Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (21 page)

… Once, at the time when Ptolemy [XII] their king had not yet been given by the Romans the appellation of ‘friend’ and the people were exercising all zeal in courting the favour of the embassy from Italy which was then visiting Egypt and, in their fear, were intent on giving no cause for complaint or war, when one of the Romans killed a cat and the multitude rushed in a crowd to his house, neither the officials sent by the king to beg the men off nor the fear of Rome which all the people felt were enough to save the man from punishment, even though his act had been an accident. And this incident we relate, not from hearsay, but we saw it with our own eyes on the occasion of the visit we made to Egypt.
¹³

Greeks and the Romans, misreading the situation, dismissed the animal cults as a primitive form of animal worship. The theology was, as we might expect, far more complicated. The ‘animal’ aspect of a god represented his or her essential nature expressed in easily recognisable terms. To show Hathor as a cow stressed her placid, nurturing nature; it did not mean that Hathor was to be imagined looking or behaving exactly like a cow, and nor did it mean that each and every cow was to be equated with Hathor. Most of Egypt’s deities could be depicted in several equally valid ways, and in many cases a god’s appearance was
dependent upon context. Thoth, the scribe of the gods, for example, could appear as either a baboon or an ibis, while Amen of Thebes, who normally appeared in human form, could also be represented by the goose or the ram. Hathor could appear either as a beautiful woman or as a cow. If she was required to participate in a set-piece scene, to sit on a throne to receive an offering, or to rattle a
sistrum
, she had to have the conventional female body that would allow her to perform these actions – but there was no reason why that human body could not be topped by a cow’s head complete with horns and a crown. Realism was never an issue: in all their work, Egypt’s artists set out to convey the essence of their subjects and, in a land where words were pictures and pictures were words, the image of a cow-headed woman told its own story.

It was perhaps inevitable that animals specifically linked to gods would become imbued with an aura of divinity. Initially only a few animals from each species were singled out. While some temple geese may have symbolised Amen within the precincts of the Karnak temple, for example, most dynastic geese were bred as food. Gradually, however, the idea developed that any animal from a ‘sacred’ class might have its own divine attributes, and Egypt’s temples came to resemble informal zoos. The temple of Thoth at Hermopolis Magna became a sacred safari park, with hundreds of baboons and thousands of ibises wandering around, while the Bubastis temple of Bast was soon overrun with cats. At death these temple animals were mummified, packed into miniature coffins or purpose-made pots, and interred in their thousands in galleries in the nearby desert cemeteries.

The Apis bull, the living embodiment of the Memphite creator god Ptah, had been revered from the beginning of the dynastic age, but little is known of his cult before the New Kingdom, when the 19th Dynasty Khaemwaset, priestly son of Ramesses II, constructed the ‘lesser vaults’, an underground gallery to house the Apis burials in the Sakkara cemetery. The cult grew in popularity until, by the Ptolemaic period, it had assumed a huge significance. By now the bulls were
being buried in enormous stone sarcophagi in the ‘greater vaults’, the focus of modern tourist visits to the Memphite Serapeum. At a time when standards of human mummification were declining, increasing attention was being paid to the mummification of sacred animals, and the dead Apis underwent a sixty-eight-day stay in an embalming house in the precincts of the Ptah temple, followed by a series of elaborate rituals (including a journey to the sacred temple lake and a visit to the tent of purification, where the opening of the mouth ceremony was performed) leading to the funeral on the seventieth day. The Ptolemies made a financial contribution to these expensive ceremonies, with Cleopatra donating 412 silver coins plus food and oil at the death of the Apis, son of the cow Ta-nt Bastet.

The Memphite Serapeum lies in the sacred animal cemetery in the Sakkara necropolis, to the north-west of the step pyramid built by the 3rd Dynasty king Djoser. This is a complicated site incorporating a ruined Ptolemaic temple complex, a sphinx-lined processional avenue, a temple built by the Late Period king Nectanebo, and a series of sacred-animal catacombs and cemeteries including the galleries dedicated to the Apis bulls. The Isis cows, the mothers of the Apis bulls, had their own cemetery nearby, with the last cow being interred during Cleopatra’s Year 11. Further catacombs were dedicated to ibis, baboon and falcon burials, while the neighbouring Anubeion (dedicated to the jackal-headed god of mummification, Anubis) and Bubasteion (dedicated to the cat goddess Bast) housed dog and cat burials. The scale of these animal interments is extraordinary: excavations at Sakkara have so far yielded an estimated four million ibis mummies and 500,000 hawks, plus many domestic artefacts and papyri which make it clear that the Ptolemaic Serapeum was a living community with accommodation for priests and lay workers, a palace for the frequent royal visits, and a library and archive second only to the Great Library of Alexandria.

