Cleopatra the Great (24 page)

With the inauguration of the second roof chapel at Dendera planned for the 26th of the Egyptian month Khoiak (28 December) 47
BC,
precisely calculated by the temple astronomers as the moment when the full moon passed right over the centre of the temple's roof in ‘a very rare occurrence', it is unthinkable that Cleopatra would not have been present to take advantage of the moment when maximum moonlight infused her new chapel with the full powers of Isis. Attended by torchbearers, she would have first purified herself in Dendera's sacred lake, which became known as ‘Cleopatra's Bath'; perhaps she used the very silver jugs and basins housed in the temple treasury. The millennia-old rituals then required her to be anointed with specific perfumes. Of the thirteen kinds of myrrh resin stored in the temple's perfume laboratory, it was claimed that the gold-coloured resin ‘springs from the Eye of Ra', the red ‘from the left eye of Osiris' and the white ‘from the eye of Thoth'. The earlier female pharaoh Hatshepsut took advantage of its protective qualities appearing ‘with the best of myrrh on all her limbs', which may also have been worn by Cleopatra. She was additionally anointed with extract of lotus
(Nymphaea caeruled)
whose hyacinth-like fragrance, popular with both royals and clergy, was listed in the temple's
Book of Unguents
as being specifically prepared for use in Osiris' ceremonials.

Cleopatra would then have had her eyes outlined with black eye-paint, embellished with the green malachite shade associated with the eye of Horus to bestow his divine protection. In scenes in the temple's crypts she and her father Auletes were shown presenting the goddess with these colours, listed as ‘green eye paint for the right eye and black kohl for the left eye'.

Within the temple's robing room, Cleopatra would have adopted the dress of Isis whose finest of linen gowns was a ‘many-colored robe . . . part was glistening white, part crocus-yellow, part glowing red and along the entire hem a woven border of flowers and fruit clung swaying in the breeze'. Its rainbow colours were then concealed by a lustrous black mantle which hung ‘in innumerable folds, the tasseled fringe quivering. It was embroidered with glittering stars on the hem and everywhere else, and in the middle beamed a full and fiery moon'; these were the same stars and sacred animals of the Zodiac found on the stoles of devotees of this ‘Black-robed Queen'.

With her clothing complete, Cleopatra's pinned-up hair would similarly have been transformed into the coiffure of Isis whose long hair ‘fell in tapering ringlets on her lovely neck'. Introduced by Cyrene-born Berenike II as a style popular in her homeland, its distinctive ringlets had then been adopted by the first Cleopatra ‘the Syrian' who combined it with the robes of Isis to create the full goddess ensemble. Since this hairstyle subsequently became associated with Isis and her devotees, the seventh Cleopatra may also have had her auburn hair styled this way — or she may simply have worn a long dark wig for an instant transformation.

She would have finally been crowned in the regalia of tall feathers, horns and solar disc which ‘shone a round disc like a mirror', the ‘vipers rising from the left-hand and right-hand partings of her hair' alluding to the sacred uraeus snakes which were a key part of the royal image. As portrayed on the rear wall of the temple, Cleopatra also wore a broad collar of traditional design, fringed with small beads, inlaid with carnelian, lapis and turquoise fastened with Ptolemaic-style hook and loop fastener, and matching gold bracelets. The ensemble was completed by the presentation of a pair of silver sistrum rattles ‘which sang shrilly when she shook the handle' and an accompanying menat necklace of multiple malachite beads, either worn or carried with the sistra as sacred implements which formed her badge of priestly office.

All these magnificent ornaments were stored in caskets brought from the security of the temple's crypt. Dendera's lavish treasury was ‘filled with every kind of real precious stones, every kind of perfume, every kind of grain', which Cleopatra would have presented to her divine alter-ego in thanksgiving for the safe birth of Caesarion and the continuity of the Ptolemaic house. And all were exempt from tax. Guarded by the temple treasurer Petearsemtheus and Cleopatra's own images on the surrounding walls, there were golden globular vessels for offering wine and milk, silver censers and large ‘thymiateria' incense burners decorated with Greek and Persian designs interspersed with figures of Bes, and large quantities of silver plate inscribed in both Greek and Egyptian to ‘Ptolemy living forever beloved of Ptah' and to Hathor-Isis, ‘Lady of Dendera, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of All Gods'.

