Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (15 page)

When Ptolemy was instituting a festival and all kinds of sacrifices, and especially those which relate to Bacchus [Dionysos], Arsinoë asked the man who bore the branches what day he was celebrating now, and what festival it was. And when he replied ‘It is called the Lagynophoria; and the guests lie down on beds and so eat all that they have brought with them, and everyone drinks out of his own flagon, which he has brought from home.’ And when he had departed she, looking towards us, said, ‘it seems a very dirty kind of party; for it is quite evident that it must be an assembly of mixed multitude, all putting down stale food and such as is altogether unseasonable and unbecoming.
’
¹⁶

Religious processions had long been a regular feature of Egyptian life and the principal cities were criss-crossed by ceremonial routes defined by avenues of sphinxes. The days that the gods left the temple sanctuary to parade through the streets or sail on the Nile were eagerly anticipated public holidays, and crowds lined the processional ways to watch and cheer as their gods sailed by in golden boats carried high on the shoulder by priests. Eating and drinking were an important part of festival days, and New Kingdom government records show that men from the Theban tomb workers’ village of Deir el-Medina absented themselves from work to brew beer in advance of the festivities.

In wine-drinking Alexandria, the essentially Egyptian procession was combined with Greek
tryphe
to make an unforgettable spectacle. Athenaeus preserves some of the otherwise lost work of Callixeinos of Rhodes, including a description of the celebration, in the winter of 275/4 (or 279/8 or 271/70), of the Ptolemaia, a four-yearly Dionysiac festival with a grand parade and games commemorating the entry of the deified Ptolemy I into Olympus, and hosted by his son Ptolemy II.
¹⁷
Ptolemaiae were celebrated throughout Egypt, but the grandest display was, of course, in Alexandria. Here celebrations started with lavish sacrifices and with an opulent banquet held in a magnificently decorated tent containing hundreds of ornate couches and golden dining tripods. Callixeinos was struck by the fact that, even though it was winter, the floor of the tent was so thickly strewn with flowers of every description that it resembled a summer meadow. More flowers were woven into garlands for the diners to wear.

The next day saw the processions: ‘the procession of Lucifer (the morning star)’, the procession ‘dedicated to the parents of the king’ and the procession ‘of all the gods’. The wide city streets quite literally
flowed with wine (an estimated 25,000 gallons) and the people poured out of their houses to watch, wonder and drink. Towards the front of the procession came Dionysos himself: an enormous purple-clad statue pouring libations out of a golden goblet, and an even larger statue riding an elephant and supported by an army of satyrs (followers of Dionysos) crowned with golden ivy leaves and silenoi (elderly satyrs) dressed in purple and scarlet cloaks. Next came floats displaying gold and silver treasures (plate, tripods, armour, thrones and crowns, including the crown of Ptolemy I, made from ‘ten thousand pieces of gold money’), floats presenting mythological tableaux, a vast array of exotic wild animals, including twenty-four lions and 2,000 bulls, costumed actors, musicians, divine and royal statues, priests and acolytes, and an automated statue of the personified Mount Nysa, birthplace of Dionysos, which entertained the crowds by repeatedly standing up, pouring a libation of milk out of a golden bottle and sitting down again. There were women dressed as maenads (female followers of Dionysos), with snakes and ivy wreaths in their dishevelled hair, an enormous wine press complete with sixty singing satyrs to trample the grapes, and a 180-foot-long phallus with a star at one end. A deep vine- and ivy-covered cave, constructed on the back of a float, released twin fountains of milk and wine. From deep within the cave flew doves, pigeons and turtledoves, their feet tied together with ribbons so that they might be caught (and later eaten) by the spectators. The military procession, with 57,600 foot soldiers and 23,200 cavalry, probably marched on the following day. This was
tryphe
at its extreme: a conspicuous display of public luxury and generosity designed to impress all – citizens, tourists and specially invited foreign dignitaries – who saw it. A
tryphe
, some might think, hovering dangerously close to hubris.

