Netflix's Cleopatra

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

• As probably literally anyone on this site could tell you, the Seleucids were a Hellenistic dynasty like the Ptolemies. However, unlike the Ptolemies, they did have partial native ancestry; specifically, Antiochus I Soter was half-Iranian on his mother's side. Incidentally, Seleucus was the only groom from the Susa weddings who did not divorce his Persian wife after Alexander's death (except Hephaestion, but he was a bit too dead to divorce anyone), which says a lot about the attitude of Macedonian nobility towards foreigners (Alexander himself had issues because his mother was an Epirote, and they're at least Hellenic).

And that is not true. It is a claim of 19./early 20. century historians, that all diadochs except Seleukos divorced from their persian and median wifes. There is not a single ancient source, which is making such a claim.

THE SUSA MARRIAGES — A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE on JSTOR

Thats a conclusion made by conflating their own societal norms with the norms of the hellenistic period. For example there was no need to get divorced as the macedonian nobility wasn't monogamous. You could marry other women, if you got a political bonus from it or were really in love. It was accepted to have a second wife. Why get your support in danger as Diadoch by insulting the local persian-median nobility?

Examples: Philipp II or Pyrrhus

What's right, is that the Seleucids were better in making good diplomatic relationships with their near eastern neighbours by wedding diplomacy (for example Pontos, Armenia, Maurya Empire).

[Laser101]

And that is not true. It is a claim of 19./early 20. century historians, that all diadochs except Seleukos divorced from their persian and median wifes. There is not a single ancient source, which is making such a claim.

THE SUSA MARRIAGES — A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE on JSTOR

Thats a conclusion made by conflating their own societal norms with the norms of the hellenistic period. For example there was no need to get divorced as the macedonian nobility wasn't monogamous. You could marry other women, if you get a political bonus from it or you really love another woman.

Examples: Philipp II or Pyrrhus

What's right, is that the Seleucids were better in making good diplomatic relationships with their near eastern neighbours by wedding diplomacy (for example Pontos, Armenia, Maurya Empire).

Point taken.

Although regarding Ptolemy I at least, he did not have any known children with his Persian wife Artakama, unlike his other two known (Greek) wives Eurydice and Berenice or his mistress Thais, all of whom bore him multiple children. Maybe that's where the notion that he divorced her comes from?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Probably yes. Ptolemaios would have no bonus from maintaining the marriage with Artakama too. We don't know for certain, as obvious there was nothing for contemporary greek historians to report about her.

[Kyriakos]

"One day we may hear Kanye West say: 'I don't care what they teach you in school, Hitler was black'"

[Laser101]

Probably yes. Ptolemaios would have no bonus from maintaining the marriage with Artakama too. We don't know for certain, as obvious there was nothing for contemporary greek historians to report about her.

Perhaps 'set aside' might be more accurate than 'divorced' then. It's quite possible he had no further relationship with her even if they were not formally divorced.

Incidentally, did the southern Greeks allow polygamy? The Macedonians clearly did, and AFAIK the Romans did not.

[Roma_Victrix]

Nitpick; Champa and the Vietnamese are different, and the latter conquered the former before the French even showed up.

Yes, this is true, but I was also trying to be as anachronistic as possible. Also, while they were culturally different and spoke Chamic languages rather than Vietnamese, you can't really divorce Champa from the history of Vietnam considering they were (while admittedly also Hindu) a similar Buddhist kingdom to Dai Viet that controlled the southern half of the country for centuries (and for a millennium it was a series of Imperial Chinese dynasties in control of the northern half).

So the director decided to put out an article in Variety regarding the controversy around her project, and to be blunt it is basically an embodiment of the phrase "digging yourself deeper". To comment on some of the 'highlights':
I would agree Cleopatra probably wasn't as white as Elizabeth Taylor, but that's because Elizabeth Taylor is British-American, and most people from northern or north-western Europe are much paler than Mediterranean peoples like the Greeks or Egyptians. However, she's still closer than a West African (which is the origin of most African-Americans). On the other hand, Gal Gadot, an olive-toned Israeli, is much closer in appearance to a Greek in Egypt (although the Egyptians would probably not like her either, but that's for... different reasons).

