Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (38 page)

6
‘ …she based the external trappings of her monarchy on the precedents provided by famous ancient Egyptian female monarchs, Hatshepsut among them, as was clearly demonstrated in her representations and the accompanying inscriptions at the temple of Hathor at Dendera’: R. S. Bianchi, ‘Cleopatra VII’, in D. B. Redford (2001),
The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt
, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York: 273–4.

7
This papyrus was discovered as part of a cartonnage mummy case (cartonnage being made from layers of linen or papyrus held together by plaster or glue and moulded to shape). It is now housed in Berlin Museum (C Ord Ptol 73). A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar (1934),
Select Papyri II
, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and Heinemann, London: 209.

8
W. Schubart and D. Schäfer (1933),
Spätptolemäische Papyri aus amtlichen Büros des Herakleopolites
, Weidmann, Berlin: 1,834.

9
The visit to Thebes appears in many histories, but is not supported by contemporary documentation and so must be open to a certain amount of doubt. Strabo and Appian record the visit to ‘Syria’ without further definition.

10
Plutarch,
Life of Pompey
, 77–80. Translated by B. Perrin; Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, 42: 4. Translated by E. Cary.

11
Alternatively, the Ptolemy of circle nine may be the inhospitable captain of Jericho who killed his guest Simon Maccabaeus.

12
Plutarch,
Life of Caesar
, 49. Translated by B. Perrin.

13
Suetonius,
Divine Julius
, 45. Translated by R. Graves.

14
Ibid., 52.

15
Cicero, quoted ibid., 49.

16
Ibid., 50–51.

17
The other Cleopatra heads are housed in the Antikensammlung, Berlin, the Louvre, Paris (a Hellenistic-style Cleopatra probably carved by an Egyptian craftsman) and the Cherchell Museum, Algeria. For further details of Cleopatra’s images, see the various papers in Walker and Ashton, eds (2003).

18
The coin images – the official face of Cleopatra – can be compared with images on clay seal impressions found among a diverse collection of sealings from the Ptolemaic temple of Horus at Edfu and today housed in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. The sealings were originally attached to papyrus documents that vanished long ago. One sealing shows a queen – Cleopatra VII? – wearing a vulture headdress, solar crown and a long, full wig. Another replicates the Cypriot Cleopatra/Isis coin but Caesarion, somewhat bizarrely, has vanished from the scene.

19
For a discussion on approaches to Cleopatra’s beauty, see E. Shohat ‘Disorientating Cleopatra: A Modern Trope of Identity’, in Walker and Ashton, eds (2003): 127–38.

20
Grant (1972): 66.

21
The Berlin head is just one among many representations of Nefertiti. Few of the others display the same stark symmetrical beauty. See J. A. Tyldesley (2005, revised edition),
Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen
, Penguin Books, London.

22
Plutarch,
Life of Antony
, 27. Translated by B. Perrin.

23
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, 42: 34. Translated by E. Cary.

24
It is possible to catch a glimpse of ‘real’ people going about their daily business, but to do this we have to look principally at the graffiti and doodles left by dynastic Egypt’s unofficial artists. During the Ptolemaic age the situation changed slightly as the elite started to commission art that was less idealised and, to modern eyes, more realistic. This change is not apparent in royal art. See R. S. Bianchi (1988), ‘The Pharaonic Art of Ptolemaic Egypt’, in
Cleopatra’s Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies
, Brooklyn Museum, New York: 55–80.

25
The extent to which priestly decrees outlined how pose, material, scale and placement should be used in these propaganda pieces is discussed further in Stanwick (2002): 6–14.

26
As her fertility was important to the queen, it was necessary that she be depicted as eternally young. When we do find an image of an older queen it therefore comes as something of a shock. The 18th Dynasty Queen Tiy and her daughter-in-law Nefertiti lived in an age of artistic experimentation, and both were depicted as older women. In contrast, it was always considered acceptable to depict men at all stages of life.

27
The significance of the triple uraeus is discussed, with further references, in R. Bianchi, ‘Images of Cleopatra VII Reconsidered’, in Walker and Ashton, eds, (2003): 13–23. See also S.-A Ashton (2005), ‘The Use of the Double and Triple Uraeus in Royal Iconography’, in A. Cooke and F. Simpson eds,
Current Research in Egyptology II
, BAR International Series 1,380, Oxford: 1–9.

