Cleopatra and Arsinoe — Two Tales of Tombs

Isis: Page 6 Two recent archaeological developments have brought Cleopatra into the news. They each concern tombs—her sister Arsinoe’s tomb and her own. A skull of a skeleton found early last century in ‘The Octagon’ a tomb in Ephesus in Turkey was recently reconstructed using measurements of the skeleton taken in the 1920s. The skull itself was lost in the 1940s. The reconstructed skull turned out to be elongated and so arose the following argument which has become the subject of a recent BBC documentary. Cleopatra arranged for her sister Arsinoe to be murdered. Arsinoe was duly murdered on the steps of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus. Because the skull is elongated Arsinoe was African and not Greek, therefore Cleopatra was African and not Greek.