Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Cleopatra's Twins

Giuseppina Capriotti, an Egyptologist at Italy's National Research Council, found the statues of the babies  Alexander Helios (Sun) and Cleopatra Selene (Moon) in the museum that were discovered  near the temple of Dendera on the west bank of the Nile in 1918, according to Discovery News.

The researcher identified the children as Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, Antony and Cleopatra's twins, following a detailed stylistic and iconographic analysis published by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

Capriotti noticed that the boy has a sun-disc on his head,‭ ‬while the girl boasts a crescent and a lunar disc ("selene" = moon). The serpents, perhaps two cobras, would also be different forms of sun and moon, she said. Both discs are decorated with the udjat-eye, also called the eye of Horus, a common symbol in Egyptian art.

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