Cleopatra:

Beauty and seductress

Hollywood depictions :

Two of history's most famous Valentines are gently debunked today by analysis of an exceptionally well-preserved Roman coin, which gives the lie to the fabled beauty of Cleopatra and the manly features of her lover Mark Antony.

Far from possessing the classical looks of Elizabeth Taylor, or the many other goddesses who have played her on stage and screen, the Egyptian queen is shown with a shrewish profile while Antony suffers from bulging eyes, a crooked nose and a bull neck.

Debated for centuries, but with little effect against a tide of romance backed by Shakespeare, Delacroix and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the faces of the couple have the stamp of authenticity on the silver denarius found in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was coined in Antony's own mint to mark his victories in Armenia in 32BC, achieved with the help of Cleopatra's one undoubted attraction, her money.

"Its other distinction is that it looks as though it was minted yesterday," said Melanie Reed from Newcastle University, whose archaeology museum found the 5p-sized coin while researching a forgotten 18th century hoard left for years in a local bank. "The profiles in particular are in marvellously good condition. If a Roman invader brought it over here, he or she certainly knew how to take care of their loose change."

Coins showing the doomed pair of lovers, who were to kill themselves within two years in the face of ruin, are not uncommon, but the majority are in poor condition or have more flattering images. The Newcastle find, minted at a time when Antony and Cleopatra faced internal rebellion and outside invasion, may deliberately have emphasised the reality of the pair, to deter pretenders.

Fascinated posterity

The inscriptions also play up the couple's power, with the Roman general's head surrounded by the words "Antoni Armenia devicta" - for Antony, Armenia having been vanquished.

Cleopatra gets the still more boastful "Reginae regum filiorumque regum" - Queen of kings and of the children of kings, or possibly Queen of kings and of her children who are kings - her twin son and daughter were in titular charge of everything from the Caucasus to Libya.

The question of Cleopatra's looks has fascinated posterity, particularly during male-dominated centuries when it was seen as the key to her hold over Antony and, before him, Julius Caesar. She is said to have seduced Caesar in 48BC by presenting herself to him rolled up in a rare and valuable Persian carpet, with nothing else on.

"The popular image we have of Cleopatra is that of a beautiful queen who was adored by Roman politicians and generals," said Clare Pickersgill, assistant director of archaeological museums at Newcastle University. "But the coinage bears out recent research which suggests there was much more to her than that."

The denarius profile clearly emphasises strong characteristics including a determined, pointed chin, thin lips which are often associated with a sharp nature, and in particular a long, pointed nose. The last has been famously central to discussion of what Cleopatra really looked like, with Pascal going so far as to write in his Pens,es: "Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed."

Romantic movements

His point - that a softer, Elizabeth Taylor-like queen might have persuaded her great lovers to give up conquering the world and retire by the Nile - was later undermined by the Romantic movement. Ms Pickersgill said: "Orientalist artists of the 19th century and then modern Hollywood depictions, especially by Taylor and Richard Burton in the 1963 movie, built up the role of Cleopatra as a great beauty."

The queen's contemporaries took a different line, according to Lindsay Allason-Jones, director of archaeological museums at Newcastle, who said that Roman and Egyptian writers had a clearer-eyed view of her talents.

"The idea of Cleopatra as a beautiful seductress is much more recent," she said. "Classical age writers tell us that she was intelligent and charismatic, and that she had a seductive voice. But tellingly, they make little of her beauty."

The coin, which was originally found by an unknown member of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, goes on display from today at the Shefton Museum on Newcastle University's campus.

It was rediscovered during a huge trawl of the north-east for items to go on display in the Great North Museum which opens in Newcastle in 2009.

Descended from Alexander the Great, Cleopatra ("Father's joy") was the last independent ruler of Egypt before the Roman conquest in 30BC by Octavian, later Augustus, which ended the civil war and began the Roman empire. She killed herself with a poisonous snake shortly after the suicide of Mark Antony, Octavian's main rival in the Roman civil war, following the disastrous sea battle of Actium off the coast of Egypt.

Guardian