Cleopatra's mind much sharper than her looks

By ELEANOR BLACK

In a satisfyingly modern twist to an ancient tale, it seems Cleopatra's legendary beauty owed more to her alluring personality than physical assets.

An exhibition at the British Museum unmasks the first-century Queen of Egypt - long idealised as a stunner with lustrous hair, luminous eyes and a comely figure - as a stumpy, chunky woman with a hook nose and flaring nostrils.

The exhibition, which opens next month, explodes one of our best-loved myths with a collection of ceramics, paintings, bronzes and caricatures which reveal a ghastly set of brown teeth, rolls of fat around the neck and an unusually prominent lower lip.

Eleven sculptures, initially thought to represent less-attractive queens, have been identified as Cleopatra, who was best known for seducing Julius Caesar and his general Mark Antony before killing herself in dramatic style by forcing a snake to bite her breast.

The unflattering sculptures make Cleopatra look more like Cinderella's stepsisters than Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh, two of the screen goddesses who portrayed her on film.

And they bear no resemblance to the ruler described by Roman historian Dio Cassius as "a woman of incomparable beauty," and by Plutarch as an irresistible charmer: "Her appearance, together with the seduction of her speech ... her character, which pervaded her actions in an inexplicable way, was utterly spellbinding. The sound of her voice was sweet when she talked."

Dr Tom Stevenson, a classics lecturer at Auckland University, said scholars had long known that Cleopatra was no sight for sore eyes, but was idolised for her quick mind and conversational skill.

"She was the product of many generations of inbreeding. The poor lady didn't have the best genes at all."

A clever leader, Cleopatra was expert at manipulating her image. She was the only member of her family, the Ptolemies from Macedonia, who bothered to learn Egyptian so that she could talk to her subjects.

She left a trail of potent lotus perfume wherever she went, and travelled the Nile river in a golden barge with red sails and silver oars.

But representations of Cleopatra as a devilishly attractive woman with fuzzy morals were unfair, said Dr Stevenson. "There is no indication that she was other than a formidable woman. The Romans never gave anything but short shrift to formidable women."

According to historians, it was the Romans, embarrassed by Cleopatra's romantic success with their great leaders, who created the legend of her looks, believing it made her accomplishments less impressive.

Centuries later the plain Queen with a spectacular brain is settling the score.