Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

[athanaric]

Second: I am not sure we had blue eyes in antiquity.

Well you didn't, anyway, because you didn't exist back then. Your ancestors, on the other hand... Frankly, if the DNA evidence says that some of the ancient Greeks had blue eyes, what's the problem?

I have heard that Dorian Greeks often had blue eyes, but I simply considered it a lie or propaganda by rightwings to make Aryans seem closer "racially" to Spartans \ Macedonians (the most recognized Dorians) as well as make Aryans seem closer to Spartans racially so that Nazis could talk about Leonidas and Thermopylae etc etc without putting up images of dark-haired and brown-eye people.
No offense, but I still don't believe blue eyes were common around here and I think it's something the eugenics-supporting historians of the 1920s promoted. I don't say they were unheard of, I say they were probably very rare.

Speaking of using terms wrong, firstly, it's not "rightwings" (that would include a whole lot of people of different ideological backgrounds), you have to be more specific. I think you mean white supremacists.
Secondly, you seem to be using the term "Aryan" as a synonym for Northern Europeans. It is not (except for National Socialist ideologues and other weirdos detached from reality and historical facts). While there may be an argument to make whether or not "Aryan" is originally congruent with "early Indo-European", i.e. the people who spread into the rest of Europe and Asia from the Pontic Steppe, conquering and assimilating the locals, "Aryan" in the modern sense refers to Iranians and Indo-Aryans, most of whom are brown-skinned as you know.

Ptolemies and Egyptian lovers: @RV: I read some of what you wrote. In short: I strongly disagree with many of your assumptions, but since you're tired of talking about that, I won't go into detail. I will just say that if you meant "White" as "pure Greek" in the OP, I disagree for (reasons) and I believe she had some ancient Egyptian blood.

Based on pure conjecture. Are you trolling now? Why do people insist on her having Egyptian ancestry when it's not supported by any evidence? What does that imply about you guys, anyway? Seems like you believe that appreciation or knowledge of a culture must be tied to genetic heritage.

I didn't know that Americans considered "White" an ethnic group.
Not to mention that Europeans have many ethnic groups! Why not call them "European-ancestry" or something?
It is very bizarre to me that "White" can refer to an ad-hoc mix of ethnic groups and not skin tone.

Yeah it's kind of stupid, but that's another topic really.

As I said, I wouldn't consider an albino Sudanese as "black" and I was mostly laughed at.

Well, he's still ethnically Sudanese. Calling him "white" semantically implies kinship with people of entirely different ethnic backgrounds. Plus, calling Albinos "white" would only ever make sense if we ditched the traditional black-white categorization completely and called all regular, Europoid white people by their actual skin colour, i.e. cream, pink, light brown etc.

We don't misuse skin colors for definition of ethnicity here. Black means black skin, not African. Our racists discriminate and use derogatory terms about one's origin\nationality by using origin, nationality, ethnicity etc, not skin tone.
The one racist I know that compares skin tone to see a person's "worth", goes completely by skin tone, considers dark-skinned Greeks worse than light-skinned Greeks etc. And he's not the only one; darker skin in a Greek used to mean "work in the fields" = poorer. The same way as people use "redneck" as derogatory term.
So from "darker skin" = "poor" it grew that "darker skin" = "bad". Nationality doesn't come to it.

Well, your categorization is very technical and also very strict regarding light skin tones.

[alhoon]

And blacks did not? Come on, Italian-Americans have strong family traditions and cultural background that resembles Mediterraneans and most are Catholics as a religion (like the evil Irish). They are probably less integrated than people from Africa that were brought in what is now USA 300 years ago.

[Roma_Victrix]

Second: I am not sure we had blue eyes in antiquity. I have heard that Dorian Greeks often had blue eyes, but I simply considered it a lie or propaganda by rightwings to make Aryans seem closer "racially" to Spartans \ Macedonians (the most recognized Dorians) as well as make Aryans seem closer to Spartans racially so that Nazis could talk about Leonidas and Thermopylae etc etc without putting up images of dark-haired and brown-eye people.
No offense, but I still don't believe blue eyes were common around here and I think it's something the eugenics-supporting historians of the 1920s promoted. I don't say they were unheard of, I say they were probably very rare.

This isn't some incredibly hard thing to confirm, even with the overwhelming amount of Imperial Roman artwork versus surviving pre-Roman Greek artwork. Take for instance, this pale green/blue-eyed depiction of the god Dionysios from the island of Delos, in a mosaic dated to the 2nd century BC. Despite the fact that he's riding a tiger, the mosaic is otherwise highly realistic in terms of shading, lighting, and most importantly, coloring.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...century_BC.jpg


That's from southern Europe, but colonizing Greeks even as far afield as Central Asia retained these features apparently (or obtained them through Eastern Iranian intermarriage). Take for instance the famous Urumqi Warrior of the Sampul tapestry, a tapestry image found in northwestern China dated to the 2nd century BC, realistically depicting a Greco-Bactrian soldier (or king, considering the royal diadem on his head) with clearly blue eyes as he wields a spear beneath a Greek centaur motif.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...mqiWarrior.jpg


These are ancient Greek depictions of Greeks with light eye colors. I have shown you modern Greek girls with similar eye colors. If you choose not to believe your own eyes, well, I guess you'll just have to read Sumskilz' archaeogenetic analysis above. If you refuse to believe it after that then I guess arguing with you is a hopelessly lost cause, and this conversation can go ahead and end right now.

About those two girls: Especially the left one is completely Dorian in appearance except the blue eyes. She's a bit light-skinned because she doesn't actually work in fields. A few months on the field and she will turn a nice Mediterranean brown.
I have seen the busts of Cleo you put up and if you said to someone there "See that bust? This is the bust of the aunt of those two girls!" people would believe you.

So this is what "white" means to you? The superficial difference between a suntan and not being suntanned? Seriously? Come on, dude. I might have lost a few brain cells reading this. No offense. I think you might want to entirely rethink your views about physical and cultural anthropology.

About us looking similar: Greeks are a small population and we prefer to marry Greeks so... we tend to look a bit similar. I could often tell a Greek on the streets of Dusseldorf or Vienna or Aachen.

Interesting. Okay.

Ptolemies and Egyptian lovers: @RV: I read some of what you wrote. In short: I strongly disagree with many of your assumptions, but since you're tired of talking about that, I won't go into detail. I will just say that if you meant "White" as "pure Greek" in the OP, I disagree for (reasons) and I believe she had some ancient Egyptian blood. Now, if you count Ancient Egyptians as white too... then there's no way she couldn't be white.

Or you could just read the post of mine on the previous page about the almost complete lack of known Egyptian mistresses of Ptolemaic rulers minus one case that didn't even produce any children or heirs. Without further evidence to speak of it's a pointless conversation filled with nothing but baseless speculation (you at least need a base to build up from, which we don't even have here). The whole thing about Cleopatra being "white" is based on the obvious appearance of her skin in her painted portraits from Herculaneum and Pompeii, but moreover Susan Walker's (2008) own chosen language describing her skin tone as "pale ivory", like a typical goddess in many Roman artworks.

