By depicting Cleopatra as a Black woman, Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra” is creating a stir. Now, because all four of my grandparents were Coptic, and because the Copts are “acknowledged as the remaining descendants of the civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians, with Pharaonic origins,” I cannot resist but offer my two cents. First, this business has been going on for a quite long time. One of my very first college research papers (still in my possession, from 1993) was dedicated to debunking this widespread and entrenched claim that ancient Egyptians were Black -- as in sub-Saharan African Black. On the one hand, one can sympathize with the motive behind this claim: to give sub-Saharan Africans a source of pride, to present them as one of the first great civilizations. On the other hand, you cannot warp the truth -- that is, foist a lie -- without negative consequences.............But I digress; returning to Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra,” here we point out what should be obvious: not only are Egyptians not racially Black -- which I know from personal, familial, and travel experience -- but Cleopatra wasn’t even Egyptian. She was Greek, specifically Macedonian, a descendant of Alexander the Great’s general, Ptolemy I. ..............To Read More....
My Take - This isn't a new argument, and one of the points made by those who studied ancient Egyptian history is the royals in Egypt practiced incest. Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great and when his empire broke up after his death his generals took over. General Ptolemy, a Greek, took over Egypt. In Egypt royal brothers and sisters married, and that went on for the history of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, so it's unlikely Cleopatra has any ancestors from sub-Sahara regions.
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