Skip to content
Vagobond
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Vagobond Podcast Adventures
  • Vagobond Travel Videos
Menu

Egyptian queen Cleopatra was no stunner, coin shows

Posted on February 14, 2007 by CD

You might not want to compare your girls beauty to Cleopatra….Happy VD.
cd

LONDON (AFP) – When Shakespeare wrote that the face of Cleopatra, the ancient queen of Egypt, “beggar’d all description”, he meant that words could not sum up her beauty.
click hereBut a coin dating from 32BC and put on display in Britain Tuesday shows the phrase had an unintended double meaning — it depicts the queen as no great looker with a pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose.
Her lover, Mark Antony, fares little better on the coin’s flipside — the Roman general is shown with a hook nose, bulging eyes and a thick neck.
The portraits are a long way from the famously sultry depiction of the couple by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film “Cleopatra”.
The coin has gone on display at Newcastle University, northeast England, on
Valentine’s Day after years of lying in a bank.
Cleopatra, who also had an affair with legendary Roman emperor Julius Caesar, also inspired Shakespeare to write one of his most famous lines: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety”.
But Lindsay Allason-Jones, the university’s director of archaeological museums, said that the image of her as a great beauty is comparatively modern, dating back to medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
“Roman writers tell us that Cleopatra was intelligent and charismatic and that she had a seductive voice, but, tellingly, they do not mention her beauty,” she said.
“It’s one of those perpetual myths that has been perpetuated by having people like Elizabeth Taylor playing her and it’s very difficult to get that out of peoples’ psyches.
“She does look as if she’s forgotten to put her teeth in.”
The coin itself represents one three hundredth of a Roman soldier’s salary and was probably minted to pay the wages of those stationed in Egypt.

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Changing the World with #MicroVictory after #Microvictory
  • Bitcoin Pizza Day – 2023 – May 22nd Free Pizza Party in Honolulu
  • The Children’s Crusade – A Broadway Show by ChatGPT
  • Baldism and the Holiest of Holies
  • Happy May Day! Workers Unite! Baldists Celebrate with a Day Off!

Vagobond Links

  • VM Discord
  • Vagobond Substack
  • Vagobond Medium
  • CD’s Cent Page
  • CD’s Amazon Author Page
  • VoiceMarkr App

Vagobond Magazine

MicroVictory Army

Baldism.org

VoiceMarkr

Hawaii Travel

  • Big Island
  • Kauai
  • Lanai
  • Maui
  • Molokai
  • Oahu

Beyond Hawaii Travel

  • Australia
  • Belgium
  • Bulgaria
  • Canada
  • China
  • Dubai
  • Egypt
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Iceland
  • Indonesia
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Luxembourg
  • Macedonia
  • Malaysia
  • Morocco
  • Singapore
  • South Korea
  • Spain
  • Sri Lanka
  • Turkey
  • USA Mainland
  • Vietnam

Oahu Travel

  • Oahu
  • Oahu Tourist Attractions
  • Oahu Neighborhoods
  • Oahu Beaches
  • Oahu Food and Drink
  • Oahu’s Natural Beauty
  • Hawaiian History and Culture
© 2023 Vagobond | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme