"An alabaster head of Cleopatra and a mask thought to belong to her lover Mark Antony have been found near Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Monday." Middle East Times

This is what I get for forgeting to visit Zahi's website for a month!

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I remember seen a doucmentary on this archaeological dig of a workers city of the people that built the pyramids. Turns out they had a better health plan then is typically thought. Anyway, Zahi Hawas was frequently interviewed, and he has a wonderful voice.

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Funny thing is i read that they had potentially found the tomb of Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius in some article and it mentioned Cleopatra as "beautiful". Everything I;ve read on the fall of the Republic era says she was actually very plain; polite language for ugly.

It is a modern myth she was beautiful. Beguiling, intelligent maybe but she was apparently no looker.

There are coins with her profile, where she is often portrayed as a middle-aged matron with a generous nose. This is not what we'd call beautiful, at least in our culture. But I guess it's possible that she was more of a looker when she was younger (when she met Julius Caesar). In any case, attractiveness is not just about physical looks.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Yeah, being queen of Egypt helps.
Did you know that Julius Caesar had a comb over?

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Plutarch himself wrote that she was nothing to look at, yet was famously charming...if I were a time traveller, she'd be near the top of the "to-see" list.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

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It'd be nice to finally have a good likeness of Cleopatra. I saw a show a while back, Digging for the Truth possibly, that showed a statue that was though to be her but it wasn't definite. Too bad the article didn't include a picture of the finds.

No she doesn't appear to have been that good looking but there must have been something about her that powerful men liked.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

If I read the article correctly, the statue of Cleopatra is headless.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

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Well there is a picture of a bust of ol' Cleo in her wikipedia article. From what I understand, these things are fairly accurate, so no ,she wasn't the most beautiful thing to sprout legs, in this males opinion anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cleopatra_Bust.jpg

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Finding one bust will not be the end of the story. You have to remember that portraits can vary according to the artist. Do you have any idea how many different busts there are of Antinous, for example? One historian I read described them as "ranging from the sublime to the banal", or something similar.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

I'm certainly plain, but not exactly hideous.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

It took me a while to figure out too. I think it means:

The two treasures (the head and mask), and a bronze statue of Goddess Aphrodite and a headless royal statue from the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt between 323 and 30 BC, were discovered by a joint Egyptian-Dominican Republic team of archeologists in the Tapsiris Magna temple, Hawass said.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Well sure, you'd need a few to compare with but at least we'd have something. I guess the one ravens' cry linked can be compared to this one and we'll see. Although if everything I've heard is true, if this one makes her look good it'd be inaccurate.

Anyway, I find the discovery of new old stuff quite exciting. I wish I'd have grown up to be a archaeologist.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

She had power.

She had the appropriate genital configuration.

She was willing to use both to get what she wanted.

Looks are pretty extraneous at that point.

I don't know... The Romans were pretty powerful by then. Caesar did not seem to need her in any way. And Mark Anthony just doomed himself and her, for the adventure. I think there had to be something special about Cleo.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Which article was that?

The OP mentions the "alabaster head of Cleopatra". I don't think it's supposed to fit on the "headless royal statue from the Ptolemaic dynasty" because Cleopatra predated the Ptolemys, didn't she?

Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemies. The article is a bit confusing.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

O yeah