Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

[Jurand of Cracow]

An interesting piece on identifying ancient people.

[ubutnut]

applying modern standards to ancient ppl is anachronistic but sadly this is the trend now. damn politically correct.

Penis size and empire development?!

actually when you click on any roman rebel character on strat map he'll shout at you "MENTULA!" he don't mention the size tho.

[Roma_Victrix]

Just in case anyone is interested, you can check out the work I've done on Cleopatra for various Wikipedia articles:

Cleopatra (almost a complete rewrite, brought to you by yours truly)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra

Early life of Cleopatra (created this article just the other day)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_..._Cleopatra_VII

Reign of Cleopatra (created this article just the other day)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Cleopatra_VII

Death of Cleopatra (almost a complete rewrite and huge expansion, brought to you by yours truly)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Cleopatra

I relied mostly on Roller (2010), Fletcher (2008), and Burstein (2004), as well as dozens of other ancillary sources to fill in gaps and reinforce the main sources cited. Be sure to check out the new artworks, including the stunning comparisons of the Berlin and Vatican Cleopatra busts, as well as the little-known paintings of Cleopatra. Well, until now, thanks to me launching them from academic obscurity into standard images on Wikipedia.

[HernanU]

Baharr - yes, Cleopatra was ethnically Macedonian. Anyone arguing she was "black" or somehow "African" in origin is a retard. Same goes for Hannibal, who was Phoenician.

People tend to mix, you know, no man or woman reject love and sex naturally because the color of their skin. Egypt was conquered by Makedonia three centuries before the arrival of the romans, and Hannibal being Phoenician... well, 500 years and a small group of Phoenician probably mixed with the local nobility and warchief to secure the peace. The ancient world was more culturally biased and not racially, the greek and romans probably look with the same contempt the blonde barbarians of the Rhine and the black barbarians of Nubia. Probably in the centuries of presence in Egypt the hellenized elites mixed with the original macedons, same with the phoenician in Carthage.
I think the modern prejudices about race clouded this discusion. It's like "Hey, Jesus was a white man. Don't you see the paintings, you liberal scum!" Yes, painted a thousand years later.
The people live, have babies with the locals and change, that's why probably the jews in the I century ressemble more like the modern palestinians than the modern jews who change in the 1.500 years of diaspora in Europe. And black jews exist too! So, maybe she was light skinned, maybe not, but call "retard" to other people because they have different opinons in this matter is, well, retard.
Don't be that guy man.
I still struggle with the english language, so sorry for the gramathics. But I speak spanish almost perfectly.
Saludos.

[Roma_Victrix]

People tend to mix, you know, no man or woman reject love and sex naturally because the color of their skin. Egypt was conquered by Makedonia three centuries before the arrival of the romans, and Hannibal being Phoenician... well, 500 years and a small group of Phoenician probably mixed with the local nobility and warchief to secure the peace. The ancient world was more culturally biased and not racially, the greek and romans probably look with the same contempt the blonde barbarians of the Rhine and the black barbarians of Nubia. Probably in the centuries of presence in Egypt the hellenized elites mixed with the original macedons, same with the phoenician in Carthage.
I think the modern prejudices about race clouded this discusion. It's like "Hey, Jesus was a white man. Don't you see the paintings, you liberal scum!" Yes, painted a thousand years later.

Your argument is based on nothing, though. As outlined by Egyptologist Dr. Joann Fletcher (Cleopatra the Great: The Woman Behind the Legend, New York, 2008), the ONLY person in the entire Ptolemaic dynasty to introduce any known non-Macedonian-Greek blood was Cleopatra I Syra, and even she was mostly Macedonian-Greek. She was part Sogdian-Persian by virtue of being a descendant of Apama, wife of Seleucus I Nicator. Yet Sogdians weren't some incredibly different people from that of the Greeks, being an Eastern Iranian people who had fair hair and fair eyes. Just look at their descendants today in what is now modern Tajikistan. They're basically white people native to Asia. Just because some Europeans (mostly Anglos, let's be honest) have the arrogance to presume that only Europeans can be white doesn't mean that it's actually true.

Any claims that Cleopatra was anything other than Macedonian Greek (with like 5% Sogdian-Persian blood) is either pure speculation or Afrocentric propaganda. She had an Egyptian (but also part Macedonian) half-cousin, the High Priest of Ptah, but that branch of her family is not known for having produced Ptolemaic royal family members or heirs. And it was also ILLEGAL in the Greek city-states of Alexandria, Naukratis, and Ptolemais Hermiou (considered legally separate from the rest of Egypt) for Greeks and Egyptians to intermarry. This was a partially segregated society. The Egyptians (and Jews) even lived in separate residential quarters than the Greeks and Macedonians in the city of Alexandria.

