We have ample testimony to her sense of humor; Cleopatra was a wit and a prankster. There is no cause to question how she read Herodotus’ further assertion that Egypt was a country in which ‘the women urinate standing up, the men sitting down.’
-Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff
So Herodotus made Cleopatra laugh. I wonder what he would have made of Elizabeth Taylor’s kohl-lined blue eye shadow shaped like bird wings and gold-beaded braids looking like cat-o’-nine tails. I bet he would have said something more about the wonders of Egypt, about eyes that fly and hair that hurts. That too would have made her laugh. And he would have taken one look at her sitting on that golden throne and said, Stand up and pee like a Queen!
I don’t think that most Egyptians I met in Cairo in 1978 had even heard the name Herodotus. A Greek?, they would have asked. You mean a Rumi- a word originating in Rome but broadened to mean anyone from the wider Greco-Roman Western world, such as a Ptolemy or an American.
Cairenes are known for their sense of humor because there is a survival imperative at work in that dog-eat-dog city- if you can’t beat ‘em, laugh at ‘em. I never got the hang of how to joke with Egyptians. I once called Ahmad, my building’s doorman, Abu Bawaaseer, Father of Hemorrhoids, when he went into the hospital for treatment, and he looked at me like I’d kicked him in the teeth. Not so funny after all.
I never got to ask him that riddle about what dogs do on three legs, so I can’t say if Cleopatra might have laughed at that one too. But I bet in any case she was a cat person, not a dog lover, so a peeing dog joke wouldn’t have rung her bell. But Egyptians all love Arabic language punning. So here is one for the post-hemorrhoidal Ahmad. If you eat ful (stewed beans, the Egyptian staple meal) like a fool, you’ll bul (pee) from your bowel. Sorry, Abu Bawaaseer.
