Cleopatra’s Twins by Mark Antony Identified

“PetThe political intrigues and love affair of Mark Antony and Cleopatra have captured the imaginations of generations, even before the famous couple’s deaths in 30 BCE in their war against the future Emperor Augustus of Rome. This statue is the only known image of their twin children, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios.

At least, that’s the argument of archaeologist Giuseppina Capriotti, who identified the statue as such in 2012. While these twin children carved in sandstone were discovered back in 1918 near the famed Temple of Hathor in Dendera on the Nile’s West Bank, for almost 100 years scholars thought they depicted a solar deity’s divine children.

However, a close examination of the iconography of the statues suggests otherwise. The girl (on the right) has a lunar crescent disk, and “Selene” referres to a moon goddess, and the boy (wearing a braid, typical of the Egyptian style) has a solar disk behind him, signifying the Greek God Helios. Furthermore, the twins’ lower limbs are encircled by a serpent, important for the sun God: all this is evidence that suggests these were Antony and Cleopatra’s children.

Taken together, along with the dating of the statue between 50-30 BCE, the evidence supports the idea. Antony officially recognized the twins, born in 40 BCE, as his own children with Cleopatra three years after their birth. On that year there was a solar eclipse, and that is the same time that the twins received their names relating to the Greek moon (Selene) and sun (Helios) deities.

Unlike Cesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, the future Emperor Augustus allowed the children of his rivals Antony and Cleopatra to live. They were taken to Rome and paraded in a military triumph in gold chains and given to Antony’s third wife Octavia to raise. While little Helios died young, Selene went on to marry King Juba of Mauretania (in north Africa), where she likely exerted a lot of power, as coin evidence with her image suggests.