About the video of the Pagans: Well, that religion is crawling with nationalists. Regardless, one of those speaking seems to have a lot of Albanian blood to me. Regardless, I wouldn't call most of them white to be sincere. White as in skin tone. I don't understand well what you people mean when you say "white". I read "white" and I think very pale skin. I read "black" and I think very dark skin.

That's the problem here. You're talking about the superficial definition that is literally (and figuratively) only skin deep. Caucasian features are about more than just skin tone. Some people in India, such as the southernmost Tamils, are as black as sub-Saharan Africans, and yet none of their body or facial features match those of sub-Saharan Africans at all. They look Caucasian in appearance otherwise. In that same token, some northern Chinese people, Koreans, and Japanese have lighter skin than many Europeans, and yet nobody calls East Asians as "white" people. You're thinking purely in terms of light skin versus dark skin, which is but one indicator of race (and not a very exact one either). In either case, this whole clickbait thread title was more or less in jest to the inexplicable horde of people who think Cleopatra was a sub-Saharan African, when none of her features in the paintings and busts of her made by the Romans indicate this at all.

To emphasize my point about East Asians with light skin, here's an ancient Eastern Han Chinese painting from the tomb of Dahuting in Henan province, made a few centuries after the Urumqi Warrior painting I showed above. Notice how the women here have light skin, like many Chinese people, but they don't exhibit traits or facial features that are known among Caucasians unless they are mixed race.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Han_period.jpg

I didn't know that Americans considered "White" an ethnic group.
Not to mention that Europeans have many ethnic groups! Why not call them "European-ancestry" or something?
It is very bizarre to me that "White" can refer to an ad-hoc mix of ethnic groups and not skin tone.

I don't make the rules about it. That's just how the US Census Bureau views things when it comes to racial statistics. Also, excluding this to just "Europeans" doesn't make any sense, considering how many Afghans, Tajiks, and even some rarely blond-haired but still Turkic Uyghurs can easily be confused with Europeans if you take them out of their native dress and put them into t-shirts and tennis shoes with Hipster haircuts.

As I said, I wouldn't consider an albino Sudanese as "black" and I was mostly laughed at.

They are still "black", meaning "Sub-Saharan African" in terms of population groups and racial grouping. It's more than just skin color. Just because they are albino does not mean they are somehow suddenly white or European-looking.

[alhoon]

Well you didn't, anyway, because you didn't exist back then. Your ancestors, on the other hand... Frankly, if the DNA evidence says that some of the ancient Greeks had blue eyes, what's the problem?

Nothing. I wasn't aware there's such genetic evidence, that's all. Blue eyes existed in the Balkans 3600 years ago? Fine I guess.

Speaking of using terms wrong, firstly, it's not "rightwings" (that would include a whole lot of people of different ideological backgrounds), you have to be more specific. I think you mean white supremacists.
Secondly, you seem to be using the term "Aryan" as a synonym for Northern Europeans. It is not (except for National Socialist ideologues and other weirdos detached from reality and historical facts). While there may be an argument to make whether or not "Aryan" is originally congruent with "early Indo-European", i.e. the people who spread into the rest of Europe and Asia from the Pontic Steppe, conquering and assimilating the locals, "Aryan" in the modern sense refers to Iranians and Indo-Aryans, most of whom are brown-skinned as you know.

I am not an anthropologist, so yeah, I kinda go by what I hear. And yes, by rightwings in this discussion I meant a specific group of white supremacists, not even all of them. The guys detached from reality and historical facts.

Based on pure conjecture. Are you trolling now? Why do people insist on her having Egyptian ancestry when it's not supported by any evidence? What does that imply about you guys, anyway? Seems like you believe that appreciation or knowledge of a culture must be tied to genetic heritage.

It doesn't imply anything about the rest of us, good or bad. I am not trolling, I just don't think it is probable that a Greek dynasty in Egypt wouldn't have some local blood in their veins after several generations nor they would write about it. Of course I go by pure conjecture. Sure, it's not written anywhere, but would it be? Would that record about X palace guard slipping in Cleo's grandmother rooms at night when her husband was far far away have been found?
Yes it is conjecture 100% but is it so unthinkable to consider it possible? Infidelity was not just a male vice. Sure men didn't bother that much to hide their extramarital affairs or in some cases (like Phillip or Alexander) they were polygamists. But women have needs too.

@Roma:
I was not aware of such art depictions and I stand corrected.

About the Albino Sudanese though: "Just because they are albino does not mean they are somehow suddenly white or European-looking."
Sure they are not suddenly European looking. But at least I, when I say "white" I mean "skin of very light color" I don't mean ancestry. I will have to ask people I discuss with what they mean by "white" because I thought everyone meant "white skin" not "an arbitrary grouping of ethnicities that in general had lighter skin without that being a deciding factor".
I am not an anthropologist and I have never been interested in such differences of people physical characteristics. I have been this long in the discussion because I was stunned that "White" doesn't mean "white skin" but a whole lot of things.

You say that my characterization is "skin deep" and I agree. I never saw a reason to look at people's facial features (or even skin tone). I see a black guy that is Indian and I would consider him "Black Indian". I had such a student in Liege. I was not aware that those very dark Tamils are not considered blacks.

There is a language gap in our discussions.

Regardless: If you group Ancient Egyptians in that "White" Group, then Cleopatra can't be anything but white. You practically put every group she could possibly be tied to in this huge "White" category.

I don't make the rules about it.

Who does? I want to have words with them! We mediterraneans are very different culturally at least to Northerners. We also have different diets. Bundling us with them together is weird.

[athanaric]

It doesn't imply anything about the rest of us, good or bad. I am not trolling, I just don't think it is probable that a Greek dynasty in Egypt wouldn't have some local blood in their veins after several generations nor they would write about it. Of course I go by pure conjecture. Sure, it's not written anywhere, but would it be? Would that record about X palace guard slipping in Cleo's grandmother rooms at night when her husband was far far away have been found?
Yes it is conjecture 100% but is it so unthinkable to consider it possible? Infidelity was not just a male vice. Sure men didn't bother that much to hide their extramarital affairs or in some cases (like Phillip or Alexander) they were polygamists. But women have needs too.

Except that's not how it works. Sure, a woman of royal blood might theoretically have banged some other guy. Maybe even someone who wasn't Greek/Macedonian (how likely is that, though?). But I can't recall a single case of a queen of anywhere actually raising a bastard whose father was from an entirely different ethnicity with a different skin colour, and then having said bastard accepted as prince or princess (instead of killed, along with herself). Ask yourself, even if such an affair happened, how likely is it to result in offspring? And why would a woman of royal blood have an affair with someone from a socially stigmatized ethnicity/culture, instead of one of the many Macedonian nobles/soldiers at the court? Might as well argue that the gentleman was Galatian or Cilician.
Your entire premise is BS based on a lack of understanding of patriarchal power structures and traditional notions of royalty.

