Posted on 02/14/2007 8:59:15 AM PST by blam
oh lord
Cleopatra was a direct descendant of Alexander's general, Ptolemy I Soter, son of Arsinoe and Lacus, both of Macedon. A Greek by language and culture, Cleopatra is reputed to have been the first member of her family in their 300-year reign in Egypt to have learned the Egyptian language.
Brilliant!!
My Lord Sunken...that pic...you owe me (and I suspect a bunch of others), a new keyboard. OMG....lol!
At least someone was willing to rake the sand away every couple thousand years, in the case of the actual Sphinx...
"It's possible that the Cleopatra on the coin is a few decades older than the 19 year old beauty queen fixed in our minds."
Yes, I think you're 100 per cent correct. Still, she looks like she was an ancestor of Charles de Gaulle.
Hey, that's just an actual historical-type portrait of the Pharaoh Tutonthomas.
Bravo! :'D
I guess Velazquez wasn't the first artist to portray inbred nobles as they truly were.
...to Helen back.
/Outstanding
If she indeed looked like that, she was the real beauty.
"The Secret History is by Procopius, a contemporary of Justinian and Theodora (who supposedly was a courtesan before she married Justinian). Petronius, the author of the Satyricon was much earlier, a contemporary of Nero."
Exactly right. Theodora was a bear-keeper's daughter.
Even if he had some Numedian/Berber blod, this is not black. We are talking about Mediterranian Semites.
The guy spoke a dialect of the same language used in Tyre and the alphabet is the same as in Phoneocian, Canaanite, Ancient Hebrew, and Samaritan. His name means "Graced by Ba'al the Fleet."
would not take the portraits on that coin at face value. In the Roman world of that time, a strong chin and a big nose were considered attractive. If you look at most coins from that era you'll find those same exaggerated features on almost everyone.
Exactly. Minting a coin with crude methods means you will always exaggerate things like ears and noses, otherwise the dude would look like some amorphous blob without any body parts whatsoever.
We ain't talking a Rembrandt here.
Emperor Trajan88 proclaims thumb's down to not-so-hotties like Ms. Cleopatra...
...and thumb's up for HOTTIES like Ms. Moynahan!
Lot's of different historians over the years, some I see I've misremembered, LOL, ie., Petronius for Procopius for example. Sometimes contemporary authors (more or less) that mine the classics for story material like L. Spague DeCamp (sp?) or Robert Graves, the authors of "Lest Darkness Fall" and the Claudius books, respectively. Ribald gossip has a long and honorable tradition! And then there's plain erotica, try the Decameron by Boccaccio or an unexpurgated version of the Thousand and One Nights translated by Burton.
You're right of course, middle age and forgetfulness are getting the best of me!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.