Cleopatra Page 3

  As an educated Greek, Herodotus would have arrived in Egypt with an inbuilt admiration for its ancient traditions, its scientific, magical and medical knowledge, and its gods. The Egyptians were barbarians, it was true, but unlike the Persians they were cultured barbarians worthy of respect, and Herodotus would have felt quite at home in a land where, even before the arrival of the Ptolemies, so many people were of Greek heritage. There were Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian army and navy, a sizeable Greek population in the northern cities, and one specifically Greek city, or polis, run on entirely Greek lines in the western Nile Delta. The city-port of Naukratis (modern Kom Ge’if) had been specifically developed to handle trade between Egypt and Greece; Herodotus tells us that the site was given to the Greeks by the 26th Dynasty king Ahmose II (570–526), although archaeological evidence shows Greek settlement at the site dating to at least sixty years earlier. As the only legal outlet for Greek merchandise in Egypt, Naukratis flourished, surviving the political and international upheavals that characterised the later dynasties and outliving the Ptolemies to serve as a trading centre throughout the Roman era.

  Ptolemy I had encouraged large-scale Greek immigration, a policy that continued until the reign of Ptolemy V, when almost overnight the stream of new arrivals slowed to a trickle. In consequence, by the time Auletes took his throne Naukratis had been joined by a further two Greek cities. Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great soon after the Macedonian conquest of Egypt, lay on the Mediterranean coast and was home to some 300,000 people, including the largest Jewish community outside Jerusalem. Ptolemais Hormou (modern el-Mansha, near Sohag), founded by Ptolemy I, lay near the ancient city of Thinis in Upper Egypt and served as a Greek regional capital that might, it was hoped, provide a check to the notorious hot-headed nationalism of the southern Egyptians.

  The early Ptolemies, who were by no means averse to imposing Greek-style rule on their colonies, had recognised the Egyptian bureaucratic system as one of the most competent in the world. Leaving the basic structure in place, they had ‘improved’ it by adding several more tiers of officials to the scribes and tax collectors already in place. An extract from an official document concerning an army enlistment, written in Memphis in February 157, shows just how unwieldy the bureaucracy had become:

  … I received back the decree from Ptolemaios the memorandum-drafter and the letter from Epimenides. And I conveyed them to Isidoros … and from him I carried them to Philoxenos and from him to Artemon and from him to Lykos, and he made a rough draft, and I brought that to Sarapion in the office of the secretary and from him to Eubios and from him to Dorion, and he made a rough draft, and then back again to Sarapion. And they were handed in to be read to the chancellor and I received them back from Epimenides and I carried them to Sarapion and he wrote to Nicanor…7

  Egypt was still divided into approximately forty traditional nomoi or nomes (administrative districts) run by local officials, but the nomes now had Greek rather than Egyptian names, so that the Middle Egyptian Hare nome, for example, became the Hermopolite nome.8 Each nome had been under the authority of a nomarch, or local governor; the role of the nomarch was now taken over by a Greek strategos (literally ‘general’) appointed by the king. The strategoi themselves reported to an epistrategos.

  As increasing numbers of educated Greeks arrived in Egypt, they started to take over the more important administrative posts, while the indigenous Egyptians retained the bulk of the menial and unpleasant jobs, including all the jobs that in Greece would have been assigned to slaves. The king himself – an absolute ruler – was advised by official ‘friends’, who bore honorific kinship titles designed to stress their personal ties to the royal family, and by high-ranking hand-picked bureaucrats who were, of course, of Greek extraction. He was protected by a Macedonian bodyguard. This institutional racism rankled with the Egyptians, who recognised that they were quickly becoming second-class citizens in their own land. While many elite Egyptians retained their inherited positions, Greek gradually became the language of public life. Ambitious Egyptians were forced to become bilingual; Greeks, on the other hand rarely bothered to learn the notoriously difficult demotic Egyptian script. The decree issued by the priesthood at Memphis on 27 March 196, in honour of the anniversary of the accession of Ptolemy V, had to be published both in the Egyptian language (in two scripts) and in Greek so that all the king’s literate subjects could read it. A copy of this bilingual decree, engraved on the so-called Rosetta Stone, was to prove instrumental in Champollion’s AD 1822 deciphering of the hieroglyphic script.

