PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND-1ST CENTURY B.C.

This striking portrait head, sculpted from a hard black stone, keeps her identity a mystery, since neither attributes nor inscriptions are preserved. Her hairstyle—center-parted wavy locks falling into long corkscrew curls, also called ‘Libyan curls’ —was newly introduced in the Ptolemaic period. The style was fashionable not only with Ptolemaic queens, but also for depictions of the goddess Isis. It was also appropriated by private individuals of the period who desired to emulate the Royal family. Of this hairstyle, S.-A. Ashton informs: “On the Greek-style portraits of Ptolemaic queens the corkscrew coiffure is simply a new way of styling the hair that becomes fashionable in the second century BC and there is nothing to associate it with the goddess Isis….In other words, the wig shows the queens in the guise of a Greek but portrayed according to Egyptian tradition.“ (S.-A. Ashton, Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt: the Greek and Egyptian Traditions and Their Interaction, PhD. thesis, King’s College London, 1999, p. 139).
In related portraits of Ptolemaic queens wearing this new hairstyle, the physiognomic traits are not usually specific enough for positive identification, but the presence of Royal attributes such as a diadem or uraeus, absent on the present example, confirms that a queen was the intended subject. For a limestone head in Brooklyn ascribed to Cleopatra VII with a similar visage but with a diadem fronted by a triple uraeus, see no. 163 in S. Walker and P. Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth). As in the present example, the eyes of the Brooklyn head are recessed for now-missing inlays, a common feature of Ptolemaic portraiture of the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. (Ashton, op. cit., p. 130). Compare also the recently excavated statue of a queen from the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion, p. 170 in J. Bischoff and C. Gerigk, Diving to the Pharaohs.