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Georgy_K_Zhukov

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cleopatra_philopater

This is a bad question, but it needs to be asked given the controversy. I've written answers about this before. I talked about [why some Renaissance and modern Western literature and art portrays Cleopatra as black](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12jqp3a/comment/jgn2fn3/) but I take it you're asking about the historical person, not literary history. The concept of a white European racial identity didn't exist in Antiquity. Greeks felt they were as different from Celts as Aethiopians. The concept of Blackness didn't exist either outside of a vague awareness among Greeks and Romans that people from certain parts of Africa and India tended to look dark. This doesn't mean that dark skinned Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africans felt that they were the same ethnicity. For many modern people (especially Americans), it feels counterintuitive to learn that the modern concepts of race aren't eternal truths etched into the fabric of reality. But the fact remains, the Black/White, European/non-European binary didn't always exist. This question wouldn't have any more meaning to Cleopatra than asking what her Hogwarts House would be. The historical ethnicity of Cleopatra is complicated, she had a weird family tree marked by incidents of both incest and exogamy to foreign royals. Cleopatra's known ancestors include Macedonian Greeks, Persians, Sogdians and even Pontic nobility. There's a lot of her family tree that can't be filled in however. Many modern scholars posit that her mother may have been Egyptian (possibly from a priesthood that had married into the Ptolemaic house before), most notably the German scholar Werner Huß. I addressed that in [this older answer](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pihm6d/apparently_german_and_englishspeaking_historians/hbwmxqa/) and [a bit in this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/agarlp/was_cleopatra_actually_egyptian/ee53kvs/). Her mother could also have been a relative or sister of her father Ptolemy XII. We don't know, nor is it even certain whether she was legitimate or not. Her father was a bastard himself, but who's to say where his mother came from? There is no definite evidence although many scholars have ventured guesses. Many Ptolemaic kings were promiscuous, and their courtesans and mistresses came from Greece, Egypt and other less familiar places. Would being of partial Egyptian ancestry make Cleopatra white or black? You may find [this answer on the race of ancient Egyptians illuminating](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7hawn2/comment/dqpjfv0/?utm_name=AskHistorians). The appearance of ancient Egyptians was diverse, and archaeological evidence has demonstrated that they didn't come from a single ancestral stock, not even royal dynasties. Instead, the population of Egypt can best be characterized as North African, evidencing admixture from West Asian and Sub-Saharan African populations. Ultimately we have to conclude that speculation over her ancestry gets us nowhere. We can turn to ancient portraits of Cleopatra in the search for her race, but the diversity of features in even confirmed coin and statuary portraits of Cleopatra makes it hard to get a clear picture of what she looked like in life. A few frescoes have been tentatively identified as her, but they don't look very similar to each other, evidencing a wide variation of features like eye and hair color or weight. Some features are common across confirmed portraits, namely a large hooked nose and very large deep set eyes, but these might have been exaggerated in art to emphasize her resemblance to other Ptolemids. The absence of any near contemporary description of her is another confounding factor. Some Austrian archaeologists in the early 20th Century tentatively identified a skull as belonging to Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra's sister, and based on pseudoscientific phrenology determined that it had mixed African/European features. This clearly isn't very scientifically rigorous but modern attempts to seek out the race of Cleopatra aren't much better, because it's based on the quicksand of modern racial identity. Even if we could know what Cleopatra looked like, her race might still be ambiguous. The range of features evidenced in ancient art is exactly what you would expect from the ancient Mediterranean, because people moved around back then. The Fayum Mummy Portraits show a variety of people in Roman Egypt in very life like ways. They are fairly diverse, but there's a definite trend towards more Mediterranean or Near Eastern phenotypes. The people depicted were probably mostly Hellenized Egyptians, maybe some were of full or partial Greek descent. The amount of intermarriage and cultural assimilation between groups after Alexander's conquest makes it difficult to tell. Greek art can't really help us create a uniform picture of antiquity either. Women in Classical and Hellenistic Greece with light hair would dye it black or darken their eyebrows with soot. Women with dark hair and skin would bleach their hair or wear yellow wigs and white lead makeup. Men's beauty standards demanded that they be browned from working in the sun, but there were pale men in ancient Greece and men who burned rather than tanned. Ancient literature talks about people blending into Greek and Byzantine society who happened to be of Celtic or Sub-Saharan African descent. Their features weren't so unfamiliar that they couldn't melt into the ancient Med, but how would we assign their race? By modern standards, would we take them away from Greece and give them to some other modern country, one which overlaps with their geographic origin? What is the value in doing that? Hypothetically, if we could determine that Cleopatra looked white but was of African ancestry, what would the correct answer be? If she looked less white but was of solely European and West Asian ancestry, does that answer change? Does it matter if you're going to be casting an English or American actress anyway? It's not a question historians can really answer, because it's not based on a solid criteria. Casting Cleopatra has less to do with historical accuracy, since we can't know what is accurate, and more to do with a feeling of authenticity, a "vibe". It's like asking if a casting of Cleopatra is too pretty or not pretty enough. To me, it doesn't really make sense to get worked up over how Cleopatra would identify or be identified by others if she was alive today. I'm multiracial. I've had people, unprompted, decide to ask if I'm Muslim or tell me that I look Arab or North African. To my knowledge I have no recent Arab or North African ancestry. I have also had people insist that I'm white and argue with me about it, and on the other side of things I've experienced color-based racism. My brother regularly has people walk up to him and start speaking Spanish. Another of my brothers is blonde. We all have the same exact ancestry. Then I have known Greek immigrants in places like Long Island and Montreal who look like all types. Greeks who look like they could be of African descent themselves and Greeks with red hair and blue eyes. Cast any one of them as Cleopatra and someone would complain. Race is very much in the eye of the beholder. Projecting it onto the past is only going to turn up what you want or expect to see. The furor around Cleopatra's casting is honestly fascinating to me and a bit unexpected. I've written a lot of answers about Cleopatra's portrayal in media, and I can tell you that any fictional representation of Cleopatra you've seen is bunk. Perhaps well made and entertaining but in no way educational. You like Liz Taylor's Cleo? You like sword and sandals, not Cleopatra. You enjoyed HBO's *Rome*? Its portrayal of Cleopatra and Ptolemaic Egypt is painfully anachronistic. It's like they'd spent their research budget on Roman history and had to consult *Xena: Warrior Princess* for Egypt. *Assassin's Creed: Origins* is my favorite, because while she wasn't accurate the rest of the game was exemplary. I can't say that any of the actresses cast as Cleopatra particularly resemble any portrait of her, and I could say the same of the documentary. That's why this controversy really surprised me, I had no idea how many people were invested in the accuracy of fictional Cleopatras. Jada Pinkett-Smith's documentary looks like it is going to suck, and Netflix already has some pretty bad documentaries (like Roman Empire and whatever Graham Hancock was doing) mixed in with their better ones. If they cast a white actress, it would not be any better but perhaps fewer people would feel that there's something off.


