Daily Mail (Fiona Macrae)From Elizabeth Taylor to Sophia Loren, there have been many faces of Cleopatra. But this might be the most realistic of them all.
Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton believes the compute regenerated 3D image is the best likeness of the legendary beauty famed for her ability to beguile.
Likeness: The computer-generated 3D image has been pieced together from images on ancient artefacts
Pieced together from images on ancient artefacts, including a ring dating from Cleopatra's reign 2,000 years ago, it is the culmination of more than a year of painstaking research.
The result is a beautiful young woman of mixed ethnicity - very different to the porcelain-skinned Westernised version portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1961 movie Cleopatra.
The Telegraph
With thanks to Rhio Barnhart for forwarding the link.
Ashton developed her image of the monarch - who came to power at the tender age of 18 - by looking at her Greek heritage as well as her Egyptian upbringing.
"She probably wasn't just completely European. You've got to remember that her family had actually lived in Egypt for 300 years by the time she came to power," she said.
The images will be broadcast this week as part of a Five documentary, Secrets of Egypt: Cleopatra. The programme looks at whether the portrayal of Cleopatra as a temptress who ruined two generals of Rome - Julius Caesar and Mark Antony - was the victim of Roman "spin" aimed at blackening her name.
See the above pages for the full story, including images of the reconstructions.
1 comment:
It never ceases to amaze me how much time people waste on irrelevance...
Cleopatra was Greek and the general consensus is that she was not aesthetically pleasing.
We have no mummy of the woman and cannot rely on Egyptian idealism to portray anyone accurately (do Seti I or Ahmose I look anything remotely like their depictions?). So this type of conjecture is a waste of tax payer money - Ms Ashton's likely source of income.
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