The Last Pharaoh of Egypt



Cleopatra natural papyrus



"For (as they say) it was not because her [Cleopatra's] beauty in itself was so striking that it stunned the onlooker, but the inescapable impression produced by daily contact with her: the attractiveness in the persuasiveness of her talk, and the character that surrounded her conversation was stimulating. It was a pleasure to hear the sound of her voice, and she tuned her tongue like a many-stringed instrument expertly to whatever language she chose...."

From Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony

She may not have been an Egyptian, but she was Egypt's queen, ruling on her own rather than in the name of her husband. Her relationships with the leaders of Rome led to scandals. Her death continues to inspire playwrights, movie producers, and romantics.
She was . . . Cleopatra.

Cleopatra came to power in Egypt at the age of 17. She reigned from 51-30 B.C. As a Ptolemy, Cleopatra was Macedonian, but even though her ancestry was Macedonian, she was still an Egyptian queen and worshipped as a god.

Since Cleopatra was legally obliged to have either a brother or son for her consort, she married brother Ptolemy XIII when he was 12.

"However she soon dropped his name from any official documents regardless of the Ptolemaic insistence that the male presence be first among co-rulers. She also had her own portrait and name on coins of that time, ignoring her brother's."

How did Queen Cleopatra get away with such high-handed actions? Perhaps because Egyptian women were uniquely accepted as capable of holding office and handling affairs.

"Despite the many rights of women, Egypt was not an egalitarian society. There were many class-based distinctions. Women did not inherit equally with men and fewer were literate. Rather than legal restrictions, custom dictated that middle and upper class women usually engage in child-rearing and home-based activities."

To rid herself of brother-spouse Ptolemy XIII, who had sent her into exile, Cleopatra needed Roman support. After she supposedly enticed Caesar with the infamous gift of herself rolled up in a carpet, Ptolemy was killed. In 47 B.C., Cleopatra dutifully married the next Ptolemy brother in line, Ptolemy XIV, an 11-year old, and then went on a cruise with her lover, Caesar.

"Cleopatra's union with Julius Caesar... would have placed Egypt firmly back on the map as a world power after a period of increasing weakness, with Caesar and Cleopatra reigning as joint rulers of the classical world. With this in mind she promptly produced the necessary son and heir to launch the dynasty. Republicans in Rome thwarted this by assassinating Caesar on the steps of the Senate before he was offered a Throne. Octavian later had their son Caesarion strangled following Cleopatra's defeat and ritual suicide."

An outcome of the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra was a son, the soon-to-be-murdered Caesarion, whom Cleopatra set up as her co-regent (remember the rule about women ruling as pharaohs with a male) after the murder of her second brother.

In the wake of Caesar's March 15, 44 B.C. assassination and the Civil War, Mark Antony arranged to meet Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.

He fell in love with her, but married a Roman, Octavia, sister of Caesar's heir, Octavian, later known as Augustus. It was with Cleopatra, however, that Antony lived. Octavin led the Romans to believe that Mark Antony was in the process of handing over what should be theirs to the Egyptian queen. Between this potential international threat, competition over the legacy of Julius Caesar (that Octavian was heir to the estate of Julius Caesar didn't necessarily put him in charge of the Roman Empire), and the familial insult to Octavian's sister, tensions mounted in Rome. Ultimately Mark Antony divorced his Roman wife when Octavian declared war on him (and Cleopatra).

In the end, defeated, Antony committed suicide and Cleopatra committed suicide, according to legend, by putting an asp to her breast.

The Macedonian/Greek Ptolemies had ruled Egypt from the time of the death of Alexander, in 323 B.C. After two centuries power shifted. During the reigns of the later Ptolemies Rome had become hungry guardian of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Only tribute paid to the Romans kept them from taking over. With Cleopatra's death, rule of Egypt finally passed to the Romans.

The Death of Cleopatra by Guido Cagnacci, 1658

The Death of Cleopatra by Reginald Arthur, 1892

Dea Tacita - The Silent Goddess

Dea Tacita

In Roman mythology, Dea Tacita ("the silent goddess") was a goddess of the dead. In later times, she was equated with the earth goddess Larunda. In this guise, Dea Tacita was worshipped at a festival called Larentalia on December 23. Goddesses Mutae Tacitae were invoked to destroy a hated person: in this inscription (Année epigr. 1958, 38, 150) someone asks "ut mutus sit Quartus" and "erret fugiens ut mus". These silent goddesses are the personification of terror of obscurity.

Nirrti

In Hinduism, Nirṛti is the goddess of death and corruption, one of the dikpāla (Guardians of the directions), representing the southwest (or — according Monier-Williams’s Sanskrit- English Dictionary — the south). The name nir−ṛt- has the meaning of "absence of ṛta, lawless". The masculine form of the name, Nirṛta, is a name of Rudra.

Nirrti is mentioned in a few hymns of the Rigveda, mostly to seek protection from her or imploring for her departure. In one hymn (X.59), she is mentioned several times. This hymn, after summing up her nature, also asks for her departure from the sacrificial site. In the Atharva Veda (V.7.9), she is described as having golden locks. In the Taittiriya Brahmana (I.6.1.4), Nirṛti is described as dark, dressed in dark clothes and her sacrificial shares are dark husks.

