Egyptian Dreams

[starguard]

CNN recently placed an article on-line stating that Cleopatra "contrary to the 1963 movie with Elizabeth Taylor" may have had African Blood.

With the finding of her sister Arsinoe tomb, historians are now sure that she (arsinoe) was of mixed blood, but seeing that both her and Cleopatra had different mothers leaves many people to wonder. Whas Cleopatra of mixed race as well?

If read somewhere that her Father was of Masadonian descent and was indeed caucasian, and her mother was of Roman descent. Rome was somewhat occupied with people from many different backgrounds. If her mother was indeed of Roman descent, is it possible that she may have been Black African?

[Robson]

We can "mix" only pure things and there's no such thing as a"pure race". Btw, there's no such thing as human races, end of story. If Cleo could be considered a Negro by the US and UK standards? Probably yes. But I can't imagine people confer any importance to this detail ("racial" phenotype) in her lifetime. She was a kinglike queen and a living goddess for the Egyptians and a filthy harlot for some Romans, and the origin of her "blood" has not the meanest weight in this all.

[kendo1]

Tut was mixed ,but he was not caucasoid.there is no such thing as a black caucasoid .you could find black africans with that same skin tone or lighter in africa without any outside influence.we have to rememeber than upper egypt for a long time was black(negriod).

most of the sudan today is still negriod too.the arabs in th sudan are still mostly black and the are but the overall population in the sudan are not arabs.most folks in the sudan are still black africans(negriod).IN FACT,arabs in the northern part of the sudan were not the major group until later modern times.northern sudan black african,meaning negriod.i do not like using these terms but i wanted to make it clear,sudan and is not a caucasoid country or region,not today and never in the past.

Now for egypt.It was black african f,but i do not believe every egyptian later on in ancient times was
black,but most still were.lower egypt was were most outsiders lived at,upper egypt is were most of the native black africans lived at,but upper egypt was for along time were most folks live at,so that would make most egyptians black africans.wars and a decline in overall population in egypt and outsders that intermarried or raped made a big diference in the population changes over the years.

when it come to the arabs in the sudan there are difference.most are black,some are white and some are brown.the black arabs, are two groups.one group is mixed and the other group do not have any arab blood at all,they are arabized nubians who just took more of the arab culture in the last few cen. to protect themselves from arab raids,so in fact they are not really arabs at all.
the mixed raced nubians who called themselves arabs,are not really arabs either,but since they took on more of the arab culture and they are part arab and if they want to be arabs,than they are,but they really are not.these comment s are not afro-centric,just facts just like the quote below.


King Tut: African or European?

The Westside Gazette, Commentary//Analysis, Niara Sudarkasa, Ph.D, Posted: Dec 07, 2005 Review it on NewsTrust

Debates over King Tut’s image and identity are not new. In 1922, Howard Carter, an English archeologist, “discovered” the tomb of this young king who had ruled Egypt about 3300 years ago, from 1336 to 1327 B.C. As soon as his reconstructed images began to appear, they sparked decades of debate over his identity. Most European and Euro-American scholars and others persuaded by their point of view claimed that King Tut was essentially a “caucasoid” ancestor of present day Europeans (referring to ”whites” generally).


Scholars of African origin and descent, along with those of their European colleagues and other scholars who disavow the Eurocentric worldview, argue that King Tut was an African, physically and culturally akin to the other dark-skinned people who populated the African continent at the time he lived.

The current controversy surrounding the exhibition coming soon to the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art is a continuation of earlier debates over King Tut’s identity. The mummy has been given a new face, created by “forensic reconstruction” that makes him look as European as possible, so that the average person could not possibly consider him to be an African. This “forensic reconstruction”, featured on the cover of the National Geographic, was displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum along with artifacts from King Tut’s tomb, as if this reconstructed bust was also “a genuine article.”


It is important to note most Egyptians we see outside of Egypt today are Arabs whose ancestors invaded Egypt and other north African states from the seventh and eighth centuries, A.D. onward. One of the recent reconstructions of King Tut, done in France, is said to have assigned him a very light skin tone, “based on an average shade of modern Egyptians.” Assuming that anyone has an accurate measure of the “average” skin tone in modern Egypt, the question is, what does this have to do with the skin color of the people living in Egypt 3000 years ago?

In other words, the debate over King Tut’s identity is part of a larger debate over the “racial identity” of the ancient Egyptians. (Here, I will not go into the question of the scientific validity of the concept of “race”). Before the 20th century, various scholars, European as well as African, considered Egyptians to be “an African race.” Herodotus, whom we were taught is the “Father of History,” depicted the Egyptians as Blacks with woolly hair, based on his studies of Egyptian history, and his visits to the African continent in the Fifth Century B.C. Nearer to our own period, we see that prominent French, English and German Egyptologists of the 18th and 19th centuries did not find it necessary to deny Egypt her African biological ancestry or her African cultural roots.