Cleopatra was loved by her Egyptian subjects for being the first Ptolemaic pharaoh to bother learning their language and she respected their religious rites and privileges in every way she could, but she didn't promote intermarriage at any point in her reign between Greeks and Egyptians. Your anachronistic ideas about Ptolemaic society should be reevaluated, at least when it comes to the multicultural Greek city-states in Egypt. Outside of those cities Greeks and Egyptians were allowed to marry one another, it is true, but even then these partial Egyptians, especially upper class ones, usually preferred to take on a Greek identity and leave behind their Egyptian one because it was undesirable in the social hierarchy.

For info on that see Stanley M. Burstein's Reign of Cleopatra (2004).

As for Romans having contempt for Celtic and Germanic tribes in Europe, some ancient authors definitely expressed this, but the Romans had a funny way of showing such contempt by not only allowing these men to become citizens after military service but also had some of them become literal Roman senators and magistrates. Funnily enough, some Celtic and Germanic soldiers left by Aulus Gabinius in Ptolemaic Egypt, while restoring Ptolemy XII in 55 BC, became almost totally assimilated into Greek culture, just like the Celtic Galatians before them who became kleruchoi soldiers and landowners in Egypt. They were even used against Cleopatra by Ptolemy XIII and then later used by Cleopatra to aid the Second Triumvirate against the assassins of Caesar in the Liberators' War of 43-42 BC. Nubians also had a small presence in Ptolemaic Egypt and they along with Ethiopians later served in the Roman military and became Roman citizens. So yes, they cared more about culture than race or skin color, so long as they adopted the mainstream Greco-Roman culture.

[HernanU]

Afrocentric propaganda? C'mon man, are you serious?
Joann Fletcher is very questioned by the egiptology experts for rush conclusions and very shady practices in intepreting the source material, so citing her is not a very solid back in your theory.
I want to be clear, I don't say the Cleopatra was black or brown or any other racial label you don't want to put on her, maybe she was the Charlize Theron of the first century BC. I'm just saying that naming someone as a "retard" for have an idea backed by serious academics and profesional research is stupid, even if the conclussions are still open to debate.
Of course the romans give celts, iberians, africans, asians and many others roman citizenship. Like I say (and you to), for them was not a matter of skin color but of cultural assimilation. For the same reason Julius Cesar took one million gauls into slavery (and kill another million) without many repercusions in Rome, they were barbarians and do not have much worth in the eyes of the "civilized" romans. If you have the bad luck of being a barbarian or an enemy of Rome (like the civilized punic or greeks who were made slaves by the tens of thousands if not put under the sword) you could have the fairest hair and the bluest eyes and be a faithful member of the Alt-Right and still end in chains in a mine or a latifundia in Italy.
All this subject is just a modern ideological view of the ancient "races" and is racist himself. And by god sake, I'm a profesor of history (yeah, I know, you won't believe me) and a passionate one. I don't take lightly the history of humanity and because of that I know the today take on the racial problem is a modern issue (very different from the idea of "race" in the medieval or early modern times), born when the romanticism meet the nationalism in the XIX century and still linger like a cancer in the world.
But, you know, peace man. I love this mod like you do, and love history like you do. This is just, I hope, a productive debate.

[Darios]

All this subject is just a modern ideological view of the ancient "races" and is racist himself. And by god sake, I'm a profesor of history (yeah, I know, you won't believe me) and a passionate one. I don't take lightly the history of humanity and because of that I know the today take on the racial problem is a modern issue (very different from the idea of "race" in the medieval or early modern times), born when the romanticism meet the nationalism in the XIX century and still linger like a cancer in the world.

It is sad but there can sometimes be a uncomfortably thin line between a history lover and a racist. This is why I ultimately became sick of Europa Barbarorum I and eventually stopped playing it all together. It stated as a mod that wanted to depict barbarian factions more accurately (a noble goal in itself) but ended up trying to depict everyone in Central and South Asia as some sort of long-lost northwestern Europeans. I remember the faction description for a kind of Galatian unit arguing that the modern prevalence of light hair and eyes in the Fayum area of Egypt being the result of settled Galatian mercenaries. The final straw was when they released a type of "wolf-warrior" Sweboz unit that they described as "these are the true Indo-Europeans." Like...seriously?

I have heard that EB2 has largely moved away from that sort of stuff, but I still do not have the stomach to play it, as I get along well enough playing Rome 2.

I am not going to argue anything regarding Cleopatra's appearance or color because I have no interest in the topic. However, I have never agreed with trying to portray the ancients with our ridiculous 'modern' categories of race. A Greek from antiquity might have scoffed at the notion of being referred to as 'white' considering how their writers went out of their way to describe how different peoples such as the Germans, Celts, and Slavs looked. Saying that Cleopatra had Europoid features is one thing (and one that is backed up by data), but referring to her as 'white' can be a bit provocative and potentially drag Afrocentrists into a flame war. Who knows what sort of skin color an ethnically Greek woman living in Egypt (and its 300+ days of sunshine a year) had. Most importantly, why should we care?