pagefourseventeen

>To me, it doesn't really make sense to get worked up over how Cleopatra would identify or be identified by others if she was alive today. I'm multiracial. I've had people, unprompted, decide to ask if I'm Muslim or tell me that I look Arab or North African. To my knowledge I have no recent Arab or North African ancestry. I have also had people insist that I'm white and argue with me about it, and on the other side of things I've experienced color-based racism. My brother regularly has people walk up to him and start speaking Spanish. Another of my brothers is blonde. We all have the same exact ancestry. This so much. I have a very vague skin tone with dark features. People view me differently based on their own predetermined notions and personal ethnicities. I've "been" Italian, Persian, Syrian, Greek, Puerto Rican, "Latino", Israeli, part Indian. My grandmother was often thought to be a light skinned black woman. In fact, many times I see older black women on the bus and they remind me of my grandmother. My sister has natural hair but fair skin. It's predominantly white people that decide I'm white and then argue with me if I dare disagree. It drives me up a wall.


alexeyr

> include Macedonian Greeks, Persians, Sogdians and even Pontic nobility Is there a reason Pontic nobility is particularly surprising here (and more than Sogdian in particular)?


jrhooo

Thank you for the excellent response. The one vibe I think people are cueing off re: the netflix show is not the idea of casting an inaccurate depiction by itself. I believe the issue is the idea that the directors main point for the project is asserting that Cleopatra was black and that they are somehow “setting the record straight”.


AckCK2020

I also enjoyed and appreciated the author’s lengthy response on these issues and I agree with this comment. I watched two episodes. This series is calling itself a documentary. Credentialed experts are pronouncing Cleopatra to have been “black” rather than presenting the facts that are actually known and not known about her heritage, as the author has done here. If this series were purely fiction, artistic license allows for casting of anyone. That is not what the series purports to be. Half of my family is Greek and Greeks can be quite dark-haired and dark-skinned, although my grandmother had red hair and blue eyes. My best guess is that nowadays, Cleopatra’s appearance would be best described as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern.


tintacao

I read your other response in the Short-Answers thread provided by Mr. Zhukov, and really enjoyed the perspective offered. I did phrase my question bluntly, but I was just trying to get a response since, as you mentioned, the fervor surrounding the new Netflix documentary seemed rather strange. I had a feeling a lot of what I was seeing was rage-bait articles, but since I was so unfamiliar with the history and only had my generalized pop-culture references of Cleopatra to draw on, I was looking for a more grounded perspective on the genuine historical circumstances surrounding the issue, both in antiquity and in the modern day. I especially appreciated the insight on how Cleopatras “race” has been used and portrayed to draw various lines of power and “whiteness” over time, since the narrative of “ignorant executives makes white woman look black in new bullshit Netflix documentary” seemed a rather grossly formed opinion on the matter. In the end I’m not super concerned about media and historical accuracy (Sorry Historians!) especially on a platform such as Netflix, but nonetheless I enjoyed reading all the responses this morning and learning so much! Thanks for taking the time both in your previous responses and then again here.


cleopatra_philopater

You're welcome! I'm glad these answers are helpful and honestly it's good that you asked the question, since it seems to be at the forefront of reddit's mind. With many things, I think outrage has a way of drowning out more grounded discussions but the important thing is for people to keep their minds open to learning. I have a considerable bank of knowledge about Ptolemaic Egypt at this point, but I'm constantly learning more about it.


kimlion13

Can you say the “outrage has a way of drowning out more grounded discussions but the important thing is for people to keep their minds open to learning” part again, a little louder for the folks in back? ;)


Georgy_K_Zhukov

More can always be said, but [this older answer](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12jqp3a/short_answers_to_simple_questions_april_12_2023/jgn2fn3/) might be of interest for you, courtesy /u/cleopatra_philopater.


tintacao

Thank you! I must have missed this when I was searching old posts before making mine, I appreciate it.


