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Thread: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

  1. #21
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by MagusCaligula View Post
    Most people don't care about truth just what fits them better, so they interpret everything as they want. I mean there are descriptions, statues, paintings, dna from many of antiquity and everyone still only see what they want. And that's why all this revisionism exists so that history serves the modern vision of the world.
    An interesting example of this thinking concerned the issue of black people living in Britain in the ancient times.

  2. #22
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Jurand of Cracow View Post
    An interesting example of this thinking concerned the issue of black people living in Britain in the ancient times.
    Going rogue and off-topic in my own thread: no one is refuting that North Africans of the Roman Empire settled in places as far afield as Britannia. At one point there was even a North African Berber governor of Rome's province of Britannia: Quintus Lollius Urbicus

    There is little evidence, however, that black sub-Saharan Africans lived in the northern provinces of the empire, let alone the British Isles. We do have depictions of black Africans in roman mosaics from places like Syria, depicting them as fishermen, shepherds, or slaves. Then there's also the sculpted depiction of Memnon, a foster child of the ethnic Greek Roman Senator Herodes Atticus during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Memnon's features in his bust are clearly sub-Saharan. Yet in all of Roman historiography, there's basically only one reference to an East African, specifically an Ethiopian, in Roman Britain as a soldier stationed there, as mentioned in The Life of Septimius Severus, contained in the Historia Augusta's (written late 4th or early 5th century AD).

    It should be emphasized, as well, that this one black Ethiopian guy was seen as an oddity by the emperor Septimius Severus (while stationed in Roman Britain), himself half-Roman and half-Punic (i.e. Semitic Carthaginian) from North Africa:

    Quote Originally Posted by Historia Augusta
    On another occasion, when he was returning to his nearest quarters from an inspection of the wall at Luguvallum in Britain, at a time when he had not only proved victorious but had concluded a perpetual peace, just as he was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian soldier, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable jester, met him with a garland of cypress-boughs. And when Severus in a rage ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man's ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland, the Ethiopian by way of jest cried, it is said, "You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god."
    So, in essence, despite Mary Beard being a credible academic otherwise, on this particular niche subject she has no clue what she's talking about.

  3. #23
    Ngugi's Avatar TATW & Albion Local Mod
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    Going rogue and off-topic in my own thread
    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    Oh, and if you deviate from this, the wrath of the gods and the thousand moderators of the Persian Empire shall descend upon you.
    Stay on target, stay on target
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Oh.


    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    We're not here to talk about Cleopatra's skin unless it has something to do with an academic debate, such as Walker's comparison of her ivory-white skin and other features in the Pompeii mural to that of common Roman and Ptolemaic-Egyptian depictions of various goddesses.
    What if we want to write Cleopatra poetry though?

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  4. #24
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Ngugi View Post
    Stay on target, stay on target
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



    Oh.
    You got me. The thousand mods of the Persian Empire shall descend upon me.

    What if we want to write Cleopatra poetry though?
    DAS IST VERBOTTEN!!!

    Seriously, it belongs in another thread.

  5. #25

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    You got me. The thousand mods of the Persian Empire shall descend upon me.



    DAS IST VERBOTTEN!!!

    Seriously, it belongs in another thread.



  6. #26

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Jurand of Cracow View Post
    An interesting example of this thinking concerned the issue of black people living in Britain in the ancient times.
    I think MB sold out, or maybe she's just too autistic to comprehend the implications of this issue.

  7. #27

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Y'all really want to see the forum burn, don't you

    What's going to be the next peaceful, totally unattached from the modern world point of discussion? Female empowerment throughout the ages? Mass migration from other cultures and it's impacts? The importance of ethnic cohesion on state-building and peace? Penis size and empire development?!
    Last edited by Severloh; March 15, 2018 at 03:20 PM.

  8. #28

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    It's impossible to discuss history without touch some sensible matters. I guess that's the reason the "History" channel stopped with the documentaries and replaced them with aliens and "historical" fantasy stuff. Or maybe there is another reason...?

  9. #29
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Floren d'Asteneuz View Post
    SO DO YOU!!! THROW HIM OVERBOARD!


    Seriously, though, that was good. I died and peed myself before doing so.

    Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
    I think MB sold out, or maybe she's just too autistic to comprehend the implications of this issue.
    I'm not sure if she understands the difference between North Africans and those south of the Sahara, which is odd given her interest in archaeology and ancient peoples.

