The Murder of Cleopatra (25 page)

These then are two mouths of the Nile, one of which is called the Pelusiac, the other the Canobic and Heracleiotic mouth. Between these are five other outlets, some of which are considerable, but the greater part are of inferior importance. For many others branch on from the principal streams, and are distributed over the whole of the island of the Delta, and form many streams and islands; so that the whole Delta is accessible to boats, one canal succeeding another, and navigated with so much ease, that some persons make use of rafts floated on earthen pots, to transport them from place to place. But at the time of the rising of the Nile, the whole country is covered, and resembles a sea, except the inhabited spots, which are situated upon natural hills or mounds; and considerable cities and villages appear like islands in the distant prospect.
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Composed of a mass of rivers, lakes, and canals, it isn't the easiest region in which to travel, especially if the waters are rising well in a good Nile inundation season. The more suitable route to Alexandria for Octavian to take in the summer would be from Pelusium, down the eastern branch of the Nile to Memphis, and then up the western branch of the Nile to Alexandria. Following this route, the army would have a far easier march, and the ships could float alongside them until they reached their destination. Alexander himself marched his troops along this 250-mile route. No general with knowledge of the Egyptian delta and the Nile inundations would take his army due east in the summer from Pelusium if he wanted his forces to reach Alexandria successfully.

If Octavian took the Nile route, he would have prevented Cleopatra's early departure from Alexandria. If she took her ships on the Nile from Alexandria down to Memphis and then up to Bubastis to the canal, she would surely run into Octavian. Alternately, she could sail straight to Pelusium, which would take her only a few days, but then there she would be marooned with no way to enter the canal until the Nile inundated properly. We don't know if Octavian left some of his fleet at Pelusium to prevent any of her ships from passing eastward or entering the Nile at the Pelusiac mouth, but it makes sense for him to set up a blockade at that location. We don't know if he did have some of his fleet come directly against the wind toward Alexandria, but there is nothing written of an early arrival of any ships before Octavian entered the city with his troops. Certainly, Antony went that exact westerly direction in order to get to Paraetonium in late June, so it is hard to say what military decisions might have been made necessary, even if they were not the preferred method of operation.

I want to note, for those who might question the ability of Cleopatra to take her fleet in the Pelusiac mouth or the Canobic mouth, that either was equally possible. The Nile had seven major arms reaching the Mediterranean in ancient days, but it was these two that had mouths that were wide enough for large ships to pass
through. There were harbors at Memphis and Koptos, locations where ships were built and stationed. And it is written that along with much trafficking of goods between the Red Sea and the Nile ports, naval ships also moved from those locations to the Mediterranean, and invading armies moved their ships from that sea down the Nile. In his travels down to Heliopolis, fifth-century BCE Greek historian Herodotus noted this at the mouth of the Nile:

First when you are still approaching it in a ship and are distant a day's run from the land, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud and you will find yourself in eleven fathoms. This then so far shows that there is a silting forward of the land.
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Suffice it to say, Cleopatra was in Alexandria, apparently with her fleet. Octavian was coming her way from the east with his troops and fleet, and Gallus was converging from the west with his troops and fleet and might already have been in Alexandria blocking the port. The Nile inundation, however, was about four weeks away, which meant that Octavian would be arriving in Alexandria just about the time the waters reached a high-enough level to open the canal for business. Cleopatra had only one option—Plan C's Actium Two. She would have to duplicate the maneuvers of Actium, have Antony's fleet engage Octavian's, and then, hoisting their sails, her fleet would move out quickly. Her fleet would sail through or behind the line of battle to the east, and then turn down the western branch of the Nile, the one Octavian had just come up. She would sail her fleet through the Canobic mouth and move quickly down to Memphis and up to Bubastis, a trip that would take about four or five days (based on the recorded travels of Herodotus). As her fleet veered to the east behind the lines of battle, her flagship at the front, she could only hope that as many ships as possible would make it out of the harbor and follow her, those in the back giving battle if necessary to allow those at the front to make their escape. The same would be true on the Nile and in the canal; the ships in the rear, if necessary, could stop and block the route and protect the fleet, allowing
the ships at the front more time to put distance between themselves and any pursuers. With the element of surprise, the advantage of a head start, and the likelihood that Octavian would think she would sail down to Koptos or Thebes and move overland toward Berenice or south into Nubia rather than turning north toward the canal (which she would hope he was not aware had been cleared), she might make it to the Red Sea with the majority of her fleet and men and make a successful run for India.

Meanwhile, she would not want Octavian to catch wind of her plans or have any suspicions that she might flee. If he got the notion that she might have some sort of escape plan, it is possible he would investigate and take extra precautions to block any exit from the country. There is a chance that this is why Plutarch has her sending messages back and forth to Octavian, begging for his mercy, and then threatening to burn all the treasure while hiding in her tomb in Alexandria:

She had a tomb and monument built surpassingly lofty and beautiful, which she had erected near the temple of Isis, collected there the most valuable of the royal treasures, gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon; and besides all this she put there great quantities of torch-wood and tow, so that Caesar was anxious about the reason, and fearing lest the woman might become desperate and burn up and destroy this wealth, kept sending on to her vague hopes of kindly treatment from him, at the same time that he advanced with his army against the city.
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Cleopatra may have created this “desperate plan” as a distraction so she could move portions of the Lagide treasury to Berenice or Memphis—to be picked up on the way to India—without Octavian realizing what she was doing. Since Cleopatra was still in Alexandria when Octavian arrived, we must surmise that the inundation was slow in coming. Clearly, the most she succeeded in accomplishing with her messages, if there was any truth to their existence, was to appear not to be planning to flee Alexandria.

