Hellenistic Heads of Queen Cleopatra VII

Document Type : Original Research

Author

Lecturer at Tourism Management and Cultural Heritage Department, Faculty of Tourism & Hotels, Matrouh University, Egypt.

Abstract

Though her wide fame, the story of last queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt is preserved, unfortunately, in words only. As most of the archaeological evidence of her reign disappeared as well as the Ptolemaic Alexandria, either under the water of the Mediterranean or buried under modern buildings. In addition, the images of Cleopatra VII are very rare. After the defeat of Cleopatra and Anthony by Octavian, and their legendary suicide, Octavian destroyed many of the images of the last queen of Egypt. Until a man named Archibios paid 2,000 donations to the Roman Emperor to preserve the remaining statues of Cleopatra. It is possible that some of the ancient Egyptian-style Cleopatra representations came to us from the collection that survived after the intervention of Archibios.
Besides, we find that pieces depicting Cleopatra have a lot of ambiguity around her, as a result of the many events that Cleopatra went through during her life in addition to her political inclinations and her constant endeavor to consolidate her position with the Egyptians and Romans at the same time. As a result, the way she was portrayed was always changing due to the political changes and situations.
In the case of Cleopatra, it is very difficult to know what she looked like in reality, or to find a clear and explicit source to classify her pictures, so this study will focus on showing the true image of Cleopatra, especially since other studies and research focus mostly on the historical side of her life.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Journal of Tourism, Hotels and Heritage
Volume 1, Issue 1
November 2020
Pages 30-39

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics