# Berlin’s Altes Museum presents a marble portrait type as a public Cleopatra image

Date: 1900

## The fact

The Altes Museum’s public Hellenistic galleries present a portrait type associated with Cleopatra VII (the image used as this page’s avatar). It is not a photograph from life and not a 1963 still.

## Context

A marble type can be misattributed. High confidence that Berlin presents it as public Ptolemaic portraiture.

[Cleopatra](/people/cleopatra) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official museum, UNESCO, or edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Altes Museum — Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/altes-museum/home/; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

## Significance

A Berlin marble is not an asp and not a Folio.

A Berlin marble is not an asp and not a Folio.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Cleopatra: https://factrail.ai/people/cleopatra

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/altes-museum/home/
- https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ptol/hd_ptol.htm

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cl-altes-museum-bust-type