[del]Elizabeth Taylor[/del] Eartha Kitt as Cleopatra.
Yeeeessss…muuuch better.
Her grandfather was Mithridates the Great, IIRC.
It’s funny how that every one of these racial threads seem to come down to people linking pictures and judging whether they are “black” or “White” or something… Soooo… I’ll just get this over with…
Alexandria (North) - [Alexandria kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Alexandria kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Aswan (Upper Nile) - [Aswan kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Aswan kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Asyut (Upper Nile) - [Asyut kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Asyut kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Damanhur (Lower Nile) - [Damanhur kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Damanhur kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Beni Suef (Upper Nile) - [Beni Suef kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Beni Suef kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Cairo (Middle Nile) - [Cairo kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Cairo kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Mansura (Lower Nile) - [Mansura kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Mansura kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Damietta (Lower Nile) - [Damietta kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Damietta kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Faiyum (Upper Nile) - [Faiyum kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Faiyum kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Tanta (Lower Nile) - [Tanta kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Tanta kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Giza (Upper Nile) - [Giza kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Giza kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Helwan (Middle Nile) - [Helwan kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Helwan kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Ismailia (Canal) - [Ismailia kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Ismailia kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Kafr el-Sheikh (Lower Nile) - [Kafr el-Sheikh kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Kafr el-Sheikh kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Luxor (Upper Nile) - [Luxor kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Luxor kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Mersa Matruh (Western) - [Mersa Matruh kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Mersa Matruh kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Minya (Upper Nile) - [Minya kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Minya kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Shibin el-Kom (Lower Nile) - [Shibin el-Kom kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Shibin el-Kom kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Kharga (Western) - [Kharga kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Kharga kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Arish (Sinai) - [Arish kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Arish kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Port Said (Canal) - [Port Said kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Port Said kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Banha (Lower Nile) - [Banha kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Banha kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Qena (Upper Nile) - [Qena kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Qena kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Hurghada (Eastern) - [Hurghada kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Hurghada kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Zagazig (Lower Nile) - [Zagazig kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Zagazig kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Sohag (Upper Nile) - [Sohag kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Sohag kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
el-Tor (Sinai) - [el-Tor kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=el-Tor kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
Suez (Canal) - [Suez kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=Suez kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
6th of October (Middle Nile) - [6th of October kids](http://images.google.ca/images?q=6th of October kids&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)
How many people do you see that you would call white? black? where are they from? If only we had an objective measure of “whiteness” or “blackness”…
It’s supposed to demonstrate that what we think of as black and white is largely a cultural construct.
smiling bandit wrote the following:
The picture I linked to [which was certainly not any of the ones smiling bandit was referring to]was a man named Scott Bond who was a very successful African American farmer from Arkansas who died in 1933. Anwar Sadat looks more middle eastern to me than anything else but I could certainly see why someone in the United States seeing him walk down the street would assume he was black.
Odesio
What Cecil says.
The concept of ‘race’ is a cultural construct. Her ‘race’, in so far as we know, was a melange of Macedonian Greek with perhaps a mix of other Mediterranean ‘races’ (such as Persian or perhaps main land Greek). Since we don’t have any actual pictures of Cleo however I don’t see how showing us pictures really says much of anything regarding the question…except to illustrate how silly this question actually is. Is that your point?
Ok…but again, what point are you trying to make here? That people perceive race based on visual cues? Granted…people perceive race based on visual cues. We don’t, however, have ANY colored pictures of Cleopatra, so the point is kind of moot.
-XT
You aren’t kidding.
“[she] only had four great-grandparents and six (out of a possible 16) great-great-grandparents (furthermore, four of those six were descended from the other two).”
And it doesn’t get any better the further back you go. Her two only real great-great-grandparents (the ones all her other great-great-grandparents were decended from them), were uncle and niece (on both her mothers and father’s sides). After Ptolomy VII and Celopatra III there is absolutely no outside blood in her line (at least as long as her known geneology is correct). So if she had any native african blood (white or black) it would have to come from before them. And none of them seem to qualify.
Here is the list of her unique ancestors:
Ptolemy I - Full Macedonian.
Berenice I - Full Macedonian.
Arsinoe I - Also full Macedonian.
Berenice II - 3/4 Macedonian and 1/4 Sogdian (modern Uzbekistan)
Cleopatra I - 1/2 Macedonian and 1/2 Greek (from Pontus)
All of her ancestry goes through only these 5 people. And not one of them has any african ancestry that we know of (white or black). As best I can tell she is 1/8 Pontian (Greek), 1/8 Sogdian and 3/4 Macedonian.
Man, I hope for her sake that there were some bastards in there…
Were Macedonians in the first century BC nearly as dark as they are now, or were they lighter, like the Thracians and Illyrians? Cuz, if we’re looking for folks who match the 20th Century definition of “Caucasians,” ya’ll can’t get “whiter” than them.
Yeah, I don’t think a smilie is needed, but for newbies, ;).
Well to be fair both (yes only two) of her grandparents were illegitimate and there is alot of discussion about exact parentage.
