by Pat Brown
No structures built by the Ptolemies currently exist, so we cannot differentiate between their temples and tombs (I will call the funerary temples “tombs” to make it simple). History, however, records Cleopatra’s great Caesarium as being right in town at the harbor; and outside of town is a burial ground, a place known as the Al Qabbari Necropolis, which was discovered by forensic anthropologists of the Centre d’Études Alexandrines, directed by Jean-Yves Empereur. Mummified skeletal remains dating back to the Hellenistic era (323–146 BCE) in forty-two collective burial chambers were found by accident during road construction just west of the city in 1999. There is another tomb in the town of Stagni, only 350 yards west of the Al Qabbari burial chambers, which are actual aboveground chambers carved into the large rock. Here we find a big stone cube with just one sealed entrance containing a chamber and a number of small rooms (it has subsequently been removed from the rock and stands freely in a garden at the Kom el-Shuqafa catacombs). The subterranean Macedonian Alabaster Tomb, likely built around 300 BCE and uncovered in 1907 in El Shatby, Egypt, lies east of modern downtown Alexandria and only a few blocks east of the ancient royal palace. The existence of this tomb might indeed indicate that there was a royal cemetery closer to town than others in Egypt. However, the location of this underground tomb is to the east of Cape Locias, so while it is close to the sea, it is not on a harbor or near the docks as the Caesarium is, the location that approximates where Plutarch places Cleopatra’s mausoleum.
One thing is clear from exploring each and every one of the tombs (funerary temples): namely, not one of them has windows to look out of, to haul bodies through, or to allow light and air inside. Tombs were sealed boxes, sometimes a number of sealed boxes, that occasionally had passageways leading to the sealed boxes. Only someone carrying a torch could find his or her way, and then for only a short time since the air supply was limited. The tombs were dark graves meant to keep mummified bodies intact and their valuables for the afterlife safe from grave robbers.
Therefore, tombs had no windows. In fact, Macedonian tombs, which the Ptolemaic tombs were modeled after, were blocks of stone with an arched roof, the entire structure being covered over with dirt to bar the entranceway. But Plutarch says that the edifice in which Cleopatra had locked herself had windows, along with some other very odd features for a tomb. Here is the very illustrative part of Plutarch’s story about Cleopatra and her sojourn in the mausoleum, a portion of his narrative that is full of fascinating and curious details.
At daybreak, Antony in person posted his infantry on the hills in front of the city, and watched his ships as they put out and attacked those of the enemy; and as he expected to see something great accomplished by them, he remained quiet. But the crews of his ships, as soon as they were near, saluted Caesar’s crews with their oars, and on their returning the salute changed sides, and so all the ships, now united into one fleet, sailed up towards the city prows on. No sooner had Antony seen this than he was deserted by his cavalry, which went over to the enemy, and after being defeated with his infantry he retired into the city, crying out that he had been betrayed by Cleopatra to those with whom he waged war for her sake. But she, fearing his anger and his madness, fled for refuge into her tomb and let fall the drop-doors, which were made strong with bolts and bars; then she sent messengers to tell Antony that she was dead. Antony believed that message, and saying to himself,
“Why doest thou longer delay, Antony? Fortune has taken away thy sole remaining excuse for clinging to life,” he went into his chamber. Here, as he unfastened his breastplate and laid it aside, he said: “O Cleopatra, I am not grieved to be bereft of thee, for I shall straightway join thee; but I am grieved that such an imperator as I am has been found to be inferior to a woman in courage.”
Now, Antony had a trusty slave named Eros. Him Antony had long before engaged, in case of need, to kill him, and now demanded the fulfillment of his promise. So Eros drew his sword and held it up as though he would smite his master, but then turned his face away and slew himself. And as he fell at his master’s feet Antony said: “Well done, Eros! though thou wast not able to do it thyself, thou teachest me what I must do”; and running himself through the belly he dropped upon the couch. But the wound did not bring a speedy death. Therefore, as the blood ceased flowing after he had lain down, he came to himself and besought the bystanders to give him the finishing stroke. But they fled from the chamber, and he lay writhing and crying out, until Diomedes the secretary came from Cleopatra with orders to bring him to her in the tomb.
