Cleopatra’s eye makeup secret? Ancient Egyptians used lead-based kohl that may have boosted the body’s immune defences and helped fight eye infections

• (Image credit: Canva)Make-up as an art never began simply to enhance the appearance but to draw courage from what was not mere beauty, but power and protection.
• Mistaken for mere garb, its long expanse across myriad empires and dynasties has symbolized unyielding power, stretched in strokes of black kohl and rosy rouge, painting a face not just to appease eyes, but to amass attention.
• However, National Geographic brings attention to something even more fascinating about the beauty rituals of the ancient world, especially when we discover that what people applied extended into what was believed