Yes, but with that being said, even Elizabeth Taylor didn't look radically different from Greek actresses of the 1960s if you Google "Greek actresses, 1960s". I think they should have used a Greek actress, but the world is not a just place, and Hollywood wanted someone with pure star power. The director is simply making glib excuses and knows that she is trolling.

As probably literally anyone on this site could tell you, the Seleucids were a Hellenistic dynasty like the Ptolemies. However, unlike the Ptolemies, they did have partial native ancestry; specifically, Antiochus I Soter was half-Iranian on his mother's side. Incidentally, Seleucus was the only groom from the Susa weddings who did not divorce his Persian wife after Alexander's death (except Hephaestion, but he was a bit too dead to divorce anyone), which says a lot about the attitude of Macedonian nobility towards foreigners (Alexander himself had issues because his mother was an Epirote, and they're at least Hellenic).

This has been addressed above by Morticia, but in either case the general rule of thumb that the Seleucids were more open to Iranian culture and embracing intermarriage still stands in contrast to the far more insular Ptolemies when it came to the native Egyptians or any other group. That cycle of fairly strict incestuous marriages or simply marrying other prominent Macedonian noblewomen was broken only when Cleopatra shacked up with two different Latin Romans from Italy, Julius Caesar as an informal lover, and Marcus Antonius as a formal husband (creating political consequences in both cases).

The Arab invasions did not completely replace (or even mostly replace) the Egyptian population, so the assertion that the Arab invasion had not happened by Cleopatra's time is kind of irrelevant. Actually, the largest Sub-Saharan component in modern Egyptian ancestry post-dates the Arab conquest (I think?)
Who uses the term 'melanated sister'? It just sounds really weird.

The most ridiculous part about this is that the director is Iranian; she really should know better what MENA people generally look like (although the producer is black American, unsurprisingly).

Black Nubians maintained a minority presence in Egypt going back to the Bronze Age even before New Kingdom Egypt conquered the Kerma culture, but yes, genomic analysis of mummies indicates both commoners and royalty were North African (with strong affinity to Levantine and Anatolian groups in the Eastern Mediterranean) rather than Sub-Saharan African. If you look at a list of DNA-tested mummies, though, some of the listed mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups overlap with East African population groups in the Horn of Africa. What is clear is that the Rashidun Arabs did not kill or displace everyone in Byzantine era Egypt, and neither did later groups like the Turkic Mamluks or Ottoman Turks. The Coptic language preserved in Egypt's Orthodox Church is also a direct descendant of ancient Egyptian, which formed its own branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (closely related to Semitic languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Amharic).

The reason the show director is doing this is because she has to make up a reason why her Greek-descended pharaohs are all black, by virtue of intermarrying with Egyptians who she also assumes were black. I mean, they even made Ptolemy XII Auletes into an East African looking guy. LOL. The modern speculative and unproven scholarly hypothesis is that Cleopatra's mother was maybe part Egyptian via a marriage with the priestly family of Ptah at Memphis, not that Ptolemy XII Auletes was black or even native Egyptian. By all accounts he was a nauseatingly typical effeminate Greek by Roman standards, a ruler who spent too much time practicing music on his Dionysiac flute. For that matter Plutarch stated that Cleopatra was plain and not particularly beautiful for the standards of the day, while mentioning nothing about her skin color. You'd think if she was Nubian he would have commented on that, let alone someone like her detractor Cicero who met her face-to-face in Rome while pestering her about letting him borrow books from the Library of Alexandria.

Regarding the sword-fighting scene; first, what is the man wearing? That is not Hellenistic soldier attire. It looks more some kind of Arab clothing, but I'm not really knowledgeable about the matter. Second, what are the swords? They might be kopises (which would be correct), but it also looks like they might be scimitars, which AFAIK were not used in the Middle East until their introduction by the Turks about a thousand years after this point. Unless of course they're meant to be a ridiculously anachronistic khopesh (like GoT's silly depiction of the Dothraki arakh).

Yes, almost everything about the sets, costumes, and gear are anachronistic and not authentic to the Hellenistic period in Egypt. They deliberately made this choice to depict Alexandria like a native Egyptian city rather than a Greek polis founded by Alexander. Native Egyptian cities continued looking traditional as they had for thousands of years and the Ptolemies even encouraged this by sponsoring temple complexes like Dendera, but Alexandria itself looked like a Greek city (albeit grander than most with a gigantic lighthouse, an ancient skyscraper that put the lighthouse at Piraeus outside Athens to shame).

