A woman of divine beauty bathes in the Nile. Her hand is cast through her hair, unknotting it, and in her throat she carries a tune. A Greek slave by unfortunate trade and scenic by the gods’ will, this woman would soon be the talk of Egypt and the subject of legend. Rhodopis, as she is known to modern storytellers, was alleged to have been history’s first Cinderella: a Greco-Egyptian woman slighted by fate and rewarded by royalty. She is sitting on the banks of the Canopic Nile, washing, when it happens: an eagle cuts the wind and snatches her sandal. Inconvenienced but unworried, Rhodopis makes nothing of the moment; the day wanes and so does the next, and soon enough the event is relegated to distant memory. Unbeknownst to her, however, the eagle had taken flight to Memphis, dropping her sandal in the lap of none other than Pharaoh himself. Possessed by the sandal’s simplicity and the exotic omen it promises, the king “sent men in all directions of the country in quest” of the woman who wore it. According to Greek geographer and historian Strabo in his ‘Geography,…
