A common misconception held even by some classics majors who ought to know better is that Rome was tolerant of every foreign god and the idea that Augustus suppressed Isis worship is a fictional literary flourish.

While it’s true that Rome generally accorded respect to foreign gods, there are a few religions that fell afoul of the powers-that-be. Rome virtually exterminated the Druids. They burned Christians and fed them to the lions. And we learn from Tertullian, Cassius Dio, Valerius Maximus, Josephus and others, they cracked down on Isis worship too.

The female-centric Alexandrine cult promoted unorthodox ideas about gender roles, war and slavery; it was thought to be a threat to the moral fiber of Rome. Writers like Juvenal and Cattullus propagated the idea that the religion was obscene and orgiastic. Certainly, Isis was a favorite amongst prostitutes, which couldn’t have earned her any points with the musty old conscript fathers in Rome.

Valerius Maximus tells us that the authorities attempted to purge the cult from Rome, going so far as to destroy her temples–though none of the workmen would take up an axe so the politician in charge had to remove his toga and start trashing the temple himself. Isis enjoyed a brief reprieve under Julius Caesar and Mark Antony–which may have had something to do with the fact that both men were sleeping with Cleopatra VII of Egypt, the New Isis.

After Cleopatra’s defeat, however, Octavian took up the mantle of protecting the moral fiber of Rome from Isis worship which, he apparently believed, subverted the proper relations of the sexes. That is to say, he didn’t believe that women should think themselves equal to men, and said so. At first he banned the worship of Isis within the sacred boundary of Rome–an indication of its status as un-Roman. However, while Augustus was away in 21 BC, his second-in-command, Agrippa, pushed the Isiacs out of the city entirely and forbid worship within a mile of Rome.

It should be pointed out that while Augustus set about destroying the Temples of Isis in Rome, he allowed himself to be portrayed making offers to Isis in traditional style on temples in Egypt. But that was Egypt, where he wanted to claim the power of the Pharaohs and make a seamless transition in rule. It’s also not clear that all these carvings were made at his direction, or on his behalf by well-meaning priests eager to curry his favor. Moreover, the appearance of Isis in frescoes and artwork on the Palatine should not be taken as an endorsement of the goddess. In the aftermath of Cleopatra’s defeat, Egyptomania took hold and it became the fashion to decorate gardens with obelisks and sphinx statues, regardless of their religious significance. That Julia, the daughter of Augustus, may have been an Isis worshipper is an interesting possibility that leads one to wonder if it was an honest spiritual calling or one more rebellion against her overbearing father.

The official Roman antipathy for Isis lasted after Augustus’ death. Josephus tells us that after a scandal during his reign, Tiberius (who was Augustus’ successor and Julia’s husband) crucified Isiac priests and threw a cult statue of Isis into the Tiber.

Much of this happened during Cleopatra Selene’s lifetime. That she continued to promote the worship of Isis in spite of this official antipathy for her goddess is an interesting facet of her life considering she would have been the most prominent Isis worshipper and a nominal member of the imperial family. It would be her nephew, Caligula, who would restore Isis worship in Rome where it would eventually flourish until the rise of Christianity.

For the past eight years of my life, I’ve been tangled up in writing about the life of Cleopatra’s daughter, the last Ptolemaic Queen of that Egyptian dynasty. I’ve had the opportunity to learn a great deal about Egypt’s past as a nation and as a religious inspiration throughout the world.

I’ve studied pitched battles that took place in the streets of Alexandria and I know that the Egyptians are no strangers to urban unrest. And when I see the people in the streets, I can’t help but think that this is a continuing struggle that has recurred over and over throughout the centuries.

Egypt is, in many ways, a touchstone of civilization. Even now, when they lack the wealth of their neighbors and aren’t considered a great military power, their long history and strategic importance still command our attention. And our respect. My heart breaks not only for the loss of human life, but for the damage done in the museum on Friday. How moving it was to see the human chain that people formed around their national treasures to protect them in the unrest.

Egypt, as always, is a place of tragedy and triumph.