In general, good depictions of the Hellenistic period (or depictions of the period in general) seem to be rare in popular culture (to my admittedly limited knowledge). For an example, Bret Devereaux's blog featured this post last year regarding a game set in the 1st century BC featuring Classical-style hoplites and RTW1-esque "Mummy Returns Egyptians". This seems odd to me, since one would think that the successor wars (specifically the 50 or so years after Alexander's death) are practically begging for a big-budget drama series.

The film Agora (2009) about the female philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) does a decent job showing Roman era Alexandria as it existed in the early 5th century AD during the decline of paganism and rise of Christianity after Constantine. The city is a multicultural mish-mash of Latin Romans, Romanized Greeks, Romanized Native Egyptians, Jews, Nubians, and others. While the set pieces are refreshingly authentic from what I remember, the plot also contained a bunch of silly anachronisms, and some of the claims about Hypatia's scientific discoveries were totally false. I guess you won't find a perfect film after all!

[Laser101]

This has been addressed above by Morticia, but in either case the general rule of thumb that the Seleucids were more open to Iranian culture and embracing intermarriage still stands in contrast to the far more insular Ptolemies when it came to the native Egyptians or any other group. That cycle of fairly strict incestuous marriages or simply marrying other prominent Macedonian noblewomen was broken only when Cleopatra shacked up with two different Latin Romans from Italy, Julius Caesar as an informal lover, and Marcus Antonius as a formal husband (creating political consequences in both cases).

Presumably this was less of a problem because by this point Ptolemaic Egypt was a de facto Roman protectorate.

The reason the show director is doing this is because she has to make up a reason why her Greek-descended pharaohs are all black, by virtue of intermarrying with Egyptians who she also assumes were black. I mean, they even made Ptolemy XII Auletes into an East African looking guy. LOL. The modern speculative and unproven scholarly hypothesis is that Cleopatra's mother was maybe part Egyptian via a marriage with the priestly family of Ptah at Memphis, not that Ptolemy XII Auletes was black or even native Egyptian. By all accounts he was a nauseatingly typical effeminate Greek by Roman standards, a ruler who spent too much time practicing music on his Dionysiac flute. For that matter Plutarch stated that Cleopatra was plain and not particularly beautiful for the standards of the day, while mentioning nothing about her skin color. You'd think if she was Nubian he would have commented on that, let alone someone like her detractor Cicero who met her face-to-face in Rome while pestering her about letting him borrow books from the Library of Alexandria.

The idea of Cleopatra VII's mother being anyone other than Cleopatra V runs into a bit of an issue. Given that Ptolemy XII had no other known wives, this would imply that Cleopatra VII (and presumably her siblings) was illegitimate. Since claimed illegitimacy had been the cause of a diplomatic crisis with Rome early in Ptolemy XII's reign, you would think that if Cleopatra VII were known to be illegitimate, Octavian would have brought that up in propaganda.

(Incidentally, I only just learned this about Ptolemy XII reading through Wiki pages. Also, the Ptolemies, like a lot of royal families, were really uninventive when it came to names, which leads to fun details like whether or not Cleopatra VI even existed or is simply the same person as Cleopatra V).


I also found this blog post from one of the project contributors (specifically the one who says "Cleopatra was black"), linked from this one. What immediately jumps out at me is that Haley apparently cares more about identity-based validation than factual accuracy.

[conon394]

but Alexandria itself looked like a Greek city (albeit grander than most with a gigantic lighthouse, an ancient skyscraper that put the lighthouse at Piraeus outside Athens to shame)

Did they put a lighthouse? I was thinking Athens was famous for the tower of the winds - a clock tower.

Yes, almost everything about the sets, costumes, and gear are anachronistic and not authentic to the Hellenistic period in Egypt. They deliberately made this choice to depict Alexandria like a native Egyptian city rather than a Greek polis founded by Alexander. Native Egyptian cities continued looking traditional as they had for thousands of years and the Ptolemies even encouraged this by sponsoring temple complexes like Dendera, but Alexandria itself looked like a Greek city (albeit grander than most with a gigantic lighthouse, an ancient skyscraper that put the lighthouse at Piraeus outside Athens to shame).

