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Cleopatra Was Short, Fat & Ugly
By Richard Brooks - Arts Editor
The Sunday Time - London
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk
3-25-1

Cleopatra, the queen of ancient Egypt who seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her supposedly irresistible beauty, has been revealed as short, frumpish and in need of a good dentist in a new exhibition at the British Museum.
 
The legendary femme fatale, who ruled in the 1st century BC, has been played on screen by Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom portrayed her as a dark beauty who drove men to obsession before she committed suicide.
 
"Myth and probably mostly nonsense," said Dr Susan Walker, curator of the Cleopatra exhibition which opens next month.
 
Eleven statues of Cleopatra that had previously been thought to portray other queens will be displayed together for the first time. They show the queen as plain-looking with a streak of sternness. She was probably no more than 5ft tall and appears to have been plump.
 
Her image is more that of an Egyptian blue-stocking academic than a red-hot lover. Her first language was Greek, but she also spoke Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic and Egyptian.
 
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