My second book was about the search for Cleopatra’s tomb. Let me share some thoughts.
Cleopatra, the very name evokes imagery.
Her full name was Cleopatra VII Thea Philopater: Cleopatra means “glory of the father,” or
‘father-loving goddess,” depending on the translation.
Like everyone else, I watched the 1963 film, Cleopatra, with Elizabeth Taylor as the great
queen. I was riveted by the image of a gorgeous woman being towed into the Roman forum on
a giant sphinx. The sets were gigantic, many were destroyed in the Italian rain. I saw a small
piece of one in a Monterey antique store. It was an Egyptian Pharoah’s head. I don’t know
where the store owners got it, but it was bigger than my living room wall.
I stared at it. What drove Hollywood to produce such an epic? It was hugely over budget from
the beginning. Did the directors hope to contain Cleopatra on a roll of film? I don’t know, but
what I can conclude is that her mystique captured these otherwise hardboiled, no-nonsense
men of Hollywood.
Just as she captured Caesar himself.
Caesar, the man who declared himself emperor of the known world, was putty in the hands of a
twenty-two-year-old girl. He was about fifty-five at the time, and the foremost lecher in the
Roman world. He didn’t stand a chance. French orientalist painter Jean-Leon Gerome portrayed
the moment when she arose from the carpet to confront a dumbfounded Caesar at his desk.
You can google it and see what the confrontation looked like. Imagination, of course, but she did
get into Caesar’s heavily guarded villa and the rest is history.
But what does this have to do with the real Cleopatra?
In my book, young and quirky detectives Flinders and Pettigrew are hired to search for her
tomb. Everybody who is anybody searches for her tomb. That is because some historical
accounts say she killed herself in her tomb. The legend is that she was bitten by an asp and
died in her tomb along with her handmaidens, and then was buried there by Roman emperor
Octavian.
A beautiful and poignant ending for a great queen.
Consider Shakespeare’s lines:
“Where art thou death? Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen.”
Shakespeare wrote in the 17 th century. The text of Antony and Cleopatra followed the writings of
Greek historian, Plutarch. Plutarch wrote around 100 CE, about two hundred years after
Cleopatra’s death, and was one of the sources of the asp bite legend.
Since then, just about every famous actress in the world has had a go at portraying the great
queen: Sarah Bernhardt, Theda Berra, Claudette Colbert, Elizabeth Taylor, and Adele James all
tried their hand.
But there is a problem with the asp bite story and the tomb.
An asp was the symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt; the Egyptian cobra is a species of asp.
Check out photographs of Egyptian pharaohs, they show a snake rearing to strike on their head
dresses. Death by asp bite was a form of execution in Cleopatra’s time: It was reserved for
individuals thought to be deserving of a dignified death.
But did she commit suicide by asp bite?
Some ancient accounts indicate that Cleopatra injected herself with a sharp instrument.
Apparently, she carried cobra venom around just in case she was captured by enemies. There
are stories that she experimented with various poisons on condemned people well in advance of
her death and concluded that death by asp bite was the least painful.
Nevertheless, the asp bite narrative makes perfect symbolic sense. The great queen kills herself
to avoid being dragged through Rome in disgrace and then put to a horrible death. And she
does so in a royal manner. The problem is that it may not be completely accurate. In 2010, a
German toxicologist argued that Cleopatra may have used a mixture of poisons, rather than
snake venom, and died a pain free death.
But as legend, the precise manner of her death does not make any difference.
Cleopatra identified herself with Isis; she even dressed as Isis. Isis was the Egyptian goddess
embodying divine feminine energy. Ancient Egyptian mythology says that Isis saved Ra from a
cobra bite. By Cleopatra’s time the Isis serpent motif had been accentuated. Cleopatra’s death
by snake bite thus takes on mythological proportions.
What happened may never be known, but the fact that there is still a debate two millennia later
is testimony to Cleopatra’s enduring mystique. And the men of Hollywood were clearly moved
by that mystique.
I’ll get to the tomb in Part II, and the Isis myth in part III.
Any comments?
