The Memoirs of Cleopatra Read Online Free PDF

remembered it as a frightening place, with its descent into a dark hollow surrounded by flickering lamps, and then the mummified body with its gold armor, distorted by the crystal dome around it.
    Olympos kept up a low murmur of explanation as we walked along. Brought here instead of to Siwa…preserved in honey…the gold sarcophagus melted down when money was scarce…the priests at Memphis refusing him burial, saying wherever he lay would never be quiet…
    “How do you know so much?” I asked him, in a whisper.
    “I don’t know nearly as much as I would like to,” he said, as if he thought my question very ignorant.
    Pompey was staring at the recumbent figure. His round eyes were even rounder. I heard him mutter something in Latin that sounded humble.
    “He wants to be the new Alexander,” Olympos whispered in my ear. “People have told him he looks like him; and he does affect the hairstyle.”
    That was not good; Alexander had conquered Egypt.
    “Well, he doesn’t look like him!” I said.
    “And people keep drawing comparisons,” said Olympos. “They harp on his youth, and call him Magnus, the Great…the only Roman ever given the title! And at twenty-six, too. But they say,” he leaned over and said so softly that I could barely hear him, “that he gave the title to himself ! And that he forced Sulla to allow him to have a Triumph.”
    Pompey was still staring worshipfully at his idol.
    I stood next to him and said ( Why did I say it? Did you, Isis, give me the words?), “I share Alexander’s blood. We Ptolemies are of his family.”
    Pompey seemed startled out of his reverie. “Then you are blessed, Princess,” he said.
    “He will preserve us, and his namesake city, to his eternal glory,” I said. “He is our protector.”
    Behind me, Father was wringing his hands and looking ineffectual.
    Pompey looked down gravely at me. “In you he has a noble champion,” he finally said.
     
    On to the Museion—so called for the Nine Muses of creative thought—where the Romans were given a detailed tour, being introduced to the leading scholars and shown the reading rooms. Then the Library, the biggest in the world, with its huge inventory of scrolls. Ptolemy II had started the collection, and each succeeding king had avidly added to it.
    The head librarian, Apollonius, greeted us. “My most exalted King, and Princess, and honored Roman magistrates,” he said, bowing low. I could almost hear the bones in his aged back crackling. “Let me show you this temple to the written word.”
    He led us through several high-ceilinged rooms, each connected, like links in a chain. Daylight entered through a series of windows running around the perimeter of the room, just beneath the ceiling. Marble tables and benches were arranged around the open floor, and readers of all nationalities were hunched over opened scrolls. I saw the Greek in his tunic, the Arab in his voluminous robe, the Jew in his mantle and hood, the Egyptian, bare-chested with a leather skirt. They all looked up with a jerk as we walked in.
    They followed us with their heads as we passed through, turning like sunflowers before drooping back down to their manuscripts. We were ushered into what looked like a private room, but was actually one of the storage rooms for the library. Shelves ran all around the walls, with labels at neatly spaced intervals identifying the scrolls. It looked like a beehive, with the rolled scrolls each making a cell. A wooden name tag dangled from the knob of each scroll.
    “So this is how they are organized,” Pompey said. He looked at one label, which read “Heraclides of Tarentum.”
    “Medicine, Imperator,” said Apollonius.
    Next to that was another label, “Herophilus of Chalcedon.”
    “The unrivaled master of Alexandrian medicine,” said Apollonius proudly.
    “Two hundred years ago,” said Olympos, under his breath. “There are more recent writings.”
    “Everything is here.” Apollonius gestured