Cleopatra's Undying Allure
by Julia M. Klein
JULY 20, 2010 TAGS:
Queen of Egypt, lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, a savvy enchantress whose legend has been burnished for two millennia by writers, artists and filmmakers, Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) remains a shadowy figure. After her military defeat and suicide-by-snake, the conquering Romans destroyed her likenesses, murdered her son Caesarion, and shaped accounts of her reign to their own political ends. The lines of Cleopatra’s two sons with Mark Antony disappeared from history, and her tomb has never been found.
But, it turns out, not for lack of trying. The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, whose adventurous zeal evokes Indiana Jones, is digging for artifacts and the tombs of both Antony and Cleopatra amid the ruins of the temple of Taposiris Magna, about 30 miles west of Alexandria. An equally exuberant French archaeologist, Franck Goddio, has spent nearly two decades planning and leading underwater expeditions off the Egyptian coast. There he has uncovered the sunken remains of ancient Alexandria and the lost cities of Heracleion, a religious center, and Canopus, a site of both religious pilgrimage and erotic revelry.
These discoveries form the core of an over-hyped but still intriguing exhibition titled, “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt.” The traveling show, premiering at Philadelphia ’s Franklin Institute through Jan. 2, 2011 , has been organized by National Geographic and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.
Despite the title, and a hokey audio tour that purports to be narrated by Cleopatra herself, few artifacts in the show can be linked definitively to the queen. The most notable (found near Cairo, in 1904) is probably an ancient scrap of papyrus, describing a tax break for a friend of Mark Antony’s. A scrawled command in Greek – “Make it happen” – is believed by scholars to be in Cleopatra’s own hand.
Most of the 150 or so other artifacts have a murkier provenance, dating to sometime in the Ptolemaic period (304-30 B.C.), or to the Roman period that followed. Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemies, a dynasty whose founder, Ptolemy I Soter, was a Greek general in the service of Alexander the Great.
To cement their rule, the Ptolemaic rulers skillfully created composite Greek-Egyptian deities. In the Egyptian tradition, they identified themselves as gods and practiced brother-sister marriage. Cleopatra, who began her reign at age 17, was married at different times to two of her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and XIV, and later married her son, Caesarion.
But her real loves were the two famous Romans, with whom she made useful political alliances and conceived four children. Antony in particular seems to have gone native, embracing the luxurious lifestyle of the Egyptian court. Possibly a beauty – accounts differ, and the few extant images suggest otherwise – Cleopatra was without doubt clever and highly educated, a linguist who spoke not just Greek and Egyptian, but also Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages.
Most of this information derives from ancient texts, highlighted in the exhibition. The show’s main contribution is to offer new details about Cleopatra’s context, her world, and especially the religious practices embraced by Ptolemaic Egypt. “The memory of Cleopatra has been totally erased,” Goddio, president of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, said somewhat hyperbolically in an interview. His marine archaeology has revealed evidence of her environs and material culture – in Goddio’s words, “the place where she was living, the statues she was worshiping, the instruments she was using.”
In terms of her appearance, Goddio said, “she is as a ghost.” This, too, appears to be an exaggeration, since the show displays coins with her profile, which includes a prominent, even beak-like nose. (It also features images of statues that may represent her.) In the exhibition, Goddio says, “we feel the presence of Cleopatra through a statue which is a likeness of her father,” as well as “a statue which is a likeness of her son with Julius Caesar.” The visage of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, known as Auletes or the Flutist, is part of a sphinx. One of Goddio’s dreams, he says, is to find a statue of Cleopatra herself.
The show is organized primarily by archaeological site rather than theme or chronology, with sections devoted to Canopus, Heracleion, Alexandria and Taposirus Magna. The audio tour, by contrast, offers a narrative history of Cleopatra that doesn’t always mesh with the displays. But other media are more effective: Videos depict the discovery of some of the key objects on view, and dark, dramatically lit galleries suggest a passage underwater.
And some of the artifacts unquestionably inspire awe. Most striking are two pink-granite colossi of Ptolemaic rulers, more than 16 feet tall, that guarded the temple at Heracleion – a place where Cleopatra must have worshiped. Strongly Egyptian in style, they were recovered in pieces and re-assembled. An imposing marble head of Serapis, a composite god, is capped with a vessel-like crown. The sculpted ringlets and beard recall Greek statuary. Even more beautiful is the headless figure of a Ptolemaic queen whose exquisitely proportioned body is visible beneath a draped, flowing gown with a knot representing the goddess Isis. Goddio said she has been identified as Queen Arsinoe II, a third-century B.C. monarch who was married to Ptolemy II and was known during her lifetime as “the mistress of the seas.”
In the section devoted to excavations by Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Dominican archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, is an alabaster sculpture they believe depicts Cleopatra. It is paired with a find from a 1990s Hungarian expedition: a fragmentary granite mask with a Roman nose and cleft chin that may portray Mark Antony.