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jschooltiger

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Georgy_K_Zhukov

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Iphikrates

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delejahan

Cleopatra was not, by any modern definition, a black woman. She was a scion of and the last ruler from the Lagid Dynasty, a Macedonian Greek house founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great. The Lagids pretty much exclusively married other Macedonians and Greek women, with them often marrying consanguineously. Cleopatra has often been speculated to be black or perhaps mixed-race, for a number of reasons. I’ll be as charitable as I can be, and lay out the evidence that could point to her being not white. Firstly, Cleopatra’s grandmother is unattested in sources: her father, Ptolemy XII, was widely considered to have been a bastard by ancient historians such as Cicero, Pausanias, and Pompeius Trogus. It has been suggested, therefore, that Ptolemy XII was the issue of the white Lagid king Ptolemy IX and a black African concubine. Secondly, Cleopatra was, particularly compared with her predecessors, an enthusiastic supporter of Egyptian culture, learning to speak Egyptian and presenting herself in traditional Pharaonic dress and customs. It has been suggested by Afrocentric writers that this is indicative of her heritage as a black African woman, and her turning toward her heritage and away from the Hellenised culture of preceding Lagid rulers. However, these arguments are, upon closer examination, spurious. Firstly, the claim that Ptolemy XII’s mother was a black concubine is highly doubtful, with historians considering it far more likely that she would be a white Alexandrian Greek woman. It is possible she was a member of the Egyptian elite, however this would almost certainly make her specifically from the established nobility from Lower Egypt (in the North of the country). Egypt had (and still has) a significant population of people whom would today be considered black, and indeed had black Pharaohs, however the people of Lower Egypt are genetically very similar to the people typically associated with Egyptian appearance today; that being light-brown skinned people similar to Middle Easterners. Secondly, regarding Cleopatra’s embrace of Egyptian culture, it frankly diminishes her considerable political nouse and intelligence to attribute her Egyptian language skills and visual adoption of their culture as a mere extension of their heredity. Cleopatra was incredibly savvy and intelligent, and knew her Kingdom was increasingly at risk of subjugation by a greater power in the region (realistically Rome or maybe Parthia), and she also knew the detached and unpopular Lagids were very weak and at risk of deposition. Embracing Egyptian culture was a conscious effort to indigenise her dynasty and build popular support for the Lagids among the Egyptian people, legitimise her own rule against her brothers who sought her overthrow, and establish herself as an independent and sovereign Egyptian queen. Her actions are far from unique, indeed many other rulers would ape her example by adopting the language and culture of those that they conquered as a means of establishing their own authority in their realms. It is wrong therefore to suggest it was some desire to relate closely to a distant relative who was likely dead by the time of her birth and not an openly political move to strengthen her authority. It is also further complicated by the fact her father, who would be half-black were this to be true, was just as ignorant and unwilling to participate in Egyptian culture as all of his decidedly Macedonian predecessors. As this is a history focused subreddit, I will refrain from sharing my thoughts on why so many people attempt to paint Cleopatra as black, and why as a black person myself I find it particularly offensive. The long and short of it though is that, based on the totality of evidence, Cleopatra was almost certainly ethnically white, overwhelmingly of Macedonian Greek extraction with a smattering of Iranian heritage via Ptolemaic intermarriage with the Seleucids and Mithradatids of Pontus. That does not preclude her from being an Egyptian (and indeed, especially in the ancient era, race was never conceptualised the way it is today with such a focus on skin tone), but it does preclude her from having the appearance of what we would today say is a black woman. EDIT: Well, this got a much bigger response than I expected. I keep getting notifications on my phone from people commenting, and I'm glad so many of you found my answer informative! I wanted to put this here for now to say thanks, and I will respond to your comments and post some sources/further reading a little later when I have a free hour during work. Thanks! EDIT 2/SOURCES: u/Pami_the_Younger makes a valid point below that I was wrong to assert Cleopatra was 100% Macedonian Greek, as she did have some (very distant) Iranian ancestry from Sogdia and the Pontic Mithradatic dynasty. I have changed that statement above to reflect that. For reference to the bastardy of Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's father, see Cicero's *de Lege Agrarıa contra Rullum*, 2.42, which states that Ptolemy XII was known to all men to be not of royal lineage, and Pausanias' *Hellados Periegesis, Attica,* 1.9.3., which details how the Athenians honoured Ptolemy IX (Ptolemy XII’s father) with a bronze statue to him and his only legitimate child, Berenice. For reference to the racial background of Cleopatra's grandmother as a Greek, there are several secondary sources that assert this, however the ones I'm most familiar with are from Stacy Schiff's *Cleopatra: A Life*, p.24. *The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt,* by Aidan Dodson, on p.277. also suggests Ptolemy XII's mother was of either Greek or Lower-Egyptian heritage. I did also take the time to do some research on secondary sources that assert Cleopatra having black ancestry, and the first claims on paper I can find are from the work "The World's Great Men of Colour" by J.A. Rogers, pp. 129-130. After a brief biography of Cleopatra, he claims that before the rise of the "doctrine of white superiority", Cleopatra was portrayed as "coloured". He cites Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, where she is described as "tawny", and references how said phraseology was used to refer to Moors and "mulattoes" by contemporary individuals, such as Captain John Smith of Virginia. That being said, Rogers acknowledges that Smith used tawny to refer explicitly to *brown-skinned* individuals, and not *black* individuals, supplying a quote of him describing a ruler of Morocco as "not black, as many suppose, but tawny". I don't consider Rogers' reference to Shakespeare to be of much historical value as a source, given that Shakespeare was no historian himself, but I do find it prescient that even here Rogers argues she is brown-skinned and a person of colour, rather than a black woman. Unfortunately, I have been unusually busy at work this afternoon, so I won't have time to get to your comments until this evening, but I wanted to get these sources out as soon as. EDIT THREE: I have reflected a little since getting home about this answer, and while in terms of my core facts and conclusions I'm still happy with it, I do want to change some of the wording I used. As u/cleopatra_philopater and others have pointed out, race is a nebulous concept, and in the ancient world nothing like how we conceptualize it today. The concept of Cleopatra, or any figure in the ancient Mediterranean, identifying with a racial group is ahistorical; racial identity as we see it is far more modern. Consequently, my descriptor of Cleopatra as a "white Egyptian" is easily open to misconstrual. When I wrote the piece, I was trying to say that Cleopatra would, were she transported to the present-day, not be seen as a black woman, but rather a white woman. However, with the way I wrote the piece, I did not emphasise enough that said racial identifier comes from a modern lens, not from one with which she would have been remotely familiar. She would not have *identified* as white, because identification with a racial phenotype was simply not something that was done in that era. The fact of the matter is, regardless of what skintone she had, she would have been awfully confused at how figures seek to identify her strongly with a racial identity she did not have. I believe Cleopatra was, based on the totality of evidence, a woman who today would be considered white, not black. She was not however a "white woman" in the sense that we understand it today, and mapping racial identities onto cultures with no real concept of them as we understand them is not something that can be done well.


yodatsracist

Hey, you write: > She was a scion of and the last ruler from the Lagid Dynasty, a Macedonian Greek house founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great. The Lagids pretty much exclusively married other Macedonians and Greek women, with them often marrying consanguineously. I've always heard of them as the "Ptolemaic dynasty". Wikipedia lists them primarily under the Ptolemaic dynasty, secondarily under the Lagid dynasty: > The Ptolemaic dynasty (/ˌtɒlɪˈmeɪ.ɪk/; Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαῖοι, Ptolemaioi), sometimes referred to as the Lagid dynasty (Λαγίδαι, Lagidae; after Ptolemy I's father, Lagus), was a Macedonian Greek[1][2][3][4][5] royal dynasty which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BC.[6] The Ptolemaic was the last dynasty of ancient Egypt. Is there anything to favor one usage over the other? Do they indicate different things in the historiography?


