Milk bath Milk bath A milk bath is a bath taken in milk instead of water. Often other scents such as honey, rose, lavender and essential oils are added. Milk baths use lactic acid, an alpha hydroxy acid, to dissolve the proteins which hold together dead skin cells. There are legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk daily for her complexion. These legends have not been confirmed and some historians believe that Roman Empress Poppaea set this bathing fashion after Cleopatra's death. Queens Catherine Parr and later Elizabeth I of England used milk baths to make their skin appear more youthful and
Cleopatra Selene of Syria in her ancestry". As a queen of Syria, she was the second to rule with the name 'Cleopatra'. Hence, she is termed "Cleopatra II Selene" to differentiate her from her predecessor and aunt Cleopatra I Thea, who was the mother of Cleopatra Selene's husbands Antiochus VIII and Antiochus IX. Classicist Grace Macurdy numbered Cleopatra Selene as "Cleopatra V" within the Ptolemaic dynasty and many historians have used this convention. Sibling marriage was known in ancient Egypt and, although it was not a general practice, it was acceptable for the Egyptians; the Ptolemaics practiced it, perhaps to consolidate the dynasty. In