Some scholars thought, perhaps naively, that the debate over the identity of ancient Egyptians had been settled at the UNESCO Conference on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt, held in Cairo in 1974. After all, there Professor Cheikh Anta Diop, the great Egyptologist from Senegal, and his protégé and colleague, Dr. Theophile Obenga, from the Republic of Congo (and now a Professor at San Francisco State University), marshaled all the archeological and linguistic evidence to show that Egypt was peopled by indigenous African populations from the area then known as Ethiopia. They also argued conclusively that the key symbols in ancient Egyptian political and spiritual realms, as well as other cultural attributes, were unmistakably African.

From this short discussion, it should be clear that the debate over King Tut’s image and identity involve much more than the question of his color. At its core, the debate centers on his Africanity, which refers to his biological ancestry, his cultural origins, the origins of the populations in Egypt during the period in which he lived, and, a matter not discussed here, the source of the objects found in his tomb. In that regard, it should be noted that objects similar to some of those buried with King Tut have been found in early archeological sites in the modern day Sudan and Ethiopia.

Even though the political climate surrounding the scholarship on ancient Egypt is changing, the controversy continues. Scholars with Eurocentric perspectives on history seem determined to create for themselves “caucasoid” ancestors in ancient Egypt. African scholars are even more adamant that Egypt must be accorded her rightful place as the African state, which gave rise to what is now called “Western Civilization.” Stay tuned for more “out of Africa”!

Dr. Niara Sudarkasa is a former Professor of Anthropology and Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she also served as an Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. In 1987, she became the first woman to serve as President of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

[kendo1]

WRONG THREAD. I POSTED THIS IN.

[anneke]

[starguard]

This makes me wonder about King Potolomy. After he inherited the Egyptian throne from Alexander the Great and started his own Dynasty, he soon married and started having children, who were forced to marry and have children of their own through incest. Does anyone know exactly who he chose as a wife? Was she Greek like himself, or did he marry an Egyptian woman.

If he chose a non greek woman, I would think it very possible that his desendants could have very well been of mixed blood.

I am not certain of this, but I do belive it to be a possibility!

[Segereh]

[kylejustin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_VII#Ancestry

this is considered accurate for her ancestry. her father's side at least. her mother is unknown, and cleopatra V is the most likely. however you would have to read the pages on these figures to understand it all.
anyway, as you can see, though the ptolemies married foreign princesses, sometimes egyptian women, (ptolemy I married a daughter of nectanebo) the dynasty itself stayed predominantly greek in genetics. the ptolemies had a lot of incest, so most of cleopatra's ancestry is the same people.
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[kylejustin]

a simplified version of her family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
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heaven won't take me.......hell's afraid i'll take over.....

[kylejustin]

the ancestry in the male line of cleopatra VII:

ptolemy I and berenice I were full macedonian greek. (paternal line 6th great grandparents).

ptolemy II married arsinoe I (paternal line 5th great grandparents), daughter of lysimachus, a macedonian king, by amastris, a persian princess, who was 2nd great granddaughter of darius II. his second wife was arsinoe II of egypt, but only had sons.

ptolemy III married berenice II (paternal line 4th great grandparents, and first cousins), daughter of magas, greek king of cyrene (Libya) by apama, daughter of antiochus I of syria, and his wife apama, daughter of a persian baron. magas was the son of berenice I before she married ptolemy I.

ptolemy IV married arsinoe III (paternal line 3rd great grandparents, and siblings)

ptolemy V married cleopatra I (paternal line great great grandparents), daughter of antiochus III of syria by laodice III (first cousins), a daughter of mithridates of pontus and laodice, a daughter of antiochus II of syria.
cleopatra I descends from greek royalty all over turkey and syria, as well as the persian apama mentioned above.

ptolemy VIII married cleopatra III (paternal great grandparents, niece and uncle)

ptolemy IX and cleopatra IV (paternal grandparents and siblings)

ptolemy XII and possibly cleopatra V (father and possible mother, niece and uncle, first cousins)

therefore arsinoe I (half persian), berenice II (quarter persian), and cleopatra I introduce persian blood into the ptolemaic dynasty. therefore, cleopatra's great great grandmother had persian blood, as did every king from ptolemy III down. which means, considering the inbreeding of the rest of the dynasty down, it is entirely plausible (but unlikely, given the amount of greek blood in the dynasty) that cleopatra's family could inherit genes from the persian royal bloodlines. makes it more plausible if the table is true, as in cleopatra's mother being cleopatra V, and a cousin/niece of ptolemy XII.

but i havn't heard of any contemporary reports of the ptolemaic dynasty with an olive or darker skin.
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heaven won't take me.......hell's afraid i'll take over.....

[starguard]

I was watching a show onn TV a few months ago called "Cleopatra: Portrait of a Killer" that seems to have gained a lot fo attention receintly. Here is a clip from it on youtube, stating that cleopatra's sister had african blood

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO78VHqAopI&feature=player_embedded

[chillie]

Yes, she was mixed. Macedonean (sp), she was related to King Mithradates, her mother was a nabatean
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festina lente

[kylejustin]

[chillie]

Something about her mother being HALF nabatean.
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festina lente