Cleopatra the Great (30 page)

The burnt bones and ashes were collected up and placed in an urn beside those of his daughter Julia in the family tomb, the Tumulus Iuliae. In the Forum a 20-foot-high column of Numidian marble was set up, simply inscribed ‘For the Father of the Country'. Antonius then ordered the Assembly Hall to be walled up and never used again, and the title of Dictator to be abolished for ever.

Although he would also have protected Cleopatra and Caesarion had they wished to stay in Rome, she seems to have had no desire to remain once Octavian had received his mother's letter telling him about his great-uncle's murder and the contents of the will. For as he sped back from student life in Macedonia to claim his inheritance, Cleopatra knew only too well that he would be a threat to the life of Caesar's true son, Caesarion.

Yet Cleopatra may also have lost their second child around this time, in much the way that Caesar's daughter Julia had suffered the same fate in 55
BC
, losing Pompeius' child after seeing his cloak covered in blood after a violent public meeting and imagining the worst. Although heavily censored by Octavian in his later rewriting of history, there is some evidence in Cicero's copious correspondence that Cleopatra suffered a miscarriage in the month following Caesar's death. Writing with regret about the miscarriage suffered by Cassius' wife after her husband's part in Caesar's murder, Cicero added immediately afterwords, ‘I am hoping it is true about the queen and
that
Caesar.' The possibility that this cryptic comment may refer to a second child of Caesar and Cleopatra is backed up by references to Caesar's non-Roman children in the plural and his own provision for a son ‘who might be born' to him.

Yet, regardless of such a loss, some Romans had suddenly become brave enough to say what they had only thought when Caesar had been alive, Cicero commenting that ‘I see nothing to object to in the flight of the queen.' And indeed Cleopatra had left Rome by 15 April with her son, her brother and her entourage. Presumably she would have worn the dark head cover or ricinium that Western widows had adopted as early as Homer's time. But for the Egyptians black had always been the colour of new life and rebirth. So, dressed in her usual dark robes of Isis, Cleopatra's appearance would have served a dual purpose.

Yet the black-robed monarch did not sail straight to Alexandria, but travelled east to Cyprus to restore Ptolemaic authority. Although Caesar had returned the island to Egypt in 48
BC
after ten years' harsh Roman rule, it had technically been given to her two younger siblings, Ptolemy XIV and Arsinoe IV. Since Arsinoe was still alive in nearby Ephesus, where Caesar had exiled her, and stirring up dissent, Cleopatra was more than keen to appear before the Cypriot people as their rightful female monarch alongside their acknowledged ruler Ptolemy XIV — even if he had been airbrushed from the official coinage, which depicted only Cleopatra with young Caesarion.

Having ensured that Cyprus' wealth was once more directed to Egypt, Cleopatra appointed the official Serapion as governor before setting sail for Alexandria. It was possible to cross the Mediterranean in as little as six days if the Etesian winds were blowing from the north, and, managing to avoid the sudden spring storms, Cleopatra's ship finally reached the shelter of the Great Harbour.

Backed by the three legions that Caesar had stationed there, she picked up the reins from her caretaker government and was firmly back in power by July 44
BC
. Although a document dated 26 July was issued in the joint names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV, by September he had ominously disappeared from the records. Having reached fifteen, notional adulthood, he may well have wanted more power for himself, and Caesar's death meant there was nothing to prevent Arsinoe resuming co-rule with him. The pair would have posed a real threat to Cleopatra and her three-year-old son, so he was eliminated, reputedly poisoned by Cleopatra in time-honoured royal tradition.

Retaining her title Thea Philopator, ‘the Goddess who loves her Father', Cleopatra then dropped the now redundant title ‘Philadelphus', ‘Brother Loving', while upholding the Ptolemaic tradition of dual rulers by immediately making Caesarion her co-ruler. As Ptolemy XV Caesar, Theos Philopator Philometor, ‘the God who loves his Father and Mother', he became the Living Horus in every sense, his mother Cleopatra the Living Isis and his father Caesar Osiris. For in the well-known Egyptian saga, Osiris was resurrected at the hands of his all-powerful wife Isis and took his place as Lord of the Underworld, while their son Horus was successfully raised by Isis to take his father's place on earth.

