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Cyrenaican hairstyles have gone way down. Lately they're likely to be helmet hair, or beret hair.
Cleo herself seems to have preferred a "Greek Chignon" style hairdo and also a hairstyle called "Melon" ... both of which require the hair to be pulled back into a bun. I am sure the great queen was up on the very latest Greco-Roman hair styles.
I believe that we are thinking in modern day racial terms that had no meaning in the ancient world. I have read authors like Cheik Anta Diop, George James, Van Sertima, etc. and attended several lectures sponsored by a study group called Khepera. The impression I get is that when many people talk about Cleopatra and the Ancient Egyptians being "Black", they envision the average Egyptian as looking like the average African-American in any US city. (I fully realize the inherent problem of trying to use any sort of "average" in this context, but this is for the sake of simplification.) I think the odds of this are very remote, considering the location of Egypt and the population dynamics over the past millennium. If "Black" is merely meant to contain some elements of sub-saharan ancestry, then this is a bit more probable. I don't think we will ever know what Cleopatra's ancestry was, unless we stumble across her mummy one day.
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The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, has provided pointers to Cleopatra’s true ethnicity. Scholars have long debated whether she was Greek or Macedonian like her ancestor the original Ptolemy, a Macedonian general who was made ruler of Egypt by Alexander the Great, or whether she was north African.
Evidence obtained by studying the dimensions of Arsinöe’s skull shows she had some of the characteristics of white Europeans, ancient Egyptians and black Africans, indicating that Cleopatra was probably of mixed race, too. They were daughters of Ptolemy XII by different wives.
After a bazillion years have passed, I don't know why this is even discussed. Why is her ethnicity relevant?
Wankers everywhere want to know.
Actually if I remember correctly around the beginning of the thread, African Americans were trying to claim her and the Egyptian civilizations for their own, I guess out of insecurity concerning their place in history.
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....... Evidence obtained by studying the dimensions of Arsinöe’s skull shows she had some of the characteristics of white Europeans, ancient Egyptians and black Africans, indicating that Cleopatra was probably of mixed race, too.....
Ahhh, now we're getting somewhere! She probably looked much like this:
Cleo herself seems to have preferred a "Greek Chignon" style hairdo and also a hairstyle called "Melon" ... both of which require the hair to be pulled back into a bun. I am sure the great queen was up on the very latest Greco-Roman hair styles.
I don't think it far-fetched that she probably set the fashion, at least in her corner of the empire.
Arsinoe's skeleton may have been found and identified but Cleo herself, still has not.
This BBC article does mention that Arsinoe's mother had African ancestry but as the Fox News excerpt of the Sunday Times (whose link to the Times full article does not work) states: "They were daughters of Ptolemy XII by different wives."
As I posted earlier there are question marks regarding the identity of Cleo's mother, which might not have been the same as Arsinoe.
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Originally Posted by LuckyGem
After a bazillion years have passed, I don't know why this is even discussed. Why is her ethnicity relevant?
On this, I am in full agreement.
What I am most interested in, close to this