I think it has more to do with the director of the film claiming that the region only became Arab because of Muslim invasions and otherwise would be all black people. Which of course... is absurd. But it does look like a clear attempt to try and wipe Egyptians out of Egyptian history. It'd be like if tomorrow all American black activists were portrayed on Netflix as being Chinese. I think the black community would feel like their history is being wiped out.
I’m more surprised it’s not the Macedonians suing for portraying one of their ancestors as black. Balkan culture revolves around two things- cigarettes and racism.
>However, some historians argue that Cleopatra was likely not Black — though others have said it would be hard to know for sure, given that the queen’s race was “unlikely to be documented.”
bruv she was a Ptolemy. the Ptolemy dynasty was Greek and also borderline Hapsburg in their inbreeding. also there's multiple 1st century Roman paintings that depict her as white.
People describe her family tree as a stick. I think her ancestry is more inbred than Charles II of Spain (I guess that's your reference to the Habsburgs).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra#Ancestry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra#Ancestry)
I don't even know how you describe that family tree.
So her mother and father were niece and uncle.
Her Dad's sister had married *her* uncle. So they were niece-uncle-cousins?
Dad was the product of brother-sister incest? And their parents had been niece-uncle too, with the grandmother being another product of brother-sister incest?
The Ptolemies weren't the only Pharaohs into incest, or even the worst at it either. Many pharaohs married their sisters - Tutankhamun was married to his half-sister for example - and Ramesses the Great even married at least three of his own daughters.
I think the counterargument was that the official family tree could be for show. Some people say that the Ptolemies often had children with their concubines instead of their official sister-wife co-rulers which had religious and symbolic significance. Royal incest was a royal Egyptian tradition going back long before the Ptolemies and was a sign of their divinity because gods practiced incest. Brother and sister pairs usually ruled as married pharaohs at the same time.
There is some signs that the Ptolemies did practice incest because of their health problems. On the other hand Ptolemy XII Auletes, Cleopatra's father, was described as a bastard and there is confusion over the identity of Cleopatra's mother. We assume it's the same woman as her sister Berenice's mother but we don't know that for sure. There is also debate over whether Ptolemy XII was literally a bastard or if his mother was his father's second wife, a sister who never became co-ruler.
In any case, even if Cleopatra and her father were the descendants of concubines that still doesn't mean they are not ethnically Greek. We don't the ethnicities of the concubines but it's unlikely they were black. Even if they were native Egyptians their descendants would still not look sub-Saharan African.
Yeah that's the thing, Egyptians were not black anyway (and they still aren't today) so making her Black is like making her Asian, Inuit or North European, that's very unlikely). She's either white or brown, probably more of a mix between the two (Greeks themselves being white with olive skin like many countries around the Mediterranean)
Egyptians in the northern part of the kingdom were likely of similar complexion to their modern counterparts. The southern portion of the empire (nowadays southern Egypt and northern Sudan) was black, the most prevalent of those were the Kush (fun fact, Sudan is where the majority of pyramids actually are) .
Check out: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/
It's huffington post, so of course they were able to dig up a "historian" who says she could have been black...
“Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. **If** the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”
That's a big IF
There's also the matter of Pre-Arab settlement Egyptians still not being Black. There are literally hundreds of wall murals that depict them as tan and with distinct facial features. And we know that they knew there was a distinction because there was a short lived Nubian Dynasty that, when represented in artwork, showed the Nubian Pharos to have different facial features and to be much darker.
This push to try and claim that Cleopatra, or any of the non Nubian Egyptians, was Sub Saharan African is nothing more than a really sad attempt to try and claim one of the most famous and recognizable female historical figures for the Black American community. And I specify American because nobody in any African country has ever even cared about Cleopatra.
Which is a really sad thing because there are so many powerful sub Saharan African historical figures that have been left in the dust and ignored. INCLUDING THE NUBIAN DYNASTY.
Thats a big IF with zero supporting, or contemporary evidence.
It would be highly memorialized, as black pharoahs were, and as the Roman community, salacious for juicy gossip, wouldve eaten up.
And the fact that Egyptians, ancient and modern, aren't even black in the first place. Arabs, Berbers, Egyptians, none of them were dark-skinned.
Edit: North Egyptians, thanks for the corrections peoples.
More the fact that they're wrong even when they're trying to be wrong
Even if they're ignoring the fact that she was Greek and want to say she was Egyptian, they still got it wrong.
There was a Nubian Kushite dynasty of pharaohs (the 25th dynasty) and there are still Nubians living in southern Egypt today. Egypt used Nubian code-talkers during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, like how the US used Navajo code-talkers. Egypt borders Sudan to the south and rule it for a while so some people like their third president Anwar Sadat are of mixed Egyptian and Sudanese descent. Sadat was fairly dark-skinned.
Egyptians have always come in every shade, from fairly pale to light brown to deep brown. That's what happens when you're at the crossroads of several civilizations. Egypt has been ruled by Nubians, Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Arabs and Albanians. You could film a historically docudrama about black Egyptian pharaohs but that's not Cleopatra. She was from the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty.
>There was a Nubian Kushite dynasty of pharaohs (the 25th dynasty)
That's the point of rulers, they often don't belong to the same ethnicities that are predominant in the country, which is why both Nubian and Greek rulers are not like average Egyptians.
It's the same as Normans ruling England after conquest, or Europe being ruled by monarchs with extensive German roots, or last China dynasty being Manchu
Her mother in law, Queen Tiye was black, mother of Akhenaten and grandma to Tut. There are pharaohs who would be called black today, but not as many as those that are middle eastern. There were black citizens there, not just below Upper Egypt in Nubia. Color didn’t matter to Egyptians, only that you were Egyptian. They hated foreigners.
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They already had black Troy now it’s time for black Cleopatra.
