The Murder of Cleopatra (22 page)

Ah, such a tragedy unfolds for Cleopatra and Antony. But, let's stop and think about Plutarch's amazing description of Cleopatra's escape plan, how she attempted to drag her ships across the isthmus from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. What an incredible undertaking—one so spectacular, Plutarch no doubt had credible historical accounts of it having happened.

It is clear to me that this phenomenal effort to move her fleet to the Red Sea indicates Cleopatra was well aware of her predicament and was still fighting to be the mistress of her own future, something I believe she continued to attempt to orchestrate to the end. After Actium, she knew that her liaison with Mark Antony would no longer be a strong and powerful force in keeping her on Egypt's throne (unless Octavian suddenly died), that he could only aid her in some more moderate fashion, and that it would be up to her to make a drastic move if she saw Octavian heading her way. Unfortunately, Cleopatra would not know exactly when Octavian would march on Egypt, so she did not know how much time she had to take action. This lack of knowledge would have a great effect on just how she would try to escape the country.

First, we need to examine what Cleopatra would need in order to leave Egypt and survive in a foreign land for a considerable period of time. It is certain she would need a large amount of money (her Lagide treasury or at least a substantial portion of it) and a sizable number of men to protect her and it. In other words, she couldn't sail off to India or anywhere else with three ships and the contents of her treasury. She needed her fleet, her men, and her treasure.

According to Plutarch, she had at least sixty ships, a number that was surely large enough to sail the Red and Arabian Seas. But the ships were in the Mediterranean, not in the Red Sea, and that was her dilemma. There are those who believe that she might have had some ships down south at Berenice, where she sent her son Caesarion with some of the treasure, but since Caesarion was still there when Octavian sent his men to get him, he obviously didn't sail away. Also, it is unlikely that Cleopatra would have gone to the trouble of dragging
any of her ships over the isthmus, over thirty miles of desert (the seas were closer together in those days than at present), if she had a reasonable number of large warships and merchant ships at Berenice.

There is a logical reason why Cleopatra might not have had so many ships on her Red Sea ports. Those Nabataeans who ended up burning up some of her ships pretty much controlled the Red Sea at the time. They were pirates who made seafaring rather challenging in those days, and we see similar activities in the same region today (e.g., the Somali pirates). There were lots of little coves and reefs along the Egyptian Red Sea shore, which limited the availability of navigable ports and provided ideal hiding places from which pirates could strike. During Cleopatra's time there were only two ports operating on the Red Sea, the one at Berenice, close to the southern border and the best location for setting off toward India; and Mersa Gawasis, the port 230 miles to the north, located just south of present-day Hurghada.

Although six caves that were carved into a coral terrace that held parts of ships and shipbuilding materials from pharaonic times were found in Mersa Gawasis in 2004 by archaeologists, it is believed these workshops were used to repair damaged ships and to reconstruct ships that were built in the shipyards of Koptos (present-day Luxor), then dismantled and carried by thousands of men on donkeys for eleven or so days through the Wadi Hammamat to the Red Sea port. There appeared to be no evidence that ships were actually being built at Mersa Gawasis or Berenice, although Strabo, the geographer, writes of a shipyard at Cleopatris (also known as Arsinoe; located at the end of the Ptolemaic Canal on the Bitter Lakes at the north end of the Red Sea) that was operational soon after Octavian took over Egypt. Once Antony and Cleopatra were taken care of and he was in control of Egypt, Octavian began preparing for an invasion of Arabia and supposedly built eighty warships and 120 transport ships for the occasion, with the help of then governor Aelius Gallus (who was the second prefect of Roman Egypt from 26 to 24 BCE, after replacing the first prefect, Cornelius Gallus [30-26 BCE]).
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The invasion of Arabia failed, and many of the ships sunk, but it is interesting that Strabo does say there were still 120 ships in operation sailing from the Egyptian Red Sea coast in 26 BCE.