Alexandria could boast an eclectic religious profile and an embarrassment of temples dedicated to a diverse multitude of gods: there were temples dedicated to Greek deities, at least half a dozen temples
dedicated to Isis, temples dedicated to other, lesser Egyptian gods, temples dedicated to the sole god worshipped by the monotheistic Jews, and many shrines and temples dedicated to Alexander and the growing number of deified Ptolemies.
¹⁸
The latter included the Arsinoeion, built by Ptolemy II in honour of his dead wife. Here, Pliny the Elder tells us, the priests planned to employ magnetism in their worship of the deified Arsinoë II:

The architect Dionochares had begun to use loadstone for constructing the vaulting in the temple of Arsinoë at Alexandria, so that the iron statue contained in it might have the appearance of being suspended in mid-air; but the project was interrupted by his own death and that of King Ptolemy who had ordered the work to be done in honour of his sister.
¹⁹

The magnetic floating statue would not have appeared out of place in a city filled with modern miracles: automated statues, steam-powered models, automatic doors and the word’s first coin-operated machines.

Prominent among Alexandria’s many deities stood Serapis, a god apparently designed by a committee. Legend tells how the canny Ptolemy I summoned the Egyptian priest Manetho of Sebennytos (modern Sammanud) and the Greek priest Timotheos of Athens, and invited them to submit designs for a new deity. Ptolemy wanted a modern god for the modern world, with no pre-existing allegiances to either cities or dynasties and no powerful, long-established priesthood. Such a god could be used to support the new dynasty within Egypt, and could serve as an ambassador for Alexandria and the Ptolemies outside Egypt’s borders. If he proved acceptable to both Greeks and Egyptians, he might also go some way towards uniting Alexandria’s religiously mixed population. The chosen god was Serapis, a combination of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek deities
Dionysos, Hades (god of the underworld), Asklepios (god of healing), Helios (the sun god) and Zeus. An anthropomorphic deity – animal and animal-human hybrid gods being unacceptable to non-Egyptians – Serapis personified divine kingship, healing, fertility and the afterlife. The new god’s name was derived from the name of the Memphite god Osor-Apis, himself a fusion of the deceased Apis bull, who was considered to be the living embodiment of the god Ptah and Osiris.

As we might expect, the story of Serapis’s clinical conception is only partially true. Ptolemy I did deliberately set out to promote a new god, but it seems that a version of Serapis already existed as an obscure deity worshipped in the Greek colony of Sinope, on the Black Sea. Ptolemy’s Serapis looked very much like the Greek Zeus. He was a mature gentleman with a mop of curly hair and a beard who dressed in Greek robes and carried a sceptre, but he was often shown with Egyptian features and he wore a
modius
crown in the form of a corn measure. Serapis was married to the universally popular goddess Isis, who, as the wife of Osiris, was already acceptable to both Greeks and Egyptians. As Ptolemy had planned, Serapis, Isis and their son Harpocrates quickly came to be associated with the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty.

While the native Egyptians were somewhat unconvinced by the new god, preferring to remain loyal to their traditional deities in their original forms, Serapis enjoyed a huge success throughout the Greek and Roman world. Soon every civilised city could boast a Serapeum, or temple of Serapis, each of which would include a subsidiary temple dedicated to the divine consort Isis, and also serve as a hospital for the sick. Egypt’s doctors were respected throughout the ancient world, but their scientific understanding and practical skills were limited. In a land entirely controlled by capricious gods – gods who caused the sun to shine, the Nile to rise, the crops to grow and the dead to be reborn – it was entirely reasonable to assume that otherwise inexplicable illnesses were cause by malevolent powers. Invalids, faced with
the choice of consulting a doctor or a priest, may well have viewed the latter as the more effective option. As both Serapis and Isis were blessed with the gift of healing, their temples attracted pilgrims from far and wide, with the Koptos Serapeum developing a particularly good reputation for curing the sick. Here, after a period of ‘incubation’, a night or two spent sleeping in the temple precincts and dreaming of Serapis, the faithful could expect to receive a divine cure. Restored to health – whether by the dream, the highly experienced temple staff or visiting doctors, who tended to use the Serapeum as a teaching hospital – they returned home to tell the world about the miracles wrought by Serapis and Isis.

The heart of the cult of Serapis lay in the raised south-western sector of Alexandria near the native Egyptian district. The temple complex was built by Ptolemy I and extensively remodelled by Ptolemy III. In its heyday it was one of the most famous and beautiful religious sites in the classical world. Today, however, it is a confusing ruin, topped by ‘Pompey’s Pillar’, an ill-named granite column, possibly originally cut by an 18th Dynasty king and re-erected in Alexandria in
AD
291 as a pedestal to support an image of the emperor Diocletian. Archaeologists have argued long and hard over the original architecture of the Serapeum: whether it was an essentially Greek-style building with some additional Egyptian touches, or whether it was an Egyptian building with Greek elements. Unfortunately, the few surviving written descriptions refer to the Roman Serapeum, built by Hadrian after the Jewish uprising of
AD
116 destroyed the original Ptolemaic temple. Hadrian’s Serapeum, and its archive of 700,000 papyrus scrolls, would itself be destroyed by Christians in
AD
391.

