Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt Read Free

beneath the roof, cut into its wood to reveal the coffin. The discarded remains of the pillar would be venerated for ever in the temple of Isis at Byblos.
    Isis took the coffin and set sail for Egypt so that she might bury Osiris in his own land. But Seth, hunting in the moonlight, stumbled across Osiris lying in his coffin in the Egyptian desert. Furious, he hacked his brother into pieces, which he flung far and wide. Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis searched high and low, recovering the scattered parts until only the penis was missing. This would never be found, for the greedy Nile fish had eaten it.
    Isis, the divine healer, equipped her husband with a replica penis, bandaged him, then sang the spell that would bring him back to a semblance of life. Transforming herself into a bird, she hovered over her husband’s restored body, flapped her wings and breathed air into his nose. Her magic was very poweful; nine months later she bore Osiris a son. As Osiris retreated to the afterlife to become king of the dead, Isis fled with the baby Horus to the papyrus marshes. Here she protected her son with her potent magic until he was old enough to challenge his uncle and claim his inheritance. 7
    The Isis of this tale is the ideal wife for any man, be he king or commoner, and she is the ideal role model for any queen. She is beautiful, wise, faithful and fertile. While things go according to plan, she remains modestly in the background, supporting her husband and attending to the domestic tasks that are traditionally the wife’s lot. When her husband dies, she grieves for him. But we should not underestimate her. Isis is cunning and well versed in magic, and she is quite capable of independent action should the need arise. It is she who poses the greatest threat to Seth’s ambition. Her healing powers, in particular, are unsurpassed, magic being an important aspect of theEgyptian healer’s training. While Osiris takes a sabbatical to travel the world it is Isis, and not Seth, who is left to rule in his absence; the tradition of the wife deputising for the husband is a well-documented one, and we have examples of women from all walks of life directing their absent husbands’ affairs. When Osiris departs to the land of the dead, it is Isis who rules on her infant son’s behalf.
    Osiris quickly came to symbolise all of Egypt’s dead pharaohs. They, mummified like their new sovereign, became eternal kings in the shadowy afterlife, while their successors, the Horus kings, ruled the living Egypt. And, as Isis was the mother and protector of Horus the living king, she naturally became the mother of all of Egypt’s living kings. Two- and three-dimensional images of Horus sitting on his mother’s knee may therefore be ‘read’ as images of the living king sitting on his throne, while images of Isis suckling Horus (or his late variant Harpocrates) may be read as images of any and all Egyptian queens suckling their sons. Conversely, any image of an Egyptian queen with her son may be interpreted as an image of Isis with Horus. Soon after Caesarion’s birth, mother and son were featured on the bronze Cypriot coin already mentioned (page 61). The obverse of this coin shows Cleopatra carrying a sceptre and wearing the raised diadem known as a stephane , a Hellenistic symbol of divinity. Caesarion is an indistinct, featureless blob at his mother’s breast. This is not Cleopatra the queen, but Cleopatra the mother goddess Isis/Aphrodite, suckling the infant Horus/Eros. The reverse of the coin features the double cornucopia, symbol of never-ending fertility, and the legend ‘of Cleopatra the Queen’ ( Kleopatras Basilisses ).
    No equivalent Egyptian coin was issued, but reliefs carved in the Armant birth house associate Cleopatra with Rat-tawi (Female Sun of the Two Lands; a late form of Hathor) and Caesarion with the infant Harpre-pekhrat (Horus the Sun, the Child; a late version of Horus/Harpocrates). We have already noted