The Memoirs of Cleopatra Read online

  The murderers—three very ordinary-looking men—were rounded up and sent to Bibulus to answer to him. The Roman magistrate surprised us by acting in strictest legality. Although his sons had been killed, he said, Roman law forbade his dealing with the murderers; it was rightly a matter for the Senate to judge. He himself would not take direct vengeance on them.

  O Roman law! If ever I saw the murderers of my children, I would forget all about the law, except the eternal one of vengeance for a dead child—the prerogative of a mother. Laws can go only so far, and at the crucial moment they fail us. They are a poor substitute for justice. The Greek gods know more about that than the Roman law.

  The Bibulus affair turned the people against me so certainly that I could almost believe Pothinus had engineered it. (I know this was not true, but, Isis, why did the gods favor him?) There was murmuring about “the lover of the Romans,” “the Roman slave,” and how I was truly my father’s daughter. They had ousted him from the throne for groveling before Rome, and I was the same. Away with her!

  It did not help that, shortly after this, the son of Pompey came to Egypt to request troops and provisions for the coming clash with Caesar. We had to yield them, and so the troops ended up serving Rome after all. Sixty ships were dispatched, along with hundreds of soldiers. Pompey and his followers had been ejected from Italy by this Caesar, who had defied the Roman Senate and acted as if he commanded his own destiny. It was said he was lucky above all men; it was also said that his main weapon was speed, for he could appear at a site before his enemies realized he had even started out. They said he covered a hundred miles a day, making lightninglike strikes.

  I must here refute a piece of Roman propaganda, heaped on me with all the rest of Octavian’s later abuse: that the younger Pompey and I became lovers on his visit to Alexandria. I met him, I entertained him at banquets, and showed him the city with pride, but he never even touched my hand. To do so would have violated every principle of protocol. I was a virgin, and as protective of my chastity as Athena. Besides, he was not very attractive!

  The other thing that worked against me at the time was the Nile himself. At the last flooding he had not risen up to the level required, and so a famine was inevitable. Scientists had worked out a table of the exact degree the Nile must rise to guarantee crops, and the levels below that they called “the cubits of death.” In that year, the great river’s level fell within that death range.

  The gods send the waters, or withhold them, but the rulers are blamed. I gave orders for the grain from the previous season’s harvest to be rationed, but what happened is what always happens: there was not enough, although profiteers somehow managed to get their own supply. People were starving. In Alexandria, the riots began. In the countryside, there were threats of uprisings. The farther one went up the Nile into Upper Egypt, the greater the disaffection of the people. Being so distant, they had never really been welded to the Ptolemaic state, and now they were starting to pull away.

  At about this time the sacred bull of Hermonthis died, and the installation of his successor was to take place. This was an elaborate ceremony in which the new sacred bull must be escorted on the Nile to his holy precinct. Pharaohs had taken part in the water procession in times past, but no Ptolemy had ever done so. Hermonthis was one of the hotbeds of disaffection, a few miles upstream from Thebes. I thought it would be politically wise to partake of the ceremony. It would remove me from the intrigues of the palace for a while, and strengthen my position by allowing me to cultivate support in a dangerous area.

  Accordingly I set out in the royal barge. I looked forward to the journey, expected to take about ten days.

  I sat in the shelter at the stem of the barge, protected by awnings, and watched my countryside slide by. I saw how low the Nile was as we plied our way upriver, past the pyramids, past Memphis, its white wall gleaming in the noonday sun, past green fields studded with palm trees, banks lined with red-black earth, donkeys and waterwheels and houses of mud brick. The strip of land near the river was always the same; what changed was the background. The desert was sometimes golden and sandy behind it, other times an ashy white, bleached wilderness, other times rocky cliffs. The size of the ribbon of green waxed and waned, from less than a mile to almost ten, but always it stopped somewhere within eyesight and the desert took over.

  When the sun set, a red ball sinking into the diminished Nile and making him run red, light did not linger. Night came swiftly, a black, inky night with a million stars. Silence reigned, brooding over the desert just beyond us. It got cold, even in high summer.