In the coming days I may have more to say about what is happening there, but at the moment I wanted to point in the direction of a few links about Isis–because right now, Egypt seems in need of a faithful and loving mother.

• Calling on Isis — The picture at the bottom is fascinating
• When Isis Wept for Egypt – Some spiritual thoughts on the matter

Queen Cleopatra wore her black priestess gown–the one with the silver stars and the knot of Isis between her breasts. If she’d known her barge was going to arrive at the sacred isle while the blistering sun was this high, she would have worn the white linen that the Romans found so scandalous.

This time of year, ocean breezes cooled Alexandria, but here in Aswan was the driest and most withering heat anywhere in Egypt. Perspiration pooled between the queen’s shoulder blades and the servants fanned her with ostrich feathers, swaying in time with the rowers below deck, but their efforts were in vain. Even the queen’s small daughter complained of thirst.

“So drink!” Cleopatra commanded. “Iras set a cup of water right beside you.”

The girl’s fair hair coiled damply on her brow and her rose-pink lips formed a pout. “I don’t want water. Fat Mardion promised that if I came with you to Philae there’d be pomegranate juice. It’s what he drinks in the heat.”

“Which is why he’s Fat Mardion,” Cleopatra said archly, but her daughter wasn’t amused. In truth, Cleopatra wished she’d taken her trusted eunuch along because he was indulgent with the children whereas the queen herself wasn’t very patient.

It wasn’t that Selene was an ill-mannered child; it was just that the girl didn’t like to be apart from her twin brother and Cleopatra supposed she should have taken some solace in her children’s love for one another. After all, she had been raised in a nest of fratricidal Ptolemy eaglets, each willing to tear the other to shreds and her earliest terrors were born of the days when her siblings fought for the throne of Egypt.

Luckily, none of her own four children showed signs of murderous ambition. No, her children loved each other as brothers and sisters should—except for the twins, who held some bond between them that went beyond love. When separated, Selene and Helios were like half a person each, one brooding, the other complaining until they were reunited once again. Their bond touched the queen’s heart, but it also worried her, for she’d seen into the Nile of Eternity…

The oarsmen pulled up their paddles as the barge approached the landing. “Do we swim now?” Selene asked and without waiting for an answer, the girl pulled the ribbons from her hair and threw them on the deck with a flourish. Not a single servant even looked askance, delighted as they all were with the antics of the queen’s little girl.

On the riverbank, the priests had gathered. Musicians played their double-reeded clarinets, serving girls threw pink flower petals into the water, and worshippers knelt in homage to Queen Cleopatra, their Pharaoh and the New Isis. Soon, she’d greet them and give the blessings they craved from her. Then, she’d visit the Nilometer, which would tell her whether her people would feast this year, or starve. But first, before any of this, before everything, she must be a bride of Egypt. She must be Isis for Osirus. She must be divine wife to divine husband.

Iras and Charmion were already disrobing her for the ritualized lovemaking when Selene whined, “Why couldn’t Helios come with us? He’d protect us from the crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles will never harm you,” the queen said. “You’re a child of Isis and sacred to all in Egypt, even the beasts. Besides, your brothers aren’t with us because there are some things only queens can do.”

This caught her daughter’s attention. “There are things kings can’t do? Not even Kings of Egypt, like Caesarion?”

“Can a man suckle an infant?” Cleopatra asked as her hair was unbound. “Neither can a king nourish his kingdom. He can protect and defend it. He can rule his people justly. But he cannot feed his people except through Isis. This is why no man comes to be Pharaoh without wedding Pharaoh’s daughter, and why your brother Caesarion will one day need you to be a very good wife and queen.”

Selene’s emerald gaze was very shrewd and the queen decided that she’d been right to take the girl on this journey, even at so young an age. “Every year, the river rises to wash away all the dead vegetation from the dry cracked land. It deposits black fertile soil in its place. Then the farmers grow their wheat, and the laborers cut the wheat with their scythes and the bakers make it into bread.”

“I know that.” Selene gave a delicate, and very regal, roll of her eyes.

“Then tell me why the Nile rises?” Cleopatra asked, stepping out of her black robes without inhibition. Her naked body wasn’t as perfect as it once was, but since having children of her own, she was more womanly now and perhaps more beautiful to the river god that awaited her.

