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Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Harmachis is an Egyptian priest. Since he was a boy he has trained for one job: to kill Queen Cleopatra and free Egypt from foreign rulers. But when he finally stands before the queen, something goes wrong with his plan. She is clever and beautiful, and instead of killing her, he falls under her spell. His story is told as if it were written on ancient paper and found in his tomb, full of temples, treasure, and secrets.
Harmachis is a priest of Isis in ancient Egypt, trained since childhood for a single sacred task: to kill Queen Cleopatra and free his country from foreign rule. Everything is prepared. Then he stands before the queen, and the plan collapses. Cleopatra is brilliant, charming, and fascinating, and the sworn assassin falls under her spell instead. What follows is a life of love, ambition, and betrayal at the most glittering court in the ancient world, written out by Harmachis himself as a confession.
Haggard builds the book as a found manuscript: the confession of Harmachis, written on papyrus and dug from his tomb. That frame lets the story feel both intimate and vast, one man's guilt set among temples, tombs, hidden treasure, and court intrigue. In three great movements it carries him from priest to lover to broken witness of Egypt's fall.
It works because the tempter and the tempted are both real people. Cleopatra is no simple villain, and Harmachis is no simple hero, so his failure feels like tragedy rather than weakness. Around them Haggard builds the most sumptuous of his ancient world romances, full of splendour and doom, and it remains the richest of them all.
Harmachis is a priest of Isis, raised from childhood for one purpose: Egypt groans under foreign rule, and he is sworn to kill Cleopatra and free his country. Instead, in the queen's presence, the sworn assassin falls under her spell, and his holy mission collapses into love, ambition, and betrayal. Haggard tells the story as Harmachis's own confession, and fills it with temples, tombs, treasure, and court intrigue.
Harmachis is a priest of Isis, raised from childhood for one purpose: Egypt groans under foreign rule, and he is sworn to kill Cleopatra and free his country. Instead, in the queen's presence, the sworn assassin falls under her spell, and his holy mission collapses into love, ambition, and betrayal. H. Rider Haggard tells the story as Harmachis's own confession, written on papyrus and dug up in his tomb, and he fills it with temples, tombs, treasure, and the intrigue of a glittering, doomed court.
Published in 1889, Cleopatra is Haggard in his richest vein, an Egyptian epic from the author of King Solomon's Mines and She, and still the most vivid of his ancient world romances. Starvard carries it for readers who want their historical adventure at full splendour, told from inside the losing side of history by a man who betrayed his gods for a queen. Lovers of ancient Egypt, of tragic confession, and of old fashioned storytelling on the grandest scale will find this the shelf's most sumptuous doorway into Haggard's world, and it richly deserves its new readers.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 2769.
The first chapter
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.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1889. Author died 1925. Public domain. Share this book: WhatsApp
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