The Murder of Cleopatra (5 page)

At the very beginning of any death investigation, I know very little, usually only that a person, or more than one person, has met with some unfortunate turn of events that has led to their demise. I do not know if they met their fates through accident, suicide, homicide, natural causes, or, if there are multiple corpses, by any combination of these manners of death.

The same is true for Cleopatra and her handmaidens. All I know is that they are dead and here they lie in the mausoleum, unmoving in their final death positions as if someone had yelled out “Freeze!” and they had obeyed. That they are dead is my first verifiable fact, and as I begin collecting and analyzing the evidence, the picture begins to fill out.

First, I find there is the claim by Octavian that Cleopatra and her servants have committed suicide. The queen's physician, who visited the scene of the crime and pronounced the ladies dead, did not state the deaths were natural, so we can determine that their deaths were at least suspicious. The investigation is worth pursuing because in any death where there is a possibility that the deceased did not die from disease or old age, one should conduct an examination
to determine the actual cause and manner of the fatality. If there has been foul play, the victim deserves a full exploration of the circumstances to bring the truth to light and to have the perpetrator or perpetrators who took his or her life brought to justice.

If too much time has passed for the guilty to stand trial for their crimes, it is never too late for the pages of history to be corrected to reflect a more accurate accounting of the events.

During the last trip I made to Egypt, I met up with Professor David Warrell, a poison expert with the University of Oxford. After a hair-raising taxi ride through the streets of Cairo, Dr. Warrell and I arrived at a secluded cobra facility and examined the various snakes found in the region. Only one snake turned out to be a candidate for the job of Cleopatra's killer, and that was the Egyptian Cobra, the Naja Haje. This was the only one with sufficient venom to do the job.

Standing within a couple of feet of that large hooded asp flicking its tongue at me, watching it rise in the air each time the old, grizzled snake handler ticked it off with the poke of a stick, I realized what the women in the tomb would have been dealing with (even if it had been a smaller asp, as some people think might have been smuggled in with the figs, the fact that it is so deadly makes even a tiny snake just as terrifying). I had moved quite near to the snake and, suddenly, it occurred to me that none of the production team was within twenty feet of the beast; just me, Dr. Warrell, and a man who was so up in years that he didn't likely have that much time left in the world anyway. Clearly, fear of deadly snakes is a natural deterrent that keeps people at a safe distance. To be willing to reach out and touch one would require great courage and an acceptance of death that few humans have; Cleopatra, perhaps, but her handmaidens, doubtful.

Dr. Warrell filled me in on the scientific facts of the cobra and its venomous ability to kill, and I inserted this knowledge into the tomb crime-scene scenario.

The beautiful and beloved queen of Egypt and her handmaidens had reached the end of their lives. It has been believed for over two thousand years that a snake of this sort—a cobra or an asp—was
responsible for the deaths of all three ladies. The physician in attendance said there were two marks on Cleopatra's arm that resembled a snake bite, yet no tests were conducted to prove that venom was actually within any of these purported puncture marks.

Furthermore, there was never mention of similar marks on the bodies of the other two women. Nor is it mentioned that anyone actually examined the bodies of the handmaidens; perhaps they were of so little consequence that any information about their deaths did not rate worth mentioning.

But if indeed a snake was the weapon used to bring about the deaths of Cleopatra and her handmaidens, why was the reptile never reported to have been seen or found within the tomb? Why weren't Octavian's men afraid of being struck down by the deadly cobra? If they had passed the snake from victim to victim, wouldn't the last woman to die have dropped the snake to the floor? Or if all three had stuck their hands into the container to access the deadly snake, wouldn't it have been left in the basket of figs? Once it was “realized” that a poisonous snake caused the death of the three females, wouldn't it be natural for any human being to be unnerved at the thought of the creature slithering within the walls of the tomb, a building that was practically hermetically sealed?

Though still in the process of being built, the work in progress was supposedly on an upper floor or the roof, not the ground level. The brand-new floors and walls would yield neither a crack nor a gap where the perpendicular surfaces meet (and even in those most ancient of tombs I visited, I never saw a sliver of space where the floors met the walls).

The asp had nowhere to go except to circle around futilely. Surely the men would be unwilling to share space with the deadly snake. One would expect them to shout out warnings, walk cautiously about, fearing the cobra would suddenly strike from behind or emerge from under an object concealing its location. They would search the tomb thoroughly, prepared to crush the poisonous viper as soon as it was discovered.

Yet nothing is mentioned of this in the writings; the men entered the tomb and tended to business with not the slightest concern that they, too, could become victims of the deadly asp.

And what did Plutarch say? Only that someone saw an impression in the sand some distance from the tomb that resembled the swishing of a snake making its way to the sea. If none of the visitors to the crime scene felt the need to locate the cobra when its presence could cost them their lives, it seems rather contradictory to search for it at a later time and out somewhere on the beach!

I decided to play devil's advocate in my mind to further determine whether the cobra could have caused the deaths of these three women, even if there were no witnesses or evidence to prove it.

First, there is the question of how Cleopatra could have gotten possession of the deadly snake. She was already in captivity and under guard. Nothing would have been allowed into the tomb that Octavian did not give his approval for, and surely before the women were left unattended within the structure, a thorough sweep would have been made of the area to ensure no items were available to the queen to use in an unacceptable manner.