    Quote Originally Posted by Severloh View Post
    Y'all really want to see the forum burn, don't you

    What's going to be the next peaceful, totally unattached from the modern world point of discussion? Female empowerment throughout the ages? Mass migration from other cultures and it's impacts? The importance of ethnic cohesion on state-building and peace? Penis size and empire development?!
    So here we have an example of someone who actually didn't bother reading the OP. Bravo, sir. Do you know what the thread is actually about? Or are you just responding to my admittedly click-bait title? The purpose of this thread is to discuss artifacts and ARTWORK, while forming comparisons between them as outlined in academic literature. You'd know that, of course, if you read more than two sentences of my thread. Come back to us when you've done that. Ciao!

  10. #30

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Going back to Roma_Victrix's point re: redheaded Cleopatra, it wouldn't be implausible for red hair to be a Ptolemaic trait (especially due to all the incest). IIRC, Thracians were associated w/ red hair, and they're just a stone's throw away from Macedonia (and the Macedonians weren't particularly prickly when it came to diplomatic marriages/concubinage in general). Given that Greeks and Macedonians (at different times) had reason to distinguish Macedonians from Greeks, red-headedness would've been an easy way to do so.

    Which would mean that we've got an ethnically-distinct, foreign dynasty in an ancient land who maintain their special looks and hair color through incest... The only conclusion can be:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  11. #31
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Dargaron View Post
    Going back to Roma_Victrix's point re: redheaded Cleopatra, it wouldn't be implausible for red hair to be a Ptolemaic trait (especially due to all the incest). IIRC, Thracians were associated w/ red hair, and they're just a stone's throw away from Macedonia (and the Macedonians weren't particularly prickly when it came to diplomatic marriages/concubinage in general). Given that Greeks and Macedonians (at different times) had reason to distinguish Macedonians from Greeks, red-headedness would've been an easy way to do so.
    Excellent points, sir. I'm sure a small amount of southern Greeks had red hair as well, given the large amount of Thracians living in Greece, even in Athens, but the concentration must have been higher in northern Greece, in Macedonia, which was closer to the orbit and center of Thracian civilization and Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. There was also the exclusive nature of many southern poleis to consider, as they were very guarded about the rules of citizenship and intermarriage with those outside of their city-state. This wouldn't have been as much of an issue for northern Greece, outside of maybe Amphipolis and a few cities.

    The depiction of Cleopatra with red hair at Herculaneum could simply be following an artistic trope in Macedonian and Greek art depicting figures with red hair, or indeed the earlier southern Italian (i.e. Magna Graecia) Greek tradition of having various blonde figures in their painted pottery. For instance, this 4th-century BC krater pelike vase from Apulia, southern Italy:

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


    Which would mean that we've got an ethnically-distinct, foreign dynasty in an ancient land who maintain their special looks and hair color through incest... The only conclusion can be:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Indeed, where are they?

  12. #32
    Spartan198's Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    OP's lying, those are just pictures of his mom at work at the Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas.

  13. #33
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Spartan198 View Post
    OP's lying, those are just pictures of his mom at work at the Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas.
    That's a really fancy way of saying my mom's a stripper. I guess that means my mom is a double amputee missing both arms too, given the damaged state of the statue of the Esquiline Venus.

  14. #34

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    That's a really fancy way of saying my mom's a stripper. I guess that means my mom is a double amputee missing both arms too, given the damaged state of the statue of the Esquiline Venus.
    Hey, some people are into that kind of stuff. There's no accounting for taste...

  15. #35

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    The first picture is clearly photoshopped: That's not Cleopatra, I can see the pixels.

    Something seemed off about the statue pictures in the first post, and now that I've looked at some of Cleopatra VII's coins, I think I know what's bugging me: her coins almost always show her with a rather prominent chin. Some of them are almost comical in how pointy her chin is. But the Venus in particular has a very smooth face-profile (at least, from the angle of the image) Compare THIS w/ the images in the first post. The nose is another oddity: I'm not seeing the downward pointing shape that we see in the coinage. Numismatics!

    What's the rationale for attributing the Esquiline Venus as Cleopatra? The OP says there's good reason: is it because of the context in which it was found?

  16. #36
    Spartan198's Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    That's a really fancy way of saying my mom's a stripper. I guess that means my mom is a double amputee missing both arms too, given the damaged state of the statue of the Esquiline Venus.
    I'm only messing with you.