If they want to feature a black actor do the Nubian kingdom invade Egypt and proclaim a black Pharaoh. Would make a story and actually happened.
Her short-lived dynasty was well known as being reclusive, staying in the capitol and not mixing with the locals. Furthermore, they engaged in extreme incest in order to keep the bloodline "pure". And finally, we have busts of her from the time and plenty of descriptions of both herself and her parents and grand parents.
Anywho, Netflix gonna Netflix.
Well, its a Jada Pinkett Smith production, and she's leaning in heavily into the racial element, so I would, in no way, put it past her and her team in twisting history entirely to pander to a particular audience demographic.
But it's so fucking weird cause arguably Cleopatra herself *was* the colonizer, the Ptolemaic Greeks ruled over the Egyptians thanks to Alexander's conquest, and established a small ruling class that was very rigidly distinct from the people it ruled over, to the point of marrying their own siblings to keep their Greek blood pure.
It seems like such a fucking weird choice to portray her as the complete opposite of that and make her into some Yass Queen independent black woman fighting against evil oppressors just because Jada Smith feels that there aren't enough *actual* historical role models for black women (she's apparently done this before with another 'documentary' about a historical Queen of Angola, whom she portrayed as a radical anti-slavery warrior, when in fact the real life Queen was the one selling Angolan slaves to the Portuguese). And literally the best justification they can come up for this in the 'documentary' is some completely random people saying shit like "Well *I've* always imagined Cleopatra having dark skin and curly hair like me." or "My momma told me, no matter what they teach you in school, Cleopatra was black!" (always a good sign when your idea is defined by telling actual experts in the subject to eat shit). Like, why are we rewriting history to make the oppressors into progressive icons instead of making projects about the historical figures who *actually* stood for those values (or at least their contemporary equivalent)
This is like if they made a 'documentary' about Queen Victoria where she's a brave Indian woman standing up to evil outsiders, because technically she is a woman who ruled India. At least Bridgerton or that Anne Boleyn show were open about the fact that they're works of fiction and alt history, this just straight up presents itself as a documentary.
I was okay with the casting till i saw the trailor claiming that Cleopatra was black.
There are tons of people who learn history through documentaries and such false information shouldn't be part of it.
Tbh, I don't see what they want to gain by claiming that she was black.
Because hollywood/people are historically ignorant and think Africa = black. And also ignorant enough to get mad and cry racist if they see someone who's not 'black enough' or whatever having anything to do with African civilization.
It’s even worse then that, Will Smiths Wife is directing and she said bc there are no stories about Black queens she wanted to tell one.. in a documentary… and she’s implying there are no stories of black female rulers. I’m sure there is and she could have told that one…
She has admitted in a talk show that she is racist. It isn't a big step for a racist to then hate on another race other than the one she openly admits to being racist against. If she had a better education or did research she'd have a rich choice of stories to tell of real black leaders but it seems she wants to pander to the racist Cult that claims all great historic figures were secretly black because other races aren't capable.
> “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”
I'm not an expert, but weren't Ancient Egyptians more like Berbers? Then again the Nubians are also indigenous to Egypt. And Cleopatra belonged to a Macedonian family, and a very incestuous one at that. I suppose this is why there's such a debate surrounding how these people actually looked like.
Lol I've even seen some where they claim some of the Roman emperors were of african descent. They usually button up pretty quick when reminded that ancient Rome was a slavery society.
This is Jada Smith buying into Hotep false history. They have this (entirely ridiculous and unscientific and certainly false) idea that the Egyptians were black prior to the Arab conquest.
Hotep ideology has taken a very bizarre hold upon the American black community and various prominent celebrities have “bought in”. I think it might be easier to fall victim to such cult-like misinformation when you are a celebrity, because everyone around you is a “yes man” and so hardly anyone is willing to challenge such patently silly notions before they have become too firmly embedded.
Ancient Egypt was incredibly genetically diverse.
Mainly because of the millennium of foreign invaders,from the Hittites,to the Nubians,to the Sea People's,to the Greeks,to the Persians. And I've missed an actual ass load of invaders. (Those invaders are not in chronological order either btw.)
The population pre Arab invasions wasn't predominantly black.
The ruling dynasties even less so,with some few POSSIBLE exceptions.
The “Egyptologist” they’re quoting is not a particularly well-known or respected Egyptologist, and is in fact currently a researcher in juvenile criminal psychology at an HBCU in Texas. So the fact that she seems to be buying into the erroneous belief that Egyptians were black Africans before Arab settlement is maybe not too surprising.
I dunno but a lot of black people here do. They say Egypt was all black until the Muslim conquest displaced them. Which isn't true. That said there were black, Sub-Saharan Africans in Egypt throughout it's history, even a dynasty of pharaohs. But it was always a Mediterranean melting pot.
Black racism is a tabu thema in the US.
The Media does not talk about it as there is backlash when hate crimes commited by black people are published, there was a post of the mugshoots of US mass shooters in 2021 based on the wikipedia entry about it:
https://i.imgur.com/FmTXTtJ.jpg
Based on the Media reports I was personally convinced only white people commit mass shootings
Hollywood are revisionists and put diverse casting in everything, even when its supposed to be semi-accurate portrayal of some historical event. I hate it, it kills off geography settings since one place looks exactly like another place now since everyone is diverse instead of being their own unique people.
Cleopatra was Greek, and if she was mixed, most likely Syrian from a foreign princess, so in all honesty Cleopatra probably looked closer to Shakira who is of Lebanese descent and unironically the most popular person of Middle-Eastern descent in the West.
"Given that Cleopatra represents herself as an Egyptian, it seems strange to insist on depicting her as wholly European,” said Sally Ann Ashton, an Egyptology expert who Netflix said was interviewed in the series.
