Portrait of Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII, used to be called Cleopatra, is one of the most famous person in history because of her beauty, intelligence, and her ability to control Egypt as a King. She was a member of Ptolemaic dynasty (a Greek family) who became the last Pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
There are many mystery stories about Cleopatra and it interest historians, archeologists, and artists to discover about her, especially her beauty. In most of studies, Cleopatra was portrayed as a great beauty. Plutarch says in his “Life of Antony”, “…her beauty, as we are told, was in itself neither altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her." We can see Cleopatra’s portrait in many works, both from ancient Egypt and from modern period.
Her beauty is an inspiration for many modern artwork to create a portrait of a beautiful woman. In these artworks, she has a strong eyes contact that attracts people at the first look.
However, the real portrait of Cleopatra is still a mystery now. In 1940, her coffin was found in France. Instead of keeping it to explore, people made it flowing in the river, so we have no evidence about how she looks.
Recently, there are some discussion about Cleopatra’s face according to her portrait in the Egyptian coins. “Ancient coin shows Cleopatra was no beauty” is an article in CNN website (2007) talking about the possibility that Cleopatra is not beautiful as people know. “A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by a sultry Elizabeth Taylor, had a shallow forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose,” that is how she was describe from the images of the coins.
Base on this information, we can think about her in another way, that the attraction of her can come from some other aspects as her intelligence, her good talking and communication with people.
Even though no one know the real face of Cleopatra, she is still the inspiration for many artworks. (See Inspiration from Cleopatra for details)
Linh Tran
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