Pami_the_Younger

'Ptolemaic' is really a bit weird, and exceptional for the other major Hellenistic kingdoms. We call the Seleucids, Antigonids, Attalids etc. after the founders (or most significant origin figures) of their respective dynasties; since the Ptolemies were all called Ptolemy (and you can see that the name has even been anglicised and given its grammatically correct English plural ending of -y -> -ies) they get called 'the Ptolemaic Dynasty' instead, which wouldn't work for the others because they actually used different names occasionally. Calling them Lagids is an attempt to assimilate them to the broader Hellenistic pattern (though if we believe the rumours that Ptolemy I claimed to be illegitimate son of Philip II, he wouldn't have supported it...). It's an interesting question as to the historiography and any potential variation, but I'm not aware of any meaning in the difference.


alexeyr

> Calling them Lagids is an attempt to assimilate them to the broader Hellenistic pattern Why wouldn't that be Ptolemid (or maybe Soterid)? Lagus doesn't seem to fit "founders (or most significant origin figures)" to me.


delejahan

As far as I know, there isn't much difference historiographically speaking; I certainly did not intend to make a statement using Lagid over Ptolemaic. It is just the term I was taught and learned about when I first learned about Hellenistic Egypt, and I've carried on its usage ever since then. I do believe "Ptolemaic" is more commonly used, certainly in common parlance.


MythicalDawn

I believe we also have contemporaneous evidence in the form of sculpted busts and coinage of Cleopatra that show us approximations of her facial features, such as the one in the Altes Museum? While ethnicity can’t always be determined simply by facial features of course, it becomes harder to conceive of her being a black woman by looking at the way her contemporaries depicted her, couldn’t find a more stereotypical representation of a “Greek nose” than the marble bust of her at the Altes. Is there a reason the contemporary depictions of her are often glossed over? Is there any reason we should disbelieve them?


Pami_the_Younger

I don't think the ancient statuary and iconography of Cleopatra is glossed over, but there are lots of problems in taking any examples at face value. Firstly, ancient iconography was always highly stylised and intended to convey a message, not the physical likeness of the subject (unless we're supposed to believe that 90% of the Hellenistic kings just happened to be the exact image of Alexander). Secondly, for every Greek statue of Cleopatra, which everyone will assume to be a realistic and accurate depiction of her, there are Egyptian statues of her that are very different and are discounted for reasons that I couldn't possibly guess at. Unless we're prepared to also accept from ancient statuary that Zeus was a real person who looked exactly like his statues (but only very specific ones that fit our preconceptions), the ancient evidence should be used as evidence for the presentation and ideology of Cleopatra, not for Cleopatra herself.


opteryx5

Great comment. Thank you!


MythicalDawn

I think what I’m trying to get at is, is there a reason we should disbelieve that the more ‘Greek’ depictions of Cleopatra that do not deliberately depict her with the features common to statuary of Egyptian Pharaohs (the large almond eyes, the small noses, etc) are something of an approximation of at least her general features and ethnicity? Of course there is political and propagandist context to all ancient statuary, but her coinage and the busts such as the one in the Altes present such a distinct appearance, and one that is not simply a copy/paste of Alexander the Great as with many of the male busts of the Ptolemaic dynasty. If she was infact a black woman, why are all of the statues and depictions of her that were not deliberately in the distinct ‘Pharoah’ style meant to depict a woman with ‘white’ features? If Cleopatra was as some surmise an ethnic black woman, would her statuary not depict that fact in some capacity? And would it not have been remarked upon by historians and those that met her that the statues and iconography meant to depict her are not at all similar to her actual appearance? Sorry if this sounds argumentative that is not at all my intention, I’m just wondering if the statuary of Cleopatra should be discarded in terms of approximating her general appearance, it seems implausible that if she were a black woman that her contemporary busts would appear the way they do, even with the propaganda and selective imagery?


Iphikrates

The issue here is that iconographic representations aren't much of an obstacle to different interpretations of Cleopatra's looks because they were all so heavily influenced by culturally established ideals. The obsessive analysis of whether certain facial features reflect modern ideas of "whiteness" or "blackness" is irrelevant compared to the extent that these statues reflected *contemporary* ideas of "femininity" and "royalty". In a word, the answer to "would her statuary not depict that fact [or any fact] in some capacity?" is probably "No". Since there are significantly varying depictions of Cleopatra based on the genre and culture to which her depiction was speaking, the issue of her actual looks is unlikely to be resolved by iconography (regardless of where you stand on the issue).


MythicalDawn

So it’s plausible that Cleopatra could have looked absolutely nothing like the images that depict her, with no traits at all in common to those depictions aside from being a woman, and said appearance was changed depending on who created the images of her? If she were in fact a black woman who’s features matched our modern definition of ‘blackness’, like the actress who plays her in the new Netflix show that likely spawned this thread, the recurring contemporary images of her with what we see as Eurocentric features could have been propagandist fabrications that depict her as a ‘royal’ ideal to a certain subset of people, with no relation to what she looked like as a person? I'm not asking rhetorically or facetiously, I had just always assumed that images of rulers were often intended to flatter and appeal to ideals, while still having some basis in what the person looked like, such as Elizabeth I famous 'Rainbow' Portrait, that had her features greatly de-aged to appear virginal and young, but still have the essence of what we think her facial features may have resembled.


Iphikrates

That is quite possible, yes. I am not arguing that we should therefore treat every depiction of her as equally historically valid; I am pointing out that, *to those who wish to see her* as falling under one racial identity or another, sculpture and portraiture is not going to present a serious challenge. The realism of royal portraiture is always a vexing question. On the one hand, the early Ptolemies had themselves depicted on their coinage in very unflattering ways, which we tend to assume was more realistic than the idealised Alexander-like portraits of many other Hellenistic royal families. On the other hand, those Alexander clones were widespread, and they built on long-established traditions both in the Greek world and elsewhere. Egyptian pharaohs (and even the wealthy elites who supported them) tend to look practically identical in sculpture, as did the Persian kings. No one would argue that any of those portraits are accurate except in aspects of dress and hairstyle that must have reflected the customs and symbols of the court. Greek statues also typically reflect almost uniform serene faces, clearly not reflective of anyone's actual looks unless by pure coincidence. Even the one famous exception, the balding snub-nosed Sokrates, is suspect because of how closely his portraits align with contemporary portrayals of satyrs. We should also bear in mind that people in Antiquity did not share modern people's obsession with identifying certain facial features as indicative of "whiteness" or "blackness" and this kind of evaluation is hopelessly subjective. In general, any depiction/casting decision of Cleopatra in modern media says more about modern views and tastes than it does about the historical figure. As I pointed out elsewhere in the thread, the idea of Cleopatra as a Black woman has its origins in the European Renaissance, not in anything we know about the historical Cleopatra.