Having learned, then, that Cleopatra was alive, Antony eagerly ordered his servants to raise him up, and he was carried in their arms to the doors of her tomb. Cleopatra, however, would not open the doors, but showed herself at a window, from which she let down ropes and cords. To these Antony was fastened, and she drew him up herself, with the aid of the two women whom alone she had admitted with her into the tomb. Never, as those who were present tell us, was there a more piteous sight. Smeared with blood and struggling with death he was drawn up, stretching out his hands to her even as he dangled in the air. For the task was not an easy one for the women, and scarcely could Cleopatra, with clinging hands and strained face, pull up the rope, while those below called out encouragement to her and shared her agony. And when she had thus got him in and laid him down, she rent her garments over him, beat and tore her breasts with her hands, wiped off some of his blood upon her face, and called him master, husband, and imperator; indeed, she almost forgot her own ills in her pity for his. But Antony stopped her lamentations and asked for a drink of wine, either because he was thirsty, or in the hope of a speedier release. When he had drunk, he advised her to consult her own safety, if she could do it without disgrace, and among all the companions of Caesar to put most confidence in Proculeius, and not to lament him for his last reverses, but to count him happy for the good things that had been his, since he had become most illustrious of men, had won greatest power, and now had been not ignobly conquered, a Roman by a Roman.
Scarcely was he dead, when Proculeius came from Caesar. For after Antony had smitten himself and while he was being carried to Cleopatra, Dercetaeus, one of his body-guard, seized Antony’s sword, concealed it, and stole away with it; and running to Caesar, he was the first to tell him of Antony’s death, and showed him the sword all smeared with blood. When Caesar heard these tidings, he retired within his tent and wept for a man who had been his relation by marriage, his colleague in office and command, and his partner in many undertakings and struggles. Then he took the letters which had passed between them, called in his friends, and read the letters aloud, showing how reasonably and justly he had written, and how rude and overbearing Antony had always been in his replies. After this, he sent Proculeius, bidding him, if possible, above all things to get Cleopatra into his power alive; for he was fearful about the treasures in her funeral pyre, and he thought it would add greatly to the glory of his triumph if she were led in the procession. Into the hands of Proculeius, however, Cleopatra would not put herself; but she conferred with him after he had come close to the tomb and stationed himself outside at a door which was on a level with the ground. The door was strongly fastened with bolts and bars, but allowed a passage for the voice. So they conversed, Cleopatra asking that her children might have the kingdom, and Proculeius bidding her be of good cheer and trust Caesar in everything.
After Proculeius had surveyed the place, he brought back word to Caesar, and Gallus was sent to have another interview with the queen; and coming up to the door he purposely prolonged the conversation. Meanwhile Proculeius applied a ladder and went in through the window by which the women had taken Antony inside. Then he went down at once to the very door at which Cleopatra was standing and listening to Gallus, and he had two servants with him.3
I pulled out from my briefcase the photos I had taken while visiting the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae. As I looked over the photos, I saw windows, fou
r windows high up on the front-facing pylon walls at Luxor, a double row high up on the pylons at Karnak, and a few on the pylon walls of the Temple of Isis. It is clear that these windows were perfectly stationed on the outer walls (the walls that protected the inner buildings and grounds of the temple) on either side of the huge door between the pylons that opened into the inner sanctuary.
I had to snicker a bit at this point as I reviewed the placement of the windows in these temple pylons. They were about four stories high. Is it really believable that Cleopatra, a woman of nearly forty years who (for a lifetime) had her every need catered to by her servants, that she and two handmaidens actually had the strength to haul a dying Antony, a strong warrior of some weight, up four stories on a rope? For that matter, why in the world would they do such a cruel thing, making him endure such bruising and scraping along the pylon walls? Why not simply open the door?
Speaking of doors, it seems a bit odd to me that the door to the tomb Plutarch describes would be bolted from the inside. Did the dead of the day actually lock themselves in, or was an innocent person always placed in the tombs with the dead to throw the sealing bolt? In fact, from what I have been able to gather, both Egyptian and Macedonian tombs had heavy doors placed in the doorframes that were the openings to the tombs, and then the doors were sealed, either by granite plugs and wax in the spaces around the doors or by building walls of heavy limestone brick on the outside of the doors, and burying the tombs under dirt the rest of the way.
