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Cleopatra wasn't "culturally black".
The Ptolemys weren't even culturally Egyptian.
They were a ruling family left behind Alexander's conquest of Egypt.
A Macedonian (Greek) conquest that replaced the existing rulers with Greeks. And those rulers weren't even Egyptian! They were Persian.
These Greeks went on to inbreed with each other for about a thousand years.
That makes Cleopatra something other than black, kids.
Key to the puzzle is not a single description characterizes her as a Nubian.
That is how both the Greeks and the Romans would have described a black woman.
Yet...
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ReplyDeleteSurpriisingly, Elizabeth Taylor was far closer to 'Real Cleopatra' than the current Moor. Shortish, hooters, shapely figure, tongue that could cut rock, sexy and very learned. ET needed a bigger noze and slightly more olive color to her skin.
ReplyDeleteHow do we know? Roman descriptions, Roman statues and statuettes, carved heads, descriptions by others besides the Romans.
This is just pure hookum.
Let's retaliate. Get the Finns to play the part of the Zulus in a remake of "Zulu."
Netflix, even less history than the History Channel. And that's bad.
The Cleopatra we all know was the first of her dynasty to learn to speak Egyptian. She, and other Greeks and Macedonians in Egypt, referred to the Egyptians as "natives," with all the overtones you'd have heard in British India.
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ReplyDeleteBeans, According to the Smithsonian special on her life, the only known image of Cleopatra during her lifetime was on a coin. She looks like Liz Taylor like I look like Richard Burton.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.world-archaeology.com/world/africa/egypt/cleopatra-was-no-beauty-coins-shows/