A curious Ptolemaic construction, the
exedra
, built along the
processional avenue of the sphinxes close by the Serapeum entrance, has yielded a semicircular podium displaying seated statues of the more important Greek philosophers and poets. The statues are unlabelled and in a poor state of preservation, but various experts have identified Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle among the figures. Nearby, lining the avenue, is a collection of statues and reliefs connected with the cult of Dionysos: the young Dionysos riding various wild animals; peacocks bearing grapes; mythological creatures including female sphinxes and sirens. The age of the
exedra
is uncertain, with some scholars dating it as early as the reign of Ptolemy I, others as late as the reign of Ptolemy XII. Its purpose is equally obscure, although there has been some speculation that the Greek sages and Dionysiac beasts may have been charged with guarding the entrance to the original Egyptian burial place of Alexander the Great.

Parallel to the native temples and the animal cults were the Hellenistic temples and the new royal cults, which were primarily designed to appeal to Egypt’s Greeks. The Ptolemaic interest in royal divinity was by no means a new phenomenon. Egypt’s living kings had long been recognised as mortals transformed by the powerful coronation rituals into demigods. At death, mummification made them fully divine. Rising into the heavens, they would twinkle as undying stars in the velvet night sky, sail across the heavens in the flaming sun-boat of Re, or descend to the underworld to rule at one with the king of the afterlife, Osiris. Egypt’s last native king, Nectanebo II, had been profoundly interested in his own divinity. But he lived in difficult times, his throne constantly under threat from the Persians. He set out to prove his piety by building and restoring the cult temples of the state gods; this was a traditional and very obvious means of bringing
maat
to chaos, establishing links with Egypt’s glorious past, raising finances and boosting national morale.
¹⁴
Within the temples Nectanebo placed royal statues which had their own priesthoods and were financed by their own endowments. For the first time, it seems, Egypt’s kings were
considered worthy of sharing the houses of the gods. Nectanebo simultaneously emphasised his own role as the one true pharaoh by promoting the image of Nectanebo the Falcon: a direct reference to the falcon god Horus, who represented all of Egypt’s living kings. Following the 343 Persian invasion led by Artaxerxes III, Nectanebo fled Egypt, probably heading south, to Nubia. He left behind the impression of a mysterious, semi-legendary figure whose mythology grew with time. Nectanebo appears in
The Alexander Romance
as a wily magician who befriends Olympias of Macedonia. Aware of the queen’s penchant for snakes, Nectanebo turns himself into a serpent, sleeps with the queen and fathers Alexander the Great. Thus Alexander, son of Nectanebo, was justified in claiming the throne of Egypt.

Alexander appreciated the importance of Egypt’s gods and the priests who served them.
The Alexander Romance
tells us that Alexander chose to be crowned King of Upper and Lower Egypt by Egyptian priests in the temple of the creator god Ptah of Memphis. This – if true – was a wise move. His conspicuous coronation, an abbreviated version of the traditional Egyptian ceremony, made clear Alexander’s acceptance of the time-honoured rituals and responsibilities of Egyptian kingship while demonstrating the priesthood’s acceptance of Alexander as king. Lest there be any doubt over his sincerity, the new king selected a throne name, Meryamen Setepenre (Beloved of Amen, Chosen of Re), that confirmed his commitment to the Egyptian pantheon. Impressive, and very public, sacrifices in the temples of Memphis and nearby Heliopolis followed. Traditional Greek-style games were held at Memphis, while, 400 miles upriver, the walls of the splendid new barque shrine in the Luxor temple were carved with images of Alexander offering to the gods of his new land. Shown in profile, shaven-headed, bare-chested and dressed in a kilt and crown, the Greek Alexander was indistinguishable from all the pharaohs who had gone before.

Alexander counted Zeus among his remote ancestors, and his
mother had for many years dropped strong hints that her son was no ordinary boy. Traditional Greek theology, however, did not accept that a living person could be divine. Now, following his Egyptian coronation, Alexander was officially semi-divine in Egypt, where he was recognised as the son of Amen-Re, father of all of Egypt’s kings. But to be half divine was not enough. Soon after his coronation ceremony Alexander made a 300-mile trek across the Libyan Desert to consult the oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the remote Siwa Oasis. Zeus-Ammon was a ram-headed hybrid of the Greek Zeus and the Egyptian Amen, tinged with more than a hint of the native Libyan god who had originally been celebrated at Siwa. Worshipped in the Egyptian style, Zeus-Ammon was essentially a Greek oracle famed for his accurate pronouncements. After eight days wandering in the desert – contemporary histories tells us that he was guided on his way by friendly crows and a succession of talking snakes, and sustained by unexpected rains – the weary Alexander arrived at the temple and entered the sanctuary with the chief priest, leaving his entourage outside. No one knows what questions Alexander asked; indeed, no one knows how he asked them or how the god responded. But the whole world soon knew how the chief priest had greeted Alexander as the son of Zeus-Ammon himself. The living Alexander was definitely, undeniably, divine.

