Portrait Head (possibly Cleopatra VII)

This limestone head shows a woman with a hooked nose, curved nostrils, pointed chin and almond-shaped eyes; features strikingly close to those seen on coin portraits of Cleopatra VII. The hair is styled in the “melon” coiffure, drawn back into a plaited knot, with two ringlets falling by the ears. The ears are pierced for earrings, yet no royal diadem is shown.

The head was found in Rome, where Cleopatra lived during her visits between 46 and 44 BC. As a celebrated and controversial figure in the city, her image and fashions were widely imitated. While some argue this is a follower who copied the queen’s image during her time in Rome, the remarkable likeness to Cleopatra’s coins keeps alive the possibility that it is indeed a portrait of the queen herself. Cicero and other Roman writers, describe Cleopatra as imperious and ostentatiously regal. That makes it less likely she would willingly suppress her queenly image. Romans often resented her precisely because she presented herself as a monarch, not as a subdued guest.

Cleopatra, however, was intensely aware of how imagery shaped power. In Egypt, she always appeared with full royal insignia (diadem, uraeus, goddess dressings) in Egyptian style because her legitimacy rested on that imagery. In Rome, however, she was a guest in Julius Caesar’s and later Mark Antony’s circles, not a reigning monarch in her own territory, so if she did allow a portrait without royal symbols, it could have been a calculated choice to appear less foreign and more acceptable in Roman elite society.

We must also consider the fact that this is a lone head, now divorced from whatever statue it once belonged to. In its prime, the figure may have been complete with attributes that made its royal identity unmistakable. Egyptian statues often carried removable crowns or metal diadems, and it is possible that a similar ornament once adorned this head, now lost to time. Likewise, a missing body could originally have shown the queen with clear insignia of rule, such as the crook and flail. The absence of these elements today does not prove they were never present; it simply reflects the fragmentary nature of the evidence.

This uncertainty has given rise to another theory: that the portrait is not Cleopatra herself but a “lookalike”; a woman from her entourage or a fashionable Roman who styled herself in the queen’s image. During Cleopatra’s stay in Rome, she was a celebrity, and her features and hairstyles were imitated widely. Yet, why commission a permanent stone likeness of a mere imitator? The very existence of so carefully carved a head may, in the end, strengthen the case for it being Cleopatra herself.

Another possibility is that this head served as a reference piece, much as some scholars believe the famous bust of Nefertiti functioned in an Egyptian sculptor’s workshop. In the Greco-Roman world, such models could provide artists with a standard likeness to copy across different media. Given the remarkable precision of this head in profile, which appears more convincing than the full face, it is tempting to see it as a working model for engravers preparing Cleopatra’s coin portraits. This would explain both the strong parallels with numismatic imagery and the unusual refinement of its side view.