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To whom does Cleopatra belong?

The Netflix documentary series “Queen Cleopatra” is stirring up controversy by casting a black actress to portray the famous Egyptian ruler. Some see this as a revisionist approach that overlooks the Greek roots of this particularly fascinating ancient figure.

Others argue the choice contributes to stripping Egyptians of their cultural heritage.

The controversy revolves around an Afrocentric interpretation of ancient history, which posits that Pharaonic Egypt was a black African civilization with no connection to the modern-day Egyptian population.

To whom does Cleopatra belong?

Depiction of Queen Cleopatra at the Ptolemaic Temple of the Goddess Hathor at Denderah, Egypt. (Credit: AFP)

She left little written evidence, if any at all.

What we know about Cleopatra comes from the reports of others who were sensitive to the mood of an era marked by Octavian’s propaganda about her.

But why does the shadow of Cleopatra still haunt us 2,053 years after her death? The mystery surrounding her undoubtedly contributed to the creation of her legend, feeding all sorts of myths.

Throughout the centuries, she had been written about, portrayed in plays, painted, sculpted and sung about. The ancient figure has been confused with what she symbolizes, which, itself, is in a constant state of evolution.

There is Cleopatra, the femme fatale, as fascinating as she was dangerous, who seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony to achieve her ends. There is Cleopatra, who represented the vices and torments of passionate love. And then there is Cleopatra, who was a great sovereign and a shrewd strategist, who managed to navigate through the troubled waters of tumultuous geopolitics.

With the Roman conquest starting in the 2nd century BC, the Hellenistic kingdoms, heirs to Alexander the Great, fell one by one.

To preserve Egypt’s independence, the Ptolemaic power embodied by Cleopatra had to negotiate astutely.

Today, a pop culture icon, Cleopatra is one of the few figures of ancient Egypt who, since her suicide in 30 B.C., has remained a topic of conversation. The mysteries of her reign are conducive to the projection of various identity anxieties on both sides of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Evidence of this can be seen in the controversy stirred by the April 12 release of the trailer for Queen Cleopatra, a documentary series that is part of the African Queens project, on Netflix.

The project previously highlighted the story of the warrior queen Njinga of Angola who was portrayed by Adesuwa Oni, a black actress.

But when it became clear that another actress of black heritage, Adele James, would play Cleopatra, it sparked major controversy — while it is widely accepted that Njinga was indeed black, the same cannot be said for Cleopatra, as many historians believe it is very likely that she was not.

Regardless of her ethnicity, it is unlikely that Cleopatra’s fate was determined by her skin color.

This is especially evident considering that there were black pharaohs who were at the origin of a real Egyptian renaissance.

The founder of the 25th Dynasty, a Kush king named Piânkhy, saved Egyptian civilization from division and protected it from the Assyrian threat in the 13th century B.C.

Moreover, it could be argued that if white Western men could and have often portrayed Jesus of Nazareth, then there is no reason why Cleopatra cannot be portrayed by a black woman.

But the Netflix project is neither a free adaptation of the legend of Cleopatra nor a work of fiction inspired by her story. Rather, it is a documentary that suggests, through the voice of a commentator featured in the trailer, that “Cleopatra was black.”

This insinuation has reignited existing tensions surrounding the Egyptian queen’s identity.

Some critics, especially in the West, have denounced what they see as an attempt to rewrite an ancient Greek figure to fit an ideological agenda that seeks to promote black men and women, who have historically been excluded from the civilizational narrative developed by the white West. Meanwhile, other detractors, notably in Egypt, have accused yet another large American cultural production of appropriating their heritage, with adherence to the Afrocentric thesis, which posits that Pharaonic Egypt was a black African civilization, sparking controversy once again.

According to this theory, modern Egyptians have no connection to ancient Egypt and are instead descendants of Macedonian, Roman and Arab invaders who displaced the original inhabitants.

“In the long run, it gets tiring to be constantly confronted with people who try to separate you from your ancestors,” says Mahmoud Salem, an Egyptian geopolitical analyst and author of an April 14 article titled “Was Cleopatra a Black African Queen?” published on the New Lines Magazine website.