[Roma_Victrix]

I'm not quite sure if either of you actually read the OP in its entirety , but perhaps I need to remind both of you gentlemen that this thread is about analyzing the surviving ancient ARTWORKS depicting Cleopatra. The glib title of my thread was merely click-bait to get you to read it in the first place. The discussion isn't so much about her skin color as it is the significant corpus of iconography related to Cleopatra, in the contemporary Roman, Hellenistic, and Egyptian traditions. If we're going to talk about skin color, then let's do so within an academic context, such as the surviving Roman paintings of Cleopatra and what academics have to say about it, such as Susan Walker (Senior Curator of Mediterranean Roman Antiquities at the British Museum). More on that below...

Afrocentric propaganda? C'mon man, are you serious?

Considering how Afrocentrism and Cleopatra is a topic outlined by scholars such as Giuseppe Pucci (2011) and Prudence Jones (2006), I fail to see how it's such a silly or tangential topic in your mind. Perhaps you're not familiar with it.

Joann Fletcher is very questioned by the egiptology experts for rush conclusions and very shady practices in intepreting the source material, so citing her is not a very solid back in your theory.

That would be Egyptology, not "egiptology".

As far as I'm aware, the biggest controversy regarding Fletcher was her claim in 2003 that a certain mummy from the Valley of Kings was Nefertiti, which was lambasted at first, but is now gaining acceptance, and she and Zahi Hawass smoothed over their little fight about it since then. To dismiss all of her work sounds like you're rushing to your own conclusions (especially for a woman who is an honorary research fellow at the University of York).

For that matter, what specifically has she said about Cleopatra that you find to be controversial at all? You offer nothing here but vague accusations without even addressing anything specific. I see that you just casually ignored my Burstein (2004) reference. I merely mentioned Fletcher's claim about Cleopatra I Syra being the only known Ptolemy who introduced non-Greek blood into the dynasty. That's hardly controversial; that is mainstream academia. Even Roller (Cleopatra, a Biography, Oxford University Press, 2010), who speculates that Cleopatra's mother may have belonged to the priestly family of Ptah at Memphis even has to admit that this has literally no proof and that only the identity of her father, Ptolemy XII, is known. And he was obviously descended from a long line of Ptolemies going back to Ptolemy I Soter, obviously a Macedonian Greek.

For instance, I find almost nothing controversial about Fletcher's insistence that this Roman painting from Herculaneum posthumously depicts Cleopatra, with red hair, the royal diadem worn over her head, the melon-style hairdo with a bun, her aquiline nose, the Egyptian-style motifs surrounding the portrait (not seen in this close-up photograph, unfortunately), etc.

I want to be clear, I don't say the Cleopatra was black or brown or any other racial label you don't want to put on her, maybe she was the Charlize Theron of the first century BC. I'm just saying that naming someone as a "retard" for have an idea backed by serious academics and profesional research is stupid, even if the conclussions are still open to debate.

That was Athanaric's chosen terminology. Let's keep things professional, shall we?

Of course the romans give celts, iberians, africans, asians and many others roman citizenship. Like I say (and you to), for them was not a matter of skin color but of cultural assimilation. For the same reason Julius Cesar took one million gauls into slavery (and kill another million) without many repercusions in Rome, they were barbarians and do not have much worth in the eyes of the "civilized" romans. If you have the bad luck of being a barbarian or an enemy of Rome (like the civilized punic or greeks who were made slaves by the tens of thousands if not put under the sword) you could have the fairest hair and the bluest eyes and be a faithful member of the Alt-Right and still end in chains in a mine or a latifundia in Italy.

I wouldn't dispute any of that, although it has nothing to do with my thread, unfortunately. Perhaps we should stay on topic from now on (admittedly I'm guilty of that transgression here, but that's besides the point).

All this subject is just a modern ideological view of the ancient "races" and is racist himself. And by god sake, I'm a profesor of history (yeah, I know, you won't believe me) and a passionate one. I don't take lightly the history of humanity and because of that I know the today take on the racial problem is a modern issue (very different from the idea of "race" in the medieval or early modern times), born when the romanticism meet the nationalism in the XIX century and still linger like a cancer in the world.
But, you know, peace man. I love this mod like you do, and love history like you do. This is just, I hope, a productive debate.

Discussions about your job or personal qualifications are completely off-topic and I would advise a mod to remove that statement of yours. Please do not go there or do that again.

Peace and love is fine and dandy, but it doesn't address the issue of iconography and ancient artworks depicting Cleopatra. Now, about that promised discussion about Susan Walker, if we're going to talk about skin color, let's at least do so with some scholarly citations. Otherwise what are we doing here? In Susan Walker's (2008: p. 40) description of the following painting from Pompeii, supported by Duane W. Roller (2010: p. 175), Walker describes the figure of Cleopatra as having ivory white skin, as well as wearing a Hellenistic golden diadem with a red jewel, and a crinkled translucent veil revealing the famous "melon" style hairdo that appears in the vast majority of ancient depictions of her.

What's interesting about this painting is that the veil was something commonly worn by Ptolemaic queens (e.g. Arsinoe II, Berenice II) in various coinage portraits, as outlined by Joann Fletcher (2008: p. 87), but Joann Fletcher says she ditched the veil in her standard coinage portraits, while retaining the diadem indicating royal status. The Romans have thus shown us a unique depiction of the queen in that regard, especially since it depicts her with the infant Caesarion (seen only as an infant in a coin minted around the time of his birth, but not nearly as detailed as this...his depiction at the Temple of Dendera shows him instead as a fully grown youth). The fact that it depicts Caesarion is very important, because this painting was actually walled off by the owner of the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus in Pompeii around 30 BC, owing to the sensitive nature of depictions of Caesarion with the new ruling regime of Octavian (soon to be Augustus). In fact Octavian purged as many statues of Mark Antony as he could find. Ones depicting Cleopatra were only spared due to their connection to patronage by Julius Caesar AND because Octavian was literally paid 2,000 talents by Cleopatra's friend Archibius not to have her statues destroyed.

And just for the record, this painting of Cleopatra standing behind temple doors most likely depicts her statue as it appeared in the Temple of Venus Genetrix, in the Forum of Caesar, which still stood there in the 3rd century AD (probably removed by Christian zealots in the 4th century AD).

I have heard that EB2 has largely moved away from that sort of stuff, but I still do not have the stomach to play it, as I get along well enough playing Rome 2.

Good lord, man, you are missing out on a brilliant mod, probably the best mod for M2TW, which in no way whatsoever should be tied to the sins of the previous EB for RTW. The team has been very careful to distance itself from the historical inaccuracies of the first. Your unfounded bias against EBII aside, let's stay focused on the thread, shall we? This is an off-topic conversation.

I am not going to argue anything regarding Cleopatra's appearance or color because I have no interest in the topic.

Well then why are you here? Making a large post to that effect?

However, I have never agreed with trying to portray the ancients with our ridiculous 'modern' categories of race. A Greek from antiquity might have scoffed at the notion of being referred to as 'white' considering how their writers went out of their way to describe how different peoples such as the Germans, Celts, and Slavs looked. Saying that Cleopatra had Europoid features is one thing (and one that is backed up by data), but referring to her as 'white' can be a bit provocative and potentially drag Afrocentrists into a flame war. Who knows what sort of skin color an ethnically Greek woman living in Egypt (and its 300+ days of sunshine a year) had. Most importantly, why should we care?

We should care about how she is depicted in ancient artworks, because art history is a thing. In fact, it just so happens to be the ing topic of this thread.

Seriously, man. At least pretend like you care and mention one bust, coin, painting, cameo carving, or statue of hers. Just one! That's all I ask. Otherwise this is moving off a cliff into the land of off-topic irrelevance. Sunshine and suntans have nothing to do with genetics or for that matter ancient works of art depicting Cleopatra, unless of course you want to talk about the different skin tones of peoples surrounding Cleopatra in this 1st-century AD Roman painting from the House of Giuseppe II, Pompeii, Italy depicting her suicide by poisoning.

[athanaric]

applying modern standards to ancient ppl is anachronistic but sadly this is the trend now. damn politically correct.

It's always been the case, though. Just the "modern standards" vary over time.

actually when you click on any roman rebel character on strat map he'll shout at you "MENTULA!" he don't mention the size tho.

Which is awesome. Although I think they say "mentulae" (plural).

People tend to mix, you know, no man or woman reject love and sex naturally because the color of their skin.

Not really; it depends on the inclinations of the individual and of course the social environment in which said individual grew up. Even without conditioning, people have preferred types and those may extend to skin colour, although they probably have more to do with features and body shape in most cases.

Egypt was conquered by Makedonia three centuries before the arrival of the romans, and Hannibal being Phoenician... well, 500 years and a small group of Phoenician probably mixed with the local nobility and warchief to secure the peace.

That's not an unreasonable assumption, but that wouldn't make them "black" or even dark-skinned by any sensible standards, it'd just mean that they were a tiny bit darker than their pale-skinned (by international standards) Phoenician ancestors. But still very much Mediterranean types.

The ancient world was more culturally biased and not racially, the greek and romans probably look with the same contempt the blonde barbarians of the Rhine and the black barbarians of Nubia.

Yeah, um, I already knew that.

Probably in the centuries of presence in Egypt the hellenized elites mixed with the original macedons, same with the phoenician in Carthage.

I actually think that it took a long while, and replacement/takeover by another political elite (Romans and/or Arabs) for them to blend into the local mix. These ethno-cultural biases hold on for a long time, as a rule. Just look at how many ethnic groups live side by side to this day without much mixing going on, unless they're culturally and genetically really close.

I think the modern prejudices about race clouded this discusion.

In my observation, studying with them and working for them, left-leaning "liberal" academics are way more biased than they think. In many cases, the pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of denying genetic differences as a factor, particularly among the humanities - including history and Classical archaeology - where most people don't really have a clue about how genetics work, and their default stance is panicked denial of any genetically-transferred differences or cultural traits. Because their greatest fear in life is to be seen as a racist/Nazi/colonialist. It's not healthy.
Same goes for the other extreme of course, like the alt-right, where people try to prove that 'negroes' are inferior for some reason, or afro-centric people who build their beliefs on the assumption of the inferiority of Europeans.

