Cleopatra Confesses (27 page)

When Cleopatra returned to Egypt in the winter of 41/40
B.C
., Antony soon followed. Perhaps they made a celebration of Cleopatra’s twenty-ninth birthday, and at around the same time, his forty-second. The pair were inseparable, and less than a year later, Cleopatra gave birth to twins, named Alexander and Cleopatra. But by then Antony was gone.

Mark Antony already had a wife, Fulvia. (He had been married several times.) Even after Fulvia died, he seemed in no hurry to return to Alexandria and the arms of Cleopatra. We can only speculate on how Cleopatra must have felt when, in order to show his loyalty to Octavian, Antony married Octavian’s half-sister, Octavia.

After a separation of some three years, during which Cleopatra succeeded in putting her country on sound financial footing,
Antony again sent for her. His relationship with Octavian had soured, and he needed the queen’s help. Their meeting took place in Antioch, in the winter of 37/36
B.C
. Antony acknowledged the twins as his own, the old flame was reignited, and Antony and Cleopatra became lovers once more. Nine months later Cleopatra bore another son, named Ptolemy Philadelphus. By then she had bargained control away from Antony of major portions of the eastern Mediterranean, and she returned to Alexandria in triumph.

Not surprisingly, Antony’s marriage of convenience to Octavia, mother of two of his children, was coming apart. Antony chose to stay in Alexandria with Cleopatra, where the two occupied gold and silver thrones with their various children ranged around them. Not everyone was favorably impressed by this display. Among those whose opposition was most outspoken was Octavian.

For several years the two lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, enjoyed the good life in Alexandria while the two rivals, Antony and Octavian, engaged in a war of words. It was inevitable that the rivals would meet in actual battle. Cleopatra pledged to assist Antony, and they began to build a fleet. By late 32
B.C
. Antony and Cleopatra had assembled an army of infantry and cavalry and a navy of five hundred warships—Cleopatra herself commanded a fleet of sixty ships—and they waited for Octavian to make his move. It came late in the summer of 31
B.C
. at the battle of Actium, which ended with Antony’s humiliating defeat.

Cleopatra hurried back to Alexandria and made an entrance into the city as though she were victorious. Unable to gather support for his cause from his discouraged troops, Antony brooded in solitude for a while before returning to Cleopatra’s palace. Both realized the end was near. Cleopatra hoped to abdicate in favor of her son, Caesarion—by 30
B.C
. he was
sixteen, of age to rule—and of Antony’s son, Antyllus. Octavian notified Cleopatra that he might agree to this only if she had Antony killed. When lavish gifts and bribery failed to sway Octavian, Antony challenged Octavian to one more battle. But at the crucial moment Antony’s men deserted him, and the once famous warrior was soundly defeated.

Retreating once more to Alexandria, where Cleopatra had taken refuge in her treasure-filled tomb, Antony was told that Cleopatra had committed suicide. At this news Antony stabbed himself, only to learn as he lay bleeding that his beloved was not dead after all. Too weak to move, he had his servants carry him to the tomb and haul him up by ropes to a high window. Antony died in Cleopatra’s arms.

Octavian permitted Cleopatra to arrange Antony’s funeral. Then, rather than allow Octavian to take her prisoner and return with her to Rome as his trophy, she chose to end her own life.

Like most other facts of the queen’s history, Cleopatra’s manner of death is still debated. Only the date is certain: August 12, 30
B.C
. According to Plutarch, writing more than a century later, Octavian “gave orders that her body should be buried with Anthony’s in splendid and regal fashion.”

This left Cleopatra’s sixteen-year-old son Caesarion to rule as Ptolemy XV, but he was captured and executed, and on August 31 Octavian annexed Egypt as a Roman province. Taking the name Caesar Augustus, Octavian had himself declared the first emperor of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra’s three children by Mark Antony were taken to Rome as prisoners and eventually given to Antony’s wife Octavia to raise.

Thus ended the life of Egypt’s greatest queen and began the enduring legend of Cleopatra.

A N
OTE FROM THE
A
UTHOR

Was Cleopatra beautiful?