The show ends with a cursory look at the Cleopatra legend, emphasizing her exotic allure -- and with the promise of more discoveries. As new artifacts are raised from the sands or the seas, they will be added to this exhibition-in-progress, chipping away ever so slightly at the mysteries enveloping Egypt’s last queen.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review. Her 2009 work for Obit has been awarded first prize for online features by the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
But, it turns out, not for lack of trying. The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, whose adventurous zeal evokes Indiana Jones, is digging for artifacts and the tombs of both Antony and Cleopatra amid the ruins of the temple of Taposiris Magna, about 30 miles west of Alexandria. An equally exuberant French archaeologist, Franck Goddio, has spent nearly two decades planning and leading underwater expeditions off the Egyptian coast. There he has uncovered the sunken remains of ancient Alexandria and the lost cities of Heracleion, a religious center, and Canopus, a site of both religious pilgrimage and erotic revelry. These discoveries form the core of an over-hyped but still intriguing exhibition titled, “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt.” The traveling show, premiering at Philadelphia ’s Franklin Institute through Jan. 2, 2011 , has been organized by National Geographic and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.
Despite the title, and a hokey audio tour that purports to be narrated by Cleopatra herself, few artifacts in the show can be linked definitively to the queen. The most notable (found near Cairo, in 1904) is probably an ancient scrap of papyrus, describing a tax break for a friend of Mark Antony’s. A scrawled command in Greek – “Make it happen” – is believed by scholars to be in Cleopatra’s own hand.
Most of the 150 or so other artifacts have a murkier provenance, dating to sometime in the Ptolemaic period (304-30 B.C.), or to the Roman period that followed. Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemies, a dynasty whose founder, Ptolemy I Soter, was a Greek general in the service of Alexander the Great.
To cement their rule, the Ptolemaic rulers skillfully created composite Greek-Egyptian deities. In the Egyptian tradition, they identified themselves as gods and practiced brother-sister marriage. Cleopatra, who began her reign at age 17, was married at different times to two of her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and XIV, and later married her son, Caesarion.
But her real loves were the two famous Romans, with whom she made useful political alliances and conceived four children. Antony in particular seems to have gone native, embracing the luxurious lifestyle of the Egyptian court. Possibly a beauty – accounts differ, and the few extant images suggest otherwise – Cleopatra was without doubt clever and highly educated, a linguist who spoke not just Greek and Egyptian, but also Hebrew, Aramaic and other languages.
Most of this information derives from ancient texts, highlighted in the exhibition. The show’s main contribution is to offer new details about Cleopatra’s context, her world, and especially the religious practices embraced by Ptolemaic Egypt. “The memory of Cleopatra has been totally erased,” Goddio, president of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, said somewhat hyperbolically in an interview. His marine archaeology has revealed evidence of her environs and material culture – in Goddio’s words, “the place where she was living, the statues she was worshiping, the instruments she was using.”
In terms of her appearance, Goddio said, “she is as a ghost.” This, too, appears to be an exaggeration, since the show displays coins with her profile, which includes a prominent, even beak-like nose. (It also features images of statues that may represent her.) In the exhibition, Goddio says, “we feel the presence of Cleopatra through a statue which is a likeness of her father,” as well as “a statue which is a likeness of her son with Julius Caesar.” The visage of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, known as Auletes or the Flutist, is part of a sphinx. One of Goddio’s dreams, he says, is to find a statue of Cleopatra herself.The show is organized primarily by archaeological site rather than theme or chronology, with sections devoted to Canopus, Heracleion, Alexandria and Taposirus Magna. The audio tour, by contrast, offers a narrative history of Cleopatra that doesn’t always mesh with the displays. But other media are more effective: Videos depict the discovery of some of the key objects on view, and dark, dramatically lit galleries suggest a passage underwater.
And some of the artifacts unquestionably inspire awe. Most striking are two pink-granite colossi of Ptolemaic rulers, more than 16 feet tall, that guarded the temple at Heracleion – a place where Cleopatra must have worshiped. Strongly Egyptian in style, they were recovered in pieces and re-assembled. An imposing marble head of Serapis, a composite god, is capped with a vessel-like crown. The sculpted ringlets and beard recall Greek statuary. Even more beautiful is the headless figure of a Ptolemaic queen whose exquisitely proportioned body is visible beneath a draped, flowing gown with a knot representing the goddess Isis. Goddio said she has been identified as Queen Arsinoe II, a third-century B.C. monarch who was married to Ptolemy II and was known during her lifetime as “the mistress of the seas.”
In the section devoted to excavations by Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Dominican archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, is an alabaster sculpture they believe depicts Cleopatra. It is paired with a find from a 1990s Hungarian expedition: a fragmentary granite mask with a Roman nose and cleft chin that may portray Mark Antony. The show ends with a cursory look at the Cleopatra legend, emphasizing her exotic allure -- and with the promise of more discoveries. As new artifacts are raised from the sands or the seas, they will be added to this exhibition-in-progress, chipping away ever so slightly at the mysteries enveloping Egypt’s last queen.
Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review. Her 2009 work for Obit has been awarded first prize for online features by the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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