I heard his voice in my ear, softer even than a whisper—or was it merely inside my own head?—saying that all would be well, but I must stop this mourning, I must rise from the sickbed and be the Cleopatra he admired for her strength and ingenuity. That was the true Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt and wife of Caesar, not this weak creature weeping and lamenting and languishing.
You must bear losses like a soldier, the voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong.
The comet blazed, commanding my attention, saying, Take heed!
And I said, “Yes, I do,” and felt joy for the first time since his death—or rather, as I knew it now to be, his departure.
I lay back down and watched the comet, closing my eyes and letting it hang over me all night.
Far away in Rome, unknown to me at the time, Octavian also saw the comet, which appeared just as he was holding his Caesarean games between July twentieth and thirtieth. It caused a sensation among the populace, who also interpreted it as I had: They knew it was Caesar, being accepted into the panoply of gods.
Octavian at once announced his “father’s” divinity, and affixed the supernatural star to the brow of Caesar’s statues and declared that henceforth all coins would depict Caesar wearing his celestial star.
And, also unknown to me at the time, Octavian took the comet to be a summons to himself, announcing his destiny and calling on him never to rest until he had avenged Caesar’s murder.
Both of us called to arms by Caesar that night—both of us wishing to avenge him and complete his work—both of us needing to destroy the other to do so. Caesar had two sons, but there could be only one heir. Caesar had a vision of his future world empire—but was it to be centered in Rome or Alexandria? Would it be western or eastern in location and spirit? And who would preside over it?
The astrologers were abuzz with excitement about the comet, which remained in the sky for many days, and held nightly gatherings in the Museion to study it. From as far away as Parthia astronomers and astrologers came—they were honored with the title magi, or wise men—to meet with their fellow scholars. Once again Alexandria was the center of intellectual excitement, and I took great pride in that. I met with them myself one evening, asking them to draw up some astrological charts for Caesarion and Ptolemy and me.
They were gathered in the circular marble hall of the building, in its very center. Most of them wore Greek dress, but the foreigners wore their long embroidered robes and two Egyptians from Upper Egypt wore the ancient costume of the Nile.
“Gentlemen, I am surprised that you are not outside studying the comet and the heavens directly,” I told them. Rolls of charts were spread out on folding tables, along with mathematical books.
“Some of us are,” said Hephaestion, our leading astronomer. “The viewing platform on the roof is very crowded. The rest of us are working on the charts down here, amending them.”
“Had you predicted this comet?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted. “No, it was a complete surprise.”
That strengthened the proof that this was no ordinary comet, but a supernatural appearance. “What is your conclusion about it?”
“It is miraculous,” he said. “It must portend some event of great importance. The birth of a child, perhaps, who will fulfill one of the many prophecies?”
No, that was not it. Caesarion had already been born, and the next baby lost. Even Octavian—should he fancy the comet was for him—was already eighteen. Could it be interpreted by him—erroneously, of course—as marking his taking Caesar’s place in Rome? “No, that cannot be,” I said impatiently. “More likely it announces the world upheaval that started with Caesar’s death.”
He nodded in assent, just to be polite. I looked over at all the scholars pouring over their charts and arguing. “Can you deliver these horoscopes to the palace within three days?” I asked, presenting him with the data. I was most anxious to peek behind the workings of fate and see what was ahead.
Again, he bowed politely.
When the horoscopes were duly presented, I discovered that even though the astrologers had used the most ambiguous and soothing language, the stars were not kind to Ptolemy. As for Caesarion and myself, our destinies were intertwined, taking strength from each other. The fulsome prediction for me was that I would die as I wished, and live eternally. The words shimmered—did it mean “die as I would like to die, in the manner in which I would like to,” or did it mean “die because I would wish to”? Astrologers! But as for Ptolemy—I saw now that I would have to take him to Upper Egypt for the winter, if he had any hopes of recovery.