  Many of the new arrivals chose to live insular, colonial lives in the self-governing Greek cities, where they hoped to maintain Greek traditions, marry fellow Greeks and avoid mixing with the Egyptians, whom, on the whole, they considered their social inferiors. Despite their self-imposed segregation, the city dwellers gradually succumbed to the influence of their adopted land, and we find increasing numbers of Greeks worshipping Egyptian gods, consulting skilled Egyptian doctors and abandoning cremation in favour of mummification. But by no means all the immigrants headed for the cities. The astute Ptolemy I, intent on extracting the maximum profit from his new land, encouraged Egypt-wide settlement by rewarding his loyal soldiers and senior civil servants with plots of land in the countryside (chora), spread throughout the valley, the Delta and the fertile Faiyum Oasis, which he gave either at a nominal rent or rent-free. This tradition was continued until as many as 100,000 ex- and serving soldiers, plus unknown numbers of male civilians and accompanying women, were settled in the Egyptian countryside and in the reclaimed agricultural lands of the Faiyum (now known as the Arsinoite nome), where there was a thriving Greek culture.9 This system, superficially generous, ensured a maximum return from the land. The settlers enjoyed the right to cultivate their own fields; the state then levied a heavy tax on their produce and Egypt’s granaries filled with the wheat that underpinned the economy. Taxes – paid by everyone in Ptolemaic Egypt, be they producer, consumer or importer – were invariably high, and a constant cause of complaint. So much so that Ptolemy II had been forced to issue a decree forbidding lawyers to represent clients disputing their tax bill.10 Meanwhile, hand in hand with the development of a punitive tax regime went the development of state monopolies in the textile, papyrus and oil industries, the development of a centralised banking system and the development of a specific Egyptian coinage that replaced the traditional barter system and allowed the Ptolemies to make a profit on every foreign coin exchange. While most taxes were still collected in kind, those who offered services rather than goods could now look forward to paying monetary taxes on their income.

  Mixed Greek-Egyptian marriages were forbidden in the Greek cities. But there were no restrictions in the chora and, as time went by, Greek settler families started to intermarry with the local Egyptians. Graeco-Egyptian families experienced a fusion of cultures: marriages were conducted along either Greek or Egyptian lines (often utilising a comfortable mixture of the two), and parents were happy to give their children a seemingly random mixture of names, making it almost impossible for modern Egyptologists to judge ethnicity on the basis of a personal name alone. Indeed, many Egyptians found it convenient to have two names, an Egyptian name that they used at home and a Greek name that they used at work. We now find some astute Greek women making absolutely sure of their rights by employing the more ‘liberated’ Egyptian legal system, which allowed them all the privileges and responsibilities accorded to Egyptian women.

  Strict Greek law relating to women was becoming unsustainable in a rapidly expanding world where respectable single women were starting to travel far from the shelter of their city-states, and where growing numbers of Greek men were settling with non-Greek women. Legal papyri, written in Greek, introduce us to independent, strong-minded women who act as guardians for their children, arrange their own and their children’s marriages, and initiate divorces. Some women own houses, slaves, orchards or vineyards; others own large boats – imp
ortant possessions in Nile-centred Egypt, where the river acted as the main highway and where barges were used for transporting grain. The poet Theocritos writes about elite Greek women who feel free to walk in the streets of Alexandria, and who consider it perfectly acceptable both to talk to unrelated men and to grumble loudly about the ‘rascally’ Egyptians who surround them.11 As educational opportunities for elite women gradually increase throughout the Mediterranean world, we find occasional female musicians, poets, artists, philosophers, doctors and lawyers. Some women, wealthy in their own right, are invited to play a part in civic affairs. Many who stay at home are able to read the novels that are now being published with a female readership in mind. Others, as this letter of complaint shows, are expected to contribute to the family finances:

  To King Ptolemy [Ptolemy III], greetings from Ctesicles. I am being wronged by Dionysos and my daughter Nike. For though I had nurtured my daughter, and educated her and raised her to womanhood, when I was stricken with bodily infirmity and my eyesight grew feeble she would not provide me with any of the necessities of life. And when I wished to obtain justice from her in Alexandria she begged my pardon, and in Year 18 she gave me in the temple of Arsinoë a written oath by the king that she would pay me 20 drachmae every month from her earnings. If she failed to do so, or transgressed any of the terms of her bond, she was to pay me 500 drachmae or incur the penalties of her oath. Now however, corrupted by Dionysos, who is a comic actor, she is not keeping any of her promises …12

  The story of the well-brought-up daughter who runs away with an unsuitable boyfriend – in this case the comic actor Dionysos – is one familiar to parents of all ages.