Once the area was secure and Cleopatra and her maidens each endured a full body search, the ladies would have been locked inside, and guards would be stationed to secure the area (one should think there would be competent guards placed outside the door and possibly a guard or two inside the door as well). Plutarch wrote that the snake was hidden among figs in a basket and that the guards barely glanced into it before they permitted it to be brought into the tomb. Either this is a fanciful story or the guards were later put to death by Octavian for their carelessness and stupidity. Any guard who wished to see the next sunrise would have thoroughly examined the basket and its contents. A snake is not something likely to be missed during such a search.

But, I allowed, suppose the guards were fools or drunks or stooges paid off by Cleopatra, and the basket, snake included, ended up inside with the prisoners. Cleopatra, the determined queen, would
have been the one to remove the snake from its temporary lair and apply it to her body. In this first scenario, something goes wrong. The two handmaidens stare at Cleopatra. The snake has bitten the queen and she does not seem affected by the bite of the asp. Cleopatra, who has studied snakes and the effects of their venom in depth, realizes her attempt at suicide has failed due to what is called a “dry bite.” When a snake bites its prey, a dry bite occurs a fair portion of the time since the venom does not always make it all the way to its fangs. Maybe she tries again, and this time the snake bites and she collapses. Then the women must each make an attempt or two or three. Passing around a cobra in a group suicide attempt is a version of reptile Russian roulette, the venom in the fangs of the snake like not knowing if there is a bullet in the right place in the cylinder of a revolver. It is likely one of the women simply would not have died.

I considered yet another possible scenario. Cleopatra applies the mouth of the creature to her body, the snake injects its venom, and she falls to the floor, the snake dropping alongside her. Which one of the remaining two women will have the guts and determination to chase after and pick up the vicious snake? Having just seen Cleopatra begin the dying process in front of them, it would take an unusual woman to follow suit and grab the snake to continue with the planned suicide. Cleopatra is already dying and she can no longer pressure her servants to commit suicide with her. Even if the next woman repeats Cleopatra's death dance, the third woman would also have to be equally as determined and brave to catch the cobra and allow its fangs to sink into her as well. It is highly unlikely for all three women to carry out this particular suicide method when there would be ample time from victim to victim to change one's mind. Finally, death from the venom of an asp or a cobra is not instantaneous; death is usually not achieved for thirty minutes to an hour, and sometimes longer. For Cleopatra to be dead and the other two women about to expire within moments of the guards' arrival, the letter Cleopatra sent off to Octavian announcing her intentions would need to have been sent a couple of hours prior to the suicide attempt,
not only minutes before. For that matter, since Octavian was so close by at the palace and a suicide note would be delivered quite quickly to him, a queen with the intelligence of Cleopatra would never have given her captor any hint of her suicidal intentions; she would have simply committed the act and left the letter to be found alongside her body. Plutarch appears to have dramatized the events of that night with much artistic license, and the elements of his story about suicide by snake appear to be quite improbable and, more likely, impossible.

The story of the asp seems to have been created after the death of Cleopatra. Plutarch was the first writer to allude to its existence, but he also comments that perhaps the deaths of the women could have also been achieved by poison. Yet there is no container of any sort near the bodies. If a bottle of poison was passed from one woman to the next, by the time the third victim was ingesting the poison, Octavian's men would already be hurrying to the tomb. The last dying woman would hardly have had an opportunity to cleverly conceal the container in some hidden niche to remain undiscovered by future searches. No, such a bottle would simply be dropped to the floor, and upon entering the tomb, the men would quickly realize the women had used poison to end their lives.

Of course, one must stop to ask the question, did one of Octavian's men, or Cleopatra's physician, or Octavian himself, remove the cobra or the bottle from the scene, eliminating the evidence of the cause of death? What would be the point? It might make sense if one wished to cover up the manner of death, to hide a suicide, but it is illogical to take away the evidence and then attribute the cause of death to be the result of evidence that has been removed! This would be senseless, and, therefore, if one believes Octavian's claim that Cleopatra committed suicide, it is clear that when Octavian's men came into the tomb, the women should have been simply lying on the floor with either a snake or a bottle of poison present.

So a crime scene without a tool of death present is immediately troublesome. If neither the asp nor the poison existed, then neither of these caused the deaths of the three women. There was also no
mention of a knife or a ligature for hanging, so there appears to be no other possible implements for the women to have used in the commission of suicide. And, as mentioned previously, it is also physically impossible for Cleopatra to have sent a suicide note to Octavian and achieved three successful suicides within the next ten to twenty minutes, the amount of time it would have taken him to read the note and dispatch his men over to the tomb.

The stories told of Cleopatra committing suicide must then be untrue. If they are untrue, the witnesses' statements of what occurred within that tomb on Cleopatra's fateful last night on earth cannot be trusted. It would seem then that the only option left for the manner of death would be homicide and a conspiracy to cover up what really happened to the unfortunate Cleopatra and her equally unlucky handmaidens.

There is something clearly wrong with the explanation of the deaths of these three women that must be investigated further. Outside of the forces of nature, what happens to humans is not without some purpose, a purpose enacted by the individual himself or by some other individual in his realm. If the evidence within the tomb conflicts with the story of Cleopatra's demise that we have believed for centuries and her death cannot be ruled a suicide, a thorough investigation is the only way to uncover the truth.

The investigation must start at the end and then go back to the beginning to discover the truth about Cleopatra's death. Once all the other evidence has been gathered leading up to that pivotal moment in time, the investigation of the last crime scene will be analyzed once again in light of the new evidence that will lead us to a more complete understanding of the suspicious death of Cleopatra.

Inspired by my conclusions as to the implausibility of Plutarch's rendition of the death of the queen, I crawled back out of the ancient tomb to start on my exploration back into the early life of Cleopatra and her future killer, where the seeds of murderous thought were already being sown.