Cleopatra the Great Read Online Free Page A

the cradle of civilization whose priests held powers passed down from the gods themselves, they nevertheless found certain things completely unfathomable, for ‘the Egyptians themselves in their manners and customs seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind’. This was particularly so in the case of women, for in contrast to the restrictions imposed on respectable Greek women who only went out of the house as a last resort and even then fully covered, their Egyptian sisters were not only allowed out, but attended market and ‘are employed in trade while the men stay at home and do the weaving’. Further unnatural practices meant that Egyptian ‘women pass water standing up, men sitting down’, with similarly amusing overtones in the Greeks’ descriptions of the Egyptians as ‘crocodiles’ and ‘papyrus eaters’. The characteristic triangular tomb structure ‘mer’ was dubbed ‘pyramis’ after the small Greek cake, and the tall stone monolith ‘tekhen’ became an ‘obelisk’, or kebab skewer.
    Yet as the massive Persian empire, successor to Assyria and Babylon, began its inexorable expansion west, the scattered peoples of southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean suddenly became very aware of their ‘Greekness’. They assumed superiority over all non-Greek-speaking ‘barbarians’, so that the Persians became denigrated as effeminate trouser-wearing cowards and the Trojan War wheeled out as proof of Greek superiority over their weaker eastern neighbours. On occasion these even included Egypt, whose mystique had been undermined by long-term familiarity, although there remained the need for mutual support against a common enemy.
    When the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525 BC and executed the last Saite king, he exhumed the mummy of his predecessor Amasis to have it tortured and beaten, but since ‘the corpse had been embalmed and would not fall to pieces under the blows, Cambyses ordered it to be burnt’ to deprive the pharaoh’s soul of its physical home. He then ridiculed the sacred Apis bull, asking the priests, ‘Do you call that a god, you poor creatures?’ before mortally wounding the beast and having the priests flogged.
    Despite such Greek accounts, the Persians successfully ruled Egypt through an efficient civil service, leaving most officials in their posts and replacing the pharaoh by a governor ruling on the Persian king’s behalf. Military garrisons were installed as far south as Elephantine, and with the Saite canal between the Nile and Red Sea reopened and camels used in increasing numbers, trade and communications were greatly enhanced.
    Although Persia also took over Greek colonies in Asia Minor, the city-state of Athens pulled off an amazing victory at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC and, despite their city being sacked in a revenge attack, struck back to defeat the Persians soundly by land and sea. The Greeks then assisted Egypt to throw out its Persian occupiers, as commemorated by the Egyptians in Homeric-style battle epics, but the Persians soon came back. With the Greeks embroiled in their own internal conflicts as Athens and Sparta slugged it out during the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC , an isolated Egypt slipped back under Persian control and suffered serious cultural decline until renewed Greek help once this war was over gave the Delta courage to rise again.
    The cities of Sais and Mendes declared independence, fighting off Persian attacks with assistance from Athenian forces headed by the Greek general Chabrias. In 380 BC a real renaissance began when the Egyptian general Nakhtnebef — better known by his Greek name, Nectanebo — proclaimed himself pharaoh (380-362 BC ). From its base at the Delta town of Sebennytos this last native dynasty restored national pride, revived ancient art forms, built an astonishing number of temples and promoted the cults