy enough going downstream, but coming back up took all our strength. We played hiding games in the reeds, and pretended to be Horus attacking the evil Seth in the papyrus marsh, disturbing a large number of ducks and kingfishers in the process. The whir of their wings felt like gigantic fans as they flew away.

  Once again we were on our way before dawn, and before the day was over we had come to the place where all the branches of the Nile knitted themselves together and the river became one. The setting sun—Re in his form as Atum, the decrepit old man sinking in the west—bathed the wide bosom of the river in his magic gold, and as we sailed on it I felt a divine stirring.

  “We will rest here tonight, and then tomorrow—you will behold the pyramids!” said Nebamun.

  “I hope I won’t be disappointed,” said Olympos, echoing all our thoughts. It would be so unbearable if they were not worth the journey. Something would die in me, and I might never undertake a long journey again for the sake of the unknown.

  “Always the Greek,” said Nebamun. “Never willing to believe, always holding back, worrying in advance that something will not be what it claims to be.”

  “Yes, that is our curse and our glory,” Olympos said.

  “The Romans just take things as they are, and figure out a way to use them,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “Destroy them, you mean,” said Mardian.

  “I don’t think they decide that in advance,” I said. “I think their actions are pure that way—not bound by prior decisions.”

  “Yes, they just decide each time, independently, to destroy. There’s no suspense there. Look what they did to Carthage—leveled it and sowed the ground with salt.”

  “But, Olympos, they didn’t destroy Greece.”

  “No, only in spirit.”

  I laughed. “As if anything could destroy the Greek spirit! You are hardly spiritless!”

  “Something of the Greek spirit survives around the world, and a little may even have seeped into some Romans, but—what was truly Greek has perished. Except in Alexandria, which has more of the Greek spirit than Athens itself now.”

  “All things pass away,” said Nebamun. “Except the pyramids.”

  Very early, before there was any stirring on the boat, I was awake. Excitement had kept me from sleeping much all through the night; now that I was on the brink of seeing the pyramids and the wonders of Old Egypt, I was seized with trembling expectation. We were famous the world over for our enormous monuments and statues, the size of which made it seem we once must have been a race of giants, to have created them and set them up. They made us seem different from all other people, with a secret knowledge or power.

  But when it came down to it, what secrets did we possess? And of what use would they be against Roman power? Whatever knowledge had raised the pyramids that might still reside in Egyptians today—how did that help against Roman legions, Roman siege machines, Roman catapults?

  Only the power of the gods could stand against them. I knew that even then, O Isis. Only you, and Amun, and Osiris. And yet they had Jupiter, and Hercules….

  In the fresh morning gold of sunshine, thin and without heat, we sailed up the Nile, looking to the western bank for our first glimpse of the pyramids. The seemingly endless green of the Delta fields had been replaced by a narrower ribbon of green on either side of the river, and just beyond that, as if someone had drawn a line, the desert began. The golden sand lay flat and expressionless, like the face of a god, stretching into eternity beyond our eyesight.

  The sun rose higher; the air on the horizon shimmered. Then, from a great distance—their tips caught the light and flashed. Three of them, winking in the sun.

  “Look!” cried Mardian. “Look! Look!”

  At first they seemed to be supernaturally huge, or we could not have seen them from afar. But as we glided upstream, coming closer, they shrank into just large buildings, like the Lighthouse. As we made for the landing, and the pyramids were framed behind farmers with donkeys and carts, they seemed to shrink still further, becoming almost ordinary.

  We hired donkeys to take us the three or so miles to the monuments, and very glad we
were to have done so, for as the sun rose higher and there was no shade anywhere, the sands heated to a foot-burning temperature. We were plowing through the golden sea of sand to what looked like piles of exactly the same material, except that the corners were very sharp. There was no wind, just the stillness and the heat.

  The pyramids grew until they seemed to fill the sky; and when at last we stood at the base of one and looked up, it seemed entirely possible that the tip touched the sun. I know now that it looked like a mountain; but then I had never seen a mountain, and it staggered me. I knew only flatness, only the horizontal—the smoothness of the ocean, the straight, wide streets of Alexandria, the level fields surrounding the river—and this mound, this vertical thrusting, I could not understand.

  The polished stones gleamed, reflecting the sun like an amber mirror. It was hard, vast, impenetrable. Nowhere was there a single ornament, facing, detail, window, ledge—just this sloping, shining ramp of stones, vanishing into the sky. I felt dizzy. The heat, rising from the sand and blazing down from the sun overhead, and the fierce light made my head spin. Suddenly I knew it was dangerous to remain there. The pyramid wanted to do us harm, strike us down.

  “Shade!” I said. “Is there no shade anywhere?”

  The sun was almost directly overhead, and the giant structures cast no shadows.

  Nebamun brought forth parasols. “Only this,” he said. I gave thanks that he had thought of them. “There is shelter under the chin of the Sphinx,” he said. “We can wait there.”

  He mounted his donkey and set out toward the Sphinx, its head peering above the sand. We should have felt the same awe and fear in its presence, but it seemed almost friendly in comparison to the pyramids. It offered us shelter, and it looked like a person, and it did not house anything long dead and hostile.