And if you group Ancient Egyptians in that "White" Group, then Cleopatra can't be anything but white. You practically put every group she could possibly be tied to in this huge "White" category.

That's nonsense. Nobody in this thread claimed that ancient Egyptians were "white". Also, their average skin colour is darker than that of average Greeks.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

And blacks did not? Come on, Italian-Americans have strong family traditions and cultural background that resembles Mediterraneans and most are Catholics as a religion (like the evil Irish). They are probably less integrated than people from Africa that were brought in what is now USA 300 years ago.

Blacks did not what? Integrate?

That isn't so much the deciding factor in this case. It has more to do with settlement and interbreeding.
So for example Blacks tend to have their own neighborhoods, together with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in some cases. Italian-Americans tend to be insular but also have communities which include Irish-Americans, sometimes the Armenians, Greeks and Jews. So yes Italians are sometimes excluded from the "White ethnic group" in the USA for this reason. However there are also many cases in which individuals have drifted towards the larger English "American" group. The deciding factor in these cases tends to be how integrated they are with the mainstream American culture, what income group they belong to and also race as a factor. So an Italian might not have a extremely hard time being seen as White by European or specifically Anglo standards but it is pretty much impossible for Blacks, for obvious reasons.

[Roma_Victrix]

@Roma:
I was not aware of such art depictions and I stand corrected.

No problem. I could offer a lot more just by searching online but I think you get the point. To complement the ancient Greek mosaic and painting, I also added ancient Eastern Han Chinese paintings of 2nd-3rd century AD Chinese women in an edit to my last post. I did this to demonstrate the difference between simple light skin (which East Asians often have) versus Caucasian traits (which the vast majority of East Asians do not have, unless they are mixed race or part of a small Caucasian minority like the Eastern-Iranian-speaking Tajiks of Xinjiang in northwestern China).

You say that my characterization is "skin deep" and I agree. I never saw a reason to look at people's facial features (or even skin tone). I see a black guy that is Indian and I would consider him "Black Indian". I had such a student in Liege. I was not aware that those very dark Tamils are not considered blacks.

There is a language gap in our discussions.

You're goddamn right there's a language barrier here! If you told an American that blacks come from India, you'd get some puzzled looks at the least, if not laughter and people pointing out to you (gently or not) that black people only come from sub-Saharan Africa. Most Americans would simply just call South Asians of any variety as "brown" people, oddly enough the same descriptor for Mexicans and Latin Americans (even though the majority of Hispanics are mixed race and a large minority of Hispanics are purely white Europeans descended from Spaniards, Portuguese, or other Europeans like Italians...for instance...Pope Francis from Argentina).

Regardless: If you group Ancient Egyptians in that "White" Group, then Cleopatra can't be anything but white. You practically put every group she could possibly be tied to in this huge "White" category.

Well...I use "Caucasian" for all of these groups, but when someone is clearly very dark (like a Pakistani), I would resort to saying "olive" or "brown" skinned. Many Central Asians, however, are clearly white people. The same as Europeans. They just happened to be born in a different continent (if you consider Eurasia to be separate continents, that is). The vast majority of North Africans are Caucasian (with a small amount of sub-Saharan black admixture), and a large portion of them can even be characterized as "white" people. The same with places in the Levant like Syria. The blue-eyed dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife could easily be mistaken as Italians, Spaniards, or a southern French couple.

Who does? I want to have words with them! We mediterraneans are very different culturally at least to Northerners. We also have different diets. Bundling us with them together is weird.

As Oda has pointed out, you're more genetically related to northern Europeans than you think, even though southern Europeans obviously belong to different and distinct population groups than the Nordics and Celts, for instance. Aside from just speaking another Indo-European language like the Romance, Celtic, and Germanic peoples, the entire civilization of northern Europeans is based on yours, bucko. You know...Western civilization.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

My father has black hair and brown eyes and become very brown in the sun, so that even other Germans think he comes from mediterranean and talk in broken german to him. Oh the surprise, when he talk to them, that they can speak normal german to him.^^

But the point is, his family came from Hunsrück, which was always a poor german region, away from international trade.

Getting brown is no specific greek thing.

[alhoon]

Except that's not how it works. Sure, a woman of royal blood might theoretically have banged some other guy. Maybe even someone who wasn't Greek/Macedonian (how likely is that, though?). But I can't recall a single case of a queen of anywhere actually raising a bastard whose father was from an entirely different ethnicity with a different skin colour, and then having said bastard accepted as prince or princess (instead of killed, along with herself). Ask yourself, even if such an affair happened, how likely is it to result in offspring? And why would a woman of royal blood have an affair with someone from a socially stigmatized ethnicity/culture, instead of one of the many Macedonian nobles/soldiers at the court? Might as well argue that the gentleman was Galatian or Cilician.
Your entire premise is BS based on a lack of understanding of patriarchal power structures and traditional notions of royalty.

I don't mean a half Sudanese baby would not have been spotted and raised as a Ptolemy. That is indeed impossible. What I mean is that said noble that Cleo's grandmother became pregnant by may had an Egyptian grandparent himself.
Greeks did intermarry to barbarians. You're talking about nearly 300 years. A "Greek" in 150BC could have been the grandson of a Greek soldier marrying a local or the son of someone that was just adopted by a Greek and raised as a Greek from infancy.

About understanding of royalty... I recently read a study that said that before DNA tests and the turbulent times at the beginning of the century about 1% of children were offspring of infidelity. Nowdays it is 2% - 3%. In aaaall those generations of Ptolemies and Greek nobles, you really think it's not possible for some Egyptian blood to get in?
And again, if today it is 2% - 3% of children have been raised by a father that never realizes the child isn't his, it would be perhaps 1% back then as long as the child is not dissimilar.

And cultural taboos and all tend to complicate but not eradicate physical attraction regardless of racism. I am not talking about a love-and-flowers affair with a guard. The question of "how probable was for a Greek queen to have an affair with a non-Greek?" is basically "how probable it is for a whole line of Greek women in a foreign country to have had sex with a non-Greek member of the palace at least once in 3 centuries?".
I would say 99.99% and I don't consider it BS.

That's nonsense. Nobody in this thread claimed that ancient Egyptians were "white". Also, their average skin colour is darker than that of average Greeks.

Well, Roma Victrix did.

[Roma_Victrix]

My father has black hair and brown eyes and become very brown in the sun, so that even other Germans think he comes from mediterranean and talk in broken german to him. Oh the surprise, when he talk to them, that they can speak normal german to him.^^

But the point is, his family came from Hunsrück, which was always a poor german region, away from international trade.

Getting brown is no specific greek thing.

That's a good point. Thanks for sharing!

