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"Queen Cleopatra, the younger goddess". [45] Cleopatra's official Ptolemaic coinage (which she would have approved) and the three Roman portrait busts of her considered authentic by scholars (which match her coins) portray Cleopatra as a Greek woman in style, including the Greek chiton, Hellenistic diadem, and Greek chignon.
- 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...
- Jone Johnson Lewis
Apr 20, 2023 · She has been variously claimed as Macedonian, Greek, Egyptian, and African. Debates over Cleopatra’s “race” were reactivated after Netflix released a trailer for its four-part docudrama Queen...
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
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 is “neither”.
Aug 22, 2024 · Cleopatra (born 70/69 bce —died August 30 bce, Alexandria) was an Egyptian queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty, famous in history and drama as the lover of Julius Caesar and later as the wife of Mark Antony.
May 17, 2023 · Cleopatra’s race has long been regarded as ambiguous by scholars and historians. What we do know is that her father, Ptolemy XII, was of Macedonian-Greek descent, a member of the family...
