It is widely viewed as a 1st-century CE Roman copy (i.e. an interpretatio graeca) of a Hellenistic original from the 1st-century BCE Ptolemaic Kingdom, commissioned by emperor Claudius[when?]

A vase next to the nude figure includes an asp or uraeus and depictions of the Egyptian cobra, symbols which support the Cleopatra interpretation.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the thirteen Medici Niobids, a variant of the Laocoön and his Sons, the bust of Commodus with the attributes of Hercules, and the Discobolus had already been found here.

After 1870 intensive building work was ongoing at the site, as part of preparations to make Rome the new capital of the Kingdom of Italy, following the Italian unification.

[9][1] Detractors of this theory argue that the facial features on the Berlin bust and coinage of Cleopatra differ and assert that it was unlikely she would be depicted as the naked goddess Venus (i.e. the Greek Aphrodite).