New attribution: a statue of Cleopatra VII

One of the masterpieces in the Hermitage's Ancient Egyptian collection is a black basalt statue of a Ptolemaic queen (Inventory No #3936, height 105 cm, acquired in 1929 from the collection of the Duke of Leuchtenberg). It represents a striding woman in a long tight-fitting dress, wearing a long tripartite wig with three uraei (royal snakes) and holding a horn of plenty in her left hand and the ankh, the hieroglyph of life, in her lowered right hand. The inlayed eyes and the headdress (probably a solar disc between cow's horns) have been lost. The statue is completely finished as its surface is splendidly polished, but it is not inscribed which makes dating and identification of the person represented a particular problem.

In 1957 I.A. Lapis identified the statue as Arsinoe II, sister and wife of Ptolemy II (3rd century B.C.), on the basis of the observation that, judging by the images on coins, although a horn of plenty was an attribute of several Ptolemaic queens, the double cornucopia (dikeras) was specific to her alone. This attribution was included in the catalogue of Egyptian sculpture in the Hermitage ( I.A. Lapis & M.E. Matye, Ancient Egyptian Sculpture in the State Hermitage Collection, Moscow, 1969, pp.124f, Cat. No 141) and more recently in the catalogues of several temporary exhibitions. However this iconographic dating is clearly at odds with the style of the statue, which is typical of a considerably later time, most probably the 1st century B.C. In order to reconcile the clash of iconography and style, it was suggested that the statue might be posthumous, produced many years after the death of Arsinoe II, since it is a known fact that her cult endured for a very long time.

In the course of preparations for the major exhibition "Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth" (Rome-London-Chicago, 2000-2002), one of its organizers, Sally-Ann Ashton, identified a group of statues in the Egyptian style without inscriptions, including the Hermitage work, as depictions of Cleopatra VII, the very queen whose life story and alliances with Caesar and Mark Antony have long since become one of the most famous legends of the Ancient World. This identification is based on the fact that, in contrast to Arsinoe II who wore only two uraei, three are characteristic of Cleopatra VII alone, while it proved possible to find a divided cornucopia on the latter's coins as well. Thus the Hermitage possesses one of the finest statues of the Ptolemaic period, depicting its most famous personage.

Statue of Queen Cleopatra
3rd century BC
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