Isadora, a postscript

Alas, as I wrote the blog about Isadora, I noted later that there is omitted a comma after "the seventh", when I discussed Cleopatra. (Cleopatra was the seventh in her family with that nomen; I did not mean she was only the seventh descendant of Ptolemy.)

Isadora, in the distant desert

This is a small mortuary temple from Tuna El Gebel, dating to the fourth century B.C., assigned to the family of a High Priest of Thoth, Petosiris, and his family. A larger tomb is nearby, one with much more of the grand facade one comes to expect whilst traveling through an ancient Egyptian archaeological site. Of course these buildings show the affects of Greco-Roman design, with truncated columns, abbreviated Egyptian architectural motifs, from the kheker friezes and cavetto cornices to the engaged columns, with their large, almost over-powering capitals, now reduced to a phlange of papyrus, a wave of sedge, a possible intrusion of a Greek capital element, and reliefs imposed with the more rounded, fuller figures of the Ptolemaic age, seen in a larger and more elegant scale and design at Dendara and Edfu. The sign at this site states that Petosiris' date is 350 B.C., a man who lived in the time of the last real connection to ancient writing and scribal practices and for the epigrapher, a time during which hieroglyphs change, lose weight and meaning, to give way to Greek, then Roman reliefs as historic battles lead to Roman dominance of Egypt and the end of the Ptolomaic Dynasty.
We hear of Cleopatra, the seventh descendent of Ptolemy, General to Alexander the Great, whose father, Auletes, stumbled around the great palace in what is now the harbor of Alexandria, drunk and playing the flute, as some historians would have us believe, sinister harbinger of another famous ruler, Nero, also drunk with power, making music in his palace as the world fell apart.
But here, at this lonely and truly melancholy place in the desert, there is another presence: that of Isadora, whose inconsolable father had her mummified remains laid to rest in a small, Graeco-Roman tomb chamber, not made of limestone, nor faced with it, but of mud-brick and covered with local stucco. And yet, here it stands, a small tribute to a father's love for his child. And what do we know of this young woman, Isadora? That her lover left her and she threw herself into the Nile and drowned. Or, that she was on her way to meet her lover and the boat she was in was overturned, and that she then drowned before she could join him. And why was she in a boat, I wonder? Did she need to cross the Nile, as so many modern travelers do, to go from the inhabited villages on the East side of the Nile, to the Western, tomb-filled land of the dead? Or was she leaving the dead and coming back to the living?
I wonder as if we could ever know what happened to Isadora, except that she is now a blackened corpse, shrouded, laid out in a glass-encased box. She lays parallel to a small altar over which a substantial engaged, plastered shell motif watches over her. It is the same design which the medieval man might have associated with the Virgin Mary, the shell of purity and eternal life. Are we being told, by Isadora's father that she died a virgin and will have eternal rest, or, that he wished that for her? Again, can we ever know the answer?
I find myself absorbed in this reflecting state, despite the fact that when first I saw the small tomb, entered, looked for some time at Isadora herself and then let my eyes travel over the bandages, the shapes of what is left of her face, her body, her small, twisted feet, I did not feel much impact. It is only now, when I am miles away, that the impact of this small tomb with its small teenage girl laying there, as if waiting for something, someone, that I am greatly moved, even saddened.
We expect to see mummies in Egypt, in museums, in books, in media. But they were and still are human beings. They lived and had aspirations. And now they are still. Cleopatra in her fame and downfall looms large in the history of the world. Isadora in her small tomb travels with me; she is the individual whose mystery, like that of the last of the rulers in Alexandria, remains, hovering, never being completely fathomed, never completely known.
But Isadora was just a local girl, one whom we are told loved someone and then drowned. If her spirit is allowed to take flight, like a Ba with its wings full-out, soaring towards the stars, I hope she finds peace, and I hope she even rejoins that person or place for whom she longs, be it her lover, her father, or the mysterious one you and I may never know.