Cleopatra the Great (14 page)

When the vessels finally reached the quayside at Hermonthis, a welcoming party of priests would have accompanied Cleopatra and the bull up to his new home within the war god Montu's magnificent temple. Purified with sacred water and incense, Cleopatra would have performed the necessary rites before Montu, Buchis' mother the sacred cow, and finally Buchis himself, whose anthropomorphic, Minotaurlike figure on the temple's wall scenes suggests that his part was played by a masked priest. There was even a sound-bite from Cleopatra herself, announcing, ‘I adore thy majesty and give praise to your soul, O great god, self created', recorded in a small vertical column of text placed between the figures of god and ruler.

Yet there was still no mention of her supposed co-ruler and brother Ptolemy XIII in any of the Hermonthis events of late March 51
BC
, and he was also missing when Wennefer, chief priest of Isis the Great, erected a Greek stela (inscribed stone slab) in the Fayum's Arsinoite region on 2 July ‘on behalf the female king [basilissa] Cleopatra, goddess Philopator'. Presenting offerings to the seated Isis feeding her son Horus, Cleopatra was shown as sole ruler here too, this time as a traditional pharaoh with double crown, stiffened linen kilt and flat, bare torso in a form of female monarchy not seen for more than a thousand years.

She was again named sole ruler on a document dated 29 August 51
BC
and this seems to be how things remained for the first eighteen months of her reign. Although Rome did not pose an immediate threat on account of its own internal problems, it was certainly a difficult time for Egypt when resources were at full stretch. Having inherited no money from her father, a series of low Nile floods and bad harvests had forced her to bring in a period of heavy taxation which only her strong relationship with priests and people prevented from turning into rebellion. Yet, combining tax revenues with the profits from ongoing foreign trade, Cleopatra was eventually able to recoup around 12,500 talents per year, demonstrating a skill for wealth creation which equalled if not exceeded the fiscal achievements of her Ptolemaic predecessors.

Yet her brother's advisers remained as determined as ever to remove her from sole power, and his former nurse Potheinus and tutor Theodotus joined forces with the Egyptian military commander Achillas to launch a coup. Despite a lack of detail, the unlikely combination of temple architecture and documents dealing with bean cargoes gives clues to a likely scenario, since recent examination of a Zodiac scene from Dendera temple has revealed a portrayal of the night sky as it appeared in August 50
BC
. Cleopatra is likely to have travelled south to inaugurate this spectacular piece of innovative carving, and her absence may well have been used as the perfect opportunity to demote her.

It would have taken little effort to convince the Alexandrians that Auletes' daughter spent far too much time with her Egyptian subjects while neglecting them, and, as food shortages led to rationing in the royal capital, Ptolemy's advisors had managed to gain control of food supplies by 27 October 50
BC
, depriving Cleopatra's supporters in the rest of Egypt. All wheat and pulse cargoes were to be diverted to the great warehouses of Alexandria ‘on pain of death' by order of Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, who now was named second. Official documents naming ‘Pharaoh Ptolemy and Pharaoh Cleopatra, the gods who love their father', were also dated to ‘year 1 which is also year 3', as Ptolemy placed his first year as king in prime position.

Yet, regardless of these ongoing difficulties in her power struggles with her brother's faction, Cleopatra did not forget her responsibilities to the native religion. When the Apis bull died at Memphis in her third regnal year, 49
BC
, she funded the funeral rites and paid 412 silver coins to cover votive offerings for the bull's spirit and supplies of food for its clergy. Thousands of people from all walks of life came together at Memphis' great cemetery Sakkara as the bull's great body was taken from its golden stall, washed and cleansed in a tent of purification, then transferred to the house of embalming within the temple complex. Accompanied by the dirges of mourners who held a constant vigil outside, the body was placed on a great limestone embalming table for evisceration. After forty days drying out beneath natron salts the carcass was anointed and wrapped in best-quality linen from the temples of the Fayum, with specific amulets inserted into the wrappings at key points. Then, laid out in an unnatural kneeling position, the bull was lowered into its coffin.