People who know of my interest in the Egyptian queen often ask me that. There are no portraits of her. Paintings on temple walls thought to be of Cleopatra are highly stylized. Most sculptures are damaged or cannot be positively identified. Her images on coins are worn to a blur. So, was she a classic beauty, or did she have the long hooked nose, bony chin, and thin lips of a witch, as some say? What about those Venus rings, rolls of fat sometimes visible around her neck, indicating pudginess? Was she a woman of color, with an African mother or grandmother, as some people claim, or was she purely Greek? Have we any idea what she really looked like?

The truth is that nobody actually knows, although recently, computer imagery has provided some ideas. For many years my own mental picture of Cleopatra coincided with shots of Elizabeth Taylor playing the role of the ancient queen in a 1963 movie. I know now that mental picture was wide of the mark. But no matter what her physical appearance, Cleopatra was certainly a charming and brilliant woman who fascinated two Roman conquerors and continues to fascinate modern students and readers.

Not long ago, I traveled to Egypt in search of the last queen. I floated down the same Nile that Cleopatra traveled with Julius
Caesar, and I visited some of the same sites—the Great Pyramids, the temples of Thebes—that were ancient even in her day, more than two thousand years ago. And I explored the modern city of Alexandria. There is not much to see of the ancient one. In 2002 the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina replaced the original great Library of Alexandria that was partially destroyed by fire in Cleopatra’s time. In the centuries following Cleopatra’s death, the Library was attacked and finally destroyed. The dramatic new one was built near the site of the original.

The Pharos lighthouse that guided ships into the Great Harbor is long gone, badly damaged and eventually obliterated by earthquakes. But four centuries after Cleopatra’s death it was the undersea earthquake and the tsunami, as we now call it, which followed that submerged most of ancient Alexandria. The royal quarter, the palaces, and all the artifacts that could be associated with the last queen’s life now lie many feet below the surface in the murky waters of the Great Harbor.

Underwater archaeologists have explored these waters, bringing up more than six thousand items—granite heads, silver coins, pottery, and other artifacts—and these scientists believe that many thousands more are scattered over the harbor floor. At the end of 2009, divers hauled to the surface a pylon more than seven feet tall and weighing nine tons. They believe it is part of the temple of Isis, the goddess with whom Cleopatra identified so strongly.

The Egyptian government now plans to build an underwater museum with tunnels that will allow visitors to view these sunken treasures of history. Even more recently, archaeologists believe they have found the long-lost tomb where Antony and Cleopatra lie buried, some thirty miles west of Alexandria.

I hope to return to Egypt someday to get a closer look at Cleopatra’s world. But my guess is that even after the archaeologists have finished their digging, the historians have completed their studies, and the anthropologists have run their computer analyses, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt will remain as much a mystery as ever.

Carolyn Meyer

A
BOUT THE RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK:

Researching is always much easier than writing—and that’s a fact! Until the day the final draft is finished, there is always the temptation to search for one more source, one more book to read, another detail to track down on the Internet, or another fact to check, and to delay the challenging task of structuring the story, developing the characters, imagining the scenes, and finding the voice, all the while maintaining historical accuracy.

My methods are highly personal. I start by searching the online catalogs of the university and public libraries in my city. I check out the books that seem most useful, take quick notes, and decide if I want to own them. Then I order the ones I want and make a mess of them with underlining, highlighting, and sticky notes. The books listed in the bibliography have been subjected to this treatment, and they stayed on my desk as I wrote. Stacy Schiff’s masterful
Cleopatra: A Life
had not yet been published, or it would certainly have been among my first purchases. But I find that historians and biographers often disagree on even the most basic facts (the identity of Cleopatra’s mother is one example), and I must pick and choose how best to tell the story without rewriting history.

Many questions come up in the process, and so at every step I begin an Internet search: names for minor (invented) characters, an explanation of the Egyptian calendar, a description of the Nilometer, for instance. Not all sites seem well documented or reliable. Most I click, take what I need, delete, and move on. Those that proved useful I bookmarked for future reference and are listed here.

