The life and legacy of the daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes, Cleopatra, has fascinated not only Europeans but also Arabs and Africans alike. Her name over the years has become synonymous with beauty, and she is known as the last ancient Greek pharaoh of Egypt.
Several artists have attempted to portray her in their art, and several authors have written books on her. Michelangelo presented his beautiful drawing of Cleopatra to his friend and admirer the Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri in 1532. Moreover, William Shakespeare wrote a five-part play, “Antony and Cleopatra.” It was the last of his tragedies and was most likely written and initially performed in 1606.
Cleopatra and the Romans
The influential Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar was Cleopatra’s lover, and she later married Mark Anthony. When the Romans under Octavian invaded Egypt, both Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide.
During her lifetime, she contributed to the building of a temple in Egypt. That temple, the ruins of which stand to this day, continues to have some of the most vibrant colors on it’s ceiling, walls, and pillars.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), construction of this temple was completed by Emperor Tiberius 185 years after work on it began under the Hellenic Ptolemies. The hypostyle hall of this temple was decorated in 34 AD by Tiberius himself with twenty-four cow-headed or Hathoric columns.
In reference to the Hellenic Ptolemaic dynasty, of which Cleopatra was a part, UNESCO states that “the Ptolemies introduced Greek culture into Egypt whilst preserving Egyptian culture. They resided in Alexandria, a Hellenistic city par excellence.”
Dendera
In the Iliad, the Greek poet Homer describes Luxor as the “city of a hundred gates.” Not far from the city of Luxor, which was the capital of Egypt during the Middle and New Kingdoms and is alternatively known as Thebes or Diospolis Magna, one can find the most important center for the worship of the goddess Hathor.
The divinity with the cow horns and the lady of the sky, associated with music, joy, dance, and motherhood, is memorialized in the Temple of Hathor in Dendera. This temple was built in Greco-Roman times between 30 BC and 14 AD. According to UNESCO, Hathor was the “equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite [and] a foremost divinity in the area known to the Egyptians as Iunet Tantere, and to the Greeks and Romans as Tenyri.” This was the capital of the 6th nome of Upper Egypt during the Ptolemies era.
Visitors can easily get to this temple within about an hour, and they are able to access the roof of the temple. This temple of the goddess Hathor in Dendera was largely built by Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII (Netjeret-merites) and added to by Trajan. It is a superb example of Greco-Egyptian temple architecture.
Importance of Hathor temple
In her thesis on “The Theology of Hathor of Dendera: Aural and Visual Scribal Techniques in the Per-Wer Sanctuary,” scholar Barbara Ann Richter of the University of California, Berkeley writes:
“The Ptolemaic temples are some of the best-preserved examples of Egyptian religious architecture; they represent the culmination of a long line of development, reflected in an increase in the number and polyvalency of hieroglyphic signs and iconographic elements in the wall reliefs. This development widened the scribal playing field for creating expressions that function on multiple aural, visual, and thematic levels.”
Cleopatra and Caesarion
Visitors to the Hathor temple can see a colossal carving of Cleopatra VII Philopator (51-30 BC) and her son Ptolemy XV Caesarion (44-30 BC) before the gods. This is located on the south exterior wall of the temple.
As explained by the Royal Collection Trust of the United Kingdom, “Caesarion was allegedly the child Cleopatra had with Julius Caesar (100-44 BC).” Judith Therman writes in her article “The Cleopatriad” for The New Yorker that “after the Queen (Cleopatra) gave birth to Caesarion she began to style herself as a New Isis….Sailors carved Isis on their prows and spread her cult to Greece, Rome, Persia, North Africa, Asia Minor, and Iberia; it even reached Germany and Britain before dying out about four hundred years into the Christian era.”
Conclusion
Graeco-Roman temples of Egypt are quite well preserved and are major sources for the study of around three centuries of Hellenic Ptolemaic rule in Egypt and almost six centuries of Roman rule in the country.
Although civilizations have come and gone, Egypt retains its rich diversity. From its people to its food, traveling in this country is a phenomenal learning experience.
The temples in Dendera, Esna, Edfu, and Komb Ombo are four Pharaonic temples that belong to the Ptolemaic period. Visitors can visit them when traveling from Aswan to Alexandria.
It’s fascinating how Hellenes feature prominently not only in European and Western civilization history but also in ancient Egypt and Africa, with these temples serving as tangible expressions of this connection.