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Cleopatra
Was Short, Fat & Ugly
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.
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"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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Cleopatra
Was Short, Fat & Ugly 