  In spite of the new air of freedom, the overwhelming majority of women living in Egypt, be they Greek, Egyptian or Jew, were denied a formal education. We can see from the surviving papyri that some women could sign their own names, but the extent to which women were taught to read and write is unclear and many more women required a scribe to both write and sign on their behalf. Taught at home, women studied the household skills that they would need to care for their husband and children. Those who, for economic reasons, had to work outside the home took unimportant and archaeologically invisible jobs; none expected to enjoy a career beyond that of wife and mother.

  Cleopatra V Tryphaena (the Opulent One), wife of Auletes, is a shadowy figure whose parentage is never mentioned. But it is possible to hazard a guess at her origins. Her first and only confirmed child, Berenice IV, was born during the 70s. This suggests that Cleopatra married Auletes after his assumption of the throne in 80. She must, therefore, have been chosen to be queen consort of Egypt, a role of such overwhelming political and religious importance that it was only awarded to women of impeccable social standing. Given the Ptolemaic penchant for incestuous unions, it is likely that Auletes would have preferred to marry a close relative. His wife’s name tends to support this assumption. The Macedonian name Cleopatra – literally ‘Renowned in her Ancestry’ or ‘Famous in her Father’ – had been favoured by the Ptolemies for six generations, but was not particularly popular outside royal circles. Names, of course, can easily be changed, and we cannot assume that the queen was born Cleopatra Tryphaena. Nevertheless, we may tentatively deduce that Cleopatra V was either a daughter born to Ptolemy IX by an unknown woman (and therefore full or half-sister to her husband) or, perhaps, a previously unidentified daughter born to the unfortunate Berenice III and her first husband, Ptolemy X (and therefore her husband’s cousin). If the latter was the case we should perhaps reinterpret the post-Berenice III succession, and see Berenice’s crown passing directly to her daughter and indirectly to her daughter’s husband.

  Incest had been an occasional feature of earlier dynasties, when some of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. In a land happily oblivious to the perils of inbreeding, these incestuous marriages brought definite practical benefits. They kept non-royals at arm’s length, restricted the number of potential claimants to the throne, provided a suitably royal husband for princesses who could not be allowed to marry foreigners or men of low social status, and ensured that a future queen could be trained from birth to understand her demanding role. On a more theoretical level, but perhaps of equal importance, they allowed the royal family to differentiate themselves both from their subjects, who favoured cousin–cousin or uncle–niece unions, and from other, more conventional royal families. The kings and queens of Egypt allied themselves with the gods, who, at the very beginning of time, had been more than happy to marry their sisters. Those who studied Egypt’s ancient mythologies knew that Shu, the dry god of the air, had married his damp sister Tefnut, goddess of moisture. Their son Geb, the green earth god, then married his sister Nut, goddess of the sky, and their children Osiris and Isis, Seth and Nephthys also wed each other. Royal brother–sister marriages were, however, by no means compulsory, and by the end of the New Kingdom the tradition had more or less died out.

  The Greek gods, too, had not been averse to incest, and Zeus had happily married his quarrelsome sister Hera. But in Greece full-sibling incest was discouraged, and the Macedonians had mocked the ‘inbred’ Persian royal family for their brother–sister unions. It was considered acceptable for Arsinoë II to marry her half-brother Ptolemy Ceraunos, but her marriage to her full-brother Ptolemy II, which took place some time between 279 and 274, was seen as scandalous perversion outside Egypt. Just how it was perceived in Alexandria is not clear, as few cared to make public comment. Sotades the Obscene, inventor of the palindrome and celebrated author of many fine and filthy poems, was foolish enough to pen some humorous verses about the royal union; he was rewarded by a long period of imprisonment and, having fled Alexandria, was eventually captured, sealed in a lead chest and thrown into the sea. The far wiser Theocritos recorded the incestuous marriage with approval. Ptolemy II, who was not averse to associating himself with Zeus, would have been pleased to read how:

  … no better wife embraces her young husband in the halls, loving with all her heart her brother and her husband. In this manner too was accomplished the sacred marriage of the immortals whom Queen Rhea bore as kings of Olympus: it is one bed that Iris, to this day a virgin, prepares for Zeus and Hera, when she has cleansed her hands with perfumes.13