I guess doubling down on Historical inaccuracy is a thing.

[Roma_Victrix]

Did they put a lighthouse? I was thinking Athens was famous for the tower of the winds - a clock tower.

The Tower of the Winds clocktower was built in Athens circa 50 BC under Roman rule. That is significantly later than the lighthouse at Athens' port of Piraeus built by Themistocles in the 5th century BC. It wasn't an impressive ancient-style skyscraper, though, unlike the Colossus of Rhodes statue and Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was just a modest one. Refer to the following source: Elinor Dewire and Dolores Reyes-Pergioudakis (2010). The Lighthouses of Greece. Sarasota: Pineapple Press, pp 1-5.

I guess doubling down on Historical inaccuracy is a thing.

Unfortunately, yes! I at least enjoyed Agora, though. They didn't do anything massively stupid or controversial in deviating from history.

Presumably this was less of a problem because by this point Ptolemaic Egypt was a de facto Roman protectorate.

Yes, the Roman Republic was the master of the Mediterranean by the lifetime of Julius Caesar, and while Latin Romans weren't Greeks, the Greeks considered them as somewhat honorary Greeks who were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games that usually only included fellow Greeks (even the so-called semi-barbarous Macedonians during the reign of Philip II had to prove their Greekness by way of Argive lineage to the Hellanodikai authorities before entering, but this was no longer a thing for Macedonians by the time of the death of Alexander the Great). It's important to note that Romans were allowed to enter the Olympic Games before they controlled Greece for that matter, around the time they invaded and quelled Illyria in the Balkans as one of the first provinces outside of mainland Italy (the other being Sicily).

The idea of Cleopatra VII's mother being anyone other than Cleopatra V runs into a bit of an issue. Given that Ptolemy XII had no other known wives, this would imply that Cleopatra VII (and presumably her siblings) was illegitimate. Since claimed illegitimacy had been the cause of a diplomatic crisis with Rome early in Ptolemy XII's reign, you would think that if Cleopatra VII were known to be illegitimate, Octavian would have brought that up in propaganda.

(Incidentally, I only just learned this about Ptolemy XII reading through Wiki pages. Also, the Ptolemies, like a lot of royal families, were really uninventive when it came to names, which leads to fun details like whether or not Cleopatra VI even existed or is simply the same person as Cleopatra V).

Yes, the historical sources are spotty and muddled, but Strabo is the only ancient historian who indirectly suggested Cleopatra VII Philopator and Ptolemy XII Auletes' later children were born out of wedlock or to another royal wife than Cleopatra VI Tryphaena. It is most likely that Cleopatra shared the same mother with her older sister Berenice IV. Cleo VI simply seems to have become estranged with Ptolemy XII Auletes and drops from historical records in the year after Cleo's birth. It seems as though she allied with her daughter Berenice IV when the latter rebelled against her father and temporarily exiled him and Cleo VII from Egypt for a couple years (until the Romans under Gabinianus, praetor Roman governor of Syria, restored Auletes to power by helping to defeat Berenice IV). It also seems as though Berenice IV might have killed her own mother before her father in turn had her killed, or Cleo VI died of natural causes, because there is no mention of Ptolemy XII Auletes having his estranged wife killed, only his enemy daughter Berenice.

What a messed up family! LOL.

I also found this blog post from one of the project contributors (specifically the one who says "Cleopatra was black"), linked from this one. What immediately jumps out at me is that Haley apparently cares more about identity-based validation than factual accuracy.

I honestly couldn't make it past the first paragraph of either blog post without rolling my eyes, so kudos to you for providing a summary.

In either case, academia is fairly consistent on the matter of offering up the speculation but saying that the overall consensus is that there is no evidence Cleopatra VII Philopator's mother was native Egyptian and was likely just Cleopatra VI Tryphaena. Almost every major biography of the queen published in the past three decades says the same thing, from Burstein (2004) to Roller (2010), Fletcher (2008) to Goldsworthy (2010), or Bradford (2000) to Schiff (2011). Scholars like Sally-Ann Ashton who argue frequently for a partially native mother are still very much in the minority of voices on the matter, yet for some reason I almost always see her name being cited in pop articles as the foremost authority on the matter.