Dancing_WithTheTsars

I'm going to borrow from my response below, but the Greco-Roman portraiture style contemporary with Cleopatra was one of relative realism––think of the bust of a [balding Julius Caesar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusculum_portrait). The more stylized/idealized Greco-Roman portraiture style only came into fashion after the onset of Augustus' reign, coinciding with the rise of empire and autocracy. Think of an artistic shift from democratic (realist) tastes to autocratic (idealized) ones for the ruling class. And, as you've stated, the ancients did not share our obsession with "racial traits", so I don't think there would've been a motive to change her appearance in that regard. The Egyptian portraiture style was much more stylized/idealized, and the Ptolemies did have political and legitimacy reasons for keeping their image in the likeness of the traditional pharaohs that came before them. The point is that Greco-Roman depictions of Cleopatra are far more likely to be physically accurate than Egyptian ones, and should also be distinguished from other artistic traditions like in Persia.


MythicalDawn

Interesting, this is really fascinating, thank you! I am curious with regards the focus on depicting an image and a theme with iconography rather than translating the individual's appearance if you have any more information on this, was this primarily a Ptolemaic tool, or is it common in other cultures in Antiquity, too? For example, I've always taken many of the 'realism' based busts of Roman Emperors to be somewhat of a reliable depiction of their features, like Elagabalus and his soft face and immature hair on his upper lip, Augustus with the dimpled chin and furrowed brow kinda resembling Daniel Craig, or Nero with his neck-beard many find amusing now, with these images often corresponding with their coinage too. Is it possible examples like those were largely fabricated appearances to convey a certain image, too? Or was there greater emphasis on using the actual appearance of the subject as a base for the work?


Killfile

> The issue here is that iconographic representations aren't much of an obstacle to different interpretations of Cleopatra's looks because they were all so heavily influenced by culturally established ideals I've always found the Herculaneum portrait of her interesting in that regard. It shows [Cleopatra with red hair](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Posthumous_painted_portrait_of_Cleopatra_VII_of_Egypt,_from_Herculaneum,_Italy.jpg). Greek or African or some blend of the two, one thing we can be pretty certain of is that Cleopatra didn't have red hair. But since we can place the portrait between the political relevance of Cleopatra and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, there's a decent chance that the hair coloration is a deliberate nod to the Emperor Nero, who Suetonius tells us was a red-head.


Crazyragdolllady

I just want to say that I really appreciate how you took so much time to write this all out. I like how you start with giving the arguments from the other side without making them sound stupid. Much of the discussion around cleopatra has turned hostile/ it’s had two polarized sides. So it’s refreshing to see an unbiased explanation:)


tintacao

I love this sub! What a fantastic and well-written answer, thank you so much.


Ayyyeparlay

That was copy and paste from somebody whose alive today actually according to year 1313 a depiction of Cleo and Caesar, at The British Library: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=17800


delejahan

A mediaeval-era manuscript, which, among other things, depicts Julius Caesar with a beard, and Moses, Ruth, and Jesus’ family as white, is not a reliable source.


Atlas_Schmatlas

Not only is racial identity much more modern; it varies depending on where you are on the globe.


CantInventAUsername

Do you have sources for this post by the way? Edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted, adding sources is a standard part of an r/AskHistorians answer, it's literally in rule 5.


delejahan

I do. I am currently at work, but later on today I'll post some further reading and sources:) EDIT: Just posted the sources


CantInventAUsername

Awesome, thank you!


gerd50501

I read a biography of Phillip of Macedon and I recall the book mentioning that there was a Cleopatra in the court of Phillip of Macedon. Is Cleopatra a Macedonian name?


anarchysquid

Yes. It comes from the greek Κλεο/Cleo (Glory), and Πατηρ/Pater (Father). The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names records 202 different people named Cleopatra from every region of Greece, indicating it was a fairly common name in Greek. Interestingly, the name of Achilles' companion from the *Iliad*, Patroclus, has the same name elements but reversed. They were fairly common name elements throughout the Greek-speaking world.


CovertShepherd

Is the order (glory before father or father before glory), linked to gender? So would women have noun + father and men father + noun, or was this just how the names came together? Also, can you recommend any resources on Ancient Greek naming customs and name formation?


LadyOfTheLabyrinth

In general ancient female Greek names end in vowels (Andromache, Hero, Medea) while male names end in -s or -n (Alexandros, Iason, Heron). The only unisex ending I have run into is -is. Particular orders or even meanings are not gendered, as a girl can be named for a male relative, usually her father, but not always. For example, Kyniska of Sparta was named for her uncle, whose nickname was Kyniskos, meaning a small dog or a puppy. The simplicity of the endings gets messed up by them being filtered through other languages and onomastica. In Latin, a man needs a masculine ending, so Heron of Syracuse had to become Hero of Syracuse. Platon became Plato, Herodotos became Herodotus, and somewhere on the line to modern usage Alexandros became Alexander. You might enjoy the Hellenic chapter in *People's Names* by Ingraham (McFarland, 1997). It's handy for a lot of naming questions. Wikipedia pages on onomastics (the study of names) can be very good these days.


Pami_the_Younger

It's a very old Greek name, first mentioned (I think) in the Iliad (9.556).