As Egypt's most potent legend became Cleopatra's political policy, the contemporary Roman historian Diodorus Siculus related that ‘Isis lived with her brother and husband Osiris, and when he died she vowed she would never accept the partnership of another man. She avenged her husband's murder and continued thereafter to rule entirely according to the laws. In sum, she was responsible for the most and greatest benefactions to all mankind.' The arrangement allowed Cleopatra to assume Isis' all-encompassing male-female duality in which she claimed, ‘I have acted as a man although I was a woman in order to make Osiris' name survive on earth', and as far afield as the Greek islands Isis' devotees claimed ‘she has made the power of women equal to that of men'.

From nurturing mother goddess to a deity believed to be more powerful than a thousand soldiers, Isis appeared with her sacred creature, the snake, wrapped round her forearm ‘in her role as supreme magician slaying Osiris' enemies'. This was no doubt replicated by means of a pair of golden snake bracelets — such jewellery was tremendously popular throughout Ptolemaic and Roman times, often worn in matching pairs on the forearms so that the snakes might appear to travel up the right arm and down the left. Perhaps it was teamed with jewellery incorporating Caesar's portrait in the same way that the Ptolemies' gold coin images were placed on richly bejewelled necklaces and girdles. Caesar's own golden image was certainly worn on rings featuring a small offering jug for the libations made to his divine soul.

Even though his ashes were buried in the family tomb in Rome, his soul was sustained within Egypt where Cleopatra, sharing Isis' power of raising the dead at least in spirit, resumed her programme of temple building. Caesar's memory was maintained in time-honoured Egyptian fashion within her magnificent Caesareum, reinforcing Caesarion's paternity in stone.

Built close to the royal palace complex on Alexandria's seafront, it resembled in some ways the temple the second Ptolemy had built in memory of his own deceased and deified partner Arsinoe II. Cleopatra seems to have been sufficiently inspired by the ancient obelisk set up before her ancestors' temple that she planned to duplicate the feature using a pair of 200-ton rose granite obelisks from Heliopolis. The 1400-year-old ‘Cleopatra's Needles' were eventually erected 60 metres apart at either side of the Caesareum's grand entrance, and the temple's 150m-wide frontage facing the harbour stretched back 70 metres within its own manicured parkland. With massive foundations supporting some sort of multi-level superstructure such as a terraced sanctuary, it was by far the most impressive of Cleopatra's Alexandrian buildings, ‘the like of which had never been seen before'. The Jewish philosopher Philo later claimed ‘there is elsewhere no precinct like this temple, situated on an elevation facing the harbours renowned for their excellent moorage; it is huge and conspicuous, decorated on an unparalleled scale with dedicated offerings, surrounded by a girdle of pictures and statues in silver and gold, forming a precinct of enormous breadth, embellished with porticoes, libraries, chambers, groves, gateways, broad walks and courts and everything adorned with the beauty that the most lavish expenditure could provide'.

Based on fragments of an inscription from the Caesareum which stated ‘when climbing the second staircase, below the right-hand portico, next to the temple of Venus, in which stood a marble statue of the goddess', it seems highly likely that Cleopatra replicated the programme of statuary set up in Caesar's Venus temple in the Forum. But alongside figures of the goddess and Cleopatra, the central figure of the Caesareum was ‘the image of the god Julius', perhaps comparable with another statue of Caesar carved from southern Egyptian schist, its green colour evoking Osiris' green skin to represent resurrection. Newly discovered granite figures of Caesarion may also have been part of such a family group.

Cleopatra was also planning a complementary building known as the Cleopatreion, presumably one of her cult centres within Alexandria still known as Cleopatra's Baths, and the two buildings emphasising the connection between the individuals they honoured. Caesar's earlier support for the city's Jewish community was reflected in the synagogue built during Cleopatra and Caesarion's joint reign and dedicated to ‘the Great God that heareth'. Cleopatra and her son also renewed a grant of asylum to Jews, issuing the decree ‘on the orders of the female king and the male king' in both Greek and Latin, the use of Latin a nod to Caesar's pro-Jewish feelings and underlining the monarchs' relationship with Rome.

