Featured image: “The world must not forget.” With this offering, the priestess commits the truth to the depths, ensuring the gods of the underworld will hear the story of the last pharaohs.
The coastline near Taposiris Magna is a jagged meeting of limestone ridge and sea. For a modern visitor, the roar of the Mediterranean is constant. For Iras, it was the sound of a desperate, last chance. The temple’s secret did not end in the tunnel, but in the churning, star-lit waters that had witnessed the rise and fall of empires.
Iras ran.
She abandoned the lamp, its flame a treacherous beacon. The darkness in the side passage was absolute, a suffocating blanket. She navigated by memory and with confidence, one hand skimming the cold, wet stone, the other clutching the amulet and scroll as if they were her own soul.
This end passage never used, was narrow and treacherous. As it sloped sharply upward, the air began to change, the scent of damp earth giving way to the sharp, clean smell of salt and sea spray. Iras reached up, found the hanging rope, and tugged hard—a few meters behind her the ceiling once again silently opened, and yet another cache of rocks sealed the narrow tunnel behind her. Her task was almost completed. A faint, grey light appeared ahead, not the warm glow of a lamp, but the cool luminescence of stars on water.
She emerged out of a fissure in the cliff face, hidden behind a curtain of thorny scrub. The wind, strong and unhindered, tore at her robes. Below her, the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks, its white foam luminous in the darkness.
The cliff dropped sheer to a maelstrom of water and stone. To her left and right, the ridge stretched away, offering no path down. She could hear above her, in the distance, the Roman cohort still searching through the temple and its surrounds.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of bone. Ankhefenmut’s last words echoed in her mind. “You must bear witness.”
She had to hurry. If she were caught, the scroll would be burned, the amulet melted down, and the secret would die with her. The Romans would ransack the tunnel, find the sealed chamber, and drag the bodies of Antony and Cleopatra back to Alexandria as trophies. All would be for nothing.
Her eyes scanned the churning water below. There, nestled in a tiny, protected cove, was the small, shallow-draft fishing boat, pulled up on the sand. It was used by the temple to collect rare shells for sacred inlays. She thanked the gods as she scrambled and slid down over the rocks, tearing her robes and skin. She half-fell, half-climbed down the cliff face and reached the sand, her breath sobbing in her chest. She pushed the boat into the surf, the icy water shocking her to her core.
She rowed. With no destination, no plan, she rowed. She put every ounce of her strength, her fear, and her grief into the oars, pulling away from the shore, from the temple, and from the tomb.
When her arms burned and she could row no more, she stopped, bobbing on the swells. She looked back. The flame in the tower of Taposiris Magna still burned, a lone, steadfast star on the dark coastline.
She knew what she had to do.
Taking the heavy, gold amulet of Isis, she kissed it once, a final prayer. Then, from a small pouch at her belt, she took the blue lapis bead. The last tangible piece of the goddess. Her hands trembled as she tied the scroll to the heavy amulet. It was ready.
But a cold dread washed over her. The petition, the tongue, the bead—it was all for the Queen, for Isis. But what of Osiris? What of the General? If their souls were to find each other in the vast, trackless Duat, the gods needed a token of him as well.
Her eyes darted wildly, as if an answer might lie in the bottom of the boat. Then her gaze fell upon the hem of her own white robe, stained dark from the temple floor. It was not just water and dirt. It was soaked with the sacred unguents and resins that had dripped from Antony’s litter as it passed her.
With a frantic tear, she ripped a strip from the stained cloth. This was his relic. Not a thing he owned, but a part of the very essence of his prepared body, the scent of his divinity. She bound it tightly to the bundle, weaving the fabric of his passing with the gold of her queen. Now, the gods would have no choice but to guide them as one.
In that moment, the teachings of her childhood crystallized. She remembered the rituals where offerings were bound and given to the Nile—not as disposal, but as a sacred return. To send something into the primordial waters was to offer it directly to the gods, to place it beyond the reach of mortal men.
With a whispered plea to the goddess, she leaned over the side and dropped the weighted bundle into the black, waiting depths. She was performing the final, desperate rite. The golden tongue would give Cleopatra her voice in the underworld, the amulet would grant her passage, and the scroll would be her divine proclamation, read not by human eyes, but by the gods of the abyss. And her own blue bead? A final, personal prayer from a heartbroken young priestess to her queen.
It sank instantly, vanishing from sight, the sea closing over it without a ripple.
The evidence was gone, hidden in a vault no Roman could ever desecrate. The secret was safe. Now, the only thing left was to ensure the story survived. Not the exact location, but the hope. The legend.
Iras turned the boat. She would not flee to obscurity. She would travel south, up the Nile, to the other temples of Isis. She would tell a story, not of a tomb’s location, but of a queen’s love for her god-husband, so powerful she vanished from the world to be with him. She would tell of a secret so great, it was buried not in a single place, but in the heart of Egypt itself.
She looked back one last time at the flickering light on the shore. It was no longer a signal of despair but a promise.
Somewhere, beneath the stone and sand, beneath the waves and the centuries, the secret slept. And as long as the story was told, Cleopatra and Antony, the Isis and Osiris of their age, were never truly gone. They were just waiting.
The Seal of Silence