The researchers believed that the bones belong to Arsinoë IV, a sister of Cleopatra who was killed on the orders of Mark Antony in 41 B.C. In 2009, the BBC aired a documentary called "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer" in which the documentary-makers talked to researchers examining skeletal remains found in 1926 in a tomb at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. (Image credit: Creator:Jean-André Rixens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) This is a painting called The Death of Cleopatra (1874) by Jean-André Rixens. Can skeletal remains reveal what Cleopatra looked like? Hawass did not return Live Science's request for comment at the time of publication. Her first language was Greek and in contemporary busts and portraits she is depicted clearly as being white," Hawass wrote in a column for Arab News at the time. "As well documented history attests, she was the descendant of a Macedonian Greek general who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. "Cleopatra was not Black," Hawass said in response to Adele James, a biracial actress, being cast to play the queen in the Netflix show "Queen Cleopatra." However, Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian antiquities minister, believes her Greek parentage points clearly to one answer. At times the Ptolemies married within their own family and Cleopatra VII was married to her brother Ptolemy XIV before he was killed in 44 B.C. "What we do know is that Cleopatra's father was Greek, and she would have considered herself to be Greek - although she did portray herself to be Egyptian, when it suited her politically," Kenrick said. (Image credit: Photo by Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images)
For instance, a sculpture may depict a ruler as being more muscular than they actually were.Īdditionally, we don't know the identity of Cleopatra's mother or paternal grandmother, Kenrick noted, which means it's possible Cleopatra could have had some African descent.Ĭleopatra's statue with Asp snake seen on display during a press visit to "Pharaohs Superstars" in Gulbenkian Foundation on November 24, 2022, in Lisbon, Portugal.
"Sculptures and statues were intended as projections of various facets of a figure, rather than intended as a true likeness," Kenrick told Live Science in an email. Kenrick also noted that ancient statues can be misleading. These artifacts, and the relief at Dendera, don't tell us much about what she looked like.Īndrew Kenrick, a visiting research fellow at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., said that ancient writers usually did not discuss what ancient figures looked like. However, the provenance of these statues is uncertain and whether they really depict Cleopatra VII is debated. There are a number of statues that may depict Cleopatra VII which are now located in museums scattered around the world. They include coins minted of her that have been found at the site of Taposiris Magna in Egypt. The artifacts we have today are not numerous. (Image credit: Tamer Soliman via Getty Images) Profile of Cleopatra on the side of the Egyptian 50 fifty piaster (A.D.
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