As one of the priests of the god Ptah who apparently undertook the bull's embalming went outside and tore a cloth to signal to the faithful to intensify their grief, the coffin was brought out in procession on a heavy golden barque, pulled along to its Serapeum tomb by the country's highest officials and accompanied by two priestesses representing Isis and her sister-goddess Nephthys. A tantalising hint that Cleopatra herself may once again have taken a direct role as Isis in the sacred bull cult is possibly revealed by an uninscribed limestone stela portraying the mummified Apis mourned by Isis and Nepthys. Although the fact that Isis wears the red crown of northern Egypt has previously been dismissed as a sculptor's mistake, it seems equally possible that this was meant to show Cleopatra as Living Isis, appearing in public ceremonials and wearing the red crown to symbolise her determination to keep hold of the region it represented. Although her presence at such rituals ensured native support, she remained locked in a vicious power struggle against her brother's advisers in Alexandria. In Rome too, matters had reached crisis point and the fall-out would soon reach Egypt.

Julius Caesar had by now returned from his long absence in Gaul to challenge Pompeius' supremacy. No longer connected by marriage, the two men began to form new alliances, appointing relatives and supporters to key government posts. In Caesar's case these appointees included the young Marcus Antonius, who ‘grew up a very beautiful youth' and became ‘the firebrand and tornado of the age' but had been forced to flee Rome to escape his debtors. After studying in Athens and Rhodes, he had been taken on by Gabinius as cavalry commander in Antioch. Setting out from here to Ephesus and his first meeting with the teenage Cleopatra in 55
BC
, he had made a great name for himself in Alexandria before returning west to serve with Caesar in Gaul. His youthful looks, much admired by at least one tribune and most of Rome's female population, were matched by his ‘gladiatorial strength' — one of the few positive things Cicero could find to say about him during a long-standing feud initiated by Cicero's execution of Antonius' childhood guardian following a political conspiracy, but temporarily patched up by Caesar to maintain political harmony.

As the arms race between Caesar and Pompeius spiraled out of control, the Senate ordered both to give up their powers. When Pompeius failed to respond, Caesar decided to force the issue and march on Rome. Leaving his Italian HQ at Ravenna on the night of 10 January 49
BC
, he ordered offerings for the gods to counter fears that they were about to invade the homeland, then led a single legion across the River Rubicon, sacred boundary between Gaul and Italy and the point at which all campaigning generals were required to disband their forces. Once over the border, they met up with Antonius who had managed to escape from Rome disguised as a slave after his support for Caesar had proved unpopular.

As Caesar began his rapid advance on Rome, Pompeius' indecision was taken for weakness and the Senate refused him the post of commander-in-chief of Rome's forces. Although these far outnumbered those of Caesar, the speed of his invasion had taken everyone off guard, and as Pompeius made a tactical withdrawal south to Campania, many senators, mindful of previous civil wars, kept a low profile. Yet Caesar decided against mass executions of his political opponents, and adopting the novel approach of leniency explained that ‘this is a new way of conquering, to strengthen one's position by kindness and generosity'.

Not only a superb general in the mould of his hero Alexander, Caesar was also a gifted writer whose
Commentaries on the Civil War
covering the events of 49-47
BC
were published in annual instalments. He wrote as he spoke, in the style of an official communique, and even Cicero was forced to admit that ‘Caesar wrote admirably: his memoirs are cleanly, directly and gracefully composed, and divested of all rhetorical trappings.' He also kept official transcripts of Senate meetings, public gatherings and key political speeches; fascinated by the politics of past regimes, he was keenly aware of history and his own place within it, using his writing to answer critics who claimed that his ambition alone had destroyed the Republic.

When Caesar failed to bring Pompeius and the Senate into discussions he lost patience, stating, ‘I earnestly invite you to join with me in carrying on the government of Rome. If, however, timidity makes you shrink from the task I shall trouble you no more. For in that case I shall govern it myself Rome was on the brink of civil war.

In order to take Caesar on, Pompeius went east to build up his forces: once again he requested military support from Egypt, sending his eldest son Gnaeus to the brother and sister monarchs in Alexandria. Later Roman sources hinted at a romantic liaison between Cleopatra and Pompeius's son, although friendly relations had probably begun in their childhood when Auletes and Cleopatra had been Pompeius' guests in Rome. So to honour this debt of guest-friendship Cleopatra and Ptolemy contributed five hundred Gallic and Germanic cavalry from the Gabiniani and a squadron of sixty warships to be used against Caesar, the man who had once tried to take Egypt from their father.

