On Tuesday, September, 24, in the Apollo hall of the Hermitage the exhibition "Arsinoja or Cleopatra?" opens. The central exhibit is one of masterpieces of the Egyptian collection - a black basalt statue of queen of Ptolomey dynasty time (304-30 years B.C).

The statue represents the going woman in long fitting dress, three-part wig with three imperial snakes, horn of plenty in the left hand and with hieroglyph of life in the right hand. In the collection of the Hermitage the statue has arrived in 1929 from the collection of duke Leichtenbergsky.

Till recently it was considered, that this sculpture is the image of queen Arsinoja II (III century B.C) – Daughter of Ptolemey I, confidant of Alexander Macedonian. In opinion of scientists, the statue was realized after Arsinoja’s death which posthumous cult was the most long in a history of Ptolomey dynasty.

However during the exhibition "Egyptian Cleopatra: from a history to a myth", taking place in 2000-2002 in Rome, London and Chicago, its organizer Sally-Ann Ashton has come to a conclusion, that the statue which in the Petersburg museum considered as image of Arsonja, actually represents Cleopatra VII Egyptian (69-30 years B.C) - one of the most well-known persons of an antiquity. These conclusions are based that on the Egyptian images the Cleopatra’s wig was decorated of three imperial snakes, whereas on the Arsinja’s wig two imperial snakes

News source: regions.ru
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