When Gallus was the prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him along the Nile River as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia. There I learned that as many as 120 vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India.
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Considering that just three years had passed since Rome assumed control in Egypt, I find it a bit perplexing how a shipyard and some two hundred ships were so quickly built at that Red Sea port. A trireme, one of the smallest and lightest of the warships of the period, might have taken about six thousand man hours to build; others say at least a couple of months. If the shipyard at Cleopatris was building just these types, it would have to build one trireme per week to get two hundred done in three years; or, more realistically, at one trireme every couple of months, there would only be twenty ships produced at that one Egyptian shipyard. And these would have to float around the dangerous Red Sea while waiting for the rest of the fleet to be finished. There is still the matter of building the shipyard even before building the ships, which requires bringing in the manpower and knowledge to build the ships properly and carrying all the materials through the desert as well. Perhaps it was one heck of an operation. (There are reports of Julius Caesar whipping up a large number of ships in a short time on the spot in order to invade Gaul, and there are other stories of generals putting together fleets of some sort in a limited time; how accurate or exaggerated these are is difficult to tell.) But the tale of Gallus's shipbuilding seems a bit too impressive—that he built some two hundred ships of various sizes (not only the simplest and lightest) in one brand-new shipyard established in a new land in a rather volatile area close to the crafty Nabataeans, the very enemy Rome was declaring war against.

Shipbuilding was quite a different animal in the days of ancient
Rome and Egypt. As a confirmed landlubber only having spent time on a cruise ship, a paddle boat, and an occasional sailboat with a glass of wine in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, my knowledge of how ships are put together is near zero. I can understand the concept of lashing logs together to make a raft, but beyond that, I have no real feel for the complexity of building a seaworthy ship: how much material it would take, how many men would be needed to put the ship together, and what level of skill the overseer of such a project would need to possess.

I took a trip back out to Giza, where the pyramids are, to visit one other structure at the site, the Solar Boat Museum. In a most peculiarly shaped building on the south side of the Great Pyramid is ensconced the oldest boat in the world, discovered in 1954. It was constructed forty-six centuries ago by Djederfre, son of Cheops, the pharaoh who was buried in the Great Pyramid. Now, this boat isn't theorized to have actually been a boat that was ever put into use, but rather it was constructed and then dismantled to be buried next to the king as his craft to then be reassembled in his future life. (Or it could have been a funerary boat that carried his body in the procession to the grave and then was broken down.) It was found in a pit thirty-one meters long and covered with sixteen tons of limestone blocks. It is made of cedar and, as a completed boat; I can tell you it is a stunning specimen, simply beautiful in its shape and craftsmanship. It was, indeed, a boat fit for a king to sail off into eternity.

However, putting aside my artistic appreciation for the ancient boat, I noted how intricate the boat is. It is not a really large craft, just thirty-one meters long, but it contained 1,224 pieces! And this pharaonic jigsaw puzzle took fourteen years for the reconstruction team to put together. Admittedly, the team no doubt had their work cut out for them, trying to figure out what piece went where, especially considering the parts were marked with an ancient hieratic script and they were making a boat they had never seen except in rough artistic depictions dating back to ancient times. Also, they undoubtedly were taking extreme care to put the boat together, so
this was no rush job. But fourteen years and 1,224 pieces at least gave me an understanding that five unskilled men and a hammer were not going to knock together a seaworthy warship or galley or transport ship over the weekend. And Cheops's boat was quite a small, delicate thing, not a vessel meant to hold dozens or hundreds of people rowing and fighting and navigating through rough waters.

What Romans like Gallus needed for their forays and what Cleopatra needed to sail off to India were much larger and stronger constructions. From what I saw at the Solar Boat Museum, I am more likely to side with the longer time frame to construct even a trireme. Of course, the shipyard at Cleopatris may have had a number of ships being constructed simultaneously, and maybe they had an awesome contingent of manpower from the legions that were available after conquering Egypt. But I should refer to Michael Pitassi's
The Navies of Rome
, specifically to his outstanding commentary on just how many ships were able to be produced in those days; and then we can see just what the odds were of Gallus producing two hundred ships in three years on the Red Sea port at Cleopatris (Arsinoe) in Egypt.

