Cleopatra | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] Dagny,
[email protected] and Emma Dudding, [email protected]

Cleopatra
by H. Rider Haggard

DEDICATION
My dear Mother,
I have for a long while hoped to be allowed to dedicate some book of
mine to you, and now I bring you this work, because whatever its
shortcomings, and whatever judgment may be passed upon it by
yourself and others, it is yet the one I should wish you to accept.
I trust that you will receive from my romance of "Cleopatra" some such
pleasure as lightened the labour of its building up; and that it may
convey to your mind a picture, however imperfect, of the old and
mysterious Egypt in whose lost glories you are so deeply interested.

Your affectionate and dutiful Son, H. Rider Haggard.
January 21, 1889.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
The history of the ruin of Antony and Cleopatra must have struck many
students of the records of their age as one of the most inexplicable of
tragic tales. What malign influence and secret hates were at work,
continually sapping their prosperity and blinding their judgment? Why
did Cleopatra fly at Actium, and why did Antony follow her, leaving
his fleet and army to destruction? An attempt is made in this romance
to suggest a possible answer to these and some other questions.
The reader is asked to bear in mind, however, that the story is told, not
from the modern point of view, but as from the broken heart and with
the lips of an Egyptian patriot of royal blood; no mere beast-
worshipper, but a priest instructed in the inmost mysteries, who
believed firmly in the personal existence of the gods of Khem, in the
possibility of communion with them, and in the certainty of immortal
life with its rewards and punishments; to whom also the bewildering
and often gross symbolism of the Osirian Faith was nothing but a veil
woven to obscure secrets of the Sanctuary. Whatever proportion of
truth there may have been in their spiritual claims and imaginings, if
indeed there was any, such men as the Prince Harmachis have been told
of in the annals of every great religion, and, as is shown by the
testimony of monumental and sacred inscriptions, they were not
unknown among the worshippers of the Egyptian Gods, and more
especially of Isis.
Unfortunately it is scarcely possible to write a book of this nature and
period without introducing a certain amount of illustrative matter, for
by