  We passed the ruins of a stone city about three days’ sail past Memphis, and I asked our captain what it was. “The city of the heretic Pharaoh, may his name be lost forever,” he muttered.

  Akhenaten! I knew a little about him, about his breaking with the old gods and attempting to found a new religion based on a worship of Aten as the one god. The priests of Amun at Thebes had made short work of him. We were gliding past all that remained of his life and work. I was profoundly thankful that my dynasty had never attempted to quash any religion. No, we threw ourselves into them all with relish! The Ptolemies, and my father in particular, had been avid builders of temples in Upper Egypt in the old style. As a result, our temples were the most beautiful still standing in the land—Edfu, Esna, and Kom Ombo were famous now. A little way past the ill-fated Pharaoh’s city we passed the Hatnub alabaster quarries on the eastern bank, where so many of our perfume and ointment jars have their origin.

  Two days later we passed the town of Ptolemais. It was founded by the first Ptolemy; almost four hundred miles from Alexandria, it was the last Greek city outpost on the Nile. From here on, the foreign influence faded away.

  On the ninth day of our journey, the Nile took a sudden bend and we were sailing due east. Near the very elbow of the bend, at Dendera, we passed the Temple of Hathor, the goddess of love. It was a very recent one, with new sections having been built by my father. I could see it from the water, its carved columns visible above its brown mud-brick guard wall. I wished I had time to stop and visit it.

  Directly across, at the exact place where the river turns back west, was the town of Coptos. I was familiar with it because it was an important trade route. At this spot, where the Nile comes closest to the Red Sea, camel caravans set out to the ports, to fetch goods from Punt and Arabia. My father had been very interested in this trade route; he believed that Egypt should be looking farther east, to India, for her trading partners, leaving the Mediterranean to Rome.

  The earlier Ptolemies had founded a number of cities up and down the coast of the Red Sea, naming them after their queens: Cleopatris, Arsinoe, Berenice. Berenice, the one farthest south, was the point at which the elephants captured in Africa were ferried. Lately the elephant trade had fallen by the wayside. They were no longer the novelty in warfare that they once had been. Julius Caesar had perfected the technique of routing them, and now they had lost their superior value as a weapon of terror.

  Julius Caesar…I wondered about him. As a soldier, he seemed formidable and infinitely resourceful. The business with the elephants—why had no one before him exploited their weak points so effectively? The animals are easy to stampede: If they are frightened by a volley of stones and missiles, they turn and run over their own troops. For centuries elephants were coveted as war machines. Yet Caesar had lately rendered them almost obsolete. How could Pompey stand up against him? I wished we had not had to take sides. It boded ill for Egypt.

  A day’s sail farther took us to Thebes, with its massive temples. This was the stronghold of Old Egypt, and here the priests of the temples of Amun still wielded great power among the people. The fourth Ptolemy had been faced with a rival native dynasty from this area, and so preoccupied was he with putting an end to it that he lost most of Egypt’s overseas territory—territory never regained.

  The priests and their retinues lined the steps at the waterside, and I could hear their sour, dirgelike hol
y music as they greeted us in passing. Gigantic temples reared behind them, dwarfing them. The smell of incense wafted over the water.

  Across from Thebes itself lay the desolate, baking cliffs and valleys where the royal tombs were sculpted out of living rock. Here Queen Hatshepshut had set up her mortuary temple, a long, horizontal series of terraces and chambers built into the hard, bone-dry cliffs. Now her myrrh trees and fountains had turned to dust. Not far away were the great mortuary temples of Ramses II and Ramses III, as well as the Colossi of Amenophis III, seated statues over sixty feet high. But the priests, paid to perform rites forever in the temple, were as dead as their masters. The rites were forgotten, and only the stones remained. The temples, bones of that belief, lay radiating heat under the desert sun.