Ptolemy I developed the link between the royal family and the gods by promoting the cults of Serapis and Alexander, and by instigating a Ptolemaic programme of temple building and restoration which, initially confined to northern Egypt, soon spread southwards. Ptolemy II took things further. His incestuous marriage with his sister mirrored the unions of Osiris and Isis and Zeus and Hera, and led directly to the deification of his late parents. Ptolemy I and Berenice I, descendants of both Dionysos and Heracles, were to be worshipped together as the Theoi Soteres (‘Saviour Gods’). The royal ancestor cults, a new and entirely Graeco-Egyptian focus for worship, were to prove an
effective means of channelling the loyalty of the elite of Alexandria and the southern city of Ptolemais Hormou, whose sons were happy to serve as eponymous priests for a year and whose daughters were eager to become priestesses in the cults of the deified queens. Outside the Greek cities the royal cults were quietly absorbed into the traditional theology, as many other gods had been before.

In 272/1 the Ptolemies acquired an enhanced divinity, as Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II were officially designated living gods. Together they became the Theoi Adelphoi (‘Brother-Sister Gods’). Arsinoë II, sister-wife of Ptolemy II, was queen consort of Egypt for less than seven years. Within the royal family she entirely supplanted her husband’s divorced first wife, Arsinoë I, and at Karnak we can see her stepson Ptolemy III making offerings to the dead Arsinoë II as if she had been his birth mother. A gold coin issued between 285 and 246 made Arsinoë the first Egyptian queen to be featured on her husband’s coinage. She was also the first Ptolemaic queen to be shown accompanying her husband as he offered to the gods, the first to wear the double uraeus which distinguished her from her predecessor, Arsinoë I, and the first to design her own Egyptian-style crown: an elaborate combination of the king’s red crown (the crown of Lower or northern Egypt), a solar disc, two tall feathers, the cow horns associated with Hathor and Isis, and the ram horns associated with Amen. The crown, which somewhat resembles the one worn by the earth god Geb, suggests an interest in Egypt’s dynastic history and, maybe, some understanding of traditional Egyptian solar theology, which is reinforced by references to Arsinoë as a ‘daughter of Amen’ and ‘daughter of Shu’. A colossal granite statue of Arsinoë recovered from the Gardens of Sallust, Rome, shows her as an entirely Egyptian queen with a now-vanished crown and a double uraeus still on her brow. The statue inscription confirms that she is:

The princess, inherent; daughter of Geb, the first, the daughter of the bull, the great generosity, the daughter of the king, sister and spouse, woman of Upper and Lower Egypt, image of Isis, beloved of Hathor, Mistress of the Two Lands, Arsinoë, who is beloved to her brother, beloved of Atum, Mistress of the Two Lands.
¹⁵

Arsinoë’s image, both Greek- and Egyptian-style, living and posthumous, spread throughout the Ptolemaic empire on coins, cult vases, statues and reliefs, while back home her name was celebrated in the growing number of towns named, or renamed, Arsinoë. By 256 the reclaimed land of the Faiyum had been renamed the Arsinoite nome, and Arsinoë, assisted by the crocodile god Souchos, had become its patron deity. An early death, in
c
. 270, had merely enhanced Arsinoë’s status. She was posthumously deified as an individual in her own right, with her personal cult based at Alexandria, where she was served by a priestess known as the basket-bearer (
kanephoros
). As temples were raised with shrines to both the deified Arsinoë and Arsinoë as half of the Theoi Adelphoi, the canny Ptolemy taxed Egypt’s vineyards to pay for his sister’s new cult. Arsinoë was now one of the Sunnaoi Theoi (‘Temple-Sharing Gods’), and her statue was officially placed beside that of the main deity in all of Egypt’s Greek and Egyptian temples. The Mendes Stela, recovered near Cairo in 1871, shows a scene of Ptolemy II, accompanied by his second wife and son, offering to a ram, to the gods of Mendes and to the deified Arsinoë. The text beneath details the dead queen’s metamorphosis into a goddess: