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  1. The race and skin color of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, has caused some debate, [2] although generally not in scholarly sources. [3] . For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?"

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    • Depictions of Cleopatra in Popular Culture
    • Are Egyptians Black?
    • Was Cleopatra Egyptian?
    • What Do We Know About Cleopatra's Ancestry?
    • Who Was Cleopatra's Father?
    • Standard Genealogy of Cleopatra VII
    • Cleopatra's Paternal Grandmother
    • Cleopatra's Mother Cleopatra V
    • Race: What Is It and What Was It in Antiquity?
    • Cleopatra Spoke Egyptian

    Shakespeare uses the word "tawny" about Cleopatra—but Shakespeare wasn't exactly an eyewitness, missing meeting Egypt's last Pharaoh by more than a millennium. In some Renaissance art, Cleopatra is portrayed as dark-skinned, a "negress" in the terminology of that time. But those artists were also not eyewitnesses, and their artistic interpretation ...

    Europeans and Americans became quite focused on the racial classification of Egyptians in the 19th century. While scientists and most scholars have by now concluded that race isn't the static biological category that 19th-century thinkers assumed, many of the theories around whether the Egyptians were a "Black race" assume race is a biological cate...

    If Cleopatra was Egyptian in heritage, if she was descended from native Egyptians, then the heritage of Egyptians in general is relevant to the question of whether Cleopatra was Black. If Cleopatra's heritage wasn't Egyptian, then the arguments about whether Egyptians were Black are irrelevant to her own Blackness.

    The Ptolemy dynasty, of which Cleopatra was the last ruler, was descended from a Greek Macedonian named Ptolemy Soter. That first Ptolemy was established as ruler of Egypt by Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt in 305 B.C. In other words, the Ptolemies were imperialist outsiders, Greeks, who ruled over native Egyptians. Many of the Ptolemy ruli...

    Ptolemy XII Auletes, son of Ptolemy IX, was the father of Cleopatra VII. Through his male line, Cleopatra VII was of Macedonian Greek descent. But we know that heritage is also from mothers. Who was his mother and who was the mother of his daughter Cleopatra VII, the last Pharaoh of Egypt?

    In one standard genealogy of Cleopatra VII, questioned by some scholars, Cleopatra VII's parents are Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra V, both children of Ptolemy IX. Ptolemy XII's mother is Cleopatra IV and Cleopatra V's mother is Cleopatra Selene I, both full sisters of their husband, Ptolemy IX. In this scenario, Cleopatra VII's great-grandparents are P...

    Some scholars conclude that Cleopatra's paternal grandmother, mother of Ptolemy XII, wasn't Cleopatra IV, but was a concubine. That woman's background has been assumed to be either Alexandrian or Nubian. She may have been ethnically Egyptian, or she may have had a heritage that we'd today call "Black."

    Cleopatra VII's mother is usually identified as her father's sister, Cleopatra V, a royal wife. Mention of Cleopatra Tryphaena, or Cleopatra V, disappeared from the record around the time that Cleopatra VII was born. Cleopatra V, while often identified as a younger daughter of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III, may not have been the daughter of a roya...

    Complicating such discussions is the fact that race itself is a complex issue, with unclear definitions. Race is a social construct, rather than a biological reality. In the classical world, difference was more about one's national heritage and homeland, rather than something we'd today call race. There's certainly evidence that Egyptians defined a...

    We do have early evidence that Cleopatra was the first ruler in her family to actually speak the native Egyptian language, rather than the Greek of the Ptolemies. Such could be evidence for an Egyptian ancestry, and could possibly but not necessarily include Black African ancestry. The language she spoke doesn't add or subtract any real weight from...

  3. Aug 18, 2023 · Was Cleopatra Black or was she Greek? Born in 69 B.C., Cleopatra ruled Egypt from 51 B.C. until her death in 30 B.C. Some say she was of solely Macedonian Greek descent, whereas others argue that she was part Egyptian, making her of African descent as well.

    • Margeaux Sippell
  4. Aug 9, 2023 · Cleopatra VII reigned from roughly 51-30 B.C. and was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. When Julius Caesar came to Egypt she had a son with him...

  5. May 8, 2023 · The Egyptian antiquities ministry went so far as to issue a statement: Cleopatra, it said, was light-skinned, not dark. So is Cleopatra black, or white? The answer isneither”.

  6. Dec 12, 2019 · Was Cleopatra black? This is a question that has long been debated. An Egyptologist, Sally-Ann Ashton, after trying to reconstruct the queen’s appearance, concluded among other things, that Cleopatra’s skin colour was dark.

  7. Apr 20, 2023 · Cleopatra was the first Ptolemaic ruler to learn native Egyptian, a now-extinct language that Spoken Coptic descended from. (Egyptian Arabic is the most commonly spoken vernacular in Egypt...

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