  A little farther, and Hermonthis, our destination, appeared on the western bank of the Nile. It was a small town, with little there except the Bucheum Temple and its enclosure where the sacred bull, believed to be incarnated by Amun, resided. Under the temple are long catacombs where the mummified bulls were entombed.

  The people lined the riverbanks, and the priests, with their shaven heads and white linen robes, stood ready to receive us. There was intent curiosity on all their faces. Is this really the Queen? they thought. May we approach? Is she truly a goddess?

  In that instant I was profoundly glad I had come all this way to be welcomed unequivocally at last. Let my brother stay behind in Alexandria, where we were treated as all too human—and disposable. I felt a soaring joy and release, as if I could breathe for the first time in my life.

  “Your Majesty,” the oldest priest said, “the sacred bull rejoices that you have come to escort him!”

  Even though I disliked bulls, I rejoiced as well.

  When the previous Buchis bull died, a search was made all up and down the Nile for his successor. The right one had been found quite nearby, to his owner’s delight.

  The ceremony consisted of loading the beast—who had to be dun-colored, with white horns and a white tail—onto a specially constructed boat, which docked near the bull’s breeding grounds a few miles upriver. He wore a crown of gold and lapis lazuli, and a face net to guard against flies. He was festooned with flower garlands, and his hooves were stained red, I noticed as his keeper led him over the gangplank. He seemed a very gentle bull, as bulls go. I hoped he had a long and uneventful tenure in Hermonthis, with cows to satisfy his every urge. It is not easy, being a holy thing and set apart.

  The silver-tipped oars on the boat sparkled as they emerged with each stroke, sending sprays of water high in the air. The bull was going to his destiny, and he rode placidly as the boat rocked on the water.

  There was much feasting, as is customary. The priests had prepared public banquets for all the people from the surrounding area, as a new bull’s installation is an uncommon occurrence. Most live to be over twenty.

  The high priest held a private feast for us, spreading a table with the produce of the area: onions, leeks, garlic, lentils, chickpeas, spinach, lettuce, and carrots. Goat and lamb, and game such as gazelle and ibex, were the meats. Out of deference to the sacred bull, beef was not eaten.

  “We will raise a ceremonial tablet to commemorate your being here,” said the high priest. “Forever and ever, as long as there are men to read, this deed will live on.”

  I was served a platter of the vegetables, sprinkled with oil from the bak tree, flavored with herbs. “Your harvest seems plentiful enough,” I said. “How have you gathered all this food, to feed not just us but the multitude?”

  He looked downcast. “I am afraid—I must confess to Your Majesty—that it was most difficult. The harvest was scanty, the Nile stingy in his bounty this year. You saw how high the landing was above the water? Usually the boats ride at a level even with the platform. Now you need a ladder.”

  “How are the people faring?”

  “There is no starvation yet. We pray we can outlast the time of want until the Nile rises once more.”

  Although we were as yet three days’ sail from Nubia, I noticed a number of distinctively Nubian faces among his servants and priests. I asked about it.

  “Oh yes, we find the Nubians to be very spiritual. They are attracted to temple service, and faithful. We are always pleased to welcome them.”

  The woman serving me was a tall Nubian with very graceful movements, as if she had been trained as a dancer.

  The host shook his head when I commented on it. “No, it is just her natural way. Nubians are lithe and elegant in all they do, from setting a dish on a table to the way they turn their heads. They are born with a sense of bodily dignity.”

  “What is your name?” I asked her. Her movements had captivated me.

  “Iras, Your Majesty,” she said. When I looked puzzled, she said, “It means ‘wool,’ eiras, because of my hair.” Her Greek was very good. I wondered where she had learned it. She must come from an educated family, or have received her education in Thebes or Hermonthis. Her hair was indeed woolly, thick, and worn in Nubian style, with the sides short.

  “I will do all in my power to help future harvests increase,” I promised the high priest. “The irrigation canals need to be deepened, I know that. They have silted up. This will be corrected.”

  “I will pray daily to Amun that this shall be so,” said the priest.

  I guessed his unspoken thought: I will pray daily that you stay on the throne to carry out your promise.