As for ancient Egyptians mentioned above by Alhoon, some were sub-Saharan black (thanks, once again, to neighboring Nubia), but most were Caucasians, perhaps mostly brown and olive-skinned, and with significantly different facial features than most Europeans. Then again, some of them exhibited clearly white/European facial characteristics (and it is hard to tell what's going on in many paintings where husbands and wives are painted radically different colors, an artistic trope going back as far as the Old Kingdom):

https://78.media.tumblr.com/66eb1a62...1coo5_1280.jpg

[alhoon]

Well...I use "Caucasian" for all of these groups, but when someone is clearly very dark (like a Pakistani), I would resort to saying "olive" or "brown" skinned. Many Central Asians, however, are clearly white people. The same as Europeans. They just happened to be born in a different continent (if you consider Eurasia to be separate continents, that is). The vast majority of North Africans are Caucasian (with a small amount of sub-Saharan black admixture), and a large portion of them can even be characterized as "white" people. The same with places in the Levant like Syria. The blue-eyed dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife could easily be mistaken as Italians, Spaniards, or a southern French couple.

You go above my head here friend. Yes, Assad and his wife could be mistaken as European Mediterraneans ... because they are Mediterraneans. He has blue eyes? I haven't noticed. Truthfully, I have not ever checked what "Traits" Assad has. I am not that much in to who has which traits, never found it interesting. That's why the confusion and that's why what you say here goes above my head.

As Oda has pointed out, you're more genetically related to northern Europeans than you think, even though southern Europeans obviously belong to different and distinct population groups than the Nordics and Celts, for instance. Aside from just speaking another Indo-European language like the Romance, Celtic, and Germanic peoples, the entire civilization of northern Europeans is based on yours, bucko. You know...Western civilization.

Genetics are not the only thing though, culturally too we are different than Nordics, Germans, Celts etc. Yes, the Western civilization is based on the Grecoroman one. I would dare say it is the direct continuation of the Grecoroman one. But when I am with foreigners, I feel much more "at home" with South Americans than Northeners and I am not the only one that says that. They "get us" and we "get them" much easier than the Northeners.


EDIT:
I still find it very funny that "Black", "White" and "Brown" don't go by skin tone. And the Tamil example... heh.

Black:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not black:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And if I called the second person black, I would be the weird one?

[Roma_Victrix]

You go above my head here friend. Yes, Assad and his wife could be mistaken as European Mediterraneans ... because they are Mediterraneans. He has blue eyes? I haven't noticed. Truthfully, I have not ever checked what "Traits" Assad has. I am not that much in to who has which traits, never found it interesting. That's why the confusion and that's why what you say here goes above my head.

I'm only aware of his eye color because I've seen about a dozen comedic memes online where it zooms in close onto his face, particularly his eyes for comedic effect. After seeing that a dozen times, it's hard not to notice someone's eye color.

I was merely pointing out Assad as a West Asian who exhibits traits that some people otherwise only associate with northern Europeans (particularly Nordics), even though that is erroneous. In fact, you were just doing that a moment ago, in this very thread, about your own ethnic group, the Greeks. So excuse me for pointing out more examples.

Genetics are not the only thing though, culturally too we are different than Nordics, Germans, Celts etc. Yes, the Western civilization is based on the Grecoroman one. I would dare say it is the direct continuation of the Grecoroman one. But when I am with foreigners, I feel much more "at home" with South Americans than Northeners and I am not the only one that says that. They "get us" and we "get them" much easier than the Northeners.

That's interesting. I would expect that of Spaniards from Spain connecting with Latin Americans, or even Italians connecting with them, but Greeks wouldn't have crossed my mind, since Greeks are not Romance-speakers. They belong to their own branch of the Indo-European language family. I guess the general "Mediterranean" culture is what allows you to click more with Spanish-speakers of all stripes, even if they don't come from the Mediterranean. That correct?

EDIT:
I still find it very funny that "Black", "White" and "Brown" don't go by skin tone. And the Tamil example... heh.

Black:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not black:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And if I called the second person black, I would be the weird one?

Well, your views are certainly weird in my American perspective. Let's put it this way: in American parlance, regardless of the hue of one's skin, the term "black" is only used in relation to sub-Saharan blacks (i.e. "Negroids" in the old-school terminology) and the term "white" can be used mainly for Europeans but also for North Africans, West Asians, and Central Asians. South Asians are usually considered Caucasians like these groups, but they are more often generally viewed as "brown" people, and sometimes West Asians are also considered "brown" people, especially in colloquial terms, not in the official sense as promoted by the US Census Bureau that considers all Arabs to be Caucasian. If this seems all-encompassing to you, it is not, since the wide strata of "Caucasians" excludes enormous sectors of humanity, namely sub-Saharan Africans, Southeast Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and virtually all the indigenous peoples of the Americas minus those who are of mixed race and at least partial European descent.

I think we can end it there, because this thread is about Cleopatra, not about race in general.

[alhoon]

That's interesting. I would expect that of Spaniards from Spain connecting with Latin Americans, or even Italians connecting with them, but Greeks wouldn't have crossed my mind, since Greeks are not Romance-speakers. They belong to their own branch of the Indo-European language family. I guess the general "Mediterranean" culture is what allows you to click more with Spanish-speakers of all stripes, even if they don't come from the Mediterranean. That correct?

Ahh... I wasn't talking "linguistically" here. I speaking to Latin Americans and Germans in English. And I find that I and several Mediterraneans get along much better with Latin Americans than Northeners. They talk loud, we talk loud, they are outgoing, we're outgoing, they don't have stiff upper lip, they are not afraid to show emotion, they "make do" easier with less... generally I socialize easier with them than Northeners although there are exceptions in both sides.
Spaniards and Southern Italians... they make me feel at home. When I was in Madrid, it was like being in an a Greek city that people didn't speak Greek. Same good things, same bad things. A German couple was wondering where the bus since the bus-stop sign said it should have been there 1 minute ago. I explained to them that they should not believe those random times printed on bus stops. They were stunned.

Cleopatra stuff: Not much to add. So far I haven't seen any kind of evidence that she was not from the group called "White". She was not Subsaharan and she was not South-Asian or East-Asian. By that broad definition, she was white.

[Roma_Victrix]

Ahh... I wasn't talking "linguistically" here. I speaking to Latin Americans and Germans in English. And I find that I and several Mediterraneans get along much better with Latin Americans than Northeners. They talk loud, we talk loud, they are outgoing, we're outgoing, they don't have stiff upper lip, they are not afraid to show emotion, they "make do" easier with less... generally I socialize easier with them than Northeners although there are exceptions in both sides.
Spaniards and Southern Italians... they make me feel at home. When I was in Madrid, it was like being in an a Greek city that people didn't speak Greek. Same good things, same bad things. A German couple was wondering where the bus since the bus-stop sign said it should have been there 1 minute ago. I explained to them that they should not believe those random times printed on bus stops. They were stunned.

The Germans are known for their punctuality and efficiency, that's true. It's the reason why they like to have vacations in Italy, because it is opposite world to them. Well, except for places like Milan, Genoa, or Cremona where everything is clean, concise, on time, and the Italians there look more like them than in Naples, generally.

