Word: cleopatra
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...star of the museum's exhibition, though, is a 104-cm black basalt statue on loan from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. One of the best-preserved representations of a Ptolemaic queen, it has been identified as Cleopatra VII. The figure is holding a double cornucopia and wearing a headdress decorated with three cobras-symbols associated only with...
...later images cast light on how Cleopatra's reputation was sullied in Rome after Octavian (later to become the emperor Augustus) defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. A marble relief, part of a frieze replete with symbols of Egypt and the Mediterranean, depicts a couple engaging in sexual intercourse aboard a boat. And a terracotta oil lamp shows a female figure, amid a Nile-like landscape, squatting on a phallus atop a crocodile. To the poet Lucan, she was a "wanton daughter" of Macedonian kings...
...Everything we know about Cleopatra comes from later Roman writers," including Plutarch, says Higgs, "and it's nearly all negative." That "prudish and snobbish" Romans would see Egypt's queen as a barbarian and a seductress is unsurprising, he adds, given that "she had taken away from them both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony." Still, says Higgs, even Cleopatra's critics acknowledged that she had some admirable qualities. Apart from her beauty, she is said to have been a humorous and charming conversationalist. Intelligent and savvy, she was a skilled diplomat who spoke several languages-and was clearly loved...
...Like her Ptolemaic predecessors in the three centuries following Alexander the Great's ouster of the Persian administration in Egypt in 332 B.C., Cleopatra had to appeal to both Greeks and Egyptians-to be seen as both Greek monarch and Egyptian pharaoh. She also needed to present herself as a formidable figure amid the violence and chaos that characterized the Mediterranean region at the time. Indeed, before Cleopatra even ascended the Ptolemaic throne, she needed to have been ruthless, given the familial bloodbaths that long characterized her incestuous line...
...Following Octavian's conquest of Egypt, Antony's suicide-by falling on his sword-and then Cleopatra's-perhaps with the help of the asp of legend, if not a cobra-the new emperor ordered that all statues of Cleopatra be destroyed. Most of the surviving images depict a figure with a voluptuous body and a strong face, masculine in its features, emphasizing power. Representations from old coins, particularly rare Greek ones, have helped to identify Cleopatra in marble and limestone sculptures. So, too, did the tiniest item on display-a 1.3-cm blue glass intaglio bearing Cleopatra's profile...