It's like "Hey, Jesus was a white man. Don't you see the paintings, you liberal scum!" Yes, painted a thousand years later.

We've had this debate. It's not a good analogy because nobody here claims that Jesus (if he even existed) was a blonde guy from Northern Italy.

The people live, have babies with the locals and change, that's why probably the jews in the I century ressemble more like the modern palestinians than the modern jews who change in the 1.500 years of diaspora in Europe.

Well, actually there is a very big percentage of Israeli Jews with Middle-Eastern looks. And, given the genetic evidence, the paleness of the Ashkenazim is not necessarily due to mixing, although some of that will unquestionably have taken place, but it's also quite likely that people naturally experienced a decreasing melanin level over the generation due to their geographical environment. It's happened before after all.

And black jews exist too!

Um yeah, but that's a different story.

So, maybe she was light skinned, maybe not, but call "retard" to other people because they have different opinons in this matter is, well, retard.
Don't be that guy man.

Well, given her ancestry and the pictorial evidence (whatever one might think of idealization etc.), actually there is no reason to assume she wasn't as pale as the average Greek woman. So yeah, it's retarded to assume she was "black", because "black" in modern parlance refers to Bantu types with negroid features and very dark skin. I don't necessarily agree with modern racial categories either, particularly not the absurd American ones, but I think you know what I mean.

I still struggle with the english language, so sorry for the gramathics. But I speak spanish almost perfectly.
Saludos.

Well, for me it's the other way round. And if we had this discussion in Spanish, it'd be against forum rules.

[QuintusSertorius]

Well, actually there is a very big percentage of Israeli Jews with Middle-Eastern looks. And, given the genetic evidence, the paleness of the Ashkenazim is not necessarily due to mixing, although some of that will unquestionably have taken place, but it's also quite likely that people naturally experienced a decreasing melanin level over the generation due to their geographical environment. It's happened before after all.

Just on this point, being Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jewish is distinct enough to show up in the DNA. Despite spending centuries in Europe, many Ashkenazim have very little non-Ashkenazi DNA, which is not what you'd expect from any population who were freely mixing with the natives of wherever they were living. The reason many Israeli Jews have Middle Eastern looks is because that's where their ancestors came from in the first place, and they largely kept to their own even while outside the Levant.

Well, given her ancestry and the pictorial evidence (whatever one might think of idealization etc.), actually there is no reason to assume she wasn't as pale as the average Greek woman. So yeah, it's retarded to assume she was "black", because "black" in modern parlance refers to Bantu types with negroid features and very dark skin. I don't necessarily agree with modern racial categories either, particularly not the absurd American ones, but I think you know what I mean.

Indeed, the Ptolemaic elite was Makedonian. Not even Greek, and if they ever married outside of the elite (which was rare) Greek was probably as far outside it as they went. They were hugely inbred by the amount of sibling marriage they indulged in.

Marrying some natives would have done wonders for the variety of their gene-pool (look at how progressively debauched they look in their coinage), but there's no evidence they ever did.

[athanaric]

I'm just saying that naming someone as a "retard" for have an idea backed by serious academics and profesional research is stupid, even if the conclussions are still open to debate.

OK, let's have the names of those "serious academics" then.

All this subject is just a modern ideological view of the ancient "races" and is racist himself. And by god sake, I'm a profesor of history (yeah, I know, you won't believe me) and a passionate one. I don't take lightly the history of humanity and because of that I know the today take on the racial problem is a modern issue (very different from the idea of "race" in the medieval or early modern times), born when the romanticism meet the nationalism in the XIX century and still linger like a cancer in the world.

Afrocentrism is identical to those pseudo-historical ideas of the 19th century, that's why we're against it.

The reason many Israeli Jews have Middle Eastern looks is because that's where their ancestors came from in the first place, and they largely kept to their own even while outside the Levant.

I.e. they are Mizrahi Jews who never left the greater Middle East/North Africa region.

[QuintusSertorius]

I.e. they are Mizrahi Jews who never left the greater Middle East/North Africa region.

No, I'm saying even those who's ancestors returned from Europe were rarely (genetically) European to begin with. They didn't inter-marry with the native European populations, so didn't pick up their genes.

[HernanU]

athanaric and Quintus, your points are fair enough for me, I understand the logic behind them but I don't agree in some issues.

In the case of the ancient jews being a semitic people then they probably looks in that time loke the middle eastern of today. Why? The reason is the Middle Eastern has not suffer the kind of influence outside his genetic pool (excluding Turkey, of course) in the almost 2.000 years of diaspora compare to other regions in the Mediterranean world, and compare with being outsiders in Europe (like the uralic ascendance of the Magyar, probably the Hungarians of 1.000 Ac were different of the today). Jews don't mixing or changing is a zionist mith (I mean, like others political-ideological miths, "The Promisse Land", "The people of God", not because the jews are bad but because every state do the same to control the population like the english "burden of the white man" or the american "manifest destiny").

