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Researchers have reconstructed the face of Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra's sister, based on measurements from a skull discovered in Ephesus.
By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
A Viennese archaeologist lecturing in North Carolina this week claims to have identified the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or half-sister. But not everyone is convinced.
That's because the evidence linking the bones, discovered in an ancient Greek city, to Cleopatra's sibling Arsinoe IV is largely circumstantial. A DNA test was attempted, said Hilke Thur, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former director of excavations at the site where the bones were found. However, the 2,000-year-old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.
"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte Observer. She will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.
Bloody family history
Arsinoe IV was Cleopatra's younger half-sister or sister, both of them fathered by Ptolemy XII Auletes, though whether they shared a mother is not clear. Ptolemaic family politics were tough: When Ptolemy XII died, he made Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII joint rulers, but Ptolemy soon ousted Cleopatra. Julius Caesar took Cleopatra's side in the family fight for power, while Arsinoe joined the Egyptian army resisting Caesar and the Roman forces. [Cleopatra and Olympias: Top 12 Warrior Moms in History]
Rome won out, and Arsinoe was taken captive. She was allowed to live in exile in Ephesus, an ancient Greek city in what is now Turkey. However, Cleopatra saw her half-sister as a threat and had her murdered in 41 B.C.
Fast forward to 1904. That year, archaeologists began excavating a ruined structure in Ephesus known as the Octagon for its shape. In 1926, they revealed a burial chamber in the Octagon, holding the bones of a young woman.
Thur argues that the date of the tomb (sometime in the second half of the first century B.C.) and the illustrious within-city location of the grave point to the occupant being Arsinoe IV herself. Thur also believes the octagonal shape may echo that of the great Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. That would make the tomb an homage to Arsinoe's hometown, Egypt's ancient capital, Alexandria.
Controversial claim
The skull attributed to Arsinoe disappeared in Germany during World War II, but Thur found the rest of the bones in two niches in the burial chamber in 1985. The remains have been debated every step of the way. Forensic analysis revealed them to belong to a girl of 15 or 16, which would make Arsinoe surprisingly young for someone who was supposed to have played a major leadership role in a war against Rome years before her death. Thur dismisses those criticisms.
"This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a kind of jealousy."
In 2009, a BBC documentary, "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer," trumpeted the claim that the bones are Arsinoe's. At the time, the most controversial findings centered on the body's lost skull. Measurements and photographs of the incomplete skull remain in historical records and were used to reconstruct the dead woman's face.
More about Cleopatra from NBCNews.com
From the reconstruction, Thur and her colleagues concluded that Arsinoe had an African mother (the Ptolemies were an ethnically Greek dynasty). That conclusion led to splashy headlines suggesting that Cleopatra, too, was African.
But classicists say the conclusions are shaky.
"We get this skull business and having Arsinoe's ethnicity actually being determined from a reconstructed skull based on measurements taken in the 1920s?" wrote David Meadows, a Canadian classicist and teacher, on his blog rogueclassicism.
Not only that, but Cleopatra and Arsinoe may not have shared a mother.
"In that case, the ethnic argument goes largely out of the window," Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard wrote in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009.
Without more testing, the bones remain in identification limbo.
"One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there is currently no other method to really determine more," Thur told the News-Observer. "But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is hope."
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
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First off I don't buy into the whoile Arseino being murdered by a proxy of Celopotra theory because greeks are notorious for having huge family-loyalty and I don't think that one of them would off another one ovver some paranoid fit of worry when you can't even typically get two greek sisters to disagree over whether tom brady's gay or just bi-curious. also since celopotra was already proven to be more attractive in an archeological sense what does this even matter and why are we not using this money to fund failing schools here at home rather than sending crack-pot grave-diggers to foreign lands for years at a time to dig up old bones that once belonged to forever unknown people? this is simply a diaster of improper invetigative procedure and horrible learning-patterns so we should find whoi's responsbile and have them repay every dollar that they laudnered away on this projectt.
TRoll
Based on the spelling, grammar, punctuation, logic and grasp of history in litterhater's comment, we certainly can't argue about the need for improved education.
She was a great looking woman.
Egads, yet another Kardashian!
LitterHater has quite the trolling history if you do a little digging. Probably another office monkey drone expelling frustrations by hiding behind the keyboard. Pay no mind.
I just want to point out that you have contributed this article to the wrong News organization. The News-Observer is located in Raleigh. Not in Charlotte which is just called the Charlotte Observer; however, the writer is from the Charlotte Observer, but these are still two totally different papers. A good read though otherwise. Just a helpful tip :)
Thanks, I appreciate that and have tweaked the article accordingly.
Wow
People get paid to do this?
We can't solve contemporary murders...yet...this is somehow important?
How do I get a completely irrelevant high paying job?
You have to be highly educated and somewhat intelligent....so don't hold your breath.
There is too much grant money out there. This is a story, pushed by a scientist seeking recognition for a discovery that in fact has not been made. Tragically, history has made the ability to pin down the owner of the bones impossible with current scientific means. So what does a headline seeker do when one has taken grant money to make a discovery and alas, the discovery cannot be proved scientifically? Well if one wants another grant from someone else, one must make this one seem like it worked as advertised. So, speculation, jumping to conclusions, assumptions and leaps in logic coupled with a little critic bashing when other scientists say "hold on now, you haven't proved your point". Maybe one day someone will actually be able to trace the bones sicientifically and tell the story. But not today.
i need lots of grant money to find the true meaning of the word...is...
It's not about money, fame maybe. Put together a “Photomosaics” jigsaw puzzle. They are easy
to put together out of the box, a little harder to do when someone hides all
the pieces. Best way ever to understand archeology. We will always be looking for answers until the puzzle is completed.