[Infidel144]

I also found this blog post from one of the project contributors (specifically the one who says "Cleopatra was black"), linked from this one. What immediately jumps out at me is that Haley apparently cares more about identity-based validation than factual accuracy.

From Haley's blog post:
"I wish we could put an end to the wretched misunderstanding of sibling marriages among the pharaoh class of ancient Egypt."

What "wretched misunderstanding"?

[conon394]

The Tower of the Winds clocktower was built in Athens circa 50 BC under Roman rule. That is significantly later than the lighthouse at Athens' port of Piraeus built by Themistocles in the 5th century BC. It wasn't an impressive ancient-style skyscraper, though, unlike the Colossus of Rhodes statue and Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was just a modest one.Refer to the following source: Elinor Dewire and DoloresReyes-Pergioudakis (2010). The Lighthouses of Greece. Sarasotaineapple Press, pp 1-5.

Yes I know the tower of winds is later but its only sort of comparable famous tower that jumped to mind. You sure on your source. Garlands "The Piraeus from the fifth to the first century" is silent on the ideal. Could the source be coflating the signal tower systems? I know of references to them (Thuc 2.94 for example). Would be nice if they sourced there reference but I don't see in the google book preview.

------------------------

From Haley's blog post:
"I wish we could put an end to the wretched misunderstanding of sibling marriages among the pharaoh class of ancient Egypt."

What "wretched misunderstanding"?

So the actual history of of the Ptolemaic dynasty is just a big misunderstanding??? You know I would like the history were Nicas not Lamachus gets killed at Syracuse or where Theagenes cuts down Alexander at Chaeronea and routed the Macedonian wing. But umm I can just make it up and claim real history is a misunderstanding. I mean I can if making a work of art and alternative time line and but umm if I claiming to make a documentary I really am sorta constrained by facts.

[Infidel144]

So the actual history of of the Ptolemaic dynasty is just a big misunderstanding??? You know I would like the history were Nicas not Lamachus gets killed at Syracuse or where Theagenes cuts down Alexander at Chaeronea and routed the MAcedonian wing. But umm I can just make it and claim real history is a misunderstanding. I mean I can if making a work of art and alternative time line and but umm if I claiming to make a documentary I really am sorta constrained by facts.

I think she might be referring to more than just Ptolemaic dynasty, but going back through the habit of inbreeding in the prior Egyptian dynasties.
Thinking about it, I have noticed some (I presume east) Africans mocking or criticizing American afrocentrists for wanting to claim bunch incestuous people as their own.

[conon394]

I think she might be referring to more than just Ptolemaic dynasty, but going back through the habit of inbreeding in the prior Egyptian dynasties.
Thinking about it, I have noticed some (I presume east) Africans mocking or criticizing American afrocentrists for wanting to claim bunch incestuous people as their own.

Ahh. Still a strange comment. edit:

"Ihave also noticed a begrudging acceptance that as an Egyptian,Cleopatra was a woman of African descent. But with that also comesanother disturbing trend: the notion that she was ugly!"

Err on the first from whom, she is clearly of inbred Macedonian decent. But Nobody called her ugly. Not Plutarch what he says is it was not some uncanny beauty that made her interesting.

[Roma_Victrix]

Yes I know the tower of winds is later but its only sort of comparable famous tower that jumped to mind. You sure on your source. Garlands "The Piraeus from the fifth to the first century" is silent on the ideal. Could the source be coflating the signal tower systems? I know of references to them (Thuc 2.94 for example). Would be nice if they sourced there reference but I don't see in the google book preview.

Hmm. I was simply referring to Wikipedia and had read the claim long ago, never checking up on the veracity of it since it has gone unchallenged for so long. Looks like they might be conflating it with signal tower systems, because this scholarly source (Smithsonian) mentions the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria as the first known proper lighthouse in history. It makes no mention of a beacon tower at Piraeus.

I think she might be referring to more than just Ptolemaic dynasty, but going back through the habit of inbreeding in the prior Egyptian dynasties.
Thinking about it, I have noticed some (I presume east) Africans mocking or criticizing American afrocentrists for wanting to claim bunch incestuous people as their own.