Also, Alhoon, if you're looking for loud s who speak everything that's on their mind and don't hide their emotions, please come to the US and visit us some time. My brother and I will show you a good time. We'll force you to shoot guns, including AR-15s. Go camping and off-roading in the woods with trucks that can climb over boulders. Fire off a bunch of fireworks. We'll drag you to a metal show and throw you in the mosh pit. Then we'll drag you to an outdoor BBQ for smoked ribs the next day and make you eat a bunch of insanely good but fattening food. Then I'll wake you up at 11 AM the next day when you're still hungover from the Jack Daniels and/or the Moonshine we had you drink, waking you up with a ing air horn blaring in your ear, so that you'll make it for kegs and eggs (drinking beer from a keg, that is, with your breakfast). And we'll scream in your ing ear the whole time. Because we're loud and proud. We are Muricans.

Seriously, though, my Northern Irish friends, when I lived over there, were surprised at how loud and outspoken we Americans were, in every conversation. We just kinda drowned everyone out. I guess it's the American way.

Cleopatra stuff: Not much to add. So far I haven't seen any kind of evidence that she was not from the group called "White". She was not Subsaharan and she was not South-Asian or East-Asian. By that broad definition, she was white.

This thread, if you read the whole OP, was actually far less about that, and more about her royal iconography, which includes what she wears and how she wears it, but just so happens to also include her physical features which are undeniably Caucasian. Everyone just kind of ignored that and are talking about race instead, because I admittedly chose a silly clickbait title that I slightly regret choosing now.

[alhoon]

I would have not delved in a thread called "Cleopatra's royal garments as shown in statues and paintings", I can tell you that.

[Ludicus]

Cleopatra didn't just speak Egyptian, though, she spoke a number of foreign languages that reflected her territorial ambitions.

And of course, who could forget the famous Queen Latifa Malik Abdul Jabar Afro Farrakhan Ebony Cleopatra:

Frankly, why are you laughing? you shouldn't be so dismissive. Sally-Ann Ashton | University of Cambridge is a reputed European Egyptologist. BA in Ancient Greek from the University of Manchester, and has a BA (Hons) and MA in Classical Archaeology from King’s College London; PhD in Egyptian Archaeology; researcher in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at The British Museum in London; Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London; Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum; University of Cambridge with curatorial responsibility for Ancient Egypt and Sudan until 2015, and has undertaken archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Greece, Italy and the Caribbean.

For the white supremacists (not you, of course), well, she is a just a dirty negro-centric sympathizer. I would like to see the curriculum vitae of these guys.

And again, she was the first Ptolemaic ruler to speak Egyptian, and her family lived there for three centuries. Let's hear Sally-Ann Ashton, the Egyptologist you laughed at. Read the whole book, Cleopatra and Egypt,
Some brief excerpts,

"...and in fact the surviving evidence supports the idea that Cleopatra presented herself as Egyptian. Cleopatra was of course descended from Macedonian Greeks, but the time she first came to power in 51 BCE her family had lived in Egypt for 272 years.
In addition to this we don't know the identity of Cleopatra's grandmother, who may have been a concubine rather an official wife, and more recently the identity of Cleopatra's mother has been questioned (HuB, 1990).

The identity of Cleopatra as an Egyptian rather a Greek was clearly established during her lifetime. Immediately after her death Strabo describes the queen as "the Egyptian women" ( Geography, 13.130). Here Strabo describes how Anthony raided temples for statues of a Greek hero and gods to gratify " the Egyptian". The second century Roman Lucius Annaeus Florus describes her as "That Egyptian woman". ( Wars 2.21.1-3; Jones 2006:106)

Cleopatra's ethnicity is a contentious subject and one that is often dismissed in academic circles...
...I'm not of African descent. Consequently, I cannot really understand the importance of claiming Cleopatra as a African queen...There is no denying that Cleopatra was queen of an African nation...
Irrespective of the tone of her skin color, the evidence for Cleopatra in Egypt strongly suggests that Cleopatra wanted to be seen as a Egyptian in her home country and that Greek heritage was neglected in favor a native (Egyptian) tradition...
...The very fact that it is necessary to defend even the possibility of Cleopatra's association with Africa demonstrates the extent to which both Classics and Egyptology have become Eurocentric in their core perceptions.
I would ask if we are, as Europeans, so keen to embrace the rulers of Dynasty 26, when Greeks settled at Naukratis, as part of Classical history? - Of course we are not; this would be preposterous.
There is generally no need to defend Cleopatra's European heritage, even though the queen showed little interest in presenting herself as such (Ashton 2003d:25-30)
Classical scholars have argued that Cleopatra's Greekness can be defined on the basis of her name; that she was of Macedonian ancestry; that her family has imposed itself on Egypt; and that her reported fluency in the Egyptian language did not make her Egyptian (Lefkowitz 1996:4). Part of the problem seems to lie in the fact that few Classical scholars are able to understand or interpret Cleopatra's Egyptian persona.

They cannot read the texts; all of the images appear to the standard Eurocentric training as the same ans even when differences are explained to them, the Egyptian evidence is dismissed as Cleopatra paying lip service to the country that she ruled. This problem is not limited to Cleopatra. In fact for years classical scholars have ignored Egyptian aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt, presenting a wholly biased and false interpretation of this period in general. Many realize that they are at a disadvantage when working on a subject that is split between two different cultures, and that there is a Hellenistic/Greek bias ( for example, Rowlandson 2003; Thompson 1988).

Such scholars have contributed important scholarship to the subject and I am not for one moment suggesting that the Hellenic tradition should be forgotten, but rather it is necessary to re-dress the balance of scholarship.
I do not blame my colleagues for this problem because of my own training initially as a Classicist. This difficulty is wholly due to the way in which the subject is taught at university level.
After three years of studying Egyptian material culture and languages, I was forced to re-write the first two chapters of my doctoral thesis. Initially I had only taken account of how Greeks viewed material culture and interpreted the sculpture that I was studying through a Greek perspective. added to the usual bias is the fact that everyone views cultures through that they have been taught and their own experiences, no matter how hard they try to do otherwise.

And so, Eurocentric view of Cleopatra also extends the study of her by classical scholars, no matter how hard they try to do otherwise.
...Cleopatra was shown as an Egyptian both in Egypt and, on at least one occasion, in Rome. As noted, Roman historians frequently refer to Cleopatra as an Egyptian and she was by no means welcomed into the European tradition that was Rome; in fact the contrary is true.

In some respects African-centered scholars do themselves no favors by using weak arguments to support what is actually a strong case for Cleopatra's presentation as an Egyptian. One example is that Shakespeare described Cleopatra as "tawny" and so Black (Clark 1984:126 -7). In fact it doesn't really matter how Shakespeare saw Cleopatra, because he was not her contemporary. A glance at the queen's representation and images, however, shows that Greece did not play any real apart in her presentation at home in Egypt.
Roman writers may not refer to the color of Cleopatra's skin,- would they have even noticed if she was a quarter African? Possibly not.This fact does not, however, belittle her appeal to a modern Black audience, and nor should it.

