Abstract

When Cleopatra bets Caesar that she can build a palace in three months, Asterix, Obelix & Getafix travel to Egypt to help her architect. There they encounter opposition from both the Romans and a rival architect... Billed as "The greatest story ever drawn. 14 litres of india ink, 30 brushes, 62 soft pencils, 1 hard pencil, 27 rubbers [erasers], 1984 sheets of paper, 16 typewriter ribbons, 2 typewriters, 366 pints of beer went into its creation!" (this is a takeoff on all the statistics given for the film Ben Hur or Cleopatra???). Uderzo really gets to show what he can do. The first example of how brilliant the books could be with foreign countries, and a great lead-in to The Big Fight.

The translators must have done their bit of drinking as well. For the Dutch and the Hungarian version, the list is mostly the same (instead of 1984 sheets of paper 38 kilos of paper was used). The Hungarian translation does not list soft pencils and the beer consumption is listed as only 67 litres which is 118 pints!

Sadly, these additional notes that appeared on the cover of the original Hodder-Dargaud edition have been removed in the Orion "re-edition".

Vitalstatistix takes final form here, and an early Fulliautomatix pounds Cacofonix. The pirates return, starting a tradition. Caesar finally remembers the three gauls. Obelix gets some magic potion! The story make great play of Cleopatra's nose. Blaise Pascal once said "If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed."