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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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What ethnicity is Cleopatra?
Was Cleopatra Greek or black?
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Did Cleopatra have African ancestry?
- Was Cleopatra Black?
- Experts Disagree About Cleopatra’s Heritage
- The Argument For Cleopatra’s Potential Egyptian Heritage
“We don’t know her exact racial heritage. We don’t know who Cleopatra’s mother was. There’s been a lot of research to prove that her mother was Egyptian, but we can’t know for sure,” Professor Haley says in Queen Cleopatra. Dr. Sally-Ann Ashton, the author of Cleopatra and Egypt, says in the docuseries that Cleopatra’s grandmother’s identity is als...
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has already responded to Netflix’s Queen Cleopatradocuseries with a statement insisting that Cleopatra was of Macedonian descent. (Macedonia was a kingdom located in modern-day Greece.) “The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Archaeology [Dr. Mustafa Waziri] confirms that Queen Cleopatra was...
For now, it seems that historians will have to agree to disagree. But some historians are leaning toward her having native Egyptian blood. “If you look at her depictions, she looks different depending on who it is that’s depicting her,” Debora Heard, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology specializing in Nubian archaeology & Egyptian studies, says in th...
- Margeaux Sippell
Evidence Against a Black Cleopatra: Incomplete. Perhaps the strongest evidence cited against Cleopatra having Black ancestry is that the Ptolemy family was quite xenophobic—against "outsiders" including the native Egyptians they ruled for about 300 years.
Apr 28, 2023 · One of Egypt’s most famous archaeologists and twice-serving antiquities minister, Zahi Hawass, was adamant: Cleopatra was not Black. “If we see statues and forms of her father and...
Apr 20, 2023 · Debates over Cleopatra’s “race” were reactivated after Netflix released a trailer for its four-part docudrama Queen Cleopatra last week, starring Adele James, a Black actor. The series is ...
The 2023 Netflix documentary series Queen Cleopatra, which appears to depict Cleopatra as black, spurred a lawsuit in Egypt claiming that the documentary was distorting the reality in order to promote Afrocentrism, and that Netflix's programs were not in line with Egyptian or Islamic values. [156]
Aug 9, 2023 · "Cleopatra was not Black," Hawass said in response to Adele James, a biracial actress, being cast to play the queen in the Netflix show "Queen Cleopatra."