In the Shatapatha Brahmana (X.1.2.9), she is associated with pain and as the southwest quarter is her region, pain is associated with the southwest. But elsewhere in the same text (V.2.3.3.) she is mentioned as living in the south, the direction of the kingdom of the dead.

Tlazolteotl

 

In Aztec mythology, Tlazolteotl (or Tlaçolteotl) is a goddess of purification, steam bath, midwives, filth, and a patroness of adulterers. In Nahuatl, the word tlazolli can refer to vice and diseases. Thus, Tlazolteotl was a goddess of filth (sin), vice, and sexual misdeeds. However, she was a purification goddess as well, who forgave the sins and disease of those caused by misdeeds, particularly sexual misdeeds.Her dual nature is seen in her epithets; Tlaelquani ('she who eats filth [sin]') and Tlazolmiquiztli ('the death caused by lust'), and Ixcuina or Ixcuinan ('she of two faces').Under the designation of Ixcuinan she was thought to be plural in number and four sisters of different ages by the names; Tiacapan (the first born), Teicu (the younger sister), Tlaco (the middle sister) and Xocotzin (the youngest sister).

Kali

Kali

is the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, shakti. The name Kali comes from kāla, which means black, time, death, lord of death, Shiva. Kali means "the black one". Since Shiva is called Kāla—the eternal time—Kālī, his consort, also means "Time" or "Death" (as in time has come). Hence, Kāli is considered to be the goddess of time and change. Although sometimes presented as dark and violent, her earliest incarnation as a figure of annihilation still has some influence. Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman. She is also revered as Bhavatārini (literally "redeemer of the universe"). Comparatively recent devotional movements largely conceive Kāli as a benevolent mother goddess.
Kālī is represented as the consort of Lord Shiva, on whose body she is often seen standing. She is associated with many other Hindu goddesses like Durga, Bhadrakali, Sati, Rudrani, Parvati and Chamunda. She is the foremost among the Dasa Mahavidyas, ten fierce Tantric goddesses.



Babalon

 

Leila Ida Nerissa Bathurst Waddell, also known as Laylah.
She was a voluptuous beauty and became a famed Scarlet Woman of Aleister Crowley.
She was familiarly addressed by Crowley as “Laylah,” and was immortalized in his 1912 volume The Book of Lies and his autobiography The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Crowley referred to her variously as ‘Divine Whore’, ‘Mother of heaven’, ‘Sister Cybele’, ‘Scarlet Woman’, and most affectionately of all, ‘Whore of Babylon’. They studied the occult and took mescaline together.

Babalon — also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations — is a
goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 by Crowley’s writing of The
Book of the Law. In her most abstract form, she represents the female sexual impulse and the liberated woman;
although she can also be identified with Mother Earth in her most fertile sense. At the same time, Crowley
believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect in the form of a spiritual office, which could be filled by actual
women — usually as a counterpart to his own identification as “To Mega Thereon” (The Great Beast) — whose
duty was then to help manifest the energies of the current Aeon of Horus.

Her consort is Chaos, the “Father of Life” and the male form of the Creative Principle. Babalon is often
described as being girt with a sword and riding the Beast. She is often referred to as a sacred whore, and her
primary symbol is the Chalice or Grail.

Goddess of Suicide

Ixtab or Rope Woman was the Yucatec Mayan goddess of suicide according to Diego de Landa. In Yucatec society, suicide, especially suicide by hanging, was under circumstances considered an honorable way to die. Ixtab would accompany such suicides to paradise (thus playing the role of a psychopomp). Here, joined by people who died as soldiers or as sacrificial victims, by women who died in childbirth and by members of the priesthood, they enjoyed a delectable existence rewarded with delicious food and drink and resting under the shade of a pleasant tree, Yaxche, free from all want.

The picture of a dead woman with a rope around the neck in the Dresden Codex is often taken to represent the goddess. Since it occurs in a section devoted to eclipses of sun and moon, it may have been used to symbolize a lunar eclipse and its dire consequences for women, especially pregnant ones: Lunar eclipses exposed their unborn children to the risks of deformation and death. No other pictures possibly representing Ixtab are known.

Pandora

From her is the race of women and female kind:
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,
no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.

Pandora

John William Waterhouse

Pandora

1882

Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Pandora

Jean Cousin The Elder

In Greek mythology, Zeus, the king of the gods, ruler of Mount Olympus and god of the sky, ordered Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship, to make Pandora out of the earth and water, so that he could punish Prometheus. Prometheus was the brother of Epimetheus and a champion of humankind, known for his intelligence. Zeus wanted to punish him for stealing the secret of fire from him and giving it to mortals (humans). All the gods helped in making Pandora a beautiful, cunning, seductive yet deceitful woman. It is said that the gods made her nature inquisitive and curious, which is the reason why she opened a box called Pandora's box, that released all the evils among mankind. By the time she closed it, the only thing that was left in the box was 'hope'.