Yes, wishing something were true is certainly not the prerogative of a historian or documentarian. I'm trying to wrap my head around their ahistorical asinine argument; are they saying that subsequent generations of sibling incest couldn't have possibly produced individuals who were physically and mentally healthy or capable enough to sit on the throne? For that matter the Ptolemies didn't practice entirely brother-sister pairings for generations on end; they occasionally married foreigners like Queen Cleopatra I Syra, formerly a princess of the Seleucid dynasty. Ptolemy II and his sister Arsinoe II didn't even have children together; she simply adopted his children from the previous marriage to Arsinoe I.

We know damn well as a fact that dynasties in Egypt practiced incest, as evidenced by mummies such as Tutankhamun.

Ahh. Still a strange comment. edit:

"Ihave also noticed a begrudging acceptance that as an Egyptian,Cleopatra was a woman of African descent. But with that also comesanother disturbing trend: the notion that she was ugly!"

Err on the first from whom, she is clearly of inbred Macedonian decent. But Nobody called her ugly. Not Plutarch what he says is it was not some uncanny beauty that made her interesting.

Yeah, Plutarch only mentioned how she wasn't a remarkable beauty, not that she was ugly. He simply said her appeal lay in her ability to charm with her famous sharp wit and alluring personality. Either way, she was a client queen of an enormously wealthy kingdom. It's obvious why she was able to attract the two known Roman statesmen she slept with for producing heirs.

[conon394]

Hmm. I was simply referring toWikipedia and had read the claim long ago, never checking up on theveracity of it since it has gone unchallenged for so long. Looks likethey might be conflating it with signal tower systems, because thisscholarly source (Smithsonian) mentions the Pharos Lighthouse ofAlexandria as the first known proper lighthouse in history. It makesno mention of a beacon tower at Piraeus.

I wonder if they just conflated the common references to Athens having bacons with the mention in Comedy and Drama that the glinting from the big outdoor Athena stature on the Acropolis (with golden spear and shield) could be seen by sailors. On clear day from say when you rounded Sunium.

[Laser101]

I honestly couldn't make it past the first paragraph of either blog post without rolling my eyes, so kudos to you for providing a summary.

That wasn't a summary, that was a first impression. Haley's post doesn't warrant much analysis in my opinion; it's ridiculously self-absorbed (by which I mean, she basically makes it entirely about how something makes her feel rather than any actual historical argument).

In the Medium blog post, the two most prominent threads are a) Ancient Greece didn't have our conception of race and b) Egypt's 'Africanness' is being denied.
An example of the first point is the following:

Comments under the petition show a range of takes on the topic, all of which oppose the idea that ‘Cleopatra was Black’. What strikes me is the number of people claiming she was ‘Greek’. What does Greek mean here? A modern bioracial category (= ‘Whiteness’)? An ethnicity? A cultural identity? A continental belonging (‘Western Europe’ or, with its settler colonial expansions, ‘the West’)? One thing is sure: The good old debate as to whether Alexander and the Macedonian dynasties that ruled parts of his empire ‘belong’ to Greece or to Macedonia is alive and well.

This is another motte-and-bailey argument. While it is true that the modern construction of race didn't exist in antiquity, the Greeks definitely had a concept of ethnic identity. They even had a well-established literary tradition of ethnography (with varying levels of accuracy). So they definitely had a notion of 'Greek' and 'not Greek', even if (as with the Macedonians) this could sometimes be a bit 'fuzzy' (as matters of identity often are).

For a case of the second point:

Q: Why do you think present-day Egyptians take issue with depictions of Cleopatra as Black?
There is a strong strand of anti-blackness in the Arab world that manifests in the desire to differentiate between MENA (Middle Eastern/North African) and “sub-Saharan”. The term “sub-Saharan” is relatively new and only emerged in the 1940s, so it seems to also reflect a strengthening of Egyptian nationalism and attempts to be not viewed as “Third World” or associated with the “backwardness” of Africa (see here and here). But, again, it is because of the strong ethno-nationalist way we tend to construct identities in the modern world. It isn’t just Egyptians, however. We see it with figures like Nassim Taleb, who have pushed back on the “blackwashing” of the pre-Arab ancient world (like with the Mary Beard-Taleb BBC Cartoon debacle back in 2017). That pushback is not rooted in historical evidence, but in a misapplication of genetics.

