CHAPTER FIVE
The New Isis
There existed at Armant till the year 1861 an extremely interesting temple built by Cleopatra the Great in honour of the birth of her son Caesarion. This was completely demolished between the years 1861 and 1863 and the materials were taken and used in the construction of a sugar factory; but prior to that date, it had been visited and described by many travellers, and fortunately a number of drawings, plans and photographs of it were taken by them. We are engaged upon a reconstruction of this temple for publication and we should be very grateful for any help which your readers may be able to give us, to make this as complete as possible.
Robert Mond and Oliver Myers, Geographical Journal 1
C aesarion’s birth was a triumph. It gave Cleopatra a new purpose – the preservation of her throne for her child and his descendants – and, as both dynastic and Ptolemaic tradition allowed mothers to rule on behalf of their infant sons, it freed her from the irksome obligation to remain married to a male co-regent. It is perhaps nocoincidence that Ptolemy XIV died as soon as it became apparent that Caesarion’s future lay in Egypt rather than in Rome, and Josephus, for one, has no doubt that the young king was murdered: ‘She was also by nature very covetous, and stuck at no wickedness. She had already poisoned her brother, because she knew that he was to be king of Egypt, and this when he was but fifteen years old …’ 2
Josephus, consistently anti-Cleopatra and prone to sweeping statements, offers no proof in support of his allegation. But, biased though they are, his remarks do carry a certain ring of truth. It is tempting to develop a dramatic reconstruction – the young and inexperienced Ptolemy left behind in Alexandria while his sister makes a second diplomatic trip to Rome; Ptolemy discovering that, with Caesar dead, the people were prepared to support his solo rule; Ptolemy considering marriage with the deposed and still-popular Arsinoë IV; Ptolemy succumbing to temptation and declaring himself king; Cleopatra returning sooner than expected and dealing swiftly with the crisis. However, it is important to remember that the estimated average life expectancy for men who survived infancy in Ptolemaic Egypt was only thirty-three. To die at just fifteen years of age was sad, but it was by no means unusual.
Ptolemy XV Caesar, king of Egypt, was to play a major part in his mother’s propaganda. With a son by her side, Cleopatra VII could abandon any thought she might have had of adopting the role of a female king and could develop instead a powerful new identity as a semi-divine mother: an identity that had the huge advantage of being instantly recognisable to both her Egyptian and her Greek subjects. Divinity was nothing new. Cleopatra had become a goddess towards the end of her father’s reign, when she had been united with her brothers and sister as the New Sibling-Loving Gods. But now she was to be specifically identified with Egypt’s most famous single mother, the goddess Isis.
From the very dawn of the dynastic age, religion had been used toprotect the position of the royal family. The belief in the king’s ability to ward off isfet (chaos) by maintaining maat (an untranslatable concept which is best understood as a combination of ‘rightness’, justice, truth and the status quo) ensured that, although individual kings were occasionally removed from power, there was never any real attempt to abolish the monarchy. This overwhelming need to preserve maat encouraged a slow, conservative approach to life. Experimentation was seen as dangerous and unnecessary – it might upset the gods and bring chaos – and it was both safer and more comforting to stick to the tried and tested ways. This conservatism is particularly obvious in official art, which, to the non-specialist, shows surprisingly little development from the beginning of the Old Kingdom until the end of the Ptolemaic
The New Isis
There existed at Armant till the year 1861 an extremely interesting temple built by Cleopatra the Great in honour of the birth of her son Caesarion. This was completely demolished between the years 1861 and 1863 and the materials were taken and used in the construction of a sugar factory; but prior to that date, it had been visited and described by many travellers, and fortunately a number of drawings, plans and photographs of it were taken by them. We are engaged upon a reconstruction of this temple for publication and we should be very grateful for any help which your readers may be able to give us, to make this as complete as possible.
Robert Mond and Oliver Myers, Geographical Journal 1
C aesarion’s birth was a triumph. It gave Cleopatra a new purpose – the preservation of her throne for her child and his descendants – and, as both dynastic and Ptolemaic tradition allowed mothers to rule on behalf of their infant sons, it freed her from the irksome obligation to remain married to a male co-regent. It is perhaps nocoincidence that Ptolemy XIV died as soon as it became apparent that Caesarion’s future lay in Egypt rather than in Rome, and Josephus, for one, has no doubt that the young king was murdered: ‘She was also by nature very covetous, and stuck at no wickedness. She had already poisoned her brother, because she knew that he was to be king of Egypt, and this when he was but fifteen years old …’ 2
Josephus, consistently anti-Cleopatra and prone to sweeping statements, offers no proof in support of his allegation. But, biased though they are, his remarks do carry a certain ring of truth. It is tempting to develop a dramatic reconstruction – the young and inexperienced Ptolemy left behind in Alexandria while his sister makes a second diplomatic trip to Rome; Ptolemy discovering that, with Caesar dead, the people were prepared to support his solo rule; Ptolemy considering marriage with the deposed and still-popular Arsinoë IV; Ptolemy succumbing to temptation and declaring himself king; Cleopatra returning sooner than expected and dealing swiftly with the crisis. However, it is important to remember that the estimated average life expectancy for men who survived infancy in Ptolemaic Egypt was only thirty-three. To die at just fifteen years of age was sad, but it was by no means unusual.
Ptolemy XV Caesar, king of Egypt, was to play a major part in his mother’s propaganda. With a son by her side, Cleopatra VII could abandon any thought she might have had of adopting the role of a female king and could develop instead a powerful new identity as a semi-divine mother: an identity that had the huge advantage of being instantly recognisable to both her Egyptian and her Greek subjects. Divinity was nothing new. Cleopatra had become a goddess towards the end of her father’s reign, when she had been united with her brothers and sister as the New Sibling-Loving Gods. But now she was to be specifically identified with Egypt’s most famous single mother, the goddess Isis.
From the very dawn of the dynastic age, religion had been used toprotect the position of the royal family. The belief in the king’s ability to ward off isfet (chaos) by maintaining maat (an untranslatable concept which is best understood as a combination of ‘rightness’, justice, truth and the status quo) ensured that, although individual kings were occasionally removed from power, there was never any real attempt to abolish the monarchy. This overwhelming need to preserve maat encouraged a slow, conservative approach to life. Experimentation was seen as dangerous and unnecessary – it might upset the gods and bring chaos – and it was both safer and more comforting to stick to the tried and tested ways. This conservatism is particularly obvious in official art, which, to the non-specialist, shows surprisingly little development from the beginning of the Old Kingdom until the end of the Ptolemaic
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