  Perversion or not, the marriage was perceived as beneficial to the royal family – it had all the advantages of the earlier royal incestuous marriages, and the additional benefit of linking the nouveaux Ptolemies to the earlier Egyptian kings – and it set a precedent that subsequent monarchs would follow with increasing enthusiasm so that only Berenice II (daughter of Magas of Cyrene; cousin and wife of Ptolemy III) and Cleopatra I (daughter of Antiochos III of Syria; wife of the sister-less Ptolemy V) subsequently married into the royal family. Outside the royal circle full-sibling incest would remain rare until the Roman period, when it became a popular means of avoiding inheritance disputes. Roman census returns from the Faiyum suggest that an astonishing 25 per cent of the population adopted the practice. Egypt’s queens now found that they were expected to provide not only an heir to the throne plus a spare, but also a sister for the king to marry. It perhaps comes as no surprise to find the Ptolemaic sister-queens assuming an increasingly prominent role in both politics and religion. The queens develop their own regalia and are well represented in the surviving statuary. They also, for the first time, have their own title. While ancient Egypt had no word for queen – all royal women were classified by their relationship to the king, so we find many ‘king’s wives’ (queens), ‘king’s great wives’ (queen consorts), ‘king’s mothers’ (dowager queens) and ‘king’s daughters’ (princesses), plus a handful of ‘female kings’ (queens regnant) – Greek had the word basilissa, or queen.

  While some of the dynastic kings of Egypt enjoyed incestuous unions, all of them enjoyed polygamous marriages. In this respect they differed from both their people and their gods. Kings maintained one ‘king’s great wife’; the consort who played a well-defined role in st
ate and religious ceremonial, who was featured in official writings and art, and whose son, gods willing, would inherit his father’s crown. At the same time there were many secondary wives condemned to live sheltered, dull lives in harem palaces away from the court. All these harem wives could be classed as queens, or ‘king’s wives’, but they were by no means wives of equal status and all ranked far below the great wife. As all the harem queens were wives, there could be no illegitimate royal children. Each and every child was a potential future king, his or her chances of succeeding being determined by gender, age and, most important of all, their mother’s status. Just occasionally, when the queen consort failed to produce an heir, a harem-born son acceded to the throne, allowing his mother to shed her obscurity and become a ‘king’s mother’.

  The kings of Macedon had also been polygamous. Their multiple marriages and their oft-repeated failures to nominate a successor from among their many children caused endless familial strife, which was made worse by the fiercely ambitious Macedonian queens, all too many of whom were prepared to lie, cheat and kill to place their own favoured son on the throne. But the Ptolemies, like their people, practised serial monogamy, taking one partner at a time, remarrying after death or divorce and, in many cases, maintaining an unofficial harem of mistresses whose children were not considered legitimate. Thus Auletes the Bastard, son of an unknown and we assume insignificant mother, was in the curious position of being completely acceptable to his Egyptian subjects, who recognised both his paternity and the validity of his coronation, but less acceptable to the Greeks and Romans, who consistently questioned his right to the throne.

  We know that Auletes had either five or six children – three or four daughters, (Berenice IV, the ephemeral Cleopatra VI, Cleopatra VII, born 70/69, and Arsinoë, born some time between 68 and 65), followed by two sons (Ptolemy XIII, born 61, and Ptolemy XIV, born 59) – but, with the exception of Berenice, we cannot with certainty name their mother or mothers. The natural assumption is that Cleopatra V bore all five (or six) and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this is the view that many modern historians take. But, as the archaeologist’s mantra reminds us, absence of evidence can never be equated with evidence of absence, and Strabo specifically tells us that just one child, the first-born Berenice, was legitimate. The unspoken implication is that the other children were not legitimate to Graeco-Roman eyes, and therefore not born to the queen consort. We may justifiably choose not to believe Strabo, who, writing half a century after Octavian’s conquest of Egypt, was keen to belittle the Ptolemies as a means of flattering the Romans. The suggestion that Cleopatra VII was innately, irredeemably flawed – a bastard like her father – even before she came to the throne was perhaps his means of prejudicing his readers against her from the start, and it is curious that no contemporary historians mention her illegitimacy. But maybe Strabo is correct, and maybe some or all of the younger children were born to a variety of different mothers. The large age gaps between the children – with a possible twenty years between the eldest and the youngest – combined with the fact that Cleopatra V vanishes from royal documents during 69, perhaps indicate that Auletes had more than one wife. We can then further speculate that Cleopatra V either died (perhaps in childbirth) or for some reason retired from public life before the birth of Cleopatra VII. Auletes, a still-vigorous king without a son, would naturally seek to replace her.