(* for alhoon) So strong is the idea the Cleopatra was white and wholly European in her outlook that another weak argument is frequently used to counter the Afrocentrics: that no authors mention Cleopatra was Black and so therefore she must be white.
For example, Lefkowitz ( 1996:22 n.2) wrote: "Who was the mistress [of Ptolemy IX]? since none of the sources tells us otherwise, the natural assumption was that she was Greek, like the Ptolemies. That of course does not prove she was not African, but there is no evidence at all that she was African" (...)

(...) Although many scholars cite the lack of written evidence that Cleopatra was black as a proof of her pure European descent, there are other aspects of her life and character that are equally nebulous but which are generally accepted.
Cleopatra was of course part Greek but it must also be notes that the suggestion she was part African is not based on wishful thinking alone but on the fact that we do not know the identity of the mother of Ptolemy XII and so Cleopatra's paternal grandmother..."
----

Renowned Egyptologist Weighs In On Angelina As Cleopatra - Jezebel

I'd rather hold judgment until it's out. Angelina Jolie did after all (bizarrely) already play someone of African Ancestory. In general though I feel that it would be a great pity for the film makers not to break with the stereotype of Cleopatra as a European femme fatale. I sincerely hope that they will take all of the recent research into consideration.

Cleopatra stuff: Not much to add. So far I haven't seen any kind of evidence that she was not from the group called "White". She was not Subsaharan and she was not South-Asian or East-Asian. By that broad definition, she was white.

alhoon, follow the asterisk (*)

[athanaric]

You're just driving the point home by citing quacks and a radical feminist website. It's embarrassing, really.

[Ludicus]

citing a radical feminist website.

No, you are lying. It's not a "radical feminist website", it's a book.Cleopatra and Egypt. Cleopatra and Egypt - Sally-Ann Ashton - Google Books
Radical feminist or dirty negro-centric sympathizer, it's the same.

Edit,
if you are referring to this,Renowned Egyptologist Weighs In On Angelina As Cleopatra - Jezebel (feminist or not feminist), what matters is the interview itself.

[sumskilz]

Frankly, why are you laughing? you shouldn't be so dismissive. Sally-Ann Ashton | University of Cambridge is a reputed European Egyptologist. BA in Ancient Greek from the University of Manchester, and has a BA (Hons) and MA in Classical Archaeology from King’s College London; PhD in Egyptian Archaeology; researcher in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at The British Museum in London; Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London; Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum; University of Cambridge with curatorial responsibility for Ancient Egypt and Sudan until 2015, and has undertaken archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Greece, Italy and the Caribbean.

You forgot to mention her MPhil in Criminological Research, her MSc in Investigative Psychology, and the fact that she's currently working full time on her second PhD in Psychology at the University of Huddersfield while somehow also being a lecturer in Psychosocial Analysis of Offending Behaviour at Edge Hill University.

[Roma_Victrix]

Frankly, why are you laughing? you shouldn't be so dismissive. Sally-Ann Ashton | University of Cambridge is a reputed European Egyptologist. BA in Ancient Greek from the University of Manchester, and has a BA (Hons) and MA in Classical Archaeology from King’s College London; PhD in Egyptian Archaeology; researcher in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at The British Museum in London; Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London; Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum; University of Cambridge with curatorial responsibility for Ancient Egypt and Sudan until 2015, and has undertaken archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Greece, Italy and the Caribbean.

Frankly, I don't care what her credentials are or how many books she has published. If someone says something stupid or baseless, it is still stupid and/or baseless, no matter who says it. Her arguments on this issue are completely specious and lacking the most basic and fundamental archaeological and/or historical data to back her claims. Ann-Ashton isn't presenting us with anything new either. You want academic authorities weighing in? How about Grant (1972), Burstein (2004), Fletcher (2008), Goldsworthy (2010), and Roller (2010) all mentioning or speculating about the same theory of Cleo's potential mother but all admitting the same thing: there is no evidence for her identity. Period. I'm not sure how many times it needs to be repeated, but Strabo was the only one who claimed she was illegitimate (i.e. born from someone besides Cleopatra V Tryphaena), and yet he didn't provide the mother's name or identity to shore up his own claim.

Before proceeding, you should know that this is the only textual evidence that all scholars, Ann-Ashton included, are working with and that this thread here, aside from being a discussion about iconography (which it should be, if you read the whole OP), contains artwork that clearly contradicts Prof. Ann-Ashton. From what anyone can tell using her existing portraits, Cleopatra was not a mixed race woman. She exhibits only Caucasian features, as discussed explicitly by Joann Fletcher (2008) and Susan Walker (2008). If that somehow bugs you, then I guess you've come to the wrong thread. I'd rather be talking about her coins and the comparison of the diadem in her busts and paintings, but since you cannot seem to let this topic go I guess it will have to be addressed once again.

For the white supremacists (not you, of course), well, she is a just a dirty negro-centric sympathizer. I would like to see the curriculum vitae of these guys.

Who cares what white supremacists think? They are even more irrelevant to the Classics and Egyptology than the Afrocentrists (at least the Afrocentrists have a considerable amount of academic ink spilled about them, in works such as Prudence Jones' 2006 source book).

And again, she was the first Ptolemaic ruler to speak Egyptian, and her family lived there for three centuries. Let's hear Sally-Ann Ashton, the Egyptologist you laughed at. Read the whole book, Cleopatra and Egypt,
Some brief excerpts,

And she deserves to be laughed at if this is the foundation of her argument, that Cleopatra must have been Egyptian because she learned it as a second language...or possibly her third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth foreign language among Ethiopian, Trogodyte, Hebrew/Aramaic, Arabic, Syriac, Median, Parthian, and Latin to complement her native tongue, Koine Greek. Does that mean Cleopatra was an Ethiopian Jewish Arab Parthian too? If we're taking this impressive linguistic ability of hers to its full and stupidest logical conclusion, why exclude the others? I mean, after all, Alexandria had an enormous population of Jews. Taken together, there were more Jews and Greeks living in Alexandria than native Egyptians.

Oh wait! That's right. Because we're talking about the Ptolemies here, who literally outlawed the intermarriage of Greeks with native Egyptians in Alexandria and the other two Greek poleis of Egypt. Apparently Ann-Ashton doesn't have much appreciation for the volatile nature of the Alexandrian Greeks (xenophobic to the bone), who would sooner roast a Ptolemy alive than accept the rule of native Egyptians.

"...and in fact the surviving evidence supports the idea that Cleopatra presented herself as Egyptian. Cleopatra was of course descended from Macedonian Greeks, but the time she first came to power in 51 BCE her family had lived in Egypt for 272 years.
In addition to this we don't know the identity of Cleopatra's grandmother, who may have been a concubine rather an official wife, and more recently the identity of Cleopatra's mother has been questioned (HuB, 1990).