Here is Pitassi's explanation of a claim by then ancient Greek historian Polybius that Rome built 120 ships
in just two months
(one hundred quinquerimes, four-level galleys of some 130 to 150 feet, requiring around 180 rowers; and twenty triremes, three-level galleys of 120 feet, with some 170 rowers). This was a little farther back in history, around the period between 267 and 261 BCE, when Rome had no navy and needed one to fight Carthage in the Punic Wars.

Luckily, Pitassi understands that certain claims of history must be taken with a grain of salt, allowing for gross exaggeration or misinterpretation of the writings or simply a communication breakdown between storyteller and those who later heard the tale. Pitassi's take on the matter of shipbuilding is not the only one out there, but it is a reasonable explanation that meshes well with other viewpoints I have researched on the matter of how ships are built and how long it takes to build them. I find Pitassi's analysis to be a good one with which to
understand the choices of Romans and Egyptians regarding how to produce ships for use on the Red Sea.

From 267 BC therefore, the navy was increasing its shipbuilding capacity and equally, having established such an operation, it follows that the building of warships was a continuous process throughout the coming war. From the figures that have been provided by the ancient sources, it is possible to ascertain an approximation of the production capacity for warships. By taking this larger overall view, such statements as that by Polybius that the Romans built 120 ships in two months, which on the face of it appears unlikely, can become reasonable and feasible. If one accepts the not unreasonable view that if the larger Navy Board started to increase warship building capacity in 267, when the Praefecti were appointed, and that by 265, had six yards in operation; then Polybius actually meant that it took two months to build one ship (so they were all ‘built in two months,' but each), i.e., if a ship took sixty days to be built, the shipyard would at that rate, build six ships a year, half a dozen yards would build thirty-six and so on. Even if he exaggerated and it took three months to build a ship and therefore, starting in 265 BC, the 120 new ships would be all ready as they were, for use together in 261 BC. Taking the war as a whole and the ancient sources' figures for new construction (and allowing for, in addition to the ‘natural' annual wastage of old ships at the end of their lives, those lost by accident or misadventure that had to be replaced) then the Romans' annual average production of new ships was about twenty-five ships.
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I think Pitassi's calculations tend to support my disbelief that Gallus was operating such a fantastic shipbuilding operation at Cleopatris. What seems more likely to me is that a good portion, if not all of those ships, simply sailed there from Alexandria (including Cleopatra's and Antony's remaining ships), and/or from Rome after being built in various shipyards at home or, possibly, from Koptos after being built in Egypt's own shipbuilding capital. What really strikes me, though, is the claim of some kind of shipbuilding and ship-
repairing facility at Cleopatris, which leads me to think there was a reason for a shipyard to be at that location where none had been before: ships and shipbuilding materials were being transported from the Nile to the Red Sea via the Ptolemaic Canal, the canal built long ago by Cleopatra's ancestor Ptolemy II. Now the canal was supposedly in disrepair and silted up when Cleopatra came to power, but due to a sudden appearance of the shipyard at the end of it (why didn't Gallus choose Mersa Gawasis or Berenice?), it is my contention that this is fairly solid proof that the Ptolemaic Canal was operational when Octavian arrived in Egypt. And why would that be? If it had been operational upon Cleopatra's return from Actium, surely she wouldn't have bothered with her disastrous attempt to drag her ships across the Sinai Desert. A useable canal clearly would have been her first choice. Therefore, the canal was not operational
when
she returned from Actium, and so the quickest method she had at her disposal was to drag the ships across the thirty miles of isthmus desert from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

Let's take a look again at the time frame in which Cleopatra had to work. In September 31 BCE, she and Antony lost at Actium and sailed back to Egypt. Octavian started coming their way in the early spring. By April he was in Syria, and by July he was crossing the border into Egypt. By August 30, he was in Alexandria. Therefore, the time it actually took for Octavian to travel from Rome to Egypt was about three months. In theory, Octavian could have shown up in Egypt in December if he had rushed right off. Of course, winter was not a great time to be moving one's fleet across the Mediterranean to Egypt, but Octavian had been known to take wild risks in the past. However, I think Cleopatra would have doubted his need to hurry to Egypt, so I will accept that Cleopatra thought she had nine months to a year to work on her escape before Octavian got in her way.