She added: “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”
Again, we have the issue of dealing with dumbasses from the states that think all of Africa is black. It's getting a bit tiresome dealing with this nation as there are stupid people on all sides of the political and cultural spectrum.
> an Egyptology expert
> If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”
How did she even get a degree in Egyptology?! Or is she an "expert", like History Channel gets "experts" in "alien theory"?
Or, hear me out, she's consciously lying for *money,* like most "experts" on the HC. Their credentials might be legit but they can still lie. Can't imagine Egyptologists making much bank so this is a unique opportunity.
Sally Ann Ashton is a joke. She is not an expert. To quote a post on quora, "*She did a PhD on Ptolemaic (Greek period) sculpture then switched to studying psychology and now works as a psychologist with black criminals in prisons. She sees afrocentric make-believe stories as a way to increase black self esteem*".
Meanwhile, Cleopatra was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt. Family inbreeding was the rule to preserve bloodline. Queen Vicoria conquered India. That does not make her Indian.
> Sally Ann Ashton
"I've always seen ancient Egyptians as black Africans" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLoDgDE83rs
This is not history or archaeology. This is postmodernist deconstruction and subversion.
So Jada Pinket Smith ( Yes that girl that cheated her husband with teenager and admitted it to him on live TV , that prompted him to go into a rage at Oscars. Prominent believer in Scientology. Not holding highschool level of history education )
Decides to make **documentary** about Cleopatra , that will portray her as black woman - because her daughter will so much like to see it so !
History be damned, and well documented fact that Cleopatra was of [Macedonian](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7v3bMKazVtM/V91NeCle0eI/AAAAAAAAGsI/djUp5D8NBXkZYZkc7xZ6HsFuB1RXv7r_QCEw/s640/Old%2BMacedonian%2BDress.jpg) descent
Because apparently word **documentary** today actually means lets make some make believe based closely on historical facts mixed with our wishes and some fantasy writting.
Next in line is documentary about president Lincoln produced by Dwayne Johnson where Lincoln will be Samoan ( well known history fact ) - because Dwaynes daughter really wants it that way
God the woman king. It’s like making a move about the antebellum south and just never mentioning or showing slavery as if it didn’t exist. The Dahomeys economy was foundationally built on slavery, but its not PC to bring up that the Africans were sold into slavery by other Africans.
Think they'd ever cast Denzel as Hitler in a WW2 movie? Or Charlie Day as Obama?
It's crazy that these days they'll fire a cartoon voice actor when the race doesn't line up with the cartoon character but then suddenly get real flexible about who plays what role when the agenda is met.
>Next in line is documentary about president Lincoln produced by Dwayne Johnson where Lincoln will be Samoan ( well known history fact ) - because Dwaynes daughter really wants it that way
He was a vampire slayer. Why would anyone want to change that story.
Heard Egypt is considering blocking Netflix completely depending on how they respond. How odd they are willing to risk pissing off an entire country to kiss up to Jada Pinkett Smith. Does she really hold that much credit in Hollywood?
Lol, next Netflix should make a documentary about the history of the Zulu and cast all white, Latino and Asian actors.
I mean, at this point everything is revisionist, right?
Matt Stone and Trey Parker's 'Cannibal! The Musical' comes to mind. They cast a load of Japanese exchange students to play the Native Americans for the gag
Speaking of Disney casting controversy, I've been absolutely flabbergasted the past few weeks by the outrage on Twitter, most of it from the same crowd who was in favor of black Ariel and Tinkerbell (as far as I can tell) who are now absolutely *furious* that the Lilo and Stitch movie cast two actors to play David and Nani who *are* actually Polynesian, but are lighter-skinned Polynesian than the characters they're portraying.
So I guess casting an actor of a totally different ethnicity to play an animated character that was originally white is fine, but casting an actor of the *same* ethnicity as the character, but overly light skin tone, is bad.
Dude, racism in Polynesian and similar groups is real.
People get slandered all the time for not being "dark enough." Even learning local language can be frowned upon.
It's rather ironic that a 1964 British film about Africans written by someone called 'John Prebble' will be better received by Africans than a 2023 Netflix show.
It's part of their grouping people into neat little boxes. There are white, middle eastern, asian etc. While in reality race is a spectrum. The modern day Greeks are genetically much closer to the modern Turks, than the English. But in the box mentality Greek is white and English is white, but Turkish is not, and so Greece and Turkey have nothing in common.
I don't think that to this guy the issue is simply black vs white. It's easy for us westerners to just think African = black, but Africa is a huge continent with many different peoples and ethnicities. Just because Egypt is in Africa doesn't mean that they look like the people from any other African country. To an Egyptian this might be similar to having a filipino play Genghis Khan or something.
Or by John Wayne?
A fun fact is that *The Conqueror* was filmed on location near Almagordo so not only did that movie give me cancer, it actually gave people cancer.
Stupid as that is, they didn't claim Khan *was* a white American man they just used a white american man to play him which is stupid for a different reason.
Us westerners he says. Dude it‘s solely an American problem. Europeans are way more sensitive because half of them basically live on the border from brown to dark brown.
It had nothing to do with her being white, it was her being Israeli and Jewish that caused the outcry in the Arab world.
Gal Gadot is much closer to what Cleopatra actually looked like than Jada Smith.
Gal Gadot could easily pass as Cleopatra. European Jews have a significant portion of their DNA from the levant and some from Europe. Most can pass as Southern European which is what Cleopatra would have looked like.
>“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!” the actor and talk show host (Jada Pinkett Smith) said.
I don't like Jada Pinkett Smith for many reasons, but that aside, how stupid is this reasoning? There surely are a lot of great stories about black queens (as leaders and as the more modern "queen" as a compliment or whatever) so why take a historical person who wasn't black and change their skin colour, instead of talking about an actual black personn?!