Sure, it's been questioned. Questioned with no real substantial answer to that question. Excuse me, Prof. Ann-Ashton, but which rabbit hole are you taking us down now? Let's find out!

The identity of Cleopatra as an Egyptian rather a Greek was clearly established during her lifetime. Immediately after her death Strabo describes the queen as "the Egyptian women" ( Geography, 13.130). Here Strabo describes how Anthony raided temples for statues of a Greek hero and gods to gratify " the Egyptian". The second century Roman Lucius Annaeus Florus describes her as "That Egyptian woman". ( Wars 2.21.1-3; Jones 2006:106)

And? She was Queen of Egypt after all. Even the Romans in one bust (now in the Capitoline Museum) depicted her with a vulture-style headdress of an Egyptian queen, despite all other pieces of Roman artwork depicting her as a Hellenistic Greek queen with a diadem on her head. Notice how disingenuous Ann-Ashton is here, if she's not supplying us with the full context (I'm assuming you're quoting her in full here and will assume that for each of these passages you've chosen). Does Ann-Ashton even tell her readers that (inexplicably) Strabo is literally the only historian to claim she was illegitimate, a bastard daughter? Looks like a deliberate omission to me.

Cleopatra's ethnicity is a contentious subject and one that is often dismissed in academic circles...
...I'm not of African descent. Consequently, I cannot really understand the importance of claiming Cleopatra as a African queen...There is no denying that Cleopatra was queen of an African nation...
Irrespective of the tone of her skin color, the evidence for Cleopatra in Egypt strongly suggests that Cleopatra wanted to be seen as a Egyptian in her home country and that Greek heritage was neglected in favor a native (Egyptian) tradition...

Right here is where Ann-Ashton flies off the handlebars into cuckoo land. LOL. Cleopatra presented herself as the New Isis, this is true, and she knew how to speak Egyptian and resided over Egyptian religious ceremonies. Did Ann-Ashton forget the part where she hosted Greek religious ceremonies and panhellenic festivals? If she didn't, the Alexandrian Greeks probably would have crucified her (they were ready and willing to do that to her father just for pissing them off about taxes...imagine the wrath they would have for someone who proudly pissed on Zeus himself). Guess what language Cleopatra used in her public speeches in Alexandria? In her correspondence and meetings with the Romans? In the vast majority of her minted coinage minus the few with Latin inscriptions? In the only administrative document of hers (dated February 33 BC) that contains her surviving signature and written words? It's freaking Greek, Ludicus. Greek.

Historians who are also numismatists probably cringed like hearing nails on a chalkboard when reading this passage by Ann-Ashton.

...The very fact that it is necessary to defend even the possibility of Cleopatra's association with Africa demonstrates the extent to which both Classics and Egyptology have become Eurocentric in their core perceptions.

Ridiculous nonsense. I haven't come across a single historian (even old school ones like Michael Grant) who downplayed her role in fostering and promoting Egyptian religion and the native Egyptian priesthood. The latter is an important point because it was heavily tied to politics. Her brother Ptolemy XIII (or rather his eunuch regent Potheinos) tried in vain to undermine her relationship with her Egyptian subjects and most of all the Egyptian priesthood, by making unpopular decisions in the name of their joint rule, like denying grain to the countryside in need of stemming famine.

Guess who we can thank for the Eurocentric perspective? The freaking Hellenistic Greeks who lived in Egypt and promoted their culture over all others. That's who we can thank for building that perception. Seriously.

I would ask if we are, as Europeans, so keen to embrace the rulers of Dynasty 26, when Greeks settled at Naukratis, as part of Classical history? - Of course we are not; this would be preposterous.

Well, that chapter of Greek colonization is certainly part of Classical history, but no, the native rulers of the 26th dynasty (following the black Kushite/Nubian rule of the 25th dynasty emanating from Sub-Saharan Sudan) are obviously part of Egyptian and not Classical Greek history.

There is generally no need to defend Cleopatra's European heritage, even though the queen showed little interest in presenting herself as such (Ashton 2003d:25-30)

WHAT? I am floored right now. I can't believe this is an "Egyptologist" saying this. Has she ever seen a single coin of Cleopatra in her life? Read every word of this excellent summary from the Art Institute of Chicago about Cleopatra's blending of Greek and Roman styles and legends in her coinage and tell me with a straight face, Ludicus, that Ann-Ashton isn't stupidly ignorant or disingenuous about her own field of work (take your pick, either way pretty bad).

Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago: Cat. 22 Tetradrachm Portraying Queen Cleopatra VII: Published by: Art Institute of Chicago

Jesus, I thought it was just funny before, but I feel a visceral lack of respect for Ann-Ashton now. She's making me livid the more I read this nonsense. It's enough to give me a migraine.

Classical scholars have argued that Cleopatra's Greekness can be defined on the basis of her name; that she was of Macedonian ancestry; that her family has imposed itself on Egypt; and that her reported fluency in the Egyptian language did not make her Egyptian (Lefkowitz 1996:4). Part of the problem seems to lie in the fact that few Classical scholars are able to understand or interpret Cleopatra's Egyptian persona.

Of for the love of God. And let me guess? Ann-Ashton is one of the chosen few smart people on Earth who really get her? Everyone else is just too stupid to properly interpret Cleopatra's role as a monarch of Egypt and leader of their religious cults? Other Egyptologists who have been working as long if not longer in this field than Ann-Ashton? Really?

They cannot read the texts; all of the images appear to the standard Eurocentric training as the same ans even when differences are explained to them, the Egyptian evidence is dismissed as Cleopatra paying lip service to the country that she ruled. This problem is not limited to Cleopatra. In fact for years classical scholars have ignored Egyptian aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt, presenting a wholly biased and false interpretation of this period in general. Many realize that they are at a disadvantage when working on a subject that is split between two different cultures, and that there is a Hellenistic/Greek bias ( for example, Rowlandson 2003; Thompson 1988).

Perhaps there are too many scholars who speak/understand Greek and not enough who understand Egyptian. Guess what? The primary source material about Cleopatra in Greek DWARFS the amount that exist in the native Egyptian language. The amount that exists in Egyptian is scanty and doesn't even provide us a full picture of her perspective. This is a point made by both Michel Chauveau (2000) and Duane W. Roller (2010). Even the possibly pro-Cleopatran historiographic work of the Libyka commissioned by her son-in-law Juba II (who married Cleopatra Selene after Cleopatra VII Philopator's death) is only fragmentary. We don't even have the full damn text! So do enlighten us, Prof. Ann-Ashton, of all these opportunities we're missing presenting Cleo's side of the story and from a purely Egyptian perspective.

Such scholars have contributed important scholarship to the subject and I am not for one moment suggesting that the Hellenic tradition should be forgotten, but rather it is necessary to re-dress[/I] [I]the balance of scholarship.
I do not blame my colleagues for this problem because of my own training initially as a Classicist. This difficulty is wholly due to the way in which the subject is taught at university level.

