Who was the real Cleopatra?
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Cleopatra in the famous 1963 movie
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One of the most famous of Egyptian queens in history was Cleopatra, who lived during the Roman period in Egypt, just before the birth of Christ. She was the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, meaning she was part of a Greek ruling family and was descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals, who was from Macedonia in Europe. The Ptolemies were the last dynasty of rulers in Egypt before the Romans and later the Arabs controlled the country. Throughout history this last Egyptian queen was considered to have been very beautiful and was therefore able to form relationships with the great Roman Generals Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar. A new movie will soon be coming out about Cleopatra and there is an internet controversy over the choice of Gal Godot, a White, Jewish actress from Israel, who was also in the recent Wonder Woman movies. Some people claim that the actress should be a Black African actress or Arab because the identity of Cleopatra's mother was possibly uncertain and she may have been black or brown in skin color. Her father was certainly Greek and was the Ptolemaic king of Egypt, so he was therefore a White person. But some people claim that since Cleopatra's mother was not necessarily the Ptolemaic, Greek queen, perhaps she was not herself (completely) White.
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A Roman painting of Cleopatra
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However, most scholars who study ancient history state that Cleopatra's mother was a in fact a Ptolemaic queen, also of Greek origin. Furthermore, in ancient Egypt the native population was more closely related to the populations of the Middle East and Southern Europe rather than to Sub-Saharan Africa. (Schuenemann, V., Peltzer, A., Welte, B. et al. Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. Nat Commun 8, 15694 (2017). This means even if Cleopatra's mother was Egyptian, Cleopatra herself would not have been black or brown, but partly Middle Eastern as well as partly Greek in ancestry, and therefore basically similar to modern Israelis, which may make Gal Gadot a good choice for the role.
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| Alexander the Great |
It is important to remember that Africa is a very large continent with different regions and different peoples. In North Africa, the native people are different from the people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan means south of the great Sahara desert, the largest desert in the world. In Sub-Sharan Africa the people are basically dark in skin color, like many African Americans. African-Americans are descended from people that were brought from western Sub-Saharan Africa, from places such as Ghana and Nigeria. However, the peoples of North African countries like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt are different, and are more similar to Middle Easterners and Southern Europeans.
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The Nubian pyramids of Meroe
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There were ancient civilizations in Sub-Saharan Africa as well, such as Songhai, Aksum, Ghana and Benin, and these societies were composed of Black Africans. So was the area of Nubia, south of Egypt in what is today Sudan. Nubians adopted Egyptian culture and created tombs and buildings like those in Egypt further north along the Nile river.
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