“But I don’t want to go,” he protested, when I told him. “I want to stay here. There is nothing up there—nothing but palm trees, mud huts, and crocodiles!”
Yes, plenty of crocodiles. Reports had just come in that there seemed to be a plague of them. Suddenly the Nile above Thebes was swarming with them, and so many crocodiles were basking on the sandbanks that it looked like a forest of wrinkled logs spread out on each side.
“Upper Egypt is very beautiful,” I said, remembering my voyages there. I had found it peaceful and lulling. “I will come with you, help settle you. We will stop at the shrine of Kom Ombo and pray to the crocodile deity there to call back his plague of crocodiles. And you shall see Philae, the most beautiful temple of Egypt, set on an island in the Nile.”
He made a face. “I don’t care about that! I want to stay here and help design the play-trireme they are making for Caesarion!”
“I will have them wait until you return,” I assured him. “Caesarion is too small to go out alone in it yet.”
For the first part of our journey, he was sulky. He did not wish to watch as the Nile and the land slid past us, but I paid careful attention to the condition of the irrigation ditches and dikes, especially in the Delta, which depended on irrigation. The waters had not started rising down here yet—it took almost twenty days before the flood reached us from the First Cataract.
In spite of his fierce words, Ptolemy lay listlessly under a canopy, scowling and coughing. He was clearly miserable.
We passed the pyramids, and he scarcely looked up at them. We passed by Memphis, passed the Moeris Oasis, passed Ptolemais, the last Greek outpost on the Nile. The river began to swell with the inundation. We had come to it, rather than waiting for it to come to us in Alexandria.
The river widened into a lake, and still we sailed onward, past Dendera with its Temple of Hathor, then past Thebes with its enormous Temple of Amun and its outsized statues of Ramses seated before his mortuary temple. The bleak hills where the dead Pharaohs held court in their rock-hewn chambers stretched far away from our line of vision.
Suddenly the river began to boil with the shapes of crocodiles. Everywhere I looked, there were the ripples in the water where a scaled back would break the surface; there were churning pockets in the reeds. Along the mudbanks they were lined up, some yawning and exposing gleaming curved teeth. They thrashed their tails slowly, and wiggled in the mud to settle themselves.
“Look!” I said, shaking Ptolemy, who was dozing in the midday heat. “Have you ever seen so many?”
He opened his eyes groggily, but they widened at the sight. “Great Serapis!” he exclaimed. “All the crocodiles in the whole world must be collected here!”
In fascination we watched while a dog came down to drink at a place on the bank that looked deserted. He approached warily, but thirst was his master and he had to drink. Gingerly he lowered his muzzle down to the surface of the empty-seeming water. He had barely touched it when an enormous shape rose up and snatched him, so quickly that my eye could barely follow the motion. A crocodile had been waiting, submerged.
The water frothed and the dog, yelping, shot above it, held in the grip of a crocodile jaw the size of a plow. The crocodile plunged him beneath the wa
ter and held him there until he drowned. Then the outsized jaw surfaced, its maw open, gulping down globs of flesh that had been alive only moments before. Blood spread out over the water and a flotilla of crocodiles rushed toward it, attacking the first crocodile and trying to wrench his meal from his jaws. Limbs and scaled tails lashed in the bloody water.
Pieces of the dog, its ears and tail, floated free but were soon snatched by other waiting crocodiles.
I shuddered. No wonder the villagers had sought help from the government; they could scarcely obtain water for themselves. I saw that the lone village water dipper was now enclosed by a high mud-brick wall, barricaded in. No one could dare approach the river to fill water jugs or wash clothes. And as the river flooded beyond its banks, it would wash the crocodiles out into the streets and houses. There would be crocodiles wandering the streets at noon, crocodiles lurking under benches, crocodiles napping in the shade behind buildings.
Ptolemy struggled to sit up and make his way to the rail. He hung over it, fascinated by the beasts.
