Racial profiling and manipulation has been around for a very long time. It has become a contemporary political issue, and more than 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that ethnicity was regularly used for political purposes. Cleopatra VIIthe last queen of Egypt and a woman of great ability, is often the victim of racial profiling, as today people may be more interested in her racial background than in her many accomplishments. Such concerns have recently come to the forefront with the announcement that in at least one of the many Cleopatra films currently planned, a white (instead of black) actress would play the role of the queen. It’s hard to imagine that race is more important than agency, but others clearly disagree.
It has been suggested – although generally not by credible academic sources – that Cleopatra was of black African descent. To be frank, there is absolutely no evidence of this, and yet it is one of those issues that seems to take on a life of its own despite all indications to the contrary. The following presents the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial ancestry, but it should be remembered that this is of little significance in assessing the queen’s legacy in world history.
Let’s consider exactly the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial origin. It’s a bit complicated, so follow carefully! She was born in early 69 BC as a descendant of a line of Egyptian kings from a 250-year-old dynasty. His ancestor Ptolemy Ia companion of Alexander The Great, founded the dynasty at the end of the 4th century BC. Ptolemy was of Macedonian Greek origin (he grew up in the royal court of Alexander’s father in Macedonia, in the northern part of the Greek peninsula) and established himself as king of Egypt in the convulsive years following the death of Alexander. The lineage passed through six successor Ptolemies until reaching Cleopatra’s father. Cleopatra therefore had no more than eight generations left to become a pure Macedonian Greek.
But what about mothers? Women are always hard to come by, even in royal dynasties, and it is here that questions about her racial origin were raised. During the first six generations, the wives of the ruling Ptolemies were also from the same Macedonian background as their husbands. Thus, until the time of Cleopatra’s great-grandfather, the ethnic composition of the dynasty was still pure Macedonian Greek. In fact, two of his ancestors married their sisters, thus strengthening the Macedonian ethnicity.
It is with Cleopatra’s grandfather that the uncertainties develop. Although he had two wives of traditional Macedonian origin, he appears to have had at least one concubine of uncertain origin, who may have been Cleopatra’s grandmother. But this is not at all clear, and some sources indicate that she was her husband’s sister, and therefore purely Macedonian.
Assuming, however, that Cleopatra’s grandmother was not of traditional Macedonian Greek stock, the question arises as to what exactly she was. Sources suggest that if she was not Macedonian, she was probably Egyptian. So, in the time of Cleopatra’s grandparents, there may have been an Egyptian element to the racial root.
Cleopatra’s father also had several wives. One of them was his sister, but again there is evidence that some of his five children had another mother. Yet the geographer Strabo (one of the few contemporary sources on Cleopatra’s life) wrote that all of her father’s wives were women of high status, which rules out any slaves or concubines and makes it possible that Cleopatra’s mother belonged to Greek stock traditional Macedonian. But that may not have been the case, so we may have to look elsewhere for the ethnicity of Cleopatra’s mother. Yet there is only one other ethnic group that has produced women of status in contemporary Egypt: Egypt’s religious elite, who actually had a long history of intermarriage with the Ptolemaic dynasty. Cleopatra’s mother was therefore perhaps Egyptian, but she probably also had Macedonian origins.
There are three other issues worth considering. The first is that Cleopatra was the only ruler of her dynasty who knew, in addition to her native Greek, the Egyptian language. This suggests a close association with an Egyptian-speaking person, perhaps his mother. Second, Cleopatra’s daughter, who became queen of Mauretania (and she herself was ethnically mixed, as her father was Roman), honored Egypt’s religious elite in her distant capital of Mauretanian Caesarea (in modern Algeria). This would make sense if they were part of his ancestral family. And third – particularly relevant to demolishing any suggestion that Cleopatra had black African blood – her depictions in Greek and Roman art and coins show nothing other than traditional Mediterranean ethnicity, although the artists were perfectly capable of showing other ethnic groups.
To summarize: it is very possible that Cleopatra is a pure Macedonian Greek. But it is likely that she had Egyptian blood, although the quantity is uncertain. True, it was not more than half, and probably less. The best evidence is that she was three-quarters Greek Macedonian and one-quarter Egyptian. There is no room for anything else, and even less for black African blood.
However, this whole argument is rather silly. What is important about Cleopatra is that she became one of the most powerful rulers of her time. She was a skilled linguist, naval commander, expert administrator, religious leader considered by some to be a messianic figure, and a worthy opponent of the Romans. She was worshiped in Egypt for over 400 years after her death. Race seems irrelevant in such a situation, and it goes without saying that people should be judged on their abilities and not their race. But unfortunately, even in 21st century America, this is far from the case. It’s unlikely that Cleopatra cared about her racial makeup, but more than 2,000 years later, people are still obsessed with it, thus trivializing her achievements.
Featured image credit: “The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra,” by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1885). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