For example, most of the "jews" expeled of Spain were Christian with jews fathers and grandfathers, they were integrated and mixed but then they were targeted by the spanish crown to consolidate his power with an idieological crusade to form a comunity of "true christians" (sadly, very much like today religious fanaticism). Jews (like everybody) change, mix and even modify his strongest points of view, like religion (today the porcentaje of atheist "cultural jews" are one of the highest in any population). Is not unrealistic to believe the ancient jews who not flee Palestine in the multiple revolts, probably peasant most of them, with less resources to relocate than the urban population (traders, artisans, learned people), probably not hellenized (the amount of Jews hellenized were very high in the superior strata of the society, and speak greek opens doors like Flavius Josephus or Paul the apostle can confirm), convert to christianity some of them (an easy pass because Christianity was a jewish sect in the beggining) and later to Islam. In the same way, is not unrealistic to think jews intermarried in the european society, probably only men (because the machism and patriarchalism of the societies) and for almost two millenia they change.

For me genetics do not matter in the scope of the history of society, is the Homo Sapiens who thrive or decay, who build civilizations or destroy them (sometimes both at the same time). Maybe I have a "liberal" point of view but I can accept with no problem the very small role of women in politics and public life trough most history (luckily for humanity a trend over in the near future). But believe genetics have a central rol in the history of mankind is absurd (not for individuals of course or the racist fuelled politics of the last two centuries), and in the individual attraction (the skin, the bodies, even the gender) the limit is the sky. Why do you think the romans (who were very "liberals" in his aproach to sex compare to medieval and a lot of modern christians) or the greeks (Alexander intermarried his makedons with the locals and strongly support mixing, being an example himself) will act like XX century "blood and soil" and not simply bang every woman or man from every culture, race and religion in their territories who they see as attractive?

[athanaric]

No, I'm saying even those who's ancestors returned from Europe were rarely (genetically) European to begin with. They didn't inter-marry with the native European populations, so didn't pick up their genes.

I understood what you were saying. The ones I was referring to are the Mizrahi Jews (living in North Africa and various places in the Middle East before the founding of Israel), who are distinct from the Ashkenazim in terms of skin colour and history, even if they share much of their genetic heritage. They constitute about a third of Israel's population, IIRC.

athanaric and Quintus, your points are fair enough for me, I understand the logic behind them but I don't agree in some issues.

In the case of the ancient jews being a semitic people then they probably looks in that time loke the middle eastern of today. Why? The reason is the Middle Eastern has not suffer the kind of influence outside his genetic pool (excluding Turkey, of course) in the almost 2.000 years of diaspora compare to other regions in the Mediterranean world, and compare with being outsiders in Europe (like the uralic ascendance of the Magyar, probably the Hungarians of 1.000 Ac were different of the today).

I would dispute that, actually. Although there are pockets of populations that haven't experinced much mixing, the ME has seen quite a few population movements. For one thing, the constant pressure of Arab/Bedouin tribes from the interior regions on the civilized areas; then, the massive import of (black) African slaves that can actually be traced in the matrilineal DNA of many modern Arabs, the import of white European slaves, the migration of Turkic tribes from Central Asia not just into Anatolia, movements of Iranian and Semitic tribes/populations, etc. It's possible that the population changes in the ME were less than in Europe, but they were considerable.

Jews don't mixing or changing is a zionist mith (I mean, like others political-ideological miths, "The Promisse Land", "The people of God", not because the jews are bad but because every state do the same to control the population like the english "burden of the white man" or the american "manifest destiny").

Of course we can't say that they weren't mixing at all, but relatively speaking, they mixed very little. This is evidenced by genetic research, a lot of which is compiled in this thread.

For me genetics do not matter in the scope of the history of society, is the Homo Sapiens who thrive or decay, who build civilizations or destroy them (sometimes both at the same time). Maybe I have a "liberal" point of view but I can accept with no problem the very small role of women in politics and public life trough most history (luckily for humanity a trend over in the near future). But believe genetics have a central rol in the history of mankind is absurd (not for individuals of course or the racist fuelled politics of the last two centuries), and in the individual attraction (the skin, the bodies, even the gender) the limit is the sky.

Archaeogenetics is a very important tool to help us understand history, though. Just like numismatics and the other traditional auxiliary fields of study.

Why do you think the romans (who were very "liberals" in his aproach to sex compare to medieval and a lot of modern christians) or the greeks (Alexander intermarried his makedons with the locals and strongly support mixing, being an example himself) will act like XX century "blood and soil" and not simply bang every woman or man from every culture, race and religion in their territories who they see as attractive?

Sex isn't marriage, though. And the social in-groups in which marriages (particularly arranged ones) typically take place, and which produce the greatest amount of children, were - and are - usually more homogenous than that. Case in point, Alexander's policy of intermarriage may have been strategically wise, but it ended up mostly in failure.