It's about the money!!! About a billion dollars a year spent on crap like this.. The powers that be have slowed scientific advancement in favor of the welfare state..
As long as they submit a paper each renewal they get a check.. We have thousands of climatologists that write about global warming and ignore real science like undersea vulcanology in the Pacific causing Ocean heating that creates El Nino and La Nina events.. We are in the dark ages of science because of government control just like the Catholic church stifled advancement.. They do not want us to have free cheep energy when they are making trillions of dollars the way it is now..
Roadrunnero--the guy is from Austria. You didn't pay for it. The climatologists you are annoyed with mostly work in Europe, also. The "leaks" from the climatologists which supposedly proved their suppression of data came from England.
If you really think this guy from Austria is making a lot of money, you might want to go see how academics in Austria live. It's not exactly posh.
Hummmmmmmmmm .... How and why does it matter .... regardless?
It doesn't amount a very strong case that it is Arsinoe, or that she was or was not of partial African ancestry.
...how long will it take an ambulance-chasing lawyer to file a wrongful death lawsuit?
Time to knock the dust off the ol' ouija board and ask the skull a few questions, get to the bottom of this.
I'm not convinced these are the bones of Cleopatra's sister. I watched the documentary.
First off, we already know many of the 'royals' of ancient Egypt were murdered. They still do that today. This may be important to someone who gets government funding to study this sort of thing, but most of the world really doesn't care. These folks are still seriously dead and likely to stay that way. Do you think it would be cool for archaeologists 2000 years from now to dig up our presidents and display their bones? Let the dead rest in peace!
Both Cleopatra and Arsinoe were Afro-greeks, when have you ever met a white woman with names like that?
Well, I never met them, but there were Macedonian women named Cleopatra:
http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/cleopatra01/cleopatra_of_macedonia.html
If I lived back then and my last name was Ptolemy I'd get as far away from Egypt as I could. If I lived back then and I was related to Ceasar I'd get as far away from Rome as I could. (And I certainly would never eat anything I hadn't prepared myself) I find ancient civilizations to be fascinating and it seems like everyday they are finding tombs and artifacts-I understand the Valley of the Kings has vast underground chambers that apparently no one even suspected were there untill they developed a technical device that could 'see' .......
Egypt and Rome what fascinating SUPER POWERS of the time. History and the pursuit of truth. That whole time period is truely an adventures paradise.
Cool stuff about Cleopatrta and her sister Arsinoe or half sister. As the research thickens and the stories are told !!!
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER of a better nature!
Hopefully investigators will be able to conduct interviews with possible witnesses and uncover additional clues. Once they narrow down their list of suspects maybe they can have a trial and bring the perpetrator to justice...
I agree. Cleopatra, being a prime suspect, has been allowed to get away with this caper for far too long now. Personally I think she did it, but I guess we have to let the criminal justice system take its course.
I just hope for a chance to go to the sentencing hearing & give her a piece of my mind. Who does she think she is, carrying on like that? The tramp!
This is archaeology & paleontology - not Nancy Grace! LOL!
I see a new Indiana Jones Movie staring Brad Pitt which will be Indiana Jones son takeing over the family business. I dont care if the story is true are not, it just sounds like a fun story. Iran and North Korea are looking for her skull because of its mystic powers and I`ll bet it was buried with Hitler. Ive also got a couple of grand sons that will eat this story up
So they did the reconstruction from old measurements and photos? That makes it all speculation and NOT an actual forensic reconstruction. I'm sure the artist rendering looks nothing like her. If you are missing pieces of the skull, then it's pure fiction/ guess work. I guess it must be a slow news day....
Very interesting but problematic. The one thing the theory Arsinoe's bones have going for them is future developments in forensic tools that may, in the future, be more precise. BTW has there been any more developments in the possible Anthony & Cleopatra burial site in Taposiris Magna?
I also find this question interesting and doubtful of solution. Given the popularity of political succession by murder today, it would be interesting to learn about how it developed in ancient times. It seems unlikely that this will be solved, however, because the murders of the family members of Caesar Augustus are still a source of scholarly argument even though we have more documentation on those murders than we do on Arsinoe. I don't find the apparent young age of the supposed Arsinoe to be a reason to dismiss her possible identity. A member of the ruling family does not have to be of age to be a tool in the hands of others.
Do they know how she was murdered?... how do they know it was a murder and not an tragic incident?
I just finished watching "Rome" again, and last week I watched "I, Claudius" again. I enjoy reading about ancienty history, and it's interesting to see the parallels to our own era.
As for the ages of the children, I think Cleopatra was only 18 or 19 when she began her reign. That would make her in her early twenties when Julius Caesar arrived. (I checked the dates in Wikipedia, but I'm reasonably confident they are accurate, given all the cross-references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra) Children grew up fast in cultures where 40 was considered old, and each royal child would have had adult adherents who wanted to use the child in seeking power for themselves.
So I don't think it's beyond the fringe to consider that Cleopatra would have seen a younger sister as a danger and murdered her. It was the customary way of getting rivals out of the way for millennia, and is still practiced in some parts of the world to this day. Just look at all the assassinations in other countries today, or remember those in our own in the last century.
Cleopatra, according to the Wikipedia account, would have been around 38 or 39 when she died. A much longer life than granted to any of her brothers or her sister.
There is a book by Michelle Moran, titled Cleopatra's Daughter, that provides interesting information on what happened to the children she had with Marc Antony. It also gives a rather full picture of palace life and intrigue in the early days of the Roman Empire. It is a novel, yes, but much of it is based on historical fact.
This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a kind of jealousy."
No. It's good science.