On the other hand, there were priests inside religious temples (not tombs), and they did bolt and unbolt the doors to the sanctuary on a regular basis.
The common form of Egyptian bolt for a two-leaf door is a piece of metal or wood flat on one leaf and rounded on the other which slides in two staples on one leaf and in one or two on the other. An examination of door-frames in the temples shows clearly not only that vertical bolts were used which engaged into the sill and the lintel, and bolts for single-leaf doors engaging in the jamb, but that the doors could be barred from the inside, recesses into which the bar was slipped was not uncommon for temple doors.4
So Plutarch’s mentions of both windows and a bolted door lead me to believe that we are indeed looking at a cult temple as the location where Cleopatra spent her last few days until she was captured. If her son, Caesarion, made a stop on his way to Berenice at the temple of Dendera, a temple on the Nile thirty-seven miles north of Luxor, he would be at the only site in Egypt where depictions of the queen and Caesarion, as coregents, remain to this day on the outer rear wall. The temple itself is the most complete building of its type still standing—as close a construction as one can find in Egypt that would be similar to the magnificent Caesarium in Alexandria, and its structure tells us a lot about the building Plutarch is actually speaking of when he describes the “tomb” Cleopatra was hiding in.
Upon entering the Dendera site, one passes through what is left of the pylons at the front of the sanctuary, just the doorframe. Then there is a long space that would have been the open forecourt, and then one enters the magnificent hypostyle hall, a huge interior with massive pillars that support the roof, which still actually exists at Dendera. University of Bologna professor Sergio Pernigotti describes temples of ancient Egypt quite well; the following depicts as exactly as possible what Dendera must have looked like, and no doubt how the Caesarium would have appeared as well.
The Egyptian temple, as we know it from the beginning of the second millennium to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, was of a standard type, regardless of size. Whether large (in some cases, very large) or small, it always contained the same elements, linked to one another in an almost unvarying scheme. The temple was sited in a vast area surrounded by a wall of unbaked, and often impressively large, bricks. This wall sometimes enclosed less important religious buildings, as well as other structures, also built of unbaked brick, such as service facilities, warehouses, and the homes of the priests, other temple functionaries, guardians, and administrative personnel.
The temple itself was a long building composed of a series of sections in which the roof gradually became lower and the floor higher, until the chapel was reached. The chapel contained the tabernacle holding the image of the god to whom the temple was dedicated. Anyone entering the temple passed through the monumental gate at the same level as the first pylon, moving from the bright sunlight of the open forecourt through the shadows of the hypostyle hall, and into the increasing darkness of the rooms leading to the sanctuary and of the rooms that sometimes surrounded it.5
The forecourt offered a fine location for Cleopatra to actually make a fire if she wanted to pretend to burn up her treasure or, in my opinion, to send up smoke as a signal for the battle to begin (and to make Octavian believe she was actually still in the temple when, in fact, she would be sailing out of the harbor). I had walked through the stunning hypostyle hall of the Dendera temple complex, explored the underground tunnels where Antony’s son no doubt would have attempted to hide once the Caesarium was breached, and up to the roof where I could stand and view the landscape for miles around and, where Cleopatra on her roof at the Caesarium, could view progress of her plan of action. I also noted that with so large a complex, with so many rooms, corridors, and cubbyholes, Octavian would have had to embark upon a lengthy search of the place to ensure that Cleopatra had not hidden anything useful inside, like poison. For a tomb, yes, he could easily check the few empty rooms and see that nothing was tucked away inside, but a temple would take days to search. He would have to station guards inside with Cleopatra and her handmaidens if he wanted to ensure that they had nothing inside that they could use in a lethal manner.
After being able to experience the Dendera, a structure so much like the Caesarium, it is easier to understand what actually occurred on the grounds of the temple when Cleopatra’s plan fell apart.
Let me stop here to recall the part of Plutarch’s story in which he claims Antony stabs himself, and the Roman general and Cleopatra are reunited at the “tomb.”