“Cleopatra is perhaps the most famous figure associated with the African continent, the one who has most infiltrated the Western psyche and the Eurocentric narrative of history. This has drawn the interest of the Afrocentric movement,” he adds.

Actress Adele James has been cast as Cleopatra in the Netflix documentary series "Queen Cleopatra," which is scheduled for release on May 10, 2023. (Credit: Netflix)

‘Foolish queen’ and ‘philosopher’

Afrocentrism, which emerged in the 19th century within the Afro-American community and gained momentum in the following century with the works of the Senegalese intellectual Cheikh Anta Diop, is often seen as a response to centuries of slavery, white domination and the marginalization of black people.

Critics argue that it is an Afrocentric reappropriation of Egyptian heritage in response to Europe’s appropriation of that past, setting up a racial binary of white versus black, Eurocentrism versus Afrocentrism, that may be anachronistic for the study of antiquity.

But above all, this racial binary removes the Egyptians from the equation and perpetuates the Egyptomania that took hold of Europe in the late 18th century, when the West claimed ancient Egyptian heritage as its own — a tendency that reinforces the idea of a modern Egypt disconnected from its past.

“The attempts to separate ancient and modern Egypt were mainly led by the West to associate Egyptian antiquity with Western culture and have a good reason to steal thousands of objects for their museums,” says Egyptologist Monica Hanna.

“Afrocentrism is only the mirror of this cultural imperialism. The question of Cleopatra’s skin color is not relevant,” she adds. “We will know the answer only if her tomb is discovered one day.”

The fact that Egypt’s borders have remained relatively stable over time makes the ongoing cultural appropriation even more frustrating.

“The modern-day Egyptian population is largely descended from their ancient ancestors. But unlike other countries in the Near East, the Egyptian language has changed over time, with ancient Egyptians not speaking a Semitic language,” according to Maurice Sartre, a French historian and a specialist in Greek and Eastern Roman history.

“The heir to the traditional Egyptian language is Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christians,” he says.

In contrast to the vitriolic portrayal by the Romans, local sources provide a different perspective on Queen Cleopatra.

For Virgil, she was a “sacrilegious Egyptian wife” of Mark Antony. For Horace, she was “a foolish queen who prepared the ruin of the Capitol and the funeral of the Empire.”

However, the Egyptian Christian priest and historian Jean de Nikiou, who witnessed the Muslim conquest, described her as “an eminent woman for her personal qualities and her actions marked by virility and strength.”

Eutychius of Alexandria, an Orthodox patriarch of the 10th century and one of the first Egyptian Christian writers to use the Arabic language, seemed to concur.

The latter wrote, “Cleopatra introduced the work of the mosaic and built an imposing temple called ‘the ‘Temple of Saturn’ .... She built in the city of Ikhmīm a hydrometer in order to control the waters of Egypt’s Nile. She then did the same in the city of Ansina.”

For the Muslim traveler and historian al-Masudi, who was born in Baghdad in the late ninth century and died in 956 in Fustat, the first Arab capital of Egypt, Cleopatra was “a philosopher who raised the rank of scholars and enjoyed their company.”

Closer to home, the “Prince of Poets,” Ahmad Shawqi, portrayed the ruler as a virtuous patriot, concerned about the fate of her people and her country, far from the perfidy that Western culture has often attributed to her.

In “The Death of Cleopatra” (1927), she became an allegory of Egyptian resistance to European imperialism and colonialism, particularly British and French.

Ahmad Shawqi. (Credit: Wikicommons)

Cleopatra’s mother

The cultural debate over Cleopatra’s identity — Greek, Egyptian or black African — is partly due to the cryptic nature of her lineage.

According to Sartre, Cleopatra is historically Greek and belonged to the Hellenistic dynasty, which was founded by Ptolemy, a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, and reigned over Egypt from 323 to 30 BC.

To be accepted by the native population, the royal lineage integrated certain local customs and did not hesitate to establish equivalences between the gods of the two civilizations.

The Ptolemies tried to bring together “two conceptions of monarchy that did not merge,” according to Bernard Legras in his book L'Égypte grecque et romaine.

They also embraced the Pharaonic custom of marrying siblings. “It was also a means of preventing mixed heritage,” explains Sartre. Strategically, the dynasty had to maintain a dual politico-religious affiliation while retaining its Greco-Macedonian culture.