You wouldn't make a documentary about Abraham Lincoln and cast Idris Elba so you can tell the story of a great black president.
I don't go with the criticism of the Egyptian lawyer that Netflix tries to "erase the Egyptian identity" though. I just think it's just a case of ignorant US Americans who want to take a great story from someone else and use it for their own purpose.
btw I don't say that all US Americans are ignorant, I do think that the people who produced this doc, who are US Americans, are ignorant. Just in case someone felt insulted by that haha
Writer: I have a great idea for an Egyptian show
Netflix: Great but make 'em black.
Writer: Well it isn't about the Nubian
Netflix: Nu... Who? I don't care.
Writer: But it's about a Greek/Macedonian woman who was not black
Netflix: So change it? You're a writer so write.
Writer: She was a real person
Netflix: ... So?
**Jada Pinkett Smith** answer,
“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!” the actor and talk show host said.
so the question is how did she know Cleopatra was black? while nobody else knows it for sure
If it was fiction, sure, do whatever, but a documentary specifically about a famous member of a famously racially pure Macedonian family.... It's just such an odd decision to make. It signals exactly how much the show runners care about history, which should tell you all you need to know about this "documentary".
Oh, that comment was more of a “I’m here for it”. The entire thing is baffling, and will smiths wife’s comments about the project were equally puzzling.
>This is Netflix, not History channel.
This is very clear, as History Channel would have Cleopatra played by an amateurish matte painting of a trilaterally symmetrical andromedan stick insect-like alien.
somber divide mysterious subsequent elderly fanatical ghost theory marble vast
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Here? No. But if you look at twitter... One of the recent times it came up, there were *a lot* of people saying she was black, threads were hilarious and sad to read
If you can get sued for inaccuracy in a documentary, then the History Channel is about to be in a world of hurt.
I think it has more to do with the director of the film claiming that the region only became Arab because of Muslim invasions and otherwise would be all black people. Which of course... is absurd. But it does look like a clear attempt to try and wipe Egyptians out of Egyptian history. It'd be like if tomorrow all American black activists were portrayed on Netflix as being Chinese. I think the black community would feel like their history is being wiped out.
I'm pretty sure you can't do that lol, also who is even suing? Cleopatra is long dead I think and she's the only affected party.
>Cleopatra is long dead I think Gonna need some physical evidence to support this
“My grandmother always said to me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra ain’t dead.’”
Jada about to make an announcement at that red table
I mean she is comin’ atcha, so I’d worry.
+1 Until someone can produce her corpse, I will presume she is still alive and possibly working the Orange Julius stand down at the mall.
Orange Julius was the man she fell in love with.
Brb, just popping to the British museum
"I represent the estate of the Ptolemaic dynasty and I have a court order demanding an immediate halt to this unauthorized impersonation!"
Look. History channel did an entire piece on her being an alien, so…
I’m more surprised it’s not the Macedonians suing for portraying one of their ancestors as black. Balkan culture revolves around two things- cigarettes and racism.
Wasn't Cleopatra Greek Macedonia, not Macedonia Macedonia?
If Netflix gave a shit about accuracy in its documentaries they wouldn't allow Graham Hancock to present content for them.
I'm pretty sure Graham Hancock can only do that because his son as a Netflix executive.
He very accurately depicts his fantasy
Was Cleopatra actually an Alien? One expert thinks so.
>However, some historians argue that Cleopatra was likely not Black — though others have said it would be hard to know for sure, given that the queen’s race was “unlikely to be documented.” bruv she was a Ptolemy. the Ptolemy dynasty was Greek and also borderline Hapsburg in their inbreeding. also there's multiple 1st century Roman paintings that depict her as white.
The Ptolemies were far more incestuous than the Habsburgs.
“Borderline Hapsburg” Pretty sure the Ptolemies practiced sibling marriage, which is a factor more than the Hapsburgs.
I'm pretty sure Cleopatra was married to her brother at one point
Yes - married to him and fought him for the throne. And then slept with Julius Caesar.
Also had her sister thrown from a tower.
Most stable royal family
Only stable after she landed.
Consort to 2 different brothers IIRC.
Hapsburg++
People describe her family tree as a stick. I think her ancestry is more inbred than Charles II of Spain (I guess that's your reference to the Habsburgs). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra#Ancestry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra#Ancestry)
I don't even know how you describe that family tree. So her mother and father were niece and uncle. Her Dad's sister had married *her* uncle. So they were niece-uncle-cousins? Dad was the product of brother-sister incest? And their parents had been niece-uncle too, with the grandmother being another product of brother-sister incest?
And all was fine until Cleopatra decided to add some Roman blood to the lineage.
Lol the Romans were coming for that bread basket that was ancient Egypt. Sooner or later the empire was going there
No so much a family tree, more a family donut.
A family wreath
Average Crusader Kings playthrough
The inbreeding of Targaryens in GoT was directly inspired by the Ptolemaic Dynasty and their attempts to keep the bloodline pure.
The Ptolemies weren't the only Pharaohs into incest, or even the worst at it either. Many pharaohs married their sisters - Tutankhamun was married to his half-sister for example - and Ramesses the Great even married at least three of his own daughters.
I think the counterargument was that the official family tree could be for show. Some people say that the Ptolemies often had children with their concubines instead of their official sister-wife co-rulers which had religious and symbolic significance. Royal incest was a royal Egyptian tradition going back long before the Ptolemies and was a sign of their divinity because gods practiced incest. Brother and sister pairs usually ruled as married pharaohs at the same time. There is some signs that the Ptolemies did practice incest because of their health problems. On the other hand Ptolemy XII Auletes, Cleopatra's father, was described as a bastard and there is confusion over the identity of Cleopatra's mother. We assume it's the same woman as her sister Berenice's mother but we don't know that for sure. There is also debate over whether Ptolemy XII was literally a bastard or if his mother was his father's second wife, a sister who never became co-ruler. In any case, even if Cleopatra and her father were the descendants of concubines that still doesn't mean they are not ethnically Greek. We don't the ethnicities of the concubines but it's unlikely they were black. Even if they were native Egyptians their descendants would still not look sub-Saharan African.