All of this is happening during the months that I am thinking, visualizing, imagining, writing, checking the facts, rewriting, tossing out, starting over, and refining—until it’s finished.

B
IBLIOGRAPHY

Chauveau, Michel.
Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra
. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Foreman, Laura.
Cleopatra’s Palace: In Search of a Legend
. New York: Discovery Books, 1999.

Mertz, Barbara.
Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
. New York: William Morris, 2008.

Nelles Map of Egypt. Munich: Nelles Verlag GmbH, 2007.

Roller, Duane W.
Cleopatra: A Biography
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Tyldesley, Joyce.
Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt
. London: Profile Books, 2008.

I
NTERNET
R
ESOURCES

Ashmawy, Alaa K. “Alexandria.” Authentic Wonders. Last modified May 23, 2006.
http://www.authenticwonders.com/Alexandria/
.

Dollinger, André. “Ancient Egypt: Music and Dance.” Last modified October 2009.
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt /timelines/topics/music.htm
.

El-Aref, Nevine. “How Pharaoh Sailed to Karnak.” The Corner Report. Last modified January 12, 2008.
http://www.thecornerreport.com/index.php?title=how_pharaoh _sailed_to_karnak&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
.

Grieshaber, Frank. “The Calendar of Ancient Egypt.” Egyptology Online Resources. Accessed July 2008.
http://aegyptologie.online-resourcen.de/Calendar_of_Ancient_Egypt
.

Hayes, Holly. “Serapeum, Alexandria.” Sacred Destinations. Last modified July 8, 2009.
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/egypt/alexandria-serapeum
.

Moore, Walter. “Authentic Ancient Egyptian Names.” Accessed March 2009.
http://kememou.com/names.html
.

Postel, Sandra.
Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?
W.W. New York: Norton Company, 1999. Excerpted online at
http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/nile/
.

Thompson, James C. “Women in the Ancient World.” Last modified July 2010.
http://www.womenintheancientworld.com
.

Tour Egypt. “Tour Egypt.” Accessed June 2009.
http://www.touregypt.net
.

T
IME
L
INE

117
B.C
. Birth of Ptolemy XII

80
B.C
. Ptolemy XII becomes king of Egypt

75
B.C
. Birth of Tryphaena

73
B.C
. Birth of Berenike

69
B.C
. Birth of Cleopatra VII

67
B.C
. Birth of Arsinoë

61
B.C
. Birth of Ptolemy XIII

60
B.C
. Birth of Ptolemy XIV; King Ptolemy XII goes to Rome

59
B.C
. King returns to Alexandria

58
B.C
. Royal family on Nile; King forced into exile; Tryphaena, Berenike usurp throne

57
B.C
. Tryphaena disappears; Berenike rules

55
B.C
. King returns from exile, orders Berenike’s death; Cleopatra becomes queen consort

51
B.C
. King Ptolemy XII dies; Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII crowned

48
B.C
. Cleopatra flees unrest to Ashkelon; returns to Alexandria

48
B.C
. Cleopatra meets Caesar; marries brother Ptolemy XIII; brother dies; marries XIV

47
B.C
. Cleopatra, Caesar on Nile journey; Caesar leaves Alexandria; Caesarion born

44
B.C
. Cleopatra, Caesarion visit Rome; Caesar assassinated; Octavian named heir

41
B.C
. Cleopatra, Marcus Antonius become lovers

40–30
B.C
. Cleopatra rules Egypt, prosperity increases; bears Antonius three children 32
B.C
. Cleopatra, Antonius assemble fleet; Octavian declares war on Cleopatra

31
B.C
. Octavian defeats fleet at battle of Actium

30
B.C
. Cleopatra, Antonius die

E
GYPTIAN
G
ODS AND
G
ODDESSES

The ancient Egyptians believed in many gods. Their names changed through time; they often appeared in various forms; they performed various functions. Here are a few of the important ones mentioned in this book, but keep in mind that there were dozens more.

Ra—sometimes spelled Re; also called Amun or Amon; sun god; creator god; greatest of the gods