The treasury even contained scaled-down versions of the crowns and jewellery for the goddess' cult statues, which were attended to daily by the temple ‘stolist' or dresser. Make-up was applied to them along with various sacred oils designed to reactivate the divine essence within, in much the same way that they were used to reactivate the soul within the mummy at the funeral. By Ptolemaic times the standard set of seven oils used since the Pyramid Age had increased to nine, from ‘Festival Scent', made of frankincense, fir seeds and bitumen, to ‘Madjet', made of carob, lotus and white frankincense. Specific unguents were also manufactured for specific rites, one complex recipe taking 365 days to produce half a litre (less than a pint). There was also the ‘secret unguent' made specifically for cult statues which blended carob pulp, myrrh and bitumen with finely ground gold, silver, lapis, turquoise and carnelian, a sparkly, sweet sticky mixture to be applied to the divine limbs whilst still warm and pliable. Yet on this occasion, spicy Tisheps unguent ‘for anointing the golden goddess Hathor, great mistress of Dendera' would no doubt have been the one selected.

As the main cult statue, dressed in identical manner to the monarch, was brought out from its inner sanctum on the shoulders of the shaven-headed priests, the procession, led by Cleopatra playing her sistrum rattles, proceeded up the temple staircase. Its winding walls, portraying the same journey, showed the monarch skilfully negotiating her way upwards while looking over her shoulder to face the goddess. A similar ceremony was held each New Year's Eve, when Hathor's gold statue was brought up the western staircase and placed in the ‘Kiosk of the Union with the Sun Disc'. The shrine's curtains were pulled back precisely at dawn on New Year's Day to allow the solar power to re-energise the spirit within the statue, which was then taken back down into the darkness of the inner sanctum via a second, straight staircase to the east. Cleopatra was now performing a similar ceremony in which Hathor's solar powers were balanced by the lunar energies of Isis.

Monarch and priests travelled up the temple staircase and out towards the roof chapel, following the path of the moon in an anticlockwise direction. They passed the western chapel with its innovative Zodiac ceiling that she had inaugurated some three years before, and reaching the newly completed eastern chapel, stepped through its open-air court and into the darkness of its inner chamber beyond. As Cleopatra's eyes adjusted to the limited light, the secret — ‘mysterion' — of Osiris' resurrection would have appeared on its walls, from the ritual chants to be sung at each hour to the list of all 104 amulets required for his mummification.

Given its very specific layout her chapel ‘may have had a performative function' — this seems to have been part of Cleopatra's policy of using theatre as a means of enhancing her divine status. And as her presence filled the entire temple, from her earliest image within the subterranean crypts far below to her physical form high on its roof, she now stood alongside Isis' sacred statue awaiting midnight when the pure moonlight would flood in through the narrow opening in the ceiling and bathe them both in its glowing rays.

As the moon slowly reached its zenith and the chamber became increasingly brighter, its detailed wall scenes portraying the mystical union of Isis and Osiris were slowly brought to life by its pure white light. Given that ‘generative light falling strongly from the moon' was felt sufficiently powerful to impregnate the virgin cows who brought forth the sacred bulls, the prone image of Osiris awaiting rebirth would similarly have been filled with lunar energy. As Isis helped him achieve erection and resurrection, bringing forth all the spirits of the ancestors in his wake, he then impregnated her with his essence, as described some twenty-three centuries earlier in the Pyramid Texts, the world's oldest collection of religious literature: ‘your sister Isis comes to you, rejoicing in love for you, she placed your phallus on her vulva and your seed issues into her, she being as alert as a star'.

Isis was also as bright as the moon, and was believed to emit her own generative force. Cleopatra harnessed such divine powers by taking the title Isis Selene, ‘the Moon'. The goddess-monarch appeared in the light of a dazzling full moon at midnight because, it was claimed, ‘at that secret hour . . . the Moon-goddess, sole sovereign of mankind, is possessed of her greatest power and majesty. She is the shining deity by whose divine influence not only all beasts, wild and tame, but all inanimate things as well, are invigorated; whose ebbs and flows control the rhythm of all bodies whatsoever, whether in the air, on earth, or below the sea.'