Cleopatra is likely to have toured her kingdom again, this time in the company of her new co-ruler Caesarion to show herself to her people as mother of Horus, and they may well have travelled to the heart of the Delta to Leontopolis (modern Tell el-Muqdam). Its name meant ‘City of the Lions' and its temple to the lion god Mihos (Greek Miysis) was adorned with limestone sculptures of the recumbent creatures, embellished with bronze lion-themed furniture, fittings and offering vessels. There was even a live lion, the god's sacred creature, kept within the temple precincts: it was entertained by the clergy who recited poetry, chanted, played music and even danced for the animal's pleasure. Elaborate ceremonials involving the monarch referred to the pharaoh as ‘nisw pa maai', ‘the Lion King', and each sacred creature was equated with both Mihos and Horus. At death the lion then became Osiris and was mummified. A limestone stela dated to the joint reign of Cleopatra and Caesarion emphasises the way in which the mummified lions were revered by the royals, evidence of yet another animal cult used by Cleopatra as part of her religious and political strategy.

Yet Cleopatra concentrated most of her building projects in the south, where she presumably travelled with Caesarion to oversee more work on the Isis-Hathor temple at Dendera. As draughtsmen were set to work on the vast expanse of outer wall, massive yet meticulous scenes of Cleopatra and Caesarion offering to Isis and Horus were duplicated with an almost mirror image in which the royal pair also made offerings to Hathor and her son Ihy. Such towering propaganda equated Cleopatra with the temple's chief deity, Isis-Hathor, the single-parent goddess whose union with an absent father had produced a single son named here as ‘Uniter of the Two Lands', a traditional phrase referring to northern and southern Egypt which might now equally apply to Egypt and Rome. Cleopatra also had her son shown in the dual crown of a united Egypt, and most significantly of all, she placed the images of her son in front of her own, announcing to the world the order of rightful succession.

High above these potent scenes, Cleopatra's elaborate suite of rooftop shrines created for Osiris' resurrection had suddenly taken on particular significance. She carried out her sacred duties within their walls, intoning words dating back twenty-three centuries as she encouraged her dead husband to live, Osiris, live! May the listless one rise up — I am Isis!' Reassuring him that ‘Horus comes at your call Osiris, you will be placed upon his arms, you will be safe in your power', Cleopatra-Isis resurrected the powers of the dead Caesar-Osiris who would live for ever through their son Caesarion-Horus in an eternal cycle of continuity.

More than likely progressing south to Thebes, Cleopatra must have been keen to acknowledge the part played by her capable governor Kallimachos during her absence and no doubt also to show that she was back in control. At the sandstone temple of Hathor-Isis on the west bank at Deir el-Medina, where her father Auletes had undertaken work, a large granite stela inscribed in both Greek and Egyptian demotic was set up, its accompanying images showing Caesarion worshipping Amun-Ra while Cleopatra in the distinctive Geb crown of horns and feathers worshipped the war god Montu, both male deities representing aspects of Julius Caesar previously acknowledged in his lifetime.

This same identification was also clear at Montu's cult centre of Hermonthis a few miles to the south, where Cleopatra's daringly innovative birth house had been embellished with extraordinary scenes of Caesarion's divine conception and birth in which Caesar actually appeared as Amun-Ra in order to impregnate Cleopatra in the timehonoured fashion of the pharaohs. The building had by now entered a second phase of construction, in which a high entrance kiosk with elegant multiple columns was added to an already imposing facade. Cleopatra's plans for a final phase of construction featuring a second such kiosk would raise the height to over 50 feet. With a series of slim columns featuring the repeated figure of the dwarf god Bes, favourite deity of women in labour, accompanied by cartouches of Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XV Caesarion, this stunning creation was typical of Cleopatra's architectural vision.

Finally in the deep south at the Ptolemies' spiritual home, Edfu, Cleopatra knew it was vital to make her son's presence felt as the living representative of all Ptolemies past. In the shade of the great entrance pylon of Auletes, where his towering images brought order to the land, two majestic Horus falcons in granite flanking the temple entrance protected the small male figure recently identified as the young pharaoh Caesarion.

Such active policies not only ensured Caesarion's birthright; the invocation of Egypt's traditional deities would bring maximum protection to the boy at a time when childhood ailments were commonly fatal. It was an acknowledged fact among the ancient medical profession that dysentery ‘carries off mostly children up to age of 10', and the environment was also filled with hazards ranging from the extreme climate to the prevalence of snakes, scorpions and crocodiles. One inscription mourned the loss of a one-year-old boy whose ‘body lies in the sand, but his soul has gone to its own land', such baby burials often including their toys and even feeding bottles.