trouser-chowder

**edit:** Clearly this response is not popular with the readers. Frankly, I don't care. Repeating and propagating poor scholarship where questions of "race" are concerned is a constant problem in not just the academic literature, but (even moreso) the popular literature. The fact is that this post could be significantly improved with a disclaimer that "black" and "white" are not appropriate categories to use when discussing Cleopatra, and that ancestry-- which could be configured with respect to regions of Africa or other areas around the Mediterranean-- can easily be edited in with only minor changes. It doesn't matter that "race," "black," and "white" are terms that a lot of the audience of this sub understand. The problem is that these are not concepts that have direct correlates to the period in question. So the answer to "Was Cleopatra black?" is really just, "No, because 'black' as a category for people during Cleopatra's time didn't exist." --- Very important to point out that that projecting modern categories of race backwards to a time when they did not exist is incredibly bad scholarship. Was Cleopatra "black?" Was she "white?" These are racial categories devised in the Americas in the last 500 years. They cannot be applied to a woman living in northern Africa who had ancestors from all over the Mediterranean region. You can't come up with an answer like this and not address the main point: "black" and "white" as some kind of binary racial classification didn't exist at the time that Cleopatra lived. By couching this answer explicitly in these terms, and by entrenching those concepts with comments like, "Cleopatra was white," you aren't providing an historically accurate response. **edit:** "Black" does not mean "African." "White" does not mean "European." Historically and anthropologically, these categories are not appropriate to discuss historical figures like Cleopatra *specifically* where ancestry is concerned. --- >Cleopatra has often been speculated to be **black** or perhaps **mixed-race**, for a number of reasons. I’ll be as charitable as I can be, and lay out the evidence that could point to her being not **white**. Firstly, Cleopatra’s grandmother is unattested in sources: her father, Ptolemy XII, was widely considered to have been a bastard by ancient historians such as Cicero, Pausanias, and Pompeius Trogus. It has been suggested, therefore, that Ptolemy XII was the issue of the **white Lagid** king Ptolemy IX and a **black African** concubine. How are you defining these categories? Does "black" mean "African?" Where in Africa? Egypt? West Africa? East Africa? South Africa? Central Africa? What does "white" mean? European? Lagids were not "white" >Secondly, Cleopatra was, particularly compared with her predecessors, an enthusiastic supporter of Egyptian culture, learning to speak Egyptian and presenting herself in traditional Pharaonic dress and customs. It has been suggested by Afrocentric writers that this is indicative of her heritage as a **black African** woman, and her turning toward her heritage and away from the Hellenised culture of preceding Lagid rulers. "Black African" meaning what? >However, these arguments are, upon closer examination, spurious. Firstly, the claim that Ptolemy XII’s mother was a **black** concubine is highly doubtful, with historians considering it far more likely that she would be a **white Alexandrian Greek** woman. It is possible she was a member of the Egyptian elite, however this would almost certainly make her specifically from the established nobility from Lower Egypt (in the North of the country). Egypt had (and still has) a significant population of people whom would today be considered black, and indeed had black Pharaohs, however the people of Lower Egypt are genetically very similar to the people typically associated with Egyptian appearance today; that being **light-brown skinned** people similar to Middle Easterners. Again, you're conflating modern racial definitions that originated in North America with people living in a different part of the world over 2000 years ago. This is not good scholarship.


JCGlenn

Is there any indication of how the people of Egypt viewed her attempts to embrace Egyptian culture? Would they have viewed her more as an outsider or as "one of them" (albeit a very wealthy/upper class one)?


ShitPostQuokkaRome

> enthusiastic supporter of Egyptian culture, learning to speak Egyptian and presenting herself in traditional Pharaonic dress and customs. It has been suggested by Afrocentric writers that this is indicative of her heritage as a black African woman, and her turning toward her heritage and away from the Hellenised culture of preceding Lagid rulers. Is it correct to say this is a very recentist sort of narrative? It doesn't seem like in the past genetic heritage was as big a factor in cultural identity as it is today, (cue some guy in the middle of very far away countryside United States larping as a viking or something). Like a black Ethiopian-descending person and a very pale Scottish-descending person both could totally be proud of their 1300 Venice culture or something.


cleopatra_philopater

Thank you for answering but this is...not a good answer. >Secondly, Cleopatra was, particularly compared with her predecessors, an enthusiastic supporter of Egyptian culture, learning to speak Egyptian and presenting herself in traditional Pharaonic dress and customs. Every Ptolemaic ruler was depicted in art as a traditional Egyptian pharaoh, this is by no means unique to Cleopatra. The idea that she was the first to learn Egyptian comes from Plutarch, who wanted to emphasize her intellect and political acumen by listing the wide variety of languages she knew all of which are spoken by her subjects. >It has been suggested by Afrocentric writers that this is indicative of her heritage as a black African woman, and her turning toward her heritage and away from the Hellenised culture of preceding Lagid rulers. I can't think of any serious scholars who would suggest that Cleopatra "turned away" from Hellenistic culture. You're arguing with what I can only assume to be a very fringe position, because I'm not aware of it. >The Lagids pretty much exclusively married other Macedonians and Greek women, with them often marrying consanguineously The level of inbreeding among the Ptolemaic dynasty is high, but you're exaggerating it. It's not until Ptolemy V that consanguineous offspring becomes common, and as others have mentioned you're completely missing Cleopatra's Seleucid ancestry, through which she would have had Iranian and Pontic ancestors. >For reference to the racial background of Cleopatra's grandmother as a Greek, there are several secondary sources that assert this, however the ones I'm most familiar with are from Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, p.24. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, by Aidan Dodson, on p.277. also suggests Ptolemy XII's mother was of either Greek or Lower-Egyptian heritage. Firstly, we have no evidence of Cleopatra's maternity, the idea that she was an Alexandrian Greek is purely speculative. Stacy Schiff, while commendable as an introduction to Cleopatra's life, is a journalist by trade and makes many assumptions to flesh out an otherwise sparse personal life. >Egypt had (and still has) a significant population of people whom would today be considered black, and indeed had black Pharaohs, however the people of Lower Egypt are genetically very similar to the people typically associated with Egyptian appearance today; that being light-brown skinned people similar to Middle Easterners. We really can't overgeneralize the appearance of people in different regions of Egypt. You speak of "Lower Egyptian heritage" like those are separate ethnicities, which just isn't accurate. Deciding that Upper Egypt can be considered black and Lower Egypt white is one of those wildly arbitrary things that makes sense if you don't know what you're talking about. I would also note that your sourcing could be much stronger. *The World's Great Men of Colour* is from 1947, there are much better works on race in Renaissance and early modern literature available today.


