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Aug 9, 2023 · (Image credit: TerryJLawrence via Getty Images) Whatever Cleopatra's skin tone was, the notion of "whiteness" or "Blackness" as conceived today would have been alien to ancient people.
- 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...
Nov 2, 2023 · Was Cleopatra Black? The notion of Cleopatra being Black has been the subject of cultural interpretations, including some that align with the Afrocentrist movement, which seeks to highlight the contributions and influence of African and African-descendant cultures.
Jul 20, 2021 · Other than Cleopatra’s beauty, another topic that has inspired debate — especially in recent years — is her race. While the ancient queen is usually depicted as being white in Western countries, some have speculated that she was actually Black, or perhaps another race altogether.
- Kaleena Fraga
Aug 18, 2023 · The new Netflix docuseries Queen Cleopatra, the second season of the African Queens anthology series from executive producer Jada Pinkett Smith, weighs in on that debate with one possible answer. The hard truth is, we don’t know for sure what her heritage really was.
- Margeaux Sippell
In 2009, a BBC documentary speculated that Cleopatra might have been part North African. This was based largely on the examination of a headless skeleton of a female child in a 20 BCE tomb in Ephesus (modern Turkey), together with the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull.
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May 26, 2023 · Jamaican-American writer JA Rogers asserted in 1946 that he believed Cleopatra was Black, due to an unidentified grandmother described as a slave.
![Was Cleopatra Black? [The Truth Behind Ancient Egypt's Queen]](https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=was+cleopatra+black+images&ei=UTF-8&xargs=0&norw=1&age=1d&th=108.4&tw=108.4&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.findingdulcinea.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F07%2FWas-Cleopatra-Black-The-Truth-Behind-Ancient-Egypts-Queen-300x300.jpg&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.findingdulcinea.com%2Fwas-cleopatra-black%2F&size=22KB&name=Was+Cleopatra+Black%3F+%5BThe+Truth+Behind+Ancient+Egypt%27s+Queen%5D&oid=3&h=300&w=300&turl=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.6XdE9n3v5Z70BaGANLMFjQAAAA%26pid%3DApi%26rs%3D1%26c%3D1%26qlt%3D95%26w%3D108%26h%3D108&tt=Was+Cleopatra+Black%3F+%5BThe+Truth+Behind+Ancient+Egypt%27s+Queen%5D&sigr=VSXf6QOHu2y.&sigit=ENBEIaIoKR9.&sigi=bqFuwXpgJkHj&sign=.7FBx0r7zSdi&sigt=.7FBx0r7zSdi "Was Cleopatra Black? [The Truth Behind Ancient Egypt's Queen]")
