The beauty of Cleopatra -- queen of Egypt who seduced two of the most powerful men in the ancient world -- may just be Hollywood fiction.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.
But a coin dating from 32 B.C. and put on display in the U.K. 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."
Source: Discovery
Tags: Cleopatra | Mark Antony | History | Coin
Comments