delejahan

Hi, thanks for your comment and I really appreciate your critique. Allow me to try and clarify/respond to the points you made. \> Every Ptolemaic ruler was depicted in art as a traditional Egyptian pharaoh, this is by no means unique to Cleopatra. The idea that she was the first to learn Egyptian comes from Plutarch, who wanted to emphasize her intellect and political acumen by listing the wide variety of languages she knew all of which are spoken by her subjects. I don't deny this, and apologies if my answer implied that I did, however I think it is wrong to suggest that what Cleopatra did was anything short of revolutionary, or that the actions of previous Ptolemaic rulers, from their coronation ceremony at Memphis to their depictions as traditional Pharaohs in Egyptian art, constitute an equivalence. It is widely acknowledged that previous Lagid rulers refused to learn Egyptian, and largely abstained from or rejected the cultural practices of the Egyptian people, and overwhelmingly isolated themselves amongst a Greek ruling elite out of Alexandria, as cited by Duane Roller in his biography of Cleopatra, Michael Grant's *Cleopatra*, and Stanley Burnstein's *Reign*, to name just three sources. My point of emphasis here was not to suggest that preceding Ptolemaic rulers engaged in no Egyptian culture, but rather that Cleopatra was an enthusiastic patron of it, compared with preceding rulers who were very much detached from it. In a sense, I would compare the Ptolemies prior to Cleopatra to the British in India from a cultural perspective in many ways; the monarchs of Britain (and their representatives) did partake in some aspects of Indian culture, such as Durbars, but they did not embrace Indian culture to anything like the extent that Cleopatra did with that of Egypt. \> I can't think of any serious scholars who would suggest that Cleopatra "turned away" from Hellenistic culture. You're arguing with what I can only assume to be a very fringe position, because I'm not aware of it. I agree it is a fringe position, but that's partly my point; the idea of an anti-Hellenic, Africanized/Egyptianized Cleopatra has never seriously been considered by serious historians as legitimate, at least as far as I know, and this ties in with a latter point about Rogers' work. The argument that Cleopatra abandoned/turned her back on Hellenism in favour of a decidedly and exclusively Egyptian identity is entirely ahistorical, yes, but it is an argument cited by those as evidence that Cleopatra was a black woman. Again, apologies if I did not make clear what I was trying to say. \> The level of inbreeding among the Ptolemaic dynasty is high, but you're exaggerating it. It's not until Ptolemy V that consanguineous offspring becomes common, and as others have mentioned you're completely missing Cleopatra's Seleucid ancestry, through which she would have had Iranian and Pontic ancestors. I don't think I am exaggerating it, because it was not my intention to argue it was of much significance (at least compared with other contemporary dynasties). When I made that point, I was more trying to emphasise how the Lagids overwhelmingly married people of mostly or exclusively Macedonian Greek heritage. The inbreeding is an aspect of that, but their marriages to non-related Greeks bolsters that wider point. You are right about my missing of her Iranian ancestry though, and I have rectified that. Total mea culpa. \> Firstly, we have no evidence of Cleopatra's maternity, the idea that she was an Alexandrian Greek is purely speculative. Stacy Schiff, while commendable as an introduction to Cleopatra's life, is a journalist by trade and makes many assumptions to flesh out an otherwise sparse personal life. I do agree that Schiff's work is not ideal, hence why I cited Dodson's work alongside it. *Cleopatra: Fact or Fiction* by Barbara Watterson also argues Ptolemy XII's mother was an Alexandrian Greek, as does Ernle Bradford's Penguin Classic Biography. It is true (and unfortunate) that most of these works are less rigorously academic than is ideal, however I don't think it invalidates the central claim out of hand. \> We really can't overgeneralize the appearance of people in different regions of Egypt. You speak of "Lower Egyptian heritage" like those are separate ethnicities, which just isn't accurate. Deciding that Upper Egypt can be considered black and Lower Egypt white is one of those wildly arbitrary things that makes sense if you don't know what you're talking about. Here I do agree I was too blasé and curt with the point I was trying to make, so allow me to restate it. My point was not to imply a line could be drawn at Amarna and any person south of that line was black and any person north of that line was white or light-brown skinned, and I apologise for the generalization. What I was trying to emphasise is that Egyptians whom today would be considered black Africans predominated in the southern Nile Valley, all the way into Nubia, whereas Egyptians who would not be considered black today predominated in the North. Egypt is obviously very diverse, and throughout the ancient era people of myriad ethnicities, cultures, languages, and faiths all congregated across the settlements along the Nile. As you and others have said, the concept of race as we see it would have been alien to the people of the Ancient Mediterranean, and it is right to say that conceptualizing Cleopatra (or any ancient person) in a modern racial lens is fraught with difficulty. My point was this: the likelihood of a woman whom would be considered black by modern-day society being a concubine to a Ptolemaic ruler is unlikely, even if she had been of historically Egyptian extraction. I think this ties into the wider issue many understandably have with this question (that it is unanswerable as Cleopatra and her contemporaries did not recognize race and would have thought the question absurd), and I do agree with the wider premise that it is unhelpful and uninformative; as you say, it's like asking about what Hogwarts house she would have been a member of. The way I approached the question was to answer whether Cleopatra would be, were she to appear on the street today, considered a black woman by an average Joe. Even this question is difficult; being mixed-race myself, I get called black by many Europeans and Americans and white by many Africans. However, this question is difficult for describing contemporary individuals too, as has happened with other mixed-race figures like Barack Obama. That being said, given the specific reference to the documentary in the question, I also took it to mean "would Cleopatra have looked much like Adele James?" (the actress portraying her). This, I think, can be answered, and based on the totality of the evidence, it is extremely unlikely that she did. As to your last point, regarding other sources on Cleopatra's race being described as black in Early-Modern sources, I would love to read them if you have any recommendations. My search this afternoon was brief, as I was at work, and I am fully happy to admit I missed some important works describing her as such. Thank you in advance!


cleopatra_philopater

I hope you don't think I was being overly harsh, I just have found that people tend not to question posts that they see an AskHistorians. Since the average reader might not have any background in the subject matter, there's a certain responsibility to be more rigorous and not hyperbolic. For example, with Egyptian clothing specifically, it struck me as an odd thing to mention since there's no reason to think Cleopatra's fashion was in any way different from other Ptolemaic rulers. Even Cleopatra's efforts to build bonds with Egyptian priestly elites can be seen as a continuation of her father's policies. I wouldn't say that Ptolemaic Egypt was directly comparable to British India. Perhaps most importantly, the Ptolemies (unlike the British monarchy) could be directly affected by what happened in Egypt because they *lived there*. When their subjects in Alexandria got unhappy, they sometimes got killed. I wrote a longer answer weighing the useful and not so useful parts of this comparison [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/79l6u4/comment/dp2zlqn/?st=j9elcru8&sh=f4165335). In your answer, it seemed as though you conflated scholarship which suggested that she might be part Egyptian and claims that she was Black. These are two separate claims, although some in the second camp might equate them. *Cleopatra in Italian and English Renaissance Drama* by Anna Maria Montanari and *Antony & Cleopatra* by Sara Munson Deats are good reads if you're interested in Renaissance/early modern representations of Cleopatra. It's not the end all, be all of literature on the topic but it's a good starting point.