  We rested after the day-and-night-long ceremony in the palace attached to the Bucheum. I had meant to return to Alexandria within two or three days, but at dawn a messenger came. He had traveled at twice our speed by combining rowing with sailing. His news was grim: The Regency Council had seized power in the name of Ptolemy XIII, and I was declared deposed. My absence from Alexandria had been my undoing.

  So soon a queen, so soon unqueened! I could hardly believe it. That they would dare—!

  “It is true,” the man said. “I beg your pardon for bringing you this unwelcome news. But I thought it best your friends told you before you were officially informed, and before the rest of the country knew. So that you can—make your plans.”

  Yes. Make my plans. For I would not submit meekly. No, never!

  “I thank you.” Calmly I bade him wait. I asked Iras, who had been assigned to our quarters for our brief stay, to bring him water to wash with, wine to refresh him.

  “Gladly,” she said, gesturing—in her exquisite way—for him to follow her into another chamber.

  Outside, the sun was beginning to penetrate the golden haze that lay over the river at daybreak, gilding the reeds along the bank. The royal barge was tied up, waiting for me. I took several breaths of air, steadying myself on the windowsill.

  What should I do? I was here in Upper Egypt, in the place traditionally most hostile to the government of Alexandria. But they seemed to like and support me. Should I attempt to raise an army here? The best soldiers came from this area, and Achillas himself had his origin here.

  But how could I pay them? I had no money with me. The usurpers in Alexandria were now in control of the treasury as well as the Macedonian Household Guard and the Egyptian army. I could not equip an army, let alone train one, with my resources here. My popularity with the people, and their obvious love for me, was gratifying but of little military use. If I attempted to stage a counterrevolution from here, all I would achieve would be bloodshed.

  These thoughts raced through my mind so quickly I was stunned to realize I had breathed in only once or twice while thinking them. I gripped the windowsill.

  “Your Majesty.” It was Mardian. I always knew his voice: it was soft and not—thank Hermes!—shrill. When he had passed the age at which the voice normally changes, his had mellowed and grown stronger, but not deeper.

  I did not turn. “You know that you may call me Cleopatra in private.”

  “Cleopatra.” He said it in a way that made it very pleasant on the ears. “What will we do?” He paused. “I k
now we will not give up.”

  “That much is decided.” I turned to him. “I will not even rant about treachery. I was brought up in a sea of treachery and deceit and betrayal. I swam in it like perch in the Nile. I am completely at home in it. I shall not drown.”

  “But what will we do? Practically, I mean. Similes are very poetic, but what specific course of action shall we take?”

  “Patience, Mardian! I have only known about the crisis for five minutes. Let me think!”

  It was then I prayed to you, Isis, to help me. To clear my head of all vanity and anger and folly, so that I might see clearly how things were and what you, my guide, would have me do. So often our human thoughts do not go far enough. We seize on first this and then the other, misleading ourselves. So I sat quietly, clasping the silver image of you I wear about my neck, and waited.

  The moments ticked by. I could feel (although my eyes were shut) the sun begin to enter the chamber as he rose higher. People were stirring out in the courtyard, and chanting priests were making their way to the bull’s stall to begin the day’s ceremonies. Still I waited.

  A sweetness pervaded me. That was when you came to me, and hushed all fears and uncertainties. I was your child, your incarnation on earth, and I was to rule. I was to leave Egypt and go to Ashkelon in Gaza. That city had been freed from Judaea by my grandfather and favored by my father. There I could gather an army. The kingdom of the Nabataean Arabs nearby, and the people of Ashkelon, would lend themselves to my cause. The neighboring province of Syria also looked favorably on me because I had complied with Bibulus’s orders. Yes. It was all very clear.

  “We will go to Gaza,” I told Mardian.

  He looked very startled. “Leave Egypt?”

  “It has been done before. I am not the first Ptolemy to have to retake my country from abroad. But it is the wisest course. Egypt is in the throes of a famine, and cannot support us. Ashkelon has more resources.”