“Is it part of the mysteries?” Selene asked.

“One of many. It is love,” the queen explained. “No man can rise to create life without a lover, and neither can the river.” She saw that Selene didn’t understand, so she continued, “Before the dark god Set cut Osirus into pieces, he first drowned the good god of grain in the Nile. Here at Philae, on these very river banks is where Isis first wept for her murdered husband. This is where she brought him back to life with her magic. The spirit of Osiris lives here now, in the depths of the river. Here, he waits for his love, for Isis, and each year he swells to make love to her.”

“And she comes to him as Egypt’s queen…”

“Just so,” Cleopatra said, removing her amethyst ring–a gift from Antony, a wedding ring, though Octavian’s propagandists claimed otherwise. “And so, no matter which man you take into your heart, when it comes to the land you rule, you must always love it like a faithful wife. Today we will meet the Nile and make tribute to it, like a bride to a bridegroom.”

“I’m too little to be a bride,” Selene pointed out.

Cleopatra sighed at her daughter’s innocence. “Not for long, My Sweet. One day, you’ll be a beautiful maiden, then a loving mother, and then, hopefully, a wise old crone. But of these three, it’s your life as a mother that will serve Egypt best.”

“And please the king,” Selene said.

“No.” Cleopatra stiffened. “Have a child for Isis, for Egypt and for yourself before you do it to please any man. Your children will be rulers, and their divine ichor come to them through their mother’s milk–no matter who their father might be.”

“But what of the divine Julius?”

What of him, indeed? Oh, the heartbreak! But, Cleopatra stilled her heart. There was still Caesarion, there was still Egypt, and there were her little twins, from whom the whole world expected great things.

“I loved Gaius,” Cleopatra said with as matter-of-fact a tone as she could muster when speaking of Caesar. “But I loved him too much. I stayed too long as a mortal with Caesar in Rome, and without me, the Nile fell below the cubits of death and my people suffered. It was a mistake I’ll never make again.”

With that, the queen allowed her servants to lower her down the ladder until she was standing in the shallows. The mud of the Nile was like silken bed sheets beneath her feet. The river was as warm as a lotus scented bath, and as the frogs sang their chorus, heka tingled at Cleopatra’s fingertips. Feeling the magic flowing through her, the queen held her arms out to her daughter.

“Come, Selene. Meet Osirus.”

Selene lingered at the side of the barge, unwilling to come down the ladder even when the servants encouraged her into the river. It was only when Cleopatra commanded it that the girl leapt with a splash. Her little feet didn’t reach the bottom, and she flailed in the water until the queen caught her under the arms. “Shhh, Selene. You carry Isis with you wherever you go, but you’ve been promised to Egypt. The Nile waits here, pining for your love. For your surrender and rapturous embrace.”

With that, the queen loosened her hold, knowing the little girl would have to swim on her own. Already, the Nile’s green waves lapped at Cleopatra’s consciousness, drawing her into the marshy reeds of a waking dream where life teemed.

“She is the resurrection.,” Cleopatra prayed. “She brings life from death. She gives to her kingdom an heir, she gives to her people their daily sustenance, and she gives Isis an embodiment on earth for Osiris to love.”

Cleopatra saw the frog and the minnows, the life-giving silt settling onto the fields beyond, and everywhere she turned in the water, the birds flocked and water lilies blossomed. With her fingers, she traced lazy circles into the river bringing fish leaping to the surface. She passed dried brown foliage as she made her way to shore, and it sprouted green with life again. She gazed upon the washed up carcass of a snake and it arose, coiled and shimmering. It was an Egyptian cobra and its hood swelled for her like the phallus of an eager lover.

