Word: cleopatras
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...really looked like. A Macedonian Greek, she ruled Egypt and was known for her liaisons-political and romantic-with the two great Roman leaders of her time, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Her legend-wrapped in intrigue, conflict and romance-lives on to this day. As Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety...
...Although she has been dead since 30 B.C., Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemaic rulers, still wields considerable power. The magic of her name is drawing crowds to the British Museum's exhibition "Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth," which runs until Aug. 26 and includes some new finds and interpretations. The museum has attracted loans of Cleopatra-related sculptures, coins, paintings, ceramics, jewelry and other artifacts from some 30 museums, libraries and private collections, stretching from Russia to Algeria to Canada...
...public view for the first time is an 80-cm granite head-believed to represent Ptolemy XV Caesar (Caesarion), Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar-found in the harbor at Alexandria, Cleopatra's capital, by French archaeologists in 1997. Side by side are three smaller marble heads from the city-of the Greek god Serapis and two Ptolemaic rulers-that probably have not been displayed together for two millennia...
...Cleopatra's name is more evocative than any image of her," says Peter Higgs of the museum's department of Greek and Roman antiquities and co-curator of the exhibition. In what Higgs calls a "biographical study"-and one with which not all classical scholars may entirely concur-Cleopatra is presented in a range of guises that have contributed to the legend that she began building during her lifetime. "We know that not everyone is going to agree with us," says Higgs. "We're not saying we're right about everything. This is our interpretation...
...contemporary coins, Cleopatra appears masculine and powerful. Slim and serene in sculptures, she is sometimes portrayed as the goddess Isis, the divine, royal mother whose cult she followed. Erotic Roman caricatures depict her as a harlot. She is a sensual and tragic figure in Renaissance paintings and objets d'art. Her modern face comes straight from Hollywood, embodied most famously in 1963 by Elizabeth Taylor-whose off-screen affair with her own Mark Antony, co-star Richard Burton, recalled the 14th century writer Giovanni Boccaccio's description of Cleopatra as a woman "who became an object of gossip...