For example Cleopatra V is sometimes labeled the daughter of Berenice III and sometimes the daughter of Cleopatra IV. It doesn’t help that Berenice’s III real name was Cleopatra and that the number is a modern adoption to help us keep them apart. So at one point one of the two living Cleopatras in the royal family had an illegitimate daughter by either Ptolomy IX or X (their numbers are modern too so the father isn’t known with certanty either) and named her Cleopatra.
And Ptolomy XII seems to have an equally confused parentage for largely the same reason. But the idea that P XII and C V were born to a parent completely outside the family seems to be a recent invention. Whoever their parents were they were both recognized as full Ptolomy’s at the time. A distinction that was not granted to any real bastards (not that there are any that I am aware of). They seemed to really like to keep it in the family so to speak.
But in the greater scheme of things it doesn’t change much for this discussion. Whether Cleopatra V and Ptolemy XII were the children of Cleopatra Berenice (known as Berenice III) or her aunt Cleopatra (known as IV) and either of her uncles (both named Ptolemy) is really a bit irrelevent. Cleopatra VII’s ancestry seems to go entirely through Ptolomy VII and Celopatra III. And the tree doesn’t really branch much above that either. And above them the geneology seems to be much more solid.
Oops. I was just re-reading this and that should be parents, not grandparents. I’m not sure who I was trying to insert in there.
Honestly the whole family gives me a headache. It is hard enough to follow non-branching family trees but when you give every kid the same name (and frequently the same nickname) it just gets tiresome. I mean really when you are outdoing hollywood stereotypical backwood hicks it is time to give it a rest.
Hi, I’m Ptolomy this is my brother (and uncle, and brother in law) Ptolomy, and this is my other brother (and nephew, and cousin) Ptolomy.
Well yeah, but everyone was black & white before about 1951.
I made no statement about Cleopatra. My point specifically addressed a comment made by smiling bandit about a series of photos linked by griffin1977. Not only do people perceive race based on visual cues but their conclusions can be radically incorrect.
Odesio
That’s what makes this whole “debate” somewhat hilarious. Why choose, out of all possible historical characters, a person who by all accounts appears to have been a thorougly inbred descendant of a family of Macedonians as an example of someone “Black”?
It is hard to imagine someone born in Africa more genetically “White” as it were - as someone whose whole family, Euro immigrants, appears to have bred with literally no-one outside the family during the entire time its members lived in Africa!
[The extant coins depicting Cleopatra, for what they are worth, show her as looking typically Greek].
BTW, this whole royal incest thing didn’t start with the Ptolemies, it was seemingly an Egyptian royal trait. Interesting to speculate as to why - perhaps to avoid having influental “consort clans”? Or are royals brought up to despise non-royals as inferior beings, and thus forced to mate within the family? Cleopatra herself was married to her brother, but didn’t have a problem breeding with non-family members …
[sub]… must … resist … aaargh …[/sub]
“What’s a Nubian?”
[sub]There … I feel much better now …[/sub] 
Apropos of nothing…
I live in Memphis, Tennessee, which is split pretty evenly racially and frequently the scene of racist idiocy from both sides. A few years back, we had an exhibition of Egyptian art on display at one of our municipal boondoogles, and the Egyptian ambassador or consul or whatnot, here for the opening of the exhibition, was asked to weigh in on some racial issue hereabouts. He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before saying, “Look, we’ve got enough ethnic strife in our own country,so if you don’t mind we’re not going to get in the middle of whatever silliness you guys are doing here, okay?”
Trade around the Mediterranean goes back much, much farther than 700 AD, of course. The Greeks and the Persians were at it hammer and tongs in 1200 BC — the approximate date for the Trojan War which, although a little lighter on the gods and glory than Homer had it, was probably a real battle or series of battles between Greece and Anatolia. There were Greeks on the Italian peninsula as of about 800 BC, during which time they were warring with Carthage.
In fact, as of about 1100 BC, there are known Egyptian mummies dressed in silk, which means there must have been some level of trade going on with China via India, or at least India herself.
There’s every reason to suspect that intermarriage and mixed ancestry through trade and conquest had been going on for 50 generations before Cleopatra even turned up.
Don’t forget Scota! Even during the most ancient times, travelling wasn’t common… but the people who did it travelled really far. She exists somewhere between 610 BC and 1610 BC, but it’s kind of hard to figure out when, if she did actually exist.
Happy St. Patrick’s day. (bloody english interloper)
Also, let’s not forget Alexander the Great who, in about 300 BC, was off conquering lands well to the east of the Mediterranean, and encouraging intermarriage among his followers. It’s really ridiculous to imagine some bright line between continents right up through 1 AD, and that prior to that, all of Africa was one homogenous “all-black” race, and Europe was likewise “all-white.”
Actually, the Ptolemaic empire in Egypt was a direct consequence of Alex The Really Good, since Ptolemy was one of Alex’s generals. That said, I don’t think that Ptolemy OR his decedents were really keen on intermarriage with the locals…in fact, IIRC, they were fairly xenophobic about such things (and even seemed to have an aversion to marriage or sex with anyone not directly related in fact).
-XT