Was Cleopatra black?

Question

Please back up your answer with some sort of evidence.

Answer 1

Cleopatra was neither black, nor Egyptian, nor Greek. Her ancestors were Macedonians, rulers of a line descended from one of Alexander's generals. Macedon was never part of Greece and its inhabitants were always considered barbarians by the Greek city states.

When Alexander the Great died he left no legitimate heir so the empire was split between his generals. One of the these, Philip Arrhidaeus, was appointed ruler of Egypt. He was followed by a long line of Macedonian rulers who married Macedonians - there was no Egyptian blood in the family.

Answer 2

No, she was Macedonian Greek, which is very white. She was the last of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, founded by Alexander the Great's General Ptolemy, who controlled Egypt when Alexander died and his empire was divided up among his generals. The common people may very well have been a mixture of everything around the Mediterranean rim, including black, but the upper classes, the royalty, were Greeks. They interbred to maintain their "purity", even to the point of brother/sister marriages. Cleopatra (and she was the 6th or 7th Queen of that name in Egypt -- the Ptolemaic dynasty lasted a loooong time), was a victim of such a union.

Answer 3

Probably not. She was descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals, who was Macedonian or Greek, and he and his descendants married others of that general stock--when they didn't marry their own siblings. J. A. Rogers, author of Great Men of Color, states that the legitimate line of the Ptolemies had died out by the time Cleopatra (properly, Cleopatra VII) was born, but he offers no evidence of a native Egyptian or other African line coming into the family as a result. Her father, Ptolemy Auletes, was indeed illegitimate, but according to Michael Grant's Cleopatra: A Biography(New York: Dorset, 1972, 5), his mother was Syrian, not Egyptian. It's true that history doesn't explicity record who Cleopatra's mother was, but the following link http://www.houseofptolemy.org/housegen.htm shows her as the daughter of yet another brother-sister marriage, and according to Grant (3-4), a sister of her father is known to have been the mother of his children immediately before and after her. In short, Cleopatra was most likely a Caucasian brunette who managed to be born without any of the defects that several generations of inbreeding might have caused. She did, however, have possibly part-black grandchildren, since her daughter by Marc Antony, Cleopatra Selene, married King Juba of Numidia and Mauretania (homeland of the Moors) and had children.

Answer 4

No. Cleopatra was the byproduct of 300 years of Greek Macedonian inbreeding. I doubt she was black. Although I'm black I often have to debunk most Afro-centrics because they're just plain wrong sometimes

Answer 5

She was Greek and Ptolemeus was one of her ancestors. We cannot know by any evidence that she was black. She surely was not black. She could be dark colored. By coins and sculptures we cannot have a result about her color. We are aware about her characteristics, and her charm also through many texts.

Answer 6

Cleopatra was Egyptian which does not necessarily means she was black. Egyptians are by far the largest ethnic group in Egypt at 94% (about 72.5 million) of the total population. Ethnic minorities include the Bedouin Arab tribes living in the eastern deserts and the Sinai Peninsula, the Berber-speaking Siwis (Amazigh) of the Siwa Oasis, and the ancient Nubian communities clustered along the Nile. There are also tribal communities of Beja concentrated in the south-eastern-most corner of the country, and a number of Dom clans mostly in the Nile Delta and Faiyum who are progressively becoming assimilated as urbanization increases.

Several articles discuss whether or not Cleopatra was black, below are the links http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_4_57/ai_82479151
http://condor.depaul.edu/~humctr/professor/columns.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-82479151.html

You can learn more about Cleopatra and Egypt by reading the following
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_language

Answer 7

No, she was Greek from the area of Macedonia. She had part Egyptian blood in her, so she was probably an olivey colored skin.

She came from a history of inbred kings and queens. Her original ancestor was Ptolemy I who was one of Alexander's generals. :)

Answer 8

No, she was Greek. When Alexander the Great died, his empire was divided by several of his generals. She was decended from them and was the last of the Greek rule and began the Roman rule after she died.

Answer 9

It's hard to know.

One would expect that with her Egyptian blood she would have dark hair and brown eyes.

However, she had Macedonian ancestry as well, which would have made her light-skinned, possibly with blonde hair and green eyes.

It's one of those mysteries that we may never know the answer to!