Cleopatra is therefore a descendant of Greek colonists, with her father, Ptolemy XII, being a confirmed part of her lineage. However, the identity of her mother remains unknown.

For a long time, there was a prevailing theory that her mother was Egyptian and hailed from a prominent family of high priests in Memphis. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that Cleopatra learned Egyptian, contrary to her predecessors.

“For the past 20 years, many historians have rejected this possibility. While it cannot be ruled out that the Ptolemies had offspring with Egyptian women, it was not for the purpose of placing them on the throne,” argues Sartre. He further explains that it was crucial to ensure that heirs were born and raised in a Greek environment in Alexandria.

Coin with the effigy of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. (Credit: Wikicommons)

Orientalism

Defining Cleopatra is particularly challenging as she is the subject of contradictory interpretations in the West.

Some individuals who seek to reassert her Greek lineage today link her with the notion of “whiteness,” perhaps to more clearly differentiate her from the black African identity that others ascribe to her.

However, it is this same Western culture that has historically marginalized the queen by portraying her as an exotic, sensual and debauched otherness, largely influenced by Octavian, who later became Emperor Augustus.

“Octavian began propagating negative publicity against Cleopatra as early as antiquity by labeling her ‘the Egyptian,’” says Sartre. “It was a way to belittle her as much as possible.”

He continues, “The Romans, despite their disdain for Greek greed, still respected their culture. However, there was a significant level of racism — although the term is anachronistic — against the Egyptians and their religion, which featured strange gods with animal heads.”

“By portraying Cleopatra as Egyptian, Octavian attempted to sway Roman public opinion during the civil war that pitted him against Marc Antony. He sought to transform the conflict into a foreign war because civil wars were never truly won,” Sartre explains.

In the West, Cleopatra has historically been portrayed as a debauched and objectified representative of the East. In recent times, there has been a resurgence of Cleopatra’s image [in the West?], but it is often in response to a perceived “black threat.”

From an Egyptian perspective, however, the question is different, even if some of the negative reactions triggered by the Netflix series have carried racist overtones.

“In general, I think there is a sense of dispossession. They want to talk about Egypt and choose to focus on a Greek invader, then claim she is black African,” Salem says.

One of the symptoms of this indemnity insecurity is the fact that an Egyptian prosecutor filed a complaint demanding “serious legal action” against Netflix, calling for blocking the platform in the country.

“In Egypt, we are not taught our history as being that of a colonized nation,” Salem says.

“We claim it uncritically and, in its entirety, including the 2,300 years of colonization: Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman conquests and so on,” he adds.

Salem continues, “When you think about it, the founder of modern Egypt, Mohammad Ali, was an Albanian who became governor of this land and used it to feed his own ambitions.”

“It doesn’t matter where they come from. Once they arrive in Egypt, they become Egyptians,” he says.

Oil on canvas produced in 1874 by Jean-André Rixens. (Credit: Wikicommons)

So, to whom does Cleopatra belong?

“To everyone and to no one. We are talking about a dynasty that died out a long time ago,” says Sartre.

He explains that Cleopatra had a daughter who had a son, and things stopped there. The heritage is that of the Hellenistic world.

“Egypt is the repository of this heritage through the palace of Alexandria and many traces of Cleopatra’s reign, such as the temple of Hathor in Dendera, built in her time. But whether we are in Europe, North Africa, or the Near East, we are all heirs to antiquity,” he says.

For more information:

El-Daly Okasha, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium, (London UCL Press edition, 2005).Hanna Monica, Women are from Africa and men are from Europe in The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Cultural Histories (Routledge edition, 2021)

Legras Bernard, L'Égypte grecque et romaine

Sartre Maurice, Cleopatra, a dream of power

Shohat Ella, Disorienting Cleopatra in Taboo Memories, Diasporic voices


This article was originally published in French by L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Sahar Ghoussoub.

She left little written evidence, if any at all.What we know about Cleopatra comes from the reports of others who were sensitive to the mood of an era marked by Octavian’s propaganda about her.But why does the shadow of Cleopatra still haunt us 2,053 years after her death? The mystery surrounding her undoubtedly contributed to the creation of her legend, feeding all sorts of myths.Throughout...