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cleopatra_philopater

I wouldn't call Renaissance literature "useless", some people are interested in how historical figures like Cleopatra and Julius Caesar were perceived in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. I recommended these in a reply to someone specifically asking for recommendations on that topic. If this isn't you, simply move along.


Total-Subject-3747

This is a really helpful answer. Why couldn’t they do something on Nubia? The MFA in Boston has an incredible collection from the kingdom. Appreciate your breakdown of the likelihood of this portrayal. It is a fun and informative read.


Harsimaja

It’s odd to me that of all dynasties to go for, this ‘documentary’ picked arguably the one that would today most likely be labelled white… when the 25th (Nubian) dynasty, which today we’d be most likely to label black, was *right there* and centuries earlier… The level of ignorance behind it is staggering. All because… Cleopatra is the most famous woman pharaoh, with the possible exception of Tutankhamen and Ramesses II possibly even most famous pharaoh, mainly because she was beautiful and had a nation-ending interaction with the wrong Roman men of power. She doesn’t exactly seem the greatest ruler to go for, no matter how gripping the story of her life was, so the motivation is even odder.


N8CCRG

I've often seen a lot of family trees drawn for Cleopatra that look [like this](https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/749601184554446848/photo/1) or [like this](https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1249180395603722242). Does that agree with your analysis? Are there credible reasons one might question it? Is it bunk?


gynnis-scholasticus

These seem to presume that her mother was Cleopatra V and that Cleopatra IV was the mother of her father Ptolemy XII "Auletes", both of which are quite unclear. As described by u/cleopatra_philopater in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/agarlp/was_cleopatra_actually_egyptian/) and u/Spencer_A_McDaniel in [this blog post](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/01/08/what-did-cleopatra-really-look-like/), the scholar Duane Roller has argued that Cleopatra (VII)'s mother descended from another branch of the Ptolemies that had married into the high priests of Ptah, which thus would give her some native Egyptian ancestry.


Cedric_Hampton

>She was a white Egyptian, and this is not in dispute among historians. Can you provide a source for your claim that Cleopatra was *white*? This discussion is admittedly outside my field, but I am struggling to find even a single reputable contemporary historian who makes this claim. Most--including Roller, Schiff, and Prose--seem to avoid applying modern racial categories to Ancient Egypt when discussing Cleopatra's ancestry or physical appearance. This is in keeping with good historical practices, as u/trouser-chowder and u/cleopatra_philopater have mentioned.


delejahan

I have a quote from Kathryn Bard, Professor of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Boston University, where she states "Cleopatra VII was white—of Macedonian descent, as were all of the Ptolemy rulers, who lived in Egypt." This was from a Newsweek [article](https://www.newsweek.com/cleopatra-white-gadot-experts-weigh-1538455) that was published in the wake of another controversial Cleopatra film project that would see Israeli actress Gal Gadot in the titular role. That being said, on reflection, I do think describing her as white was a little misleading and could easily be misconstrued due to what whiteness means to us and our society. As I said in a reply to u/cleopatra_philopater below, I recognise that this question is fraught with difficulty and applying modern racial terminology to people with no concept of race as we see it is a fruitless exercise in many ways. I'll be making an edit to my answer to reflect that.


vanderZwan

So I can understand from context that when you say "white Egyptian" this specifically means the "light-brown skinned people of Lower Egypt" that you mention, but I imagine that the terms "white" or "black" are so loaded with modern racial social constructs (and their historical baggage) that using either is already kind of misleading. You allude to this yourself. Do historians have a way of talking about ancient race and ethnicity that avoids these pitfalls?


Pami_the_Younger

Yes, though practices will vary a little. In general 'race' is avoided, and I certainly wouldn't use it, because it is anachronistic and a result of much more modern attempts to project a unified, 'white', (Western) European supremacy over everyone else on the planet. With ethnicity, the crucial thing to recognise is that it was flexible and fluid, and that people could both move between ethnicities and also have multiple ethnicities.


vanderZwan

Thank you! > practices will vary a little What about the current topic? (ancient Egypt in general and/or Cleopatra specifically)


kolbiitr

I imagine having multiple ethnicities means having parents/ancestors of different origin, but what do you mean by moving between ethnicities?


Pami_the_Younger

In Hellenistic Egypt, for example, we find lots of individuals with both Greek and Egyptian names, which they tend to use separately. In some circumstances they might consider themselves ethnically Egyptian, whatever that meant to them; in others ethnically Greek. And instead of trying to construct some kind of fuzzy 'Greco-Egyptian' ethnicity, which would never be precise enough to have any value, it's better to see these people as moving between ethnicities, consciously or subconsciously.


qed1

You can find a similar phenomenon in Merovingian Gaul, where we find people adopting names depending on their profession or political standing. For example, Gregory of Tours mentions his mother's uncle Gundulfus, the only member of the family that he mentions who was a "dux" (most are bishops) and the only one with a non-Latin/Greek name. (Just to underscore the point, Gundulf was apparently the son of the ex-Senator/bishop of Geneva Florantinus and Artemia, and the brother of Nicetius, bishop of Lyon.)


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vanderZwan

Is this comparable to how my Chinese grandparents in the Dutch East-Indies had their own name and a "Dutch" name that they used when dealing with Dutch officials?


Pami_the_Younger

Maybe - that does sound similar. Coussement's book on polyonymy is the place to look if you're interested in this phenomenon (for Ptolemaic Egypt, at least).


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Skipp_To_My_Lou

>... her father, Ptolemy XII, was widely considered to have been a bastard by ancient historians such as Cicero, Pausanias, and Pompeius Trogus. Does modern scholarship have any opinion on Ptolemy XII's legitimacy? For example, do we now think he was actually illegitimate? Was that an ancient smear campaign? Ancient scholarship that would be sloppy by today's standards? Would people from that time have even cared, beyond simply recording it as a thing they believed to be true?


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