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Cleopatra Selene Meaning

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There is little information to be found on this particular bust of a young woman; however, the scarcity of information definitely heightens the allure of this piece of art history. This emblema was made from a single sheet of silver sculpted in high relief to form the bust of a young woman many believed to be Cleopatra Selene II, a daughter of Cleopatra VII Philopator and Marcus Antonius or better known as Cleopatra and Marc Antony. This extraordinary art depicts Cleopatra Selene II wearing an elephant headdress that is thought to evoke Dionysus, the mythical conqueror of India. She is also adorned with more powerful symbols on her lower half, a scorpion on her right shoulder, a cobra on the left, a lioness and a lion on the center of the chest framing fruit and wheat. …show more content…

The Boscoreale dish was named after the location in which it was discovered, in a Roman villa at Boscoreale near Pompeii in 1895. The piece at Louvre was first thought to be the portrait of Cleopatra VII, beautifully adorned by a plentiful amount of symbols that is also present in the silver emblema with one absent in the latter that stands out in particular. The moon on top of the horn of plenty that adorned the dish was interpreted as a symbol of Cleopatra Selene as her second name in both ancient and modern Greek translate into the word moon. After the identifying the symbolism of the moon on the Louvre piece, it was widely accepted that both emblemas depicts Cleopatra Selene and not Cleopatra VII The meticulous amount of detail and work that can be seen in the silver emblema strongly suggests a portrait with idealized

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