ound indications in other works that, in other localities,
the goddess entered a secret chamber in the earth or pyramid or celebrated
her sacred mysteries and festival on the sacred boat of the sun, in the
sacred sea or lake belonging to the temple. In these cases it is obvious
that the dominant idea was the performance of the sacred rites in the
sacred centre or middle.

At a later period Cleopatra VII ascended the female throne at the age of
seventeen and became high-priestess of Amen, the living image of Isis. It
was understood that as soon as her brother Ptolemy XIV, then aged twelve,
should come of age, she was to marry him. Partly for political reasons,
akin to those which had caused king Horemheb, on his accession, to marry
the high priestess of Amen, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony become in
succession the consorts of Cleopatra, after whose death Egypt became a
Roman province. But the "land of the south," and traditional, divine,
feminine rulership, lingered on. Under the third prefect, AElius Gallus,
Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, invades Egypt at the head of her army.
She was defeated, but the position of the high-priestess of Amen, the
living Isis, continued to be such as to exact the homage and an act of
propitiation from the Roman Emperor.

An inscription, from the time of Augustus, records that a beautiful
monument, or "house," had been erected by the "lord of the land, the
autocrator, the son of the sun, Caesar," and was presented, at the time of
the Isis festival, to its possessor, the great Isis, the mother of the
god, the mistress of the lying-in-house, the splendid and mighty queen of
Philae, the benevolent princess of Abaton, the daughter of the sun. She is
likewise named "she who is great or whose greatness extends towards the
four quarters" and is designated as "the royal wife of the majesty of
Osiris and the royal mother of Horus, the victorious bull," _i. e._ the
ka. It is stated that "she found the house of birth brilliantly adorned
and well arranged in every way" and she installed herself in its interior
on a given day, so as to bring forth her son in these surroundings. One of
the rewards promised to Caesar for the delicate attention and gift bestowed
upon the goddess is "eternal and permanent occupation of the throne of
Horus, the first of the living ones." According to the Esne calendar a
"divine birth" actually took place on a given date. Brugsch, referring to
Plutarch and calendar texts,