“Don’t stand too close,” I warned him. I had seen how far out of the water a crocodile could lunge.
When at last we reached the temple of Kom Ombo, the sun was setting. I knew we could not make the proper supplications before darkness closed in, and so I gave orders for us to anchor offshore, far from the rustling reeds and from the sandbanks that were covered with the draped forms of crocodiles.
“No sleeping out on deck,” I told Ptolemy. The crocodiles would probably be prowling about, watching for a dangling arm. Crossly, he obeyed and came in to his bed in the cabin, flinging himself down. He fell asleep almost immediately.
I lay in the darkness, listening to the lapping of the water against the side of the boat, hearing—or imagining I heard—other sounds as well: of big, muscular animals slapping against the boards, or trying to claw their way up onto the deck. In the early dawn I rose and, drawing a mantle around me, stood and watched the sun rise. It touched the swaying reeds, kissed the golden sandstone of the temple, lighting first its roof and upper columns. Purple clouds still lingered, with a few stars on their fringes behind the temple.
My father had built part of the temple, and very proud of it he had been. On the temples of Upper Egypt he had been—carved in stone, at least—the warrior king he had not been in the flesh. I remembered my excitement when he had brought me here as a child to show me the new pylon and columns, and had kept me up late at night telling me about the caravan trade running from Kom Ombo to the Red Sea, where once the African elephants had been brought north to be trained for the Egyptian army. It had seemed a magical place then, and this morning it still cast a spell.
In the reeds a stirring announced that the crocodiles were beginning their day, and it was time we did, too.
A long gangplank was flung across the mudbank, with protective mesh on each side, and we hurried across it, alerting the crocodiles, which were still sluggish in the early light. We climbed quickly up the little hill where the temple reared itself above a bend in the Nile, looking out over the countryside. The golden pillars, carved with scenes of all the rulers who had helped build the temple, greeted us. There was one of my father being ceremonially cleansed by Horus and Sobek, for this temple was dedicated to both the falcon god and the crocodile god. Sobek, the crocodile god, stood taller than a man, with a man’s body, broad shoulders, and kilt, and then the snouted head of a crocodile, wearing a headdress and crown. His shrine and hall were on the right, and we made our way into them, passing through the roofed hall from the honeyed sunlight outside to ever-increasing dimness, and finally to the inner darkness of Sobek’s sacred shrine.
We lit candles, and approached the shrine holding the divine statue of the god, carved of dark granite. From inside the shrine the eyes of the god glared back at us, white and rounded, the perfectly rendered scales of his long snout making him look lifelike.
As Queen, and incarnation on earth of Isis herself, I spoke to him face-to-face. “Great Sobek, why do you trouble my land? Why have you sent out legions of crocodiles to infest the waters downriver from the First Cataract? Is there something you lack? Let me provide it, so that you may call your creatures home.”
The idol stared back at me, unyielding. The leaping flame of the candle played over his impassive features.
“I will provide what you lack, but I must ask you to desist from your attack on my land.”
Beside me, Ptolemy tugged at my gown. “Don’t sound so peremptory,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t talk to him like that.”
No, it was fitting. I was Queen, indwelt by Isis, and he was—let us be frank—a minor god, restricted to this little area. Other gods had beaten him back a long time ago, and Horus had even taken over half his temple.
“I leave you gifts here, Sobek, great god of the crocodiles, but in the name of Isis and of the people of Egypt, who are in my care, I insist that you call your creatures back.”
Or else Olympos and I would devise a way to poison the waters and kill the crocodiles.
Together, Ptolemy and I intoned a hymn of praise to Sobek and laid our gifts of flowers, wine, and precious ointment before his sacred barque. We stood in silence for a few moments, then departed.
The sun was well up now, and warming the courtyard of the temple. Over to one side stretched the necropolis of mummified crocodiles; on the other, a great rounded well attached to a lower Nilometer. I made my way over to it, and peered over the edge.
