Encaustic painting cleopatra - Public domain portrait engraving

A steel engraving depicting Caesar Augustus' now lost painting of Cleopatra VII in encaustic, which was discovered at Emperor Hadrian's Villa (near Tivoli, Italy) in 1818. She is seen here wearing the golden radiant crown of the Ptolemaic rulers (Sartain, 1885, pp. 41, 44) and being bitten by an asp in an act of suicide. She also wears the knot of Isis (i.e. tyet) around her neck, which corresponds to Plutarch's description of her wearing the robes of the Egyptian goddess Isis (Plutarch's Lives, translated by Bernadotte Perrin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1920, p. 9.)