Was Cleopatra's Suicide by Lethal Drug?

Death of Cleopatra by Jean Andre Rixens, 1874

One of ancient history's most famous legends may due for revision. A new study contends Cleopatra died of swallowing a lethal drug cocktail and not from the bite of an Egyptian cobra snake called an asp. According to Christoph Schäfer, historian and professor at the University of Trier in Germany: “There was no cobra in Cleopatra's death.”

Author of a best-selling book in Germany, Cleopatra, Schäfer searched historic writings for evidence to disprove the 2,000-year-old asp legend. 

"The Roman historian Cassius Dio, writing about 200 years after Cleopatra's demise, stated that she died a quiet and pain-free death, which is not compatible with a cobra bite,” he told Discovery News. “Indeed, the snake's venom would have caused a painful and disfiguring death.”

According to German toxicologist Dietrich Mebs, a poison specialist taking part in the study, symptoms occurring after an asp bite are very unpleasant, and include vomiting, diarrhea and respiratory failure. "Death may occur within 45 minutes, but it may also be longer with painful edema at the bite site," he said. "At the end, the dead body does not look very nice with vomit, diarrhea, a swollen bite site."

Ancient texts also record that Cleopatra's two handmaidens died with her -- something very unlikely if she had died of a snake bite, said Schäfer.

The Queen of the Nile committed suicide in August 30 B.C. at the age of 39, following the example of her lover, the Roman leader Marc Antony, who killed himself after losing the Battle of Actium.

Click here for the complete Discovery News article.
(Post first appeared on my Ancient Tides blog.)

Sphinx Origins Again Being Questioned

The Sphinx as it looks today with its pharaoh's head.

Digital rendition of how it may have looked with the original lion's head.

A concept long argued by some past and current archaeologists and Egyptologists ~ that the Sphinx is much older than usually thought and that its pharaoh’s head is a revision of an earlier head ~ are now receiving publicity again.

Accepted thought is that the monument outside Cairo, which has the head of a pharaoh and the body of a lion, was built around 4,500 years ago. But geologist Colin Reader has found that rain erosion suggests it was built many years earlier, long before the building of the pyramids.

Researchers have also determined that the Sphinx’s body and head are disproportionate, suggesting it was not originally a pharaoh. Historical architect Jonathan Foyle, who worked with Reader on the project, says the head and body are massively out of proportion, adding that the reason could be that the Sphinx originally had an entirely different head ~ that of a lion. To early Egyptians the lion was a much more potent symbol of power than the human face.

The Great Sphinx is thought by most Egyptologists to represent the likeness of King Khafra. It is also believed by others that Djadefre, the elder brother of Khafra, built the Sphinx to honor his father Khufu. This would place the time of construction somewhere between 2550 BC and 2450 BC.

However the limited evidence linking the Sphinx to Khafra is circumstantial and somewhat ambiguous, according to the London Daily Mail.

Geologist Robert Schoch concluded that the Sphinx must be much older than currently believed after an investigation in the 1990s. He claims the amount of water erosion the Sphinx has experienced indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction date and 1,500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization.

Click here for the Daily Mail article.