CAIRO — On this, at least, everyone agrees: Cleopatra was a formidable queen of ancient Egypt, the last of the Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Alexander the Great.and who would later achieve even greater posthumous fame as a seductress, immortalized by Shakespeare and Hollywood.
Beyond that, many of the details are imprecise—which is why one of the world’s dominant streaming services ended up in an imbroglio with modern day Egypt, criticized by online commentators and even the Egyptian government for casting a black actress to play Cleopatra in the second season of the Netflix series “African Queens”, released this month.
Shortly after the show’s trailers appeared last month, Netflix was forced to disable commentary, for coming off as hostile and at times racist. Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the government agency in charge of heritage, declared the program a “falsification of Egyptian history.”
For the show’s creators, the four Cleopatra episodes were an opportunity to celebrate one of history’s most famous women as an African ruler, portrayed as black. But to many Egyptians and historians, that description is at best a misinterpretation and at worst a denial of Egyptian history.
Despite her Greek Macedonian ancestry, the show’s producers say there is a possibility her mother had another origin. The identities of Cleopatra’s mother and grandmother are unknown.
“We don’t often see or hear stories about black queens, and that was very important to me, as well as my daughter, and just for my community to be able to hear those stories because there are so many,” said Jada Pinkett Smith, who produced “African Queens.” .
Cleopatra was descended from a line of Macedonian Greek kings who ruled Egypt from 323 BC to 30 BC, when it was annexed by Rome, and many experts argue that he probably had little, if any, non-Greek blood. The Ptolemies—as all kings of the dynasty were called—tended to marry their own sisters or other relatives, though there is some evidence that she had a Persian ancestor, some scholars say.
“Statues of Queen Cleopatra confirm that she had Hellenistic (Greek) features, distinguished by fair skin, a long nose and thin lips,” the Egyptian government tweeted on April 30.
Modern fights over Cleopatra’s background and skin color have erupted again and again, finding fresh fuel with each new Hollywood casting, from Elizabeth Taylor, who played her in 1963, to Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga and Gal Gadot, all recent contenders to play her in various projects.
Netflix’s choice of Adele James, a biracial British actress, is a reflection of Western arguments about black representation in Hollywood and whether history is too dominated by white narratives revolving around European primacy. But it sparked a different debate in Egypt. There, the question is whether the Egyptians and their ancient ancestors—regardless of geographic location—are African.
Tina Gharavi, the show’s director, wrote in an article defending the cast in Variety last month: “Perhaps it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as black, but that I’ve asked Egyptians to see themselves like Africans.”
Egypt is located in the northeast corner of Africa. Today, it is a member of the African Union and other continental groups. But in Greek and Roman times, historians say, Egypt was seen as a major player in the Mediterranean world, the gateway to Africa, rather than being entirely African.
Since the Arabs conquered Egypt in the 7th century, bringing with them the Arabic language and Islam, the Egyptians have shared more cultural ties with the Middle East and North Africa than with the rest of Africa.. The ancestors of today’s Egyptians include not only native Arabs and Egyptians, but also Nubians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Circassians, Albanians, Western Europeans, and other conquerors, traders, slaves, and immigrants.
For all its diversity, Egyptian society often values fair skin. But many Egyptians and historians say the racist insults hurled at James online, while abhorrent, distract from the real problem: The show is dragging a former queen into the center of contemporary Western debates where she has no place.
In 1987, Martin Bernal’s book “Black Athena” argued that historians had erased Egyptian contributions to ancient Greek culture. Although many scholars agree that much of the evidence he cited was flawed, it became a canonical text of Afrocentrism, a movement that seeks to counter ideas about the alleged inferiority of African civilizations. The pyramids and pharaohs became a source of pride for Afrocentrists and Cleopatra a heroine.
The Egyptians are also very proud of the pyramids and the pharaohs. For many Egyptians, the pharaohs—whose skin color and ancestry are still the subject of scientific debate—were Egyptians, not Africans. It doesn’t help that some Afrocentrists argue that modern Egyptians are descended from Arab invaders who displaced black Africans from ancient Egypt, a theory many Egyptians find offensive.
Some historians say that the ancients would have seen the obsession with Cleopatra’s appearance as alien. “Race is a modern construct of identity politics that has been imposed on our past.said Monica Hanna, an Egyptian Egyptologist. “This use and abuse of the past for modern agendas will only hurt everyone, because it will give a distorted picture of the past.”.
By: VIVIAN YEE
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/world/middleeast/cleopatra-netflix-race-egypt.html, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-19 13:00:08
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