This doesn't make much sense. Yes, Egypt is indeed in Africa. However, that's basically the same as asserting a connection between (say) Syrians and Koreans because they are both in Asia. There are rather significant cultural and ancestral distinctions between North Africa and the rest of the continent, because of the Sahara desert presenting a formidable travel barrier. This isn't quite true in the East, but there's a reason why the traditional southern border of Egypt in antiquity was the first cataract of the Nile (where the Aswan dam is); it marked the point where boats could not easily continue up-river. That North Africa was historically more connected to Southern Europe and the Middle East than to West Africa is not a Eurocentric point of view; it's simply because the Mediterranean is far more permissive of travel than the Sahara.

In either case, academia is fairly consistent on the matter of offering up the speculation but saying that the overall consensus is that there is no evidence Cleopatra VII Philopator's mother was native Egyptian and was likely just Cleopatra VI Tryphaena. Almost every major biography of the queen published in the past three decades says the same thing, from Burstein (2004) to Roller (2010), Fletcher (2008) to Goldsworthy (2010), or Bradford (2000) to Schiff (2011). Scholars like Sally-Ann Ashton who argue frequently for a partially native mother are still very much in the minority of voices on the matter, yet for some reason I almost always see her name being cited in pop articles as the foremost authority on the matter.

Unsurprisingly, I think Netflix cited Ashton as a source.

[Alastor]

Oh no, not this trash again ^^
Ptolemaic Egypt was heavily segregated. To claim Cleopatra was sub-saharan is as serious as to claim Achilles was black. End of story

It's already been established by other credible documentaries that Achilles was in fact black, just like most ancient Greeks:
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/...rs-greek-myth/
Stop whitewashing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[alhoon]

It's already been established by other credible documentaries that Achilles was in fact black, just like most ancient Greeks:
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/...rs-greek-myth/
Stop whitewashing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ah. A good example of how blackwashing history works, in the backs of idiotic, biased progressives. I am 90% that the person that wrote that article is a white person.

[Abdülmecid I]

Achilles wasn't Greek though, unless the Olympian Pantheon had managed to obtain the Greek nationality. The rules are pretty strict, you don't necessarily get it, even if you are born here, so I doubt it. In all seriousness, BBC's Achilles was part of a TV-series about a fictional event, full of mythical figures, and not a documentary on a historical queen/king, so I don't think the same rules apply. It's fair to criticize historical documentaries for their inaccuracies or distortions, like in regards to Hannibal or the black legionary in Roman Britain (although I find it a tad suspicious that the criticism usually does not extend to the rest of the shows' inaccuracies), but that kind of reactions are hardly justified, when it comes to works of fiction, be it the Little Mermaid or the Iliad.

[Laser101]

Achilles wasn't Greek though, unless the Olympian Pantheon had managed to obtain the Greek nationality. The rules are pretty strict, you don't necessarily get it, even if you are born here, so I doubt it. In all seriousness, BBC's Achilles was part of a TV-series about a fictional event, full of mythical figures, and not a documentary on a historical queen/king, so I don't think the same rules apply. It's fair to criticize historical documentaries for their inaccuracies or distortions, like in regards to Hannibal or the black legionary in Roman Britain (although I find it a tad suspicious that the criticism usually does not extend to the rest of the shows' inaccuracies), but that kind of reactions are hardly justified, when it comes to works of fiction, be it the Little Mermaid or the Iliad.

Well, that's certainly valid for the Little Mermaid, given that isn't human (really, she should be countershaded like most pelagic animals). Achilles is a bit different, since while he is a mythical figure, his father at least is stated explicitly in the text to be a Greek king (his mother is a water nymph, so anything goes there). Peleus at least therefore (and presumably by extension Achilles) would look Greek. A similar point could be raised e.g. for Beowulf, who is mythical figure but one who is explicitly a member of the Geats, a historical Norse tribe in southern Sweden, so it would be strange for him to be anything other than Northern European in appearance. Depictions of gods and the such are fair game though since they aren't human.