I was surprised to find that the water had not risen very high yet. Along the Nilometer’s wall the line of the “cubits of death” was clearly marked, below which famine would result. The Nile was still quite a bit below this cutoff point, but the season of flooding should be well advanced by now. I felt a wave of unease.
We hastened back to the boat, rushing over the gangplank serving as a bridge across the crocodiles, who were now eagerly awaiting food. They snapped to attention as our shadows flitted before their eyes; one large fellow opened his mouth, displaying rows of teeth and a fat, healthy tongue, as pink as a flower. Obviously, Sobek was taking good care of his own.
Now may Isis be so kind to us as Sobek is to his creatures! I prayed. We would press on to Philae, lay our concerns before the great goddess, and give Ptolemy up into her care.
It was another day’s sail up the gently swelling Nile before we reached the vicinity of the First Cataract. The usual roar of it was muffled, because the water had risen high enough that many of the sharp rocks were submerged, and we could sail—albeit very carefully—through the area that was normally so dangerous. The wide bosom of the water looked lustrous and pearly, reflecting the sky at twilight, where we anchored within sight of Philae.
In the dying light, the tiny island glowed from hundreds of votive candles left by pilgrims. Although the walls of the great Temple of Isis were made of sandstone, tonight they looked like the thinnest alabaster, white and translucent.
I had vowed never to return, after the strange ceremony I had gone through there with Caesar, which afterward seemed a mockery. Now I was not so sure. Perhaps ceremonies—even ones recited in unknown tongues—have a power in and of themselves. Perhaps Caesar had found himself bound by it after all.
One by one the lights flickered out, snuffed by the wind, and the outline of the temple faded. It remained only faintly illuminated by the struggling half moon that hung impaled by the reeds growing everywhere.
I lay on my bed, feeling the warm wind caressing me, feeling protected by Isis, hovering over her holy island.
We went ashore at first light, before the throng of pilgrims would arrive. We wanted time alone with the goddess. Ptolemy seemed especially listless, and had trouble walking the short distance from the landing area to the gateway of the temple.
“Look!” I said, pointing to the first pylon, where our father was depicted in full glory, armored, smiting enemies.
“Yes, yes, I see,” he said wearily.
A white-robed priest of Isis met
us, bowing low. “Your Majesties,” he said, his voice low and melodious. “In the name of Isis, we welcome you to the shrine.”
“We have come to petition the goddess for healing,” I said.
“Ah yes,” he replied, moving his head to indicate all the offerings left in the courtyard. “Many hundreds come here—tribes of Nubians from the south, Greeks, Arabs, even Romans. This is the premier site of healing, the fountain of it, so near the source of the Nile. And the burial place of Osiris. It is truly holy ground.” He looked at Ptolemy kindly, and would have reached out to touch him, but it was forbidden.
I put my arm around Ptolemy’s shoulder. “May we approach the sanctuary?” I asked. “Our gift-bearers follow.” I indicated the four menservants, dressed in the requisite new unbleached linen, carrying gold caskets with myrrh, gold, cinnamon, and sacred white sweet wine from Mareotis.
The priest turned and, walking in the slow, measured steps of ceremony, led us through the portals of the first pylon into the smaller court, and then through the second doorway that led into the darkened interior, where sacred chapels flanked the inmost holy of holies.
No natural light entered here; the stones were fitted together so closely that no seam was visible, keeping out the prying sun. In the left chapel, intricate candle stands flanked a life-size gold statue of Isis standing on a pedestal, throwing a soft yellow light upon her.
She was beautiful, serene, all-compassionate, all-wise. Gazing on her, I felt a tranquillity, a peace that I had seldom felt, and then only fleetingly.
O great goddess! I murmured to myself. How could I ever forget your face?
I bowed, feeling supremely blessed and yet supremely humble that I was chosen of all women on earth to be her mortal representative.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra Page 61