Egyptology

For centuries
they've trapped you
in history's tomb,
while historians
fussed ''Dynastic! Pre-dynastic!
Ptolemaic!'' over every
ornamental sarcophagi

My heart ached,
Cleopatra's eyes
filled with rage

- For you were dying -

and Alexandria burned,
faster than Rome, the night
a snake's bite
was said to ensure
immortality - In exchange
of a life unfinished -

and a death wish
was twisted.

Egyptologists forsook
their lands, their language,
their lives
to decipher ancient
scripts - a Rosetta Stone -
and write
- in pictures -
demotic, Coptic
and Hieroglyphic. Arabic
forgotten

Still, to me
you couldn't
be chronicled,
found in stone, burial chambers,
shrines or passages

but rather in
the rise of minarets;
proud. The sway
of church bells;
free. In river-inlaid
oceans, old wives tales,
and colorful Egyptian
beads. In The gallop
of Arabian horses;
unsaddled, the dance of
the Bedouin tribes and cotton
seeds

and I took off my shoes
at the threshold of your
temple, and walked
barefoot
towards the sea

your vein was mine; a nile,
your heart
was mine; a desert
and oasis of green

Egypt, I'd free you
from the coffins of history,
If I could,
and let you
breathe

- For you were dying;
dying in us -

and Alexandria burned,
faster than Rome, the night
an Asp's bite
was said to ensure
Immortality

and a death wish:

''Egypt forever Pharaonic''

was twisted.

My heart ached,

Cleopatra's eyes
filled with tears

- For you were dying -

---

**The connection between Egypt and Cleopatra --or the idea of Egypt being trapped in the past because of Cleopatra's wish (triggered by Rome's invasion) for Egypt to remain forever Pharaonic, never Roman-- is totally fictional.

Dynastic, Pre-dynastic, Ptolemaic are periods in ancient Egypt related to Pharaonic royal families.

Rosetta Stone is a stone that Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered after many failed to do so. It had three languages written on it; Ancient Greek, hieroglyphic and Demotic.

An Asp is an Egyptian cobra, the one said to have bitten Cleopatra. It was a said in ancient Egyptian/Pharaonic religion that an Asp's bite grants immortality.

-----

A million thanks to Danny ''The Prince'', for without his contest, this would have never been written.