Ancient cosmetic recipes often claimed the endorsement of celebrities such as Cleopatra. But could they really have made her complexion so famously milky?
Peer pressure led Laurence Totelin to try to recreate a beauty regime as Cleopatra might have known it. A classicist at Cardiff University, UK, specialising in the history of medicine, she often gave talks on ancient cosmetic recipes. Some, like modern-day beauty products, claimed to have a celebrity endorsement – often of Egypt's famously milky-skinned queen.
"People would always say, have you tried what you are talking about?" Totelin says. "I would give convoluted explanations like, it's very difficult to get the ingredients, we can't judge the efficacy, is it safe, and so on. I could tell that wasn't cutting it."
A period of maternity leave finally gave her the ...
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