[QuintusSertorius]

HernanU, I suggest you go read up on the current state of human genome research. Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews are a distinct population group. For example:

Ashkenazi Jews settled in central and eastern Europe in the late Middle Ages, but their modern descendants remain genetically more similar to other Jewish populations than to their European neighbors, reflecting shared western Asian origins. In the twentieth century, many Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to Israel or to the Americas in search of greater cultural and religious acceptance. Today, over five million ethnic Ashkenazi Jews live in the U.S.

Not only that, modern Jews in Europe, America and elsewhere often have very high concentrations of those specific sets of genes (80%+) - something that is impossible if there was widespread mixing with the native populations that hosted the Jewish disaspora along the way. That Jews generally didn't intermarry with the nations hosting them is a historical fact backed up by genetic data. I'm not talking about politics here, I'm talking about the science of genetics.

I understood what you were saying. The ones I was referring to are the Mizrahi Jews (living in North Africa and various places in the Middle East before the founding of Israel), who are distinct from the Ashkenazim in terms of skin colour and history, even if they share much of their genetic heritage. They constitute about a third of Israel's population, IIRC.

OK, got you.

[Darios]

That would be Egyptology, not "egiptology".

Cmon, Hernan is a native speaker of a Romance language. These kind of vocabulary mistakes are normal. It's not a big deal. My native language is English, but i have lived long enough in Romania to understand what egiptologie means.

Good lord, man, you are missing out on a brilliant mod, probably the best mod for M2TW, which in no way whatsoever should be tied to the sins of the previous EB for RTW. The team has been very careful to distance itself from the historical inaccuracies of the first. Your unfounded bias against EBII aside, let's stay focused on the thread, shall we? This is an off-topic conversation.

Oh I spent years playing EB1 and I have checked out EB2 once or twice. The teams does amazing work, I have just noticed a bit of bias in their portrayal of ancient history. The thing is, ultimately I am bored of 272 BC and my historical interest is more related to Late Antiquity, the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages. I play Rome 2 to do MP campaigns/battles with friends but that's pretty much it.

Well then why are you here? Making a large post to that effect?

Well, isn't it obvious? You are my friend and whenever I log into TWC I see updates from regarding this thread. The title of the thread is click bait that can push the wrong buttons if you're not careful. I read your re-written Wikipedia article on Cleopatra and I am really impressed, but you should be above discussing racial categories when enlightening us with your deep knowledge of history (some of the best on TWC).

[HernanU]

I'm amazed how race and genetics beggan to be so important in History studies in the XXI century, like in the second half of XIX and the first half of XX centuries. We know how it ends, if there is a "natural" tendency beyond the historical process of human culture then this metaphysical drive could lead us to be differents in definitive way one of each other, maybe even convince the less critics (the majority of the population sadly) to imagine a segregated society to "protect this natural differences".

That would be Egyptology, not "egiptology".

I do a lot of misspelling and gramathical mistakes. I'm an spanish native speaker and my english is far from perfect (my fault) so similar latin words, false equivalents and gramathical transference is common (like "professor of history" instead "history professor"). If I need to search every word because I don't want to do any mistakes then I can't participate in english forums, be reasonable.

Discussions about your job or personal qualifications are completely off-topic and I would advise a mod to remove that statement of yours. Please do not go there or do that again.

My mistake, I wrongly think was relevant. But, if you want to me to "show the academics" is inevitable. My knowledge of the period was adquired in the university almost two decades ago and I have fond memories of the "Ancient History of Asia and Africa", I remember some authors, not all of them, Barry Kemp (I love his books about Egypt), Mario Liverani, Cristina De Bernnardis, Marcelo Campagno, Norman Yofee, Van Der Mieroop, Schwartz, Finkelstein and many others I do not remember. Because some questioned my academic knowledge to speak about this subject I must say this part of my life, I'n not trying to annoy you and I do not think is a reason for a "warning" of report.
But, I'm not an Egytology or Ancient History expert at all so I learn a lot with you guys. I'm writng all the books you recomend and the books used to do this wonderfull mod and I will read them if I can found in my country (academic books often are rare because they do not tend to be "best sellers").

Maybe is better if I do not participate in this debate anymore. I think racism is infectious and need to be fight against, but I don't want to be banned or something like that because I like this forum, his community and even his rules (better than Steam forums were I found a lot of angry teens and trolls). So, cheers and I'm gonna continue to read the posts but in silence.

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm amazed how race and genetics beggan to be so important in History studies in the XXI century, like in the second half of XIX and the first half of XX centuries. We know how it ends, if there is a "natural" tendency beyond the historical process of human culture then this metaphysical drive could lead us to be differents in definitive way one of each other, maybe even convince the less critics (the majority of the population sadly) to imagine a segregated society to "protect this natural differences".

I think the problem here is that you're immediately assuming any discussion of genetics and population groups must be from the perspective of eugenics and of one or other being "better". Never mind that eugenics has a fundamental intrinsic flaw, that "purity" (ie low genetic variance) is actually weakness, not strength. Variety means a much lower incidence of inherited disorders, higher chances of having genes which can cope with unforeseen environmental factors.