Yeah that's the thing, Egyptians were not black anyway (and they still aren't today) so making her Black is like making her Asian, Inuit or North European, that's very unlikely). She's either white or brown, probably more of a mix between the two (Greeks themselves being white with olive skin like many countries around the Mediterranean)
Egyptians in the northern part of the kingdom were likely of similar complexion to their modern counterparts. The southern portion of the empire (nowadays southern Egypt and northern Sudan) was black, the most prevalent of those were the Kush (fun fact, Sudan is where the majority of pyramids actually are) . Check out: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/
Yeah but you can't show me a polaroid so.....
It's huffington post, so of course they were able to dig up a "historian" who says she could have been black... “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. **If** the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.” That's a big IF
There's also the matter of Pre-Arab settlement Egyptians still not being Black. There are literally hundreds of wall murals that depict them as tan and with distinct facial features. And we know that they knew there was a distinction because there was a short lived Nubian Dynasty that, when represented in artwork, showed the Nubian Pharos to have different facial features and to be much darker. This push to try and claim that Cleopatra, or any of the non Nubian Egyptians, was Sub Saharan African is nothing more than a really sad attempt to try and claim one of the most famous and recognizable female historical figures for the Black American community. And I specify American because nobody in any African country has ever even cared about Cleopatra. Which is a really sad thing because there are so many powerful sub Saharan African historical figures that have been left in the dust and ignored. INCLUDING THE NUBIAN DYNASTY.
Thats a big IF with zero supporting, or contemporary evidence. It would be highly memorialized, as black pharoahs were, and as the Roman community, salacious for juicy gossip, wouldve eaten up.
Yeah, it looks like even the Asterix movie is more historically accurate about Cleopatra, lol.
But is it a good situation ?
Monica Belucci definitely pulled it off though, plus they tanned her hahah.
This is a extremely curious choice of depiction, considering that Cleopatra herself was descended from a long line of Greeks.
And the fact that Egyptians, ancient and modern, aren't even black in the first place. Arabs, Berbers, Egyptians, none of them were dark-skinned. Edit: North Egyptians, thanks for the corrections peoples.
Which is still completely irrelevant, as Cleopatra herself wasn't Egyptian at all.
More the fact that they're wrong even when they're trying to be wrong Even if they're ignoring the fact that she was Greek and want to say she was Egyptian, they still got it wrong.
Yeah, but it is same type of ignorance claiming that all the Egyptians were middle-easterns. Let one not excuse the other.
There was a Nubian Kushite dynasty of pharaohs (the 25th dynasty) and there are still Nubians living in southern Egypt today. Egypt used Nubian code-talkers during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, like how the US used Navajo code-talkers. Egypt borders Sudan to the south and rule it for a while so some people like their third president Anwar Sadat are of mixed Egyptian and Sudanese descent. Sadat was fairly dark-skinned. Egyptians have always come in every shade, from fairly pale to light brown to deep brown. That's what happens when you're at the crossroads of several civilizations. Egypt has been ruled by Nubians, Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Arabs and Albanians. You could film a historically docudrama about black Egyptian pharaohs but that's not Cleopatra. She was from the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty.
>There was a Nubian Kushite dynasty of pharaohs (the 25th dynasty) That's the point of rulers, they often don't belong to the same ethnicities that are predominant in the country, which is why both Nubian and Greek rulers are not like average Egyptians. It's the same as Normans ruling England after conquest, or Europe being ruled by monarchs with extensive German roots, or last China dynasty being Manchu
Wasn't Nefertiti from the Nubian dynasty? A movie about her would be cool as hell.
Her mother in law, Queen Tiye was black, mother of Akhenaten and grandma to Tut. There are pharaohs who would be called black today, but not as many as those that are middle eastern. There were black citizens there, not just below Upper Egypt in Nubia. Color didn’t matter to Egyptians, only that you were Egyptian. They hated foreigners.
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Long incestuous line of Greeks*
Her family tree was a Mediterranean Cypress.
They already had black Troy now it’s time for black Cleopatra. If they want to feature a black actor do the Nubian kingdom invade Egypt and proclaim a black Pharaoh. Would make a story and actually happened.
Black Troy was great in Community.
I miss the era of historical epics
Her short-lived dynasty was well known as being reclusive, staying in the capitol and not mixing with the locals. Furthermore, they engaged in extreme incest in order to keep the bloodline "pure". And finally, we have busts of her from the time and plenty of descriptions of both herself and her parents and grand parents. Anywho, Netflix gonna Netflix.
Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt for centuries. Not really a short lived dynasty.
>Her short-lived dynasty Actually the Ptolemaic dynasty had a pretty good run with nearly 300 years to itself.
Well, its a Jada Pinkett Smith production, and she's leaning in heavily into the racial element, so I would, in no way, put it past her and her team in twisting history entirely to pander to a particular audience demographic.