  17. #37
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Dargaron View Post
    The first picture is clearly photoshopped: That's not Cleopatra, I can see the pixels.
    Lol. This is myopically stupid. Thanks, I lost some brain cells today. Bravo! The picture comes directly from
    Walker, Susan. "Cleopatra in Pompei?" in Papers of the British School at Rome, 76 (2008), pp. 35-46 and 345-8.
    , which you can look at and read for yourself (the image itself appearing on p. 347).

    Any more bright ideas for us, then, Sherlock Holmes?

    Something seemed off about the statue pictures in the first post, and now that I've looked at some of Cleopatra VII's coins, I think I know what's bugging me: her coins almost always show her with a rather prominent chin. Some of them are almost comical in how pointy her chin is. But the Venus in particular has a very smooth face-profile (at least, from the angle of the image) Compare THIS w/ the images in the first post. The nose is another oddity: I'm not seeing the downward pointing shape that we see in the coinage. Numismatics!

    What's the rationale for attributing the Esquiline Venus as Cleopatra? The OP says there's good reason: is it because of the context in which it was found?
    Well now you're finally saying something smart (which was strongly suggested in the OP).

    Scholars still wrangle over the Esquiline Venus, with some saying that the facial features are similar to those in the Berlin bust (pictured in the OP), and others saying they are not. Cleopatra's coinage produces its own problems, because scholars agree that her very masculine facial features seem to conform to those of her father's, Ptolemy XII Auletes, and are a lot less smooth than her sculpted images. Notice also how not only her facial features seem to conform to her Macedonian ancestors, but also Mark Antony as well, whose portrait in minted coins with Cleopatra suddenly show Antony with a similar nose and chin. This is unlike other coinage portraits of Antony, such as those minted with Octavian, and for that matter differs from his sculpted busts.

    Other arguments in favor of the Esquiline Venus depicting Cleopatra (however flawed or idealized) include the distinctive "melon" hairstyle of hers worn back into a bun, the obvious royal diadem worn over her head (not too many other female monarchs running around with that sort of regalia), and the Uraeus Egyptian cobra wrapped around the base of the vase. The Uraeus was a common royal symbol of the Egyptian pharaohs and were not associated at all with Venus/Aphrodite. I find the arguments of the detractors to be pretty weak, that Cleopatra wouldn't have been depicted as a naked goddess. If the statue was commissioned in Hellenistic Egypt, and is only a Roman copy a century later (as is generally believed), then that argument of theirs is retarded, because we have statues of her wearing the most revealing translucent garb in Egyptian style, as the goddess Isis, that no one in Egypt clearly cared about (or at least they didn't voice their prudish dissent publicly, that we know of). In fact, the very encaustic painting of her commissioned by Augustus, now lost but preserved in a 19th-century steel engraving and archaeological report, clearly shows her with bare breasts as she's being bitten by an asp. Thus even the Romans depicted her in the nude and seemed to have no qualms about it.

    And this is Augustus we're talking about, one of the major moralistic prudes of the era.

  18. #38

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    I was joking, good sir. I can get a little acid sometimes, and I forget that this is the internet, and you can't always tell whether or not we're being ironic. I'm sorry about that, and I had a good fun in the discussion as a whole.

    And by the way, don't ignore the power of penis size and economic development: there is a legit academic article about it

    https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/...9/maleorga.pdf

  19. #39

    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    You guys can analyze coinage and artwork all you want but I don't think we'll truly know if Cleopatra was white or not until we can measure her skull with a nice set of calipers.

  20. #40
    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Cleopatra was white and I can prove it

    Quote Originally Posted by Tuuvi View Post
    You guys can analyze coinage and artwork all you want but I don't think we'll truly know if Cleopatra was white or not until we can measure her skull with a nice set of calipers.
    This guy knows his phrenology.

    More exciting artwork and analysis by Duane W. Roller (2010), who continues to steamroll the naysayers into the dirt, and Susan Walker (2004), whose boots are gonna walk all over you...sorry for the bad puns.

    As outlined by Roller, this 1st-century-AD Roman painting from Pompeii most likely depicts Cleopatra VII, in a royal diadem, consuming poison and committing suicide as her anachronistically-older-looking son Caesarion (who was only 17) stands behind her.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R...ing_poison.jpg


    As outlined by Walker (and Roller), the famous Portland Vase in the British Museum can also be interpreted as depicting Cleopatra (with a serpent) and Mark Antony on one side (with his disapproving forefather Anton looking on), while the other side is occupied by Octavia the Younger, the abandoned wife of Antony, being watched over by her brother Octavian, who was most likely emperor Augustus by the time this work of art was commissioned (so sometime between 27 BC and 14 AD).


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