Antony supposedly has just seen the navy surrender and suspects Cleopatra has betrayed him. Cleopatra is terrified of Antony’s anger, so she runs into her tomb, lets fall the drop-doors, and bolts them. Then she sends word to Antony that she is dead. Antony decides to kill himself as well. He takes off his breastplate and asks his slave Eros to stab him. Eros can’t bring himself to do it, and instead kills himself. Then, Antony, feeling bested by his slave in courage, runs his sword through his belly and drops on the sofa. He doesn’t die right away, but is bleeding profusely and, somehow, Cleopatra finds out what has happened and sends his men to carry him to the tomb; yet, when they arrive, she won’t open the door. Instead, she drops ropes down from a window, and she and her ladies haul him up. Meanwhile, Antony’s bodyguard Dercetaeus runs Antony’s sword over to Octavian and tells him Antony is dead.
There is quite a bit of nonsense in Plutarch’s creative writing, but let me focus here on the demise of Antony. Having already established that Cleopatra expected no favors from Octavian, I hardly think surrendering to him would serve much purpose. But Plutarch says she does this behind Antony’s back, betraying him and then hiding in her tomb, behind heavy, bolted doors because she was so frightened of his anger. This is a laughable story. Why would she worry about Antony’s anger and not Octavian’s? And what of the burning of the treasure? Wasn’t that the reason she was locked up in the tomb? A convoluted and unconvincing story it is that Cleopatra surrendered, hid, and then sent over to Antony a phony story of her death. Then, forgetting Cleopatra’s supposed betrayal and feeling anguished over the fact that the women he loves is dead, he commits suicide (although not immediately successfully). Yet, when he hears Cleopatra lied to him about being dead, he wants to be with her, to die in the arms of the woman who has been horribly disloyal to him. Meanwhile, Dercetaeus, his bodyguard, runs off to Octavian with Antony’s sword to prove he was dead even though the surrender had already occurred.
My head is spinn
ing at Plutarch’s contorted logic. I find the idea of Cleopatra sending over false stories of her death and Antony subsequently committing suicide highly improbable. It is far more likely that Antony’s men realized it was going to mean their annihilation to fight Octavian, so in desperation they did what they had to do: they assassinated their general. Then, they surrendered to Octavian as most everyone else had already done. When the deed was accomplished, the sword was brought by Dercetaeus to Octavian to prove Antony had been dispatched. The same message was delivered to the harbor, and the men on Antony’s ships raised their oars and conceded to Octavian’s fleet. Where, exactly, Antony would have been murdered that morning—on the top of the Paneium overlooking Alexandria, or in his quarters, or outside the temple while en route to say good-bye to Cleopatra and the children—is of little importance, but the likelihood that the assassination was premeditated prior to the exact moment is something to strongly consider. Men do what is expedient, and Antony’s desire to fight, while it served his purposes (to save his children and Cleopatra and to be his final moment of glory), would have been suicide for the Roman soldiers.
If Antony was not murdered outside the door of the temple, but taken down at another location, he was likely brought to Cleopatra to let her know the battle, and her plan to escape, was over and finished. If so, perhaps Antony’s men felt some remorse over killing their leader and thought it would at least be right to bring him to the queen. Then again, perhaps they disliked the queen enough to wish to dump Antony’s body at her door to let her know they held her responsible for his demise.
At the moment Antony was struck down, Cleopatra was most likely either on the roof of the temple or at one of the windows. Her men were on guard at the door, and other men were standing ready in the open forecourt to light a fire. The forecourt of an Egyptian temple is a huge open space with all the air in the world to get a blazing fire started and unleash a towering plume of smoke. From her high vantage point in the temple, Cleopatra would have seen her doom sealed. She would see Antony murdered (if it happened as he was coming to say farewell and take her and the children to her ship), and she would have known immediately that the plan was blown. Or, if he was murdered elsewhere, she would have observed the ships surrendering and turning back. With a dying or deceased Antony now lying in front of the temple, she simply would have ordered her men to unbolt the front door and bring him in. No elaborate methods of receiving her husband would have been necessary.