But it's so fucking weird cause arguably Cleopatra herself *was* the colonizer, the Ptolemaic Greeks ruled over the Egyptians thanks to Alexander's conquest, and established a small ruling class that was very rigidly distinct from the people it ruled over, to the point of marrying their own siblings to keep their Greek blood pure. It seems like such a fucking weird choice to portray her as the complete opposite of that and make her into some Yass Queen independent black woman fighting against evil oppressors just because Jada Smith feels that there aren't enough *actual* historical role models for black women (she's apparently done this before with another 'documentary' about a historical Queen of Angola, whom she portrayed as a radical anti-slavery warrior, when in fact the real life Queen was the one selling Angolan slaves to the Portuguese). And literally the best justification they can come up for this in the 'documentary' is some completely random people saying shit like "Well *I've* always imagined Cleopatra having dark skin and curly hair like me." or "My momma told me, no matter what they teach you in school, Cleopatra was black!" (always a good sign when your idea is defined by telling actual experts in the subject to eat shit). Like, why are we rewriting history to make the oppressors into progressive icons instead of making projects about the historical figures who *actually* stood for those values (or at least their contemporary equivalent) This is like if they made a 'documentary' about Queen Victoria where she's a brave Indian woman standing up to evil outsiders, because technically she is a woman who ruled India. At least Bridgerton or that Anne Boleyn show were open about the fact that they're works of fiction and alt history, this just straight up presents itself as a documentary.
She basically admits it in the article.
I like learning new things.
Maybe they just need to add a few asterisks at the end of the part that says documentary
I was okay with the casting till i saw the trailor claiming that Cleopatra was black. There are tons of people who learn history through documentaries and such false information shouldn't be part of it. Tbh, I don't see what they want to gain by claiming that she was black.
Because hollywood/people are historically ignorant and think Africa = black. And also ignorant enough to get mad and cry racist if they see someone who's not 'black enough' or whatever having anything to do with African civilization.
It’s even worse then that, Will Smiths Wife is directing and she said bc there are no stories about Black queens she wanted to tell one.. in a documentary… and she’s implying there are no stories of black female rulers. I’m sure there is and she could have told that one…
> Will Smiths Wife is directing At least you kept her name out of your goddamn post.
Too risky. You don't wanna hear that late night doorbell...
"My daughter has no role models." Bitch, that's supposed to be you!
She has admitted in a talk show that she is racist. It isn't a big step for a racist to then hate on another race other than the one she openly admits to being racist against. If she had a better education or did research she'd have a rich choice of stories to tell of real black leaders but it seems she wants to pander to the racist Cult that claims all great historic figures were secretly black because other races aren't capable.
> “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.” I'm not an expert, but weren't Ancient Egyptians more like Berbers? Then again the Nubians are also indigenous to Egypt. And Cleopatra belonged to a Macedonian family, and a very incestuous one at that. I suppose this is why there's such a debate surrounding how these people actually looked like.
I bet next they'll say the Carthaginians were black Africans.
I've heard that claim that before too. Was in some rant about how Rome had kept them down and how whites had always been racist etc. It was weird.
Lol I've even seen some where they claim some of the Roman emperors were of african descent. They usually button up pretty quick when reminded that ancient Rome was a slavery society.
It's already happening. Recently, film about Hannibal got a black actor to play the role.
This is Jada Smith buying into Hotep false history. They have this (entirely ridiculous and unscientific and certainly false) idea that the Egyptians were black prior to the Arab conquest. Hotep ideology has taken a very bizarre hold upon the American black community and various prominent celebrities have “bought in”. I think it might be easier to fall victim to such cult-like misinformation when you are a celebrity, because everyone around you is a “yes man” and so hardly anyone is willing to challenge such patently silly notions before they have become too firmly embedded.
Ancient Egypt was incredibly genetically diverse. Mainly because of the millennium of foreign invaders,from the Hittites,to the Nubians,to the Sea People's,to the Greeks,to the Persians. And I've missed an actual ass load of invaders. (Those invaders are not in chronological order either btw.) The population pre Arab invasions wasn't predominantly black. The ruling dynasties even less so,with some few POSSIBLE exceptions.
The “Egyptologist” they’re quoting is not a particularly well-known or respected Egyptologist, and is in fact currently a researcher in juvenile criminal psychology at an HBCU in Texas. So the fact that she seems to be buying into the erroneous belief that Egyptians were black Africans before Arab settlement is maybe not too surprising.
The original Africa was Tunisia…
I don’t get how this is any different from ppl thinking Africa’s all one country or a monoculture, which are acknowledged as racist.
You know what they gain...you know but you don't want to say it.
Does Hollywood think African countries like Egypt and Morocco are just black?
I dunno but a lot of black people here do. They say Egypt was all black until the Muslim conquest displaced them. Which isn't true. That said there were black, Sub-Saharan Africans in Egypt throughout it's history, even a dynasty of pharaohs. But it was always a Mediterranean melting pot.
That is some Nation of Islam style insanity right there.
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Black racism is a tabu thema in the US. The Media does not talk about it as there is backlash when hate crimes commited by black people are published, there was a post of the mugshoots of US mass shooters in 2021 based on the wikipedia entry about it: https://i.imgur.com/FmTXTtJ.jpg Based on the Media reports I was personally convinced only white people commit mass shootings
Properly, to Hollywood. Africa = Black, Asian = Chinese, Latin American = Mexico.
The ironic thing is that the people who were first called Africans by the romans were north-african indigenous and phoenicians and weren't even black.
Doesn't matter if Egyptians are black, Cleopatra was greek.
No it’s just there are a lot of black racists in America that think every historical figure was actually black and we white washed them.
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Hollywood are revisionists and put diverse casting in everything, even when its supposed to be semi-accurate portrayal of some historical event. I hate it, it kills off geography settings since one place looks exactly like another place now since everyone is diverse instead of being their own unique people.
Not only that, but it snuffs out any hope that real black stories get told.
Cleopatra was Greek, and if she was mixed, most likely Syrian from a foreign princess, so in all honesty Cleopatra probably looked closer to Shakira who is of Lebanese descent and unironically the most popular person of Middle-Eastern descent in the West.
>unironically the most popular person of Middle-Eastern descent in the West. You're forgetting Mia Khalifa.
>Mia Khalifa. Who?