Yet at that very moment the goddess-monarch's partner and father of her child was facing serious danger to the west, where he had embarked on a long-drawn-out war with Pompeius' sons and supporters. Face-to-face combat had been avoided by their use of guerilla tactics until Caesar took their supply base at Thapsus, after which they were finally forced to fight him on 6 April 46
BC
. Ranged against Caesar and his Mauretanian allies were ten legions and a combined cavalry force of Gauls and Germans, together with his old adversary, the bearded Juba I of Numidia, who brought further troops including his crack cavalry, some mounted on camels to deal with the desert terrain. Juba also had thirty war elephants, but the initial barrage from archers and slingers scared them so much that they turned and fled, trampling their own infantry and causing a rout in which Pompeius' sons' supporters, including Juba, were forced to retreat.

Although Pompeius' sons themselves managed to escape, they lost ten thousand men. Pompeius' father-in-law Metellus Scipio and Caesar's sworn enemy Cato, whose asset-stripping of Cyprus had followed the suicide of Cleopatra's uncle, both committed suicide, while Juba planned his own death on top of a huge funerary pyre consisting of his capital city as a last grand gesture. But when the city's inhabitants made it clear they were none too keen on his plan and refused him entry, he made a deal with his remaining Roman ally Petreius: resigned to their fates, they had a final dinner then a duel to the death, when Juba, as victor, was killed by a slave.

Caesar sold off Juba's treasures at auction and then divided up his kingdom of Numidia among the Mauretanian princes who had supported him; these included Bogudes and his wife Eunoe, rumoured to have been another of roving Caesar's conquests according to his critics back in Rome. The rest of Numidia became the Roman province of Africa Nova; Juba's impressive cavalry were absorbed into the Roman army, and the region's plentiful grain supplies diverted to Rome where they were eventually able to feed the city for eight months of the year.

Finally leaving Africa, tremendously relieved after a lengthy and stressful campaign which had brought on an attack of the epilepsy which had always dogged him, Caesar travelled back to Rome in the company of Juba's four-year-old son, also named Juba. The boy would form part of Caesar's forthcoming Triumph, along with the thirty elephants and twenty-two camels captured at Thapsus — the earliest record of these creatures west of Siwa.

Back in Rome with his exotic cargo, Caesar was received by an uneasy yet sycophantic Senate who awarded him a whole string of unprecedented honours. He was already Pontifex Maximus or chief priest, and now they made him Dictator for a period of ten years.

During a forty-day period of thanksgiving, he was also awarded a series of four Triumphs to celebrate his victories in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus and Africa; the Senate diplomatically ignored the fact that many of these battles had been fought against his fellow countrymen. Despite the official calls to cut down on both overt displays of wealth and foreign influences, Caesar's lavish Triumphs came close to the Ptolemies' legendary excesses. The fixtures and fittings were made from different themed materials for each: citrus wood for Gaul, acanthus for Egypt, tortoiseshell for Pontus and ivory for Africa; 2822 gold crowns sent from all over the empire brought in an astonishing 20,414 lb of pure bullion — just over 9 tons. There was sufficient wealth to give every infantryman 240 gold pieces, around 6000 denarii at a time when the average soldier earned one denarius a day. Even so, one man complained there could have been even more had not the Triumphs been so lavish. Unfortunately this was overheard by Caesar, and the disgruntled soldier became one of the human sacrifices to Rome's war god Mars, whose heads were hung from Caesar's official residence as the high priest Pontifex Maximus.

At the first Triumph, the one for Gaul, widely regarded as the most magnificent of the four, incense bearers marched along to sweeten the proceedings as crowds lined the streets to see a procession of tableaux highlighting key episodes in the war. Exploiting the fact that most Roman women were politically clueless and understood little of the endless procession of paintings and models, men in the crowds were advised to impress such women with their superior knowledge of what each figure represented, even if it required a good deal of skill to work out that the golden statue bound in chains represented Caesar's cross-Channel conquest of Britain.

Yet everyone would have recognised the victor in his elaborate gold chariot, dressed in purple cloak and red leather parade boots with the gold crown of Jupiter held over his head by a slave. Although it was also the slave's role to repeatedly whisper in Caesar's ear the traditional words ‘Remember, you are a mortal', to counteract the mass adulation, he must have started to have his doubts as the deafening shouts and cheers bordered on worship.