Now that I’ve drafted the sequel to LILY OF THE NILE, it’s time to go back, smooth it out, make each chapter do more. I’ve never been in the position of trying to make a sequel stand on its own as a stand-alone book, so the beginning has really been a challenge for me. I’ve written a few different beginnings, and I was hoping you might offer your perspective on which one works best for you:

#1 — Sorceress, Seductress, Schemer

Sorceress, seductress and schemer. As Cleopatra’s daughter, I confess, I’ve been all these things, and more. I’ve kept secrets, betrayed vows, and broken faith even with the goddess whose words carve themselves in my flesh. And though you may have never heard my name spoken with the slightest censure, it’s only because I took a lesson from my mother’s defeat to safeguard my reputation above all.

As a prisoner of war, I learned to beg for my life. As a princess held hostage in the confines of the emperor’s household, I learned to mask my emotions so that our captors would never see my grief or my contempt. On the Palatine Hill, where our heritage was reviled and our faith suspected, I learned that to deceive was to survive.

The emperor’s wife said that by sparing me, he allowed a viper into the very heart of Rome. But it was the emperor who molded me into a creature who could strike when provoked. As one of his favorites—as his most unlikely apprentice—I learned that to win back my mother’s lost Egypt, I must manipulate and beguile. For when I was fourteen years old, it was Augustus who took me by the arms and confessed that, in me, he wanted a Cleopatra of his own.

#2 — Childhood Things

It was time to burn all childish things, for it was the night before my wedding, and this was the Roman custom. But what was I to surrender to the flames? My childhood ended that hot Egyptian day at the end of the war, when I carried a basket of figs to my mother, inside of which was hidden the deadly serpent she would use to deliver her to the afterlife. All my toys, the keepsakes of a little princess, had all been looted or left behind when I became a prisoner of war.

I was almost fifteen now, and as I rifled through my room for some symbolic offering, I could find nothing I was willing to part with. Not the filthy, tattered dress that I wore as a shackled prisoner in the emperor’s triumph, when he dragged me through the streets behind his chariot. It was covered with the blood of a prince who had spoken in our favor, though it cost him his life. I had kept it, a gristly souvenir of what my brothers and I had survived and now it was all that remained of the Prince of Emesa. I wouldn’t burn it.

Neither would I surrender the jade frog amulet that dangled from a chain at my throat. It was the last thing my mother had given to me, gleaming with the remains of her magic, a token to remind me that she had given me her Egyptian soul—her ba. And though it was carved with the words ‘The Resurrection’, they had let me keep it, for even Roman children wore bullas as a ward against evil.

#3 — Augustus

Augustus. You will have heard of him. In this River of Time, the whole world has. His statues—an idealized version of him to be sure—are ubiquitous throughout the empire. A month of summer is named after him. He has been immortalized in Virgil’s Aeneid, the propaganda he commissioned to celebrate his reign. A whole generation has lived without knowing a time when he was not the master of the world.

But I remember when he was only Octavian. He was my mother’s worst enemy, my father’s false friend, and he murdered my brother Caesarion—who was, in a fashion, his brother too. You may think I hate him, but I would deny it, and not even I would know whether or not I lied. For everything I learned about the art of deception, I learned at the emperor’s knee. He took everything from me—even my faith—then unwittingly gave it back again. But that is to get ahead of the story.

#4 — My Wedding Day Dawned

My wedding day dawned rosy as the blush on a maiden’s cheek. I watched the sun peek between pink clouds, and knew that today, I must also shine for Rome. It was early yet in the emperor’s household; only the slaves were awake, bustling about the courtyard, trimming shrubbery and hanging lanterns. Too busy to notice me beneath the overripe fig tree.

I pulled myself up into the branches, leaning back so that the smooth bark was against my neck, then peered over the wall to survey Rome’s seven hills. All the vainglorious villas and middling monuments stretching to the Tiber River beyond. And as morning broke over the sprawling city of tiled roofs, I tried to see this day with my mother’s eyes.

She was Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt, a woman of limitless aspiration. And I was her only daughter. She had wanted a royal marriage for me. She may have even hoped my wedding would be celebrated here in Rome. But could she have conceived that such a thing would come to me through her bitterest enemy? In her wildest dreams, could she have imagined that the same man who drove her to suicide—the same man who took me prisoner and dragged me behind his chariot just four years ago—would now make me a queen?

Yes, I thought. She could have imagined it. Perhaps she had even planned it.