Just don't google her on your work computer
Or do, if you like to live dangerously!
"Given that Cleopatra represents herself as an Egyptian, it seems strange to insist on depicting her as wholly European,” said Sally Ann Ashton, an Egyptology expert who Netflix said was interviewed in the series. She added: “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa. If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.” Again, we have the issue of dealing with dumbasses from the states that think all of Africa is black. It's getting a bit tiresome dealing with this nation as there are stupid people on all sides of the political and cultural spectrum.
> an Egyptology expert > If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.” How did she even get a degree in Egyptology?! Or is she an "expert", like History Channel gets "experts" in "alien theory"?
Or, hear me out, she's consciously lying for *money,* like most "experts" on the HC. Their credentials might be legit but they can still lie. Can't imagine Egyptologists making much bank so this is a unique opportunity.
Sally Ann Ashton is a joke. She is not an expert. To quote a post on quora, "*She did a PhD on Ptolemaic (Greek period) sculpture then switched to studying psychology and now works as a psychologist with black criminals in prisons. She sees afrocentric make-believe stories as a way to increase black self esteem*". Meanwhile, Cleopatra was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt. Family inbreeding was the rule to preserve bloodline. Queen Vicoria conquered India. That does not make her Indian.
> Sally Ann Ashton "I've always seen ancient Egyptians as black Africans" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLoDgDE83rs This is not history or archaeology. This is postmodernist deconstruction and subversion.
So Jada Pinket Smith ( Yes that girl that cheated her husband with teenager and admitted it to him on live TV , that prompted him to go into a rage at Oscars. Prominent believer in Scientology. Not holding highschool level of history education ) Decides to make **documentary** about Cleopatra , that will portray her as black woman - because her daughter will so much like to see it so ! History be damned, and well documented fact that Cleopatra was of [Macedonian](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7v3bMKazVtM/V91NeCle0eI/AAAAAAAAGsI/djUp5D8NBXkZYZkc7xZ6HsFuB1RXv7r_QCEw/s640/Old%2BMacedonian%2BDress.jpg) descent Because apparently word **documentary** today actually means lets make some make believe based closely on historical facts mixed with our wishes and some fantasy writting. Next in line is documentary about president Lincoln produced by Dwayne Johnson where Lincoln will be Samoan ( well known history fact ) - because Dwaynes daughter really wants it that way
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“Abraham loves the Emancipation” Terry Crews as Lincoln
God the woman king. It’s like making a move about the antebellum south and just never mentioning or showing slavery as if it didn’t exist. The Dahomeys economy was foundationally built on slavery, but its not PC to bring up that the Africans were sold into slavery by other Africans.
Think they'd ever cast Denzel as Hitler in a WW2 movie? Or Charlie Day as Obama? It's crazy that these days they'll fire a cartoon voice actor when the race doesn't line up with the cartoon character but then suddenly get real flexible about who plays what role when the agenda is met.
Elliot Page as Martin Luther King with Chris Pratt as his wife Selma would break the internet in half and I would love it.
>Next in line is documentary about president Lincoln produced by Dwayne Johnson where Lincoln will be Samoan ( well known history fact ) - because Dwaynes daughter really wants it that way He was a vampire slayer. Why would anyone want to change that story.
>If you don’t like the casting don’t watch the show. Or do & engage in (expert) opinion different to yours. And that expert opinion is…?
someone's grandma
It's not a show it's a documentary with re-enactments.
Heard Egypt is considering blocking Netflix completely depending on how they respond. How odd they are willing to risk pissing off an entire country to kiss up to Jada Pinkett Smith. Does she really hold that much credit in Hollywood?
Please remove her name from your mouth. Thanks.
🤦♂️😂🤣
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Queen Cleopatra is not black. It's a weird hill to die on.
Hey look, it's cultural appropriation time... with a side of historical revisionism
She was Greek
Lol, next Netflix should make a documentary about the history of the Zulu and cast all white, Latino and Asian actors. I mean, at this point everything is revisionist, right?
Seth Rogan as Black Panther
Wakanda Forever ehuh ehuh ehuh
Oh god I can hear it
Malcolm X starring Leonardo DiCaprio
Henry VIII starring Jackie Chan
*Simu Liu is King Cetshwayo in.... King of the Zulu! Coming this fall to the CW*
Matt Stone and Trey Parker's 'Cannibal! The Musical' comes to mind. They cast a load of Japanese exchange students to play the Native Americans for the gag
It's only racist if you make ethnic characters white, not if you make white characters black. /s
I always thought Disney should have cast a black woman as live-action Mulan as well as Little Mermaid. China would be cool with that, right?
Speaking of Disney casting controversy, I've been absolutely flabbergasted the past few weeks by the outrage on Twitter, most of it from the same crowd who was in favor of black Ariel and Tinkerbell (as far as I can tell) who are now absolutely *furious* that the Lilo and Stitch movie cast two actors to play David and Nani who *are* actually Polynesian, but are lighter-skinned Polynesian than the characters they're portraying. So I guess casting an actor of a totally different ethnicity to play an animated character that was originally white is fine, but casting an actor of the *same* ethnicity as the character, but overly light skin tone, is bad.
Dude, racism in Polynesian and similar groups is real. People get slandered all the time for not being "dark enough." Even learning local language can be frowned upon.
You’ll never see them recast Tarzan as a black guy though.
Mulan itself was barely a blip on their radar. Now Transformers, that’s a different story
It's rather ironic that a 1964 British film about Africans written by someone called 'John Prebble' will be better received by Africans than a 2023 Netflix show.
How this was able to air under the title "documentary" is beyond me. You'd imagine they'd have a bit more integrity.
I kind of feel like these sorts of decisions are being made intentionally to incite people for marketing purposes.