It would be a bold plan, a desperate plan, and it could work if all the breaks fell her way. Cleopatra surely hadn't had much good luck since Octavian came on the scene, but luck can always change. It even seemed that a good omen occurred the night before her plan would have to be enacted. Plutarch might have been indulging in his usual dramatic overkill, but his description of Antony's successful defense of Alexandria on July 31, 30 BCE, if it were true, might have given Cleopatra a dash of hope: “But when [Octavian] had taken up position near the hippodrome, Antony sallied forth against him and fought brilliantly and routed his cavalry, and pursued them as far as their camp.”
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Unfortunately, what little luck she might have had in her favor seemed to run out on the morning of August 1.

I found myself a seat on Saad Zaghloul Square underneath the statue of the early twentieth-century Egyptian statesman and nationalist, which had a soaring base with his figure on top and was built on the exact spot where Cleopatra's great Caesarium once stood. It was later known as the Temple of Augustus because Octavian completed the unfinished structure after the death of Cleopatra. The statue rests near the shore of the Mediterranean with the royal docks and palace nearby. Once Cleopatra's Needles, three fine red-granite obelisks that she had moved from Heliopolis to adorn her grand temple, stood here overlooking the great harbor (until 1877, when they were transported across the sea to London, Paris, and New York). No doubt two of the obelisks stood on either side of the entranceway to the Caesarium just as two obelisks stood guard at the doors of the temples of Luxor, Karnak, and Dendera.

The first major building to be completed under the Romans was the Caesareum. On the sea-front between the Emporium and the little promontory on which Antony built the Timoneion, Cleopatra had started building a splendid temple in honour of Julius Caesar. She did not live to finish it, and it was completed by Octavius and known as the Caesareum. At the entrance, facing the sea, were two obelisks, brought from Upper Egypt.
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The description of the Caesareum is of a magnificent temple:

It stands situate [
sic
] over against a most commodious harbour, wonderfully high and large in proportion, an eminent seamark full of choice paintings and statues, with donatives and oblations in abundance, and beautiful all over with gold and silver, curious and regular in the dispositions of the parts, with galleries, libraries, porches, courts, halls, walks, groves, as glorious as expense and art could make them, the hope and comfort of sea-faring men coming in or going out.
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It is extremely important to discern whether Cleopatra was holed up in a tomb or a temple because that location's very architecture can indicate where it was located and what Cleopatra saw as its purpose for August 1, 30 BCE. Before the days of the Ptolemies, in the Old and New Kingdoms of Egypt, two types of temples were built, cult temples and funerary temples (a fancy name for tombs). The cult temples were massive complexes located in town, in locations where the people could visit them regularly to worship their gods and their pharaohs; Luxor, Karnak, Dendera, Philae, and downtown Alexandria were homes to these lavish complexes. Tombs (funerary temples) were usually off in the desert, built into mountains or hills outside of town, so it took effort to reach them (and since they were sealed once the body was ensconced in them, the tombs rarely served much purpose).

No structures built by the Ptolemies currently exist, so we cannot differentiate between their temples and tombs (I will call the funerary temples “tombs” to make it simple). History, however, records Cleopatra's great Caesarium as being right in town at the harbor; and outside of town is a burial ground, a place known as the Al Qabbari Necropolis, which was discovered by forensic anthropologists of the Centre d'Études Alexandrines, directed by Jean-Yves Empereur. Mummified skeletal remains dating back to the Hellenistic era (323–146 BCE) in forty-two collective burial chambers were found by accident during road construction just west of the city in 1999. There is another tomb in the
town of Stagni, only 350 yards west of the Al Qabbari burial chambers, which are actual aboveground chambers carved into the large rock. Here we find a big stone cube with just one sealed entrance containing a chamber and a number of small rooms (it has subsequently been removed from the rock and stands freely in a garden at the Kom el-Shuqafa catacombs). The subterranean Macedonian Alabaster Tomb, likely built around 300 BCE and uncovered in 1907 in El Shatby, Egypt, lies east of modern downtown Alexandria and only a few blocks east of the ancient royal palace. The existence of this tomb might indeed indicate that there was a royal cemetery closer to town than others in Egypt. However, the location of this underground tomb is to the east of Cape Locias, so while it is close to the sea, it is not on a harbor or near the docks as the Caesarium is, the location that approximates where Plutarch places Cleopatra's mausoleum.

One thing is clear from exploring each and every one of the tombs (funerary temples): namely, not one of them has windows to look out of, to haul bodies through, or to allow light and air inside. Tombs were sealed boxes, sometimes a number of sealed boxes, that occasionally had passageways leading to the sealed boxes. Only someone carrying a torch could find his or her way, and then for only a short time since the air supply was limited. The tombs were dark graves meant to keep mummified bodies intact and their valuables for the afterlife safe from grave robbers.

Therefore, tombs had no windows. In fact, Macedonian tombs, which the Ptolemaic tombs were modeled after, were blocks of stone with an arched roof, the entire structure being covered over with dirt to bar the entranceway. But Plutarch says that the edifice in which Cleopatra had locked herself had windows, along with some other very odd features for a tomb. Here is the very illustrative part of Plutarch's story about Cleopatra and her sojourn in the mausoleum, a portion of his narrative that is full of fascinating and curious details.