1- Due to a lifetime of Eurocentric history classes (and popular cultural portrayals of history/historical figures) it was confirmed to me that everything of importance in the current and historical world has been directly due to (or influenced by) whites.
2 - Then came my liberal awakenings to the racist paradigms of popular culture and the outright white washing of history by a race minded (and racialist leaning) patriarchical white majority (collectively known as “the man”).
3 - Then after reading sober scholars like Mary Lefkowitz I decided that Afrocentism might not be the most stable philosophic/historical ideology to attach my trailer to…
4 - And finally just today I read that Cleopatra had an African mother! WTF! The fact that Cleopatra had Greek roots was the base of a lot of the fighting between these Anti/pro Areocentrisim factions. Who can I trust??!?
…Alright enough with my silly tongue-in-cheek narrative but seriously what does this story mean for Afrocentrics? What does it mean for our understanding of Cleopatra? Does it mean anything? What’s your opinion? I don’t really know enough about history to have a strong opinion.
African is not the same as “black”. Take a look at the people who live in Egypt today. Are they black or white? Or neither or both? Or is that the wrong question to ask?
The people who lived in Egypt 2000 years ago during the time of Cleopatra wouldn’t have looked much different than the people who live there today. Same as the people all over North Africa.
The racial boundary that divides “white” from “black” isn’t the Mediterranean Sea, but the Sahara Desert.
Even if we establish that Cleopatra had some Egyptian ancestry rather than purely Macedonian ancestry, that doesn’t mean the racial class she would be assigned by a modern American would change. Macedonians don’t look like Swedes and Egyptians don’t look like Zulus.
The article doesn’t say, but according to the the Times, the conclusions seem to be based on some notes left over from some skull measurements taken in 1926 – the skull has subsequently been lost, and now only the lower part of the skeleton remains. Well 90yo notes and skull measurements seem to be a rather shaky foundation to make such conclusions on. So colour me unimpressed.
The Times also say the two were half-sisters, of different mothers. BBC says the mother of Arsinöe may have been African, but that would say nothing about Cleopatra if they had different mothers. Wikipedia says they had the same mother: Cleopatra V (Cleopatra of Marc Antonius fame was Cleopatra VII - where the heck is Cleopatra VI?), but at the same time pretty firmly sets the whole family tree as Macedonian.
Hmmm… As I remember from my days as a hard core Afrocentric; racial boundaries move only to protray people (or entire civiliazations) of high social status as white (or “whiteish”) and protray people (or entire civiliazations) of low/unknown social status as Black (or “Blackish”).
I think of this a kind of “one drop rule”. It takes a theoretical “one drop of blood” to try to confrim our racialist ideas (white=good, black=bad) in the face of countering evidence.
Well, it’s more accurate to say that they think they found the skeleton of of one of Cleopatra’s sisters, and that the skull prroportions are consistent with someone with black African ancestry.
If she did have a black African ancestor it’s more likely to be her grandmother than her mother. Ptolmey Auletes was probably illegitimate.
The children in this picture are Egyptian. If Cleopatra shared half her acestory with them, would she look “black” to you? Many Egyptians are quite fair-skinned, and as of yet there’s no evidence that her mother was one who wasn’t.
Yes, unless you’re an Afrocentrist, in which case you do the same thing except black=good and white=bad.
People who live in Egypt today don’t look that different than people who live in Greece or Italy or Spain or Turkey or Syria, and this is because the Mediterranean Sea wasn’t a barrier to migration but instead facilitated migration. And the Egyptians 2000 ago wouldn’t be any different. A modern 21st century American isn’t likely to call a modern Egyptian “black” and wouldn’t be any more likely to call a 1st century Egyptian “black”. And they wouldn’t be much more likely to sort a 1st century Macedonian into the white pile than they would a 1st century Egyptian.
Cleopatra’s FATHER was Macedonian; no one knows who her mother was, and there’s no reason to assume she wasn’t local. That said, however…
The skeleton of her SISTER says nothing about Cleopatra’s mother – if the skeleton is her sister’s, which appears to be quite uncertain.
The skeleton itself was not the basis of the “African” ID - they performed a reconstruction based on recorded measurements of the skull, which has been missing since WWII, and found that the head was elongated in a manner typical of Egyptian and other African skulls of the period.
Mary Beard has pointed out that the whole kerfuffle is basically publicity for a BBC documentary on Cleopatra that’s airing next week.
There are different proportions generally between the skulls of “blacks” and “whites”. When you buy training skulls you need to specify what ethnic background you want the skull from:
Of course it’s a range and there is overlap, but from what I recall a trained person can tell the difference with a fair degree of accuracy. People of different ethnicities look different and this is reflected in their bones.
There’s a technique called craniofacial anthropometry. People of different “races” and different populations have skulls that are in different proportions. So, if you had two skulls, one of which came from northern Europe, and one of which came from sub-saharan Africa, you could measure the skulls and come to a conclusion, with some level of accuracy, which skull came from where.
Here, here, here and here are the last four rulers of Eygpt. They are clearly not “white” by modern western standards (and they are far less “white” than the population of other non-African Mediterranean countries), and one of them would definitely considered “black” by modern western standards. I see no reason why racial make of the first fifty rulers of Eygpt would be radically different.
However in answer to the OP its it is almost certain that Cleopatera was “white”:
She was a part of an occupying Greek elite ruling class. Yes, there is no record of her mother, but if her mother WAS native then it certainly would have been recorded (the Greek king of Eygpt having children by a non-greek wife would have certainly been commented on).
The roman chroniclers of the time used every possible means to deride her (and her non-roman “otherness”). If she had been black they would have pointed this out.
First off, none of the three valid links show me anything like a “black” man. Second, they wouldn’t look out of place in Greece, or much of Italy, either, nor parts of Spain. White doesn’t mean “Anglo”.