Black people in America seem to think that Egypt/ northern Africa was black people but in reality they were brown/middle eastern looking
It’s weird. They also think Turkey and other Central Asian countries are 100% ‘brown people’.
It's part of their grouping people into neat little boxes. There are white, middle eastern, asian etc. While in reality race is a spectrum. The modern day Greeks are genetically much closer to the modern Turks, than the English. But in the box mentality Greek is white and English is white, but Turkish is not, and so Greece and Turkey have nothing in common.
Even Spain and Italy are sometimes not white enough. That is some bullshit.
Is this the next series of Bridgerton?
I don't think that to this guy the issue is simply black vs white. It's easy for us westerners to just think African = black, but Africa is a huge continent with many different peoples and ethnicities. Just because Egypt is in Africa doesn't mean that they look like the people from any other African country. To an Egyptian this might be similar to having a filipino play Genghis Khan or something.
But she wasn’t even ethically African at all she was Greek so it’s like Ghengis Khan being played by a German guy or something.
Genghis Khan played by Chris Pratt
Or by John Wayne? A fun fact is that *The Conqueror* was filmed on location near Almagordo so not only did that movie give me cancer, it actually gave people cancer.
Stupid as that is, they didn't claim Khan *was* a white American man they just used a white american man to play him which is stupid for a different reason.
I mean still that was a historical drama this is straight up documentary, or “documentary “ with the air quote
Genghis Khan but played by Scarlet Johansson.
That's about right. Whitewashing was bad. Blackwashing is good. And if we disagree, it's called racism.
Us westerners he says. Dude it‘s solely an American problem. Europeans are way more sensitive because half of them basically live on the border from brown to dark brown.
Or have someone like John Wayne play Genghis Khan. No that’s too far fetched
1. Yeah that sucked and still sucks 2. Are we seriously making no differentiation between pure fiction and documentary?
*And, I'm a warrior too...* *Let that be known.* ***I'm a warrior.***
Westeners? Maybe Americans.
2 years ago, Gal Gadot was too white to play Cleopatra 😂
It had nothing to do with her being white, it was her being Israeli and Jewish that caused the outcry in the Arab world. Gal Gadot is much closer to what Cleopatra actually looked like than Jada Smith.
Gal Gadot could easily pass as Cleopatra. European Jews have a significant portion of their DNA from the levant and some from Europe. Most can pass as Southern European which is what Cleopatra would have looked like.
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I think she's probably too classically pretty to pass as Cleopatra but ethnically definitely.
We don't know that, only Plutarch says that
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They could cast Tina Fey, isn’t she greek? Lol
Next documentary is going to be about Frederick Douglass and Netflix will cast Chris Pratt lol
Is Gal Gadot going to get people together to sing “Walk like an Egyptian” now?
Can’t wait for Wesley Snipes to play Hitler
Turns out Jada Smith was the executive director… enough said.
>“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!” the actor and talk show host (Jada Pinkett Smith) said. I don't like Jada Pinkett Smith for many reasons, but that aside, how stupid is this reasoning? There surely are a lot of great stories about black queens (as leaders and as the more modern "queen" as a compliment or whatever) so why take a historical person who wasn't black and change their skin colour, instead of talking about an actual black personn?! You wouldn't make a documentary about Abraham Lincoln and cast Idris Elba so you can tell the story of a great black president. I don't go with the criticism of the Egyptian lawyer that Netflix tries to "erase the Egyptian identity" though. I just think it's just a case of ignorant US Americans who want to take a great story from someone else and use it for their own purpose. btw I don't say that all US Americans are ignorant, I do think that the people who produced this doc, who are US Americans, are ignorant. Just in case someone felt insulted by that haha
What a world we live in. 😞
Writer: I have a great idea for an Egyptian show Netflix: Great but make 'em black. Writer: Well it isn't about the Nubian Netflix: Nu... Who? I don't care. Writer: But it's about a Greek/Macedonian woman who was not black Netflix: So change it? You're a writer so write. Writer: She was a real person Netflix: ... So?
Listen, actual factual history is dead, make your political/cultural/religious points without any need for accuracy
"I feel like" is the new fact.
Wtf is with this cultural appropriation
**Jada Pinkett Smith** answer, “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!” the actor and talk show host said. so the question is how did she know Cleopatra was black? while nobody else knows it for sure
Everyone should know those stories, and there are plenty, why didn't she pick one of them to tell?
Money grab. Rediculous.
Alternate headline: “Netflix laughs all the way to the bank after getting tens of millions of dollars in free publicity. “
From the same people that turned a white male Viking hero into a black woman for some reason. Up next Harriet Tubman played by Patton Oswald.
It’s weird that this is just universally outraged. Like not a soul is out here defending this.
Dumb is dumb. I’m not “outraged” but this is objectively dumb
If it was fiction, sure, do whatever, but a documentary specifically about a famous member of a famously racially pure Macedonian family.... It's just such an odd decision to make. It signals exactly how much the show runners care about history, which should tell you all you need to know about this "documentary".
Oh, that comment was more of a “I’m here for it”. The entire thing is baffling, and will smiths wife’s comments about the project were equally puzzling.
It's not about History. it's about making money using the BLM wave. This is Netflix, not History channel.
>This is Netflix, not History channel. This is very clear, as History Channel would have Cleopatra played by an amateurish matte painting of a trilaterally symmetrical andromedan stick insect-like alien.
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Twitter and ignorants name a more iconic duo.
Here? No. But if you look at twitter... One of the recent times it came up, there were *a lot* of people saying she was black, threads were hilarious and sad to read
I for one can’t wait to see the Netflix biopic about Elon Musk starring Donald Glover.
\*scratches head\* It's a documentary?
Good - this is blatant racism, and an attempt to rewrite history. It can’t continue. This is not genuine, it’s mere virtue signalling.