While Pompeius gained ground in the east, Caesar did so in the west. After taking Spain he crossed to North Africa to tackle Pompeius' other African ally, King Juba I of Numidia (Algeria). Although Juba had supplied Pompeius with the grain that Rome needed to feed its growing population, many Romans regarded him as a sadistic barbarian who had defeated two Roman legions and executed the survivors.

By the summer of 49
BC
, the power balance in Egypt had shifted yet again. Cleopatra was no longer co-ruler and had been deposed by her brother's courtiers, who declared Ptolemy XIII sole monarch. His former nurse Potheinos promoted himself to minister of finance to get his hands on Egypt's purse-strings. And within a couple of months, the duplicitous Pompeius personally recommended that his remaining colleagues in the Senate should formally thank Ptolemy XIII for his military help and recognise him as Egypt's sole legitimate ruler.

Unwanted by the Alexandrians and officially unrecognised by Rome, ‘pharaoh Cleopatra' was nevertheless still recognised by the Egyptians. After retreating south to her loyal supporters around Thebes and their powerful military commander, Kallimachos, she seems to have travelled across the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea. Leaving Egypt at the beginning of 48
BC
, she ‘took up residence in Arabia and Palestine' where her ability to speak Hebrew and Aramaic helped her plan her strategy. A court was established in Askalon, near Gaza, where she built up an army paid for with coins from the Askalon mint. Her coin portraits show her wearing a characteristic melon hairstyle and diadem and reveal a careworn, rather gaunt face with deep-set eyes, a very aquiline nose, a rounded chin and a bowed lower lip. All these features bore a striking similarity to her father, Auletes, with something of the dynasty's founder, Ptolemy I; Cleopatra's masculine-style coin images were purposely designed to show her as a capable successor to such men as she prepared to do battle and retake the throne.

Caesar likewise had been busy. In order to take the war to Pompeius he sailed east to Greece in January 48
BC
to join Antonius, then marched on Pompeius' base at Dyrrhachium. Although rations ran so low that Caesar's troops were forced to eat bread made of grass as he led parties of raiders in disguise across the enemy lines, Pompeius failed to follow up his victories in their sporadic encounters. This left Caesar free to face him again.

At Pharsalus on 9 August, in blazing heat, Caesar prayed to his ancestor Venus, Greek Aphrodite, whose armed image he always wore on a ring. Promising her a great temple if she brought him victory, his rousing battle-cry of ‘Victrix' carried the day. Although he rode up and down the lines ordering his men to kill as few of the enemy as possible, fifteen thousand of Pompeius' men still died, with another twenty thousand surrendering and Pompeius himself only just managing to escape.

As the largest battle ever fought between Romans, Pharsalus was also one of the most decisive in history, making Caesar the master of Rome and gaining him many new ‘friends'. After taking on to his staff two staunch Republicans, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Lucius Junius Brutus, son of Caesar's long-term mistress Servilia, Caesar went east to Anatolia to find money to pay his victorious troops. In Ephesus, he made a point of leaving Artemis' rich temple treasury intact and in return received the title ‘Manifest God', ‘descended from Ares [Roman Mars] and Aphrodite [Venus] and Saviour of Mankind'. Caesar's progress was reported to Cleopatra down the coast at Askalon, where she no doubt rejoiced at news of Pompeius' defeat. Caesar's reaction to divine honours would have given her a real insight into the character of a man happy to exploit a divine persona to further his political ends.

His desire to emulate his hero Alexander gave them further common ground, and when he travelled on to Troy for another PR opportunity he paid homage to his ancestors the Trojan Prince Aeneas and the goddess Venus. For as he had said himself, his family ‘reckon descent from the goddess Venus' and ‘can claim both the sanctity of kings who reign supreme among mortals, and the reverence due to gods, who hold even kings in their power'. Echoing Alexander's own beliefs, this was clearly someone with whom Cleopatra could do business. So she sent him a detailed report of her own situation and told him she was about to take back her throne by force of arms.