I read the report today that a new coin had been found bearing the likenesses of Antony and Cleopatra, and minted during their lifetimes. I haven't seen any pictures yet. This is another coin bearing images of the two: And this is a bust of Cleopatra from life: The two Cleopatras= images seem to be at odds.
I read a fun fact today that Cleopatra is closer in time to the moon landing than to the building of the pyramids. Anywho, any new archeological find is exciting! Coins especially!
Interesting, [MENTION=44992]JJ_Maxx[/MENTION]. I'd never thought of it that way, but it certainly puts things in an interesting perspective. Cleopatra was an interesting historical figure.
There was no TV, no Internet, no cameras at the time. One artist or the other might never have actually seen her, or only saw her from a distance. Working from a sketch or a description could easily explain teh difference.
Good point. I'm sure many depictions were made based on second hand accounts. I suppose as between the two the bust is more likely to be accurate than the work of someone engraving a coin, though I don't know.
Its weird, but ever since I was a kid, I've always hated the whole Cleopatra 'thing'. Just reading her name makes me pull a face. She didn't do anything great and was part of a horrible, dysfunctional system.
I'm currently studying ancient roman history at university, I might link this to one of my lecturers to see what they think.
I do teh same thing - all the time without fail - why is that? personally I prefer the Liz Taylor Cleo - mmmm...
Cleopatra wasn't Egyptian, though. She was probably darker-skinned than Liz, though from what I understand, Macedonians could run a wide range of skin tones and hair colors. I doubt we'll ever know for sure, or to what extent it can be determined based on the coinage or busts from her lifetime.
I wonder where they found these coins, and whether they will be the property of a museum, or auctioned off to a collector?
She was Greek, her family ruled Egypt for a few hundred years. I've never seen that movie - I've heard its awful, though. Nefertiti is the person I most most interesting, out of anyone in history. I think her life story is AMAZING. I wish I was a good enough writer to write a screenplay about her, because I think it would make a fantastic movie.
According to Tom Holland in Rubicon, contemporary sources don't hold her to be the beauty that she's always been portrayed as. And having an over-large hooter might have been as a result of the Ptolemy in-breeding. Stunning beauty she might not have been, but she obviously had something to seduce and control two Roman greats in Gaius Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Power of personality can be far more magnetic than looks. As for the images being at odds, she was 20 years older when involved with Antony, and it the image on the coin is in profile rather than a bust. It certainly looks to me like the images are of her at different times in her life. All fascinating stuff, though.
I'm surprised this idea still comes up, it's well known among classicists that she wasn't exactly Keira Knightly or anything. What she was, though, was determined to the point of lunacy. There is a well known story of her having herself wrapped up in a rug to be presented as a present to Ceaser - during the time when Egypt was in a bitter civil war between Cleo and her brother Ptolemy. Imagine that! Being carried in a rug wrapped rightly and being carried around Alexandra in the blistering Egyptian sun, and then trusting her obviously not inconsiderable powers of persuasion and sex appeal to tempt her (err) 'suitor' to her cause.