28
A title which, given the uncertainty over Cleopatra’s marital status, might more appropriately apply to Arsinoë II.

Chapter 3: Alexandria-next-to-Egypt

1
R. T. Kelly (1912),
Egypt
, Adam and Charles Black, London: 5. Kelly is describing his first visit to Egypt in 1883.

2
Plutarch,
Life of Alexander
: 26. Translated by B. Perrin.

3
Historian Michel Chauveau (2000: 57) has suggested that ‘Rhakotis’ may have been not a proper town name but simply the misunderstood Greek form of the Egyptian
Rá-qed
or ‘building site’.

4
Arrian,
Anabasis of Alexander
. Translated by E. J. Chinnock 1893. Arrian lived
c
. AD 86–146.

5
Pseudo-Callisthenes,
The Alexander Romance
. This is at best an unreliable source, but in the matter of the two architects there is little reason to doubt its accuracy.

6
Suetonius,
Divine Augustus
, 18. Translated by R. Graves.

7
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, 51: 61.5. Translated by E. Cary.

8
Historians have looked in Egypt (Alexandria, Memphis and Siwa), in Macedonia and beyond. See, for example, A. M. Chugg (2004),
The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great
, Richmond, London, where the author argues that the body of St Mark, currently housed in the St Mark’s Basilica, Venice, is actually the body of Alexander the Great.

9
Flavius Josephus,
Against Apion
, 2: 53–6. A version of the drunken elephant story is told in 3 Maccabees 5–6, where the king involved is Ptolemy IV.

10
Discussed in more detail in Fraser (1972): 93–131.

11
Strabo,
The Geography
, 17: 8. Translated by H. L. Jones.

12
H. A. R. Gibb (1929),
Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354
, George Routledge and Sons, London: 47–50.

13
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
, 12: 184. Translated by C. D. Yonge.

14
Ibid., 11: 67. Athenaeus wrote his
Deipnosophists
(
Banquet of the Learned
) during the third century AD. The text, essentially a lengthy conversation, ranges over a variety of topics dear to the author’s heart, including sex (both ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’), luxury, food and drink, and is packed full of quotations from earlier authorities.

15
Ibid., 13: 37.

16
Ibid., 7: 2–3.

17
Ibid., 5: 25–36.

18
This can be compared to the Ptolemaic town of Kerkeosiris, which, with a population of approximately 1,500 in the second century BC, had three Egyptian shrines to Thoth, two to Isis, two to Taweret and one each to Petesouchos, Orsenouphis, Harpsenesis, Anubis, Bast and Amen, plus Greek shrines to Zeus and the twin gods Castor and Pollux. Figures given in Bowman (1990): 171.

19
Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
, 34: 42. Translated by H. Rackham. This, together with other uses of magnetism in temples, is discussed in Empereur (1998): 92–5.

20
Pliny the Elder,
Natural History
, 36: 14. Translated by H. Rackham.

21
Philo,
The Embassy to Gaius
, 149–51. Translated by F. H. Coulson (1962), Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and Heinemann, London.

Chapter 4: Cleopatra and Julius Caesar

1
G. H. Macurdy (1932),
Hellenistic Queens: Study of Womanpower in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt
, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Archaeology 14, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore: 189.

2
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus),
Pharsalia
(
The Civil War
), 10: 11off. Translated by E. Ridley (1896),
The Pharsalia of Lucan
, Longmans, Green, and Co., London.

3
Suetonius,
Divine Julius
, 35. Translated by R. Graves.

4
Recorded in Caesar’s
The Alexandrian Wars
, which was most probably written by Aulus Hirtius.

5
Ibid., 23. Translated by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn.

6
Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, 42: 44. Translated by E. Cary.

7
Suetonius,
Divine Julius
, 52. Translated by R. Graves.

8
Appian,
The Civil Wars
, 3: 2: 90.

9
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists
, 5: 37–40. See T. W. Hillard (2002), ‘The Nile Cruise of Cleopatra and Caesar’,
Cambridge Quarterly
, 52: 2: 549–54.

10
Lucan,
Pharsalia
(
The Civil War
), 10: 192–331. Translated by J. D. Duff (1928), Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and Heinemann, London. Lucan did not finish his Book 10, and so never described the actual voyage.

11
Plutarch,
Life of Caesar
, 49: 10;
Life of Antony
, 54: 6.