Alexandria was a most un-Egyptian-looking city, filled with grand Greek buildings, Greek colonnades and Greek sculptures. The extent to which this most modern of cities was embellished with Egyptian artefacts acquired from other, more ancient sites is only just becoming clear. Today rival Franco-Egyptian teams are conducting extensive
underwater excavations in the harbour. The team led by Jean-Yves Empereur is investigating the area around the Pharos lighthouse, while the team led by Franck Goddio concentrates on the area to the north of the Palaces and Antirrhodos. These are long-term projects, but the area around the vanished lighthouse has already yielded a series of pre-Ptolemaic monuments, including three broken obelisks inscribed with the name of Seti I, columns inscribed for Ramesses II and a series of sphinxes ranging in date from the Middle Kingdom to the Late Period. It seems that the cult centre of the sun god Re at Heliopolis, once the most splendid temple complex in Egypt, but sacked by the Persian Cambyses and in Ptolemaic times a ruin, was being quarried to provide Alexandria both with antiquities and with useful stone that could be recut and reused. Memphis, Bubastis and Sais, too, were being stripped of their antiquities to ornament Alexandria. It is not obvious when these artefacts were moved, and it is entirely possible that some at least were moved by the Romans. However, it seems that the Ptolemies did have the collecting habit: Pliny confirms that Ptolemy II had a dynastic obelisk raised in the Arsinoeion.
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The obelisk was later transferred to Alexandria’s forum, and then taken to Rome by the emperor Caligula. Eventually it was re-erected in St Peter’s Square, Vatican City, where it still stands today.

Displayed alongside the genuine ancient Egyptian sculptures were modern pieces in the Egyptian style commissioned by the Ptolemies themselves. A series of statues, recovered from the Pharos lighthouse underwater site, includes a colossal Ptolemy II and a colossal queen, wearing a Hathoric headdress and a curly wig, who may be intended to represent the queen as the goddess Isis. Together, it seems, king and goddess guarded the entrance to the harbour. Today Ptolemy II, his face wiped blank by the water, stands tall and proud before the rebuilt Library of Alexandria.

London and New York each boasts a pink granite obelisk known
as Cleopatra’s Needle. Both obelisks come from Alexandria, but they have only the most tenuous connection with Cleopatra VII. The obelisk, a tall, tapering stone capped with a small pyramid, represented a solid ray of sunlight. To erect an obelisk in front of a temple was a splendid technical achievement, a sign of genuine devotion undertaken by only the richest and most powerful of kings. Cleopatra’s Needles started life in the hot and dusty Aswan quarry, where they were cut on the orders of the 18th Dynasty king Tuthmosis III. Images preserved on the walls of the Karnak Red Chapel and the Deir el-Bahri mortuary temple of Hatshepsut (stepmother, aunt and coruler to Tuthmosis III) make it clear just how difficult it was to transport and raise such unwieldy artefacts. Twin obelisks, lashed to wooden sledges, are towed on a sycamore wood barge by a fleet of twenty-seven small boats crewed by over 850 oarsmen. Fortunately the flow of the river helps the barge on its way. The barge is escorted by three ships whose priests bless the proceedings. Upon their arrival at the temple there is a magnificent public celebration. A bull is killed and further offerings are made to the gods. Tuthmosis’s obelisks were erected in the precincts of the temple of the sun god Re of Heliopolis. One and a half centuries later, still in place, they were reinscribed by the 19th Dynasty Ramesses II ‘the Great’, a pharaoh with an incorrigible tendency to usurp the monuments of his predecessor. In 13, with the temple of Re in ruins, Octavian had the obelisks brought to Alexandria. They were re-erected, supported by large bronze crabs, in front of the Caesareum, Cleopatra’s unfinished monument to Julius Caesar, which now served as the focus for the imperial cult. Here they remained, one standing, one fallen, until the nineteenth-century ruler Mohamed Ali, an indefatigable moderniser, decided that Alexandria could manage without her needles. The fallen obelisk was given to Britain. It was transported to London and erected on the bank of the Thames in 1879. The sister obelisk, a gift to the USA, was erected in Central Park, New York, in 1880.