If you want a very good example of this in practise, look at the Cavendish banana, which is about as "pure" as you can get. And just one epidemic away from extinction.

[HernanU]

I think the problem here is that you're immediately assuming any discussion of genetics and population groups must be from the perspective of eugenics and of one or other being "better".

I think you're right Quintus, I 'don't believe in neutrality concerning some modern debates and maybe my poinst of view are to strong for this particular discussion. It's because academics are not inmune to politics, not by a long shot, and I believe in participate in the polemics of our time because, if not, bad things could happen in real life.
But I accept that I'm the problem here and I don't want a byzantine discussion or a flame war.

[Roma_Victrix]

Cmon, Hernan is a native speaker of a Romance language. These kind of vocabulary mistakes are normal. It's not a big deal. My native language is English, but i have lived long enough in Romania to understand what egiptologie means.

I wasn't correcting him out of spite. I was correcting his spelling to help him improve his knowledge of English vocab (and just in case anyone else was confused by his spelling). I thought the winking smiley face was enough to convey that, but apparently it was not.

Well, isn't it obvious? You are my friend and whenever I log into TWC I see updates from regarding this thread. The title of the thread is click bait that can push the wrong buttons if you're not careful. I read your re-written Wikipedia article on Cleopatra and I am really impressed, but you should be above discussing racial categories when enlightening us with your deep knowledge of history (some of the best on TWC).

That's just the thing, though. I apparently failed to emphasize this strongly enough in the OP. The thread title is entirely misleading click-bait. I don't actually care about talking about Afrocentrism or how "white" Cleopatra was, unless it has something specific to do with art history and what historians have to say about it. Her ivory white skin in Roman paintings becomes relevant and noteworthy when academics like Susan Walker (2008) compare it along with her other features to the iconography of Venus and other feminine Roman deities. Her physical features in these paintings are important to highlight because it allows us to connect them to her officially-approved imagery: her minted coinage! Unfortunately her Egyptian-style reliefs at the Temple of Dendera don't help us much in determining how she looked and dressed in real life. The Roman depictions, however, steeped in Classical and Hellenistic-era realism, show a very different woman.

I'm amazed how race and genetics beggan to be so important in History studies in the XXI century, like in the second half of XIX and the first half of XX centuries. We know how it ends, if there is a "natural" tendency beyond the historical process of human culture then this metaphysical drive could lead us to be differents in definitive way one of each other, maybe even convince the less critics (the majority of the population sadly) to imagine a segregated society to "protect this natural differences".

That would be an interesting topic for some other thread, but it's certainly not the topic of this thread.

I do a lot of misspelling and gramathical mistakes. I'm an spanish native speaker and my english is far from perfect (my fault) so similar latin words, false equivalents and gramathical transference is common (like "professor of history" instead "history professor"). If I need to search every word because I don't want to do any mistakes then I can't participate in english forums, be reasonable.

No hay problema, mi amigo. Don't worry about it. I wasn't trying to be mean. Again, I thought the smiley face conveyed that.

My mistake, I wrongly think was relevant. But, if you want to me to "show the academics" is inevitable. My knowledge of the period was adquired in the university almost two decades ago and I have fond memories of the "Ancient History of Asia and Africa", I remember some authors, not all of them, Barry Kemp (I love his books about Egypt), Mario Liverani, Cristina De Bernnardis, Marcelo Campagno, Norman Yofee, Van Der Mieroop, Schwartz, Finkelstein and many others I do not remember. Because some questioned my academic knowledge to speak about this subject I must say this part of my life, I'n not trying to annoy you and I do not think is a reason for a "warning" of report.
But, I'm not an Egytology or Ancient History expert at all so I learn a lot with you guys. I'm writng all the books you recomend and the books used to do this wonderfull mod and I will read them if I can found in my country (academic books often are rare because they do not tend to be "best sellers").

Interesting. I'll have to check out these sources. Thanks for sharing.

Maybe is better if I do not participate in this debate anymore. I think racism is infectious and need to be fight against, but I don't want to be banned or something like that because I like this forum, his community and even his rules (better than Steam forums were I found a lot of angry teens and trolls). So, cheers and I'm gonna continue to read the posts but in silence.

No worries, you're not getting banned for anything, not unless you're spamming the board with porn or creating secret alt accounts. I doubt you'd receive an infraction unless you repeatedly did something obnoxious. It's just proper decorum and rules of the TWC TOS (i.e. Terms of Service) not to talk about other forum members directly. Please keep that in mind for the future. You might have the most interesting job in the world, but a thread about Cleopatra and art history is not the place to air these ideas or invite others to discuss them.

While it might make an interesting topic for another thread, I won't comment on the issue of racism in the general public or even academia, because it doesn't have anything to do with my thread. From now on, gentlemen, and I'm addressing everyone here, can we stick to the issue of artworks exclusively? I feel as though this thread has flown off the tracks from its original purpose.