The University's outstanding coin of Cleopatra is once more on display. Coins bearing her portrait provide some of the few surviving authentic images of that monarch. The Glasgow specimen is renowned as being among the very best surviving coins and depicts a striking portrait of one of the world's most powerful women. The mistress of Julius Caesar, the lover of Mark Antony and the defeated enemy of Augustus, she committed suicide in 30BC rather than be brought in chains to Rome.

The coin has been on loan to the British Museum's major exhibition "Cleopatra of Egypt: from History to Myth", where it was a star item. After London, the exhibition was on display at the field Museum in Chicago, and in all some half a million visitors were able to gaze upon the face that once inspired love and awe.

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Archie Henderson
Modern Apprentice (Numismatics)
The Glasgow Coin Centre
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
Tel: 0141 330 2266
e-mail: ahend@museum.gla.ac.uk
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Media Relations Office (media@gla.ac.uk)

First published: 24 May 2002