Re-balanced to accommodate what? The Egyptian-language inscriptions at the Temple of Dendera? They don't really tell us much, Prof. Ann Ashton. You're probably better off parsing and interpreting the historical narrative of Plutarch in Greek than anything else.

After three years of studying Egyptian material culture and languages, I was forced to re-write the first two chapters of my doctoral thesis. Initially I had only taken account of how Greeks viewed material culture and interpreted the sculpture that I was studying through a Greek perspective. added to the usual bias is the fact that everyone views cultures through that they have been taught and their own experiences, no matter how hard they try to do otherwise.

Well now she's being more reasonable. Nothing to disagree with strongly here, but I have little hope this is going somewhere positive...

And so, Eurocentric view of Cleopatra also extends the study of her by classical scholars, no matter how hard they try to do otherwise.
...Cleopatra was shown as an Egyptian both in Egypt and, on at least one occasion, in Rome. As noted, Roman historians frequently refer to Cleopatra as an Egyptian and she was by no means welcomed into the European tradition that was Rome; in fact the contrary is true.

Lol. There was no such thing as a "European tradition" in Antiquity. There were Greeks, Thracians, Illyrians, Romans, Celts, Iberians, and Germanic peoples, but only the Greeks and Romans had any strong affinity for each other (and even that process took a very long time). I guess to a lesser extent you could include the Thracians, since they were gradually Hellenized and then Romanized, but even that's quite a stretch.

I like how Ann-Ashton, once again with her disingenuous thesis-building, fails to inform the reader that these instances of calling Cleopatra an "Egyptian" were mostly if not fully from Octavian's vicious propaganda campaign waged against her and Mark Antony, particularly depicting her as a foreign Oriental queen who practiced witchcraft and could not be trusted. It seems as though Ann-Ashton is drinking Octavian's kool-aid and not even realizing it...or maybe she does, but just doesn't care so long as it services her argument.

Aside from catering to the native Egyptian priesthood (a smart move, considering how Egyptians were now a majority of her subjects with the loss of Cyprus and all the other Ptolemaic possessions in the Mediterranean), Cleopatra was no less Greek than any of the Greek client rulers that Rome had deal with before. Only now when it is political does Cleopatra suddenly become an otherwordly Egyptian summoning the forces of witchcraft and dark, evil Egyptian gods to pervert and subdue the good honest Roman gods of Italy. Lol. No, seriously, there is a rabidly anti-Cleopatra Augustan-era poet who makes that exact argument.

Putting that aside, Ann-Ashton even admits here that there is only one Roman depiction (from the Capitoline Museum, as I mentioned above) where Cleopatra is shown wearing anything notably Egyptian. Ann-Ashton knows as well as the rest of the Egyptologists that Cleopatra, in all other images crafted by the Romans, was depicted as a Greek monarch.

Jesus/Zeus/Jupiter/Osiris have mercy, this argument of hers is easier to pick apart than wings from KFC.

In some respects African-centered scholars do themselves no favors by using weak arguments to support what is actually a strong case for Cleopatra's presentation as an Egyptian. One example is that Shakespeare described Cleopatra as "tawny" and so Black (Clark 1984:126 -7). In fact it doesn't really matter how Shakespeare saw Cleopatra, because he was not her contemporary. A glance at the queen's representation and images, however, shows that Greece did not play any real apart in her presentation at home in Egypt.

Absolute unadulterated hogwash. Not a single coin of Cleopatra has her lacking the royal Greek diadem, the typical crown of Macedonian kings and queens. Ann-Ashton is right when it comes to Shakespeare, though...as a 16th-17th century playwright, his input is meaningless and irrelevant.

This idea of Ann-Ashton's that Cleopatra didn't care to present herself as a Greek at home in Egypt would be one big enormous surprise to her Alexandrian Greek subjects who made a habit of killing Ptolemies when they did not conform to their liking. Or to the facilitators of the Library of Alexandria where she most likely received her education. Or from her own damn childhood tutor Philostratos who taught her the Greek arts of philosophy, rhetoric, and language (Roller 2010: 45-46). It must have been a huge surprise to other Greeks as well, such as the inhabitants of Athens when their public works were sponsored by Cleopatra (Fletcher 2008). It must have been a huge shock to the crowd of Alexandrian Greeks given how Cleopatra, during the Donations of Alexandria, even dressed her son Ptolemy Philadelphos up as a little miniature Macedonian king and version of Alexander the Great when proclaiming him King of Syria and Cilicia (as a successor to the Seleucids). Even her son Alexander Helios was dressed like a Median/Persian when declared King of Armenia, Medes, and Parthia. It was her son Caesarion who was meant to rule as an Egyptian-style pharaoh, but also King of Kings (in the Achaemenid Persian sense). Kindly read Roller (2010: 99-100) and Burstein (2004: 29) for information on that.

I mean, that alone just basically destroys any stupid argument Ann-Ashton is trying to make here. Seriously, Ann-Ashton has gone down into the contemptible depths as far as I'm concerned. At this point it's not a mistake of hers, she should know better. It's selective reasoning at best, perhaps maliciously so, but who knows.

Roman writers may not refer to the color of Cleopatra's skin,- would they have even noticed if she was a quarter African? Possibly not.This fact does not, however, belittle her appeal to a modern Black audience, and nor should it.

The Romans, as Susan Walker (2008: 40) demonstrates, depicted Cleopatra with "pale ivory" skin in the painting from the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus in Pompeii, while Fletcher (2008: 87, 246-247) notes they even depicted her as a redhead in the fresco from Herculaneum. As Roller (2010: 178-179) points out, both Cleopatra AND Caesarion are both wearing royal Greek diadems in the painting from the House of Giuseppe II in Pompeii (and Cleopatra has just about the lightest skin of anyone in the room, with the others standing around her as she consumes poison). The Romans did not stutter. They were portraying Greeks here. And if Cleopatra was black it would have been a centerpiece conversation in Augustan propaganda aimed against her, further proof that she was a witch or even an irredeemable Nubian or some nonsense. As for detecting partial black heritage (assuming that native Egyptians were black), I think Alhoon just demonstrated in his recent posts that, as a Greek, he's able to sniff out other Greeks just by looking at them. If something was off about Cleopatra's looks, I think contemporary writers would have mentioned this.

I hope, Ludicus, that you learned something from this. I hope you learned that relying too much on the word of one Egyptologist, despite her credentials, is a perilous and risky choice, given how I'm a freaking amateur (i.e. not an Egyptologist) and I just eviscerated her argument with the most basic facts, using the scholars I noted above plus the Art Institute of Chicago web page. That didn't take very much effort either.

Got any more for us? Here, go ahead and have fun with these aforementioned Roman paintings of Cleopatra:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ing_poison.jpg


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...1127162%29.jpg