Diaselo
Top-Poster
Doch nicht Vermutung .
-
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Endlosschleife Part 2: Mazedonier vs. Griechen
- Ersteller Lilith
- Erstellt am
Diaselo
Top-Poster
Hahahaha Lubes Schwester die gemeinsam LSD nehmen oder wasDas ist wie wenn ich sowas posten würde :
Cleopatra was black, Alexander the Great was black and only black people could survive in Ancient Egypt - it's too hot!
In my day job I work on some history magazines, and one of my many pleasures is having to "explain" why we "got things wrong" to Holocaust deniers, Irish slavery enthusiasts, Lost Causers, and now Afrocentricists. What we did was illustrate Cleopatra for the cover, but some people weren't happy, because we'd chosen to depict Cleopatra as white. (TBH I'd have preferred her more tanned to head off some of the milder criticism, but whatever - high status Greek women would have stayed out of the sun anyway)
Presented for you enjoyment are the highlights of this whole awful exchange from Facebook, subtly edited for the sake of your attention span.
Great question - thank you for asking. There's a great deal of debate about Cleopatra's heritage, and it's definitely plausible that she could have had some Semitic or sub-Saharan ancestry but that's speculation and we wanted to stick as closely as we could to what we know. The Ptolemiac dynasty were Macedonian (in the Ancient Greek sense, rather than the modern sense) and notoriously insular (and incestuous) interlopers who held themselves apart from their Egyptian subjects. Cleopatra was the first Ptolemiac ruler who could actually speak Egyptian, they were that haughty and aloof!
Contemporary sources aren't hugely helpful in arguing either case. Roman writers saw things in terms of culture rather than race, so even if she had appeared fully Hellenic (and therefore incredibly familiar in language, manners, values etc) they would have happily othered her as an exotic outsider. Contemporary Egyptian art doesn't depict the Ptolemiac Pharaohs in a distinct way from earlier kings - which could be seen as evidence that they were Semitic, but the Ptolemies, for all their superiority, took care to present themselves in the correct manner and ensure that they were seen as "authentically Pharaonic". A good comparison would be Egyptian depictions of Alexander the Great, whose conquest of Egypt put the dynasty in place (Ptolemy was one of his bodyguard).
The extent to which the Ptolemies were a Hellenic culture at the heart of Ancient Egypt is a fascinating one. Essentially Cleopatra was almost certainly of majority Macedonian descent and so we chose to depict her with strong Mediterranean features.
It turns out that first question wasn't actually a question in any sense that we would recognise, it was a portal to a dimension of fringe history madness. Anyway:
I didn’t describe Cleopatra as being Semitic, I said there was is a case to be made that she was part-Semitic or part-Sub-Saharan African, but that’s not something we know for certain. We chose to depict Cleopatra with a “Mediterranean” look precisely because of that ambiguity.
I’m assuming the portraits of Alexander the Great you’re referring to are the Alexander mural in Pompeii as that’s dark haired and tanned, although I wouldn’t say that was compelling evidence that he was non-white. If you’re thinking of something else, let me know.
If you can think of any other depictions that could be helping support the "Alexander was a Brother black" narrative, let me know (Edit: Was inappropriate, I'm genuinely sorry for my poor judgement. This is a fraught enough subject without me using the tools of the racist. Thanks to u/probablyaname for calling me out on it.)
Funnily enough, Plutarch (who we go to for much of our knowledge of Alexander) criticised some depictions of him as "too dark and swarthy. Whereas he was of a fair colour, as they say, and his fairness passed into ruddiness on his breast particularly, and in his face.”
Other depictions of Alexander are much paler, including these two Hellenic examples:
The fairness/redness of his hair is interesting too, as Pseudo-Callisthenes identifies him as blonde or tawny ("For he had the hair of a lion”) and Aelian describes him as blonde ("his Hair curled naturally, and was yellow").
Ultimately, I’d like to add a gentle reminder that whiteness and non-whiteness is a modern concept and not something that Alexander the Great or Cleopatra, or any of the chroniclers who wrote about them, would have recognised or been particularly concerned about.
I had to re-read this several times, because each time I finished I became instantly convinced I had imagined it. The news that white people cannot survive high temperature and high sunlight environments will be fantastic news for the Indigenous Australians of 1787. Just hang in there guys, they'll be dead in days!
I mean is Egypt some sort of Star Wars like lava-world? Did Napoleon have to wear a special suit? I didn't even know where to start with this one. It's very difficult responding to something that stupid without appearing condescending. Luckily I'm among friends here, right?
Depictions of historical characters don’t “have” to be backed by genetic evidence, because in the vast majority of cases this evidence does not exist. Instead we have to make do with primary and secondary sources, and from that build the best possible interpretation mindful of biases and context.
I didn't add anything about the reconstruction of (what might be) Arsinoe, because my hope of hope is that they'll bring it up later and I can devote a whole reply to saying, effectively:
a) Cleopatra and Arsinoe were half-sisters, so relying on her for Cleopatra's skin colour is flawed b) We don't know for certain that it is Arsinoe, so relying on her for Cleopatra's skin colour is flawed
Let me know if I've erred anywhere, ancient history is not my comfort zone.
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Paprika
Jackass of the Week
Wir alle wissen das du der hellhäutige blonde große starke Superhellene bist Achillis... wir wissen auch das du das Achilles Poster von Brett Pitt bei dir über deinem Bett aufgehängt hast das du dein eigenes Foto , dein vergrößertes Fotoshop Gesicht , genau auf das Gesicht von Brett Pitt geklebt hast. Und wir wissen , dass du neben deinem Bett ne große Familienpackung Taschentücher stehen hast.
Diaselo
Top-Poster
Was denn sonst.
- Macedonian is similar to Bulgarian and is sometimes been regarded as a variety of that language.
- "Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education", Colin Baker, Sylvia Prys Jones, p. 415.
- From a strictly linguistic point of view Macedonian can be called a Bulgarian dialect, as structurally it is most similar to Bulgarian.
- "Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics", R.E.Asher, J.M.Y.Simpson (editors), 1994, vol.1, p. 429.
Laut den ist eure Sprache Bulgarisch
Diaselo
Top-Poster
Also hellhäutig bin ich, blond nicht sorry sag mal bist du schwul oder was?.
Diaselo
Top-Poster
Benutzt lieber den griechischen Namen Iraklis.Richtiger 0 plan
Wie kann man nicht wissen das die antiken Makedonen sich als Nachfahren von Herkules sahen
Ist jetzt Herkules auch Slawe?
Herkulovic oder Herkluski
shqip
Geek
Hallo Lubica,
sag mal wieso hast du eigentlich deinen Nick hier gewechselt? und dann noch so einfallsreich.
Was ich fragen wollte ist hast du eigentlich dein Problem mit deinen fettigen Haaren gelöst Lubica?
Diaselo
Top-Poster
Jawohl Lube e darth e nein Snowden.
Paprika
Jackass of the Week
Ey ne alter mein Foto bekommst du nicht. Was fällt dir eigentlich ein!
shqip
Geek
Hat Lubica wiedermal Eier gelegt?
