Though she died more than two thousand years ago, Cleopatra’s appearance still fascinates us. The ancient sources—even those hostile to her—acknowledge her charisma, intelligence and powers of attraction. During my research, I began to build up a mental picture of Cleopatra and to feel that I understood at least a little of her psyche. This made me all the more curious about her physical appearance. How did this woman whose gilded statue was erected by Julius Caesar in Rome’s main temple to Venus and who captivated Mark Antony actually look?
I was fortunate to meet an archaeologist—Dr. Martin Weaver—as intrigued as I was by Cleopatra and ready to apply his scientific expertise to creating the first three-dimensional model of her. Dr. Weaver, an archaeologist for thirty years, is a specialist in archaeosteology—reconstructions based on evidence from human bones.
Of course, the usual starting point for an archaeological facial reconstruction would be the individual’s skull but Cleopatra’s vanished long ago. Dr. Weaver therefore decided to “reverse-engineer” her. The most reliable sources of information about how Cleopatra looked are the numerous coin depictions throughout her twenty-year reign. These vary in appearance depending on her age at the time and whether she is depicted in Hellenistic or Egyptian pose. But they all suggest she had high cheekbones, a pronounced nose and chin and a slight underhang beneath the jaw.
As well as analyzing these coin images, Dr, Weaver also examined the many sculptures of other members of Cleopatra’s dynasty—the ultra-inbred Ptolemies—that have survived. The evidence from these suggests—just like the coins—that Cleopatra was a woman of strong facial features and very probably—at least in later years—quite plump. In addition, Dr. Weaver looked at the surviving sculptures generally considered to be of Cleopatra—some in Egyptian and some in Greco-Roman style—but these are few in number and less helpful than the other evidence.
Dr. Weaver concluded that Cleopatra was broadly of the “dolichocephalic” type—that is, with a long, high-cheekboned face with protrusive features. Since this type is highly characteristic of people of Macedonian stock and Cleopatra was, of course, of mainly Macedonian descent, he selected a cast of a female Macedonian skull with these traits as the basic structure on which to “hang” Cleopatra’s face.
To adapt the skull to his observations from the surviving evidence, Dr. Weaver made the chin and jaw more pronounced and the cheekbones even more prominent. Next, he applied known facial skin depth measurements to the model, selecting those most appropriate to a woman of Cleopatra’s known appearance and genealogy. Fixing “skin pegs” to the model, he smoothed plastic clay over them to create the basic external structure of Cleopatra’s face.
His next step was to model the soft tissue of Cleopatra’s nose, basing the shape on her profile on coins and on the very strong Ptolemaic family traits he had observed.
To calculate the space between her eyes, Dr. Weaver drew notional lines upward from where her canine incisors would have been since in humans these lines pass through the center of the pupil. To determine the shape of Cleopatra’s eyes, Dr. Weaver applied to his deductions from his observations some additional information from studies of generic ratios in human skulls from which the distance from cheek to brow in humans is known to be an indicator of the degree of protuberance of the eyes.
To re-create Cleopatra’s ears, Dr. Weaver calculated the angle by following the jaw line—a standard technique in archaeological facial reconstruction. He then took standard “ear frames” (developed by the FBI to help in the identification process of criminals), attached these to the model at the correct angle and built up the ears by smoothing layers of clay over the frames.
The dimensions of a human being’s lips can be calculated according to the length of their teeth. As this was not possible in Cleopatra’s case, Dr. Weaver based his reconstruction of Cleopatra’s mouth on coin evidence, making it quite wide.
Dr. Weaver chose as Cleopatra’s hairstyle the so-called melon style she often wore in coin depictions and which has tight braids segmenting her hair into sections like the markings on a melon, hence the name, and with the ends of her hair gathered into a bun on the nape of the neck. This style requires so much hair that—unless Cleopatra habitually wore wigs, which the ancient sources suggest she probably did not—her hair must have been abundant, reaching almost to her waist. To create the melon hairstyle, Cleopatra’s maids probably oiled her hair to make it easier to work with. These oils would have further darkened her already dark hair to black.
In accordance with Cleopatra’s probable genealogy, Dr. Weaver gave Cleopatra olive skin and brown eyes. Her makeup was applied by an expert in cosmetics of the time. The model was completed with a gold filet around the head, long blue and gold earrings and a heavy gold necklace.
Is she beautiful? From certain angles, yes. She certainly has a compelling, even commanding presence, and shrewdness and intelligence look out from those dark brown eyes. At present she sits on a windowsill in Dr. Weaver’s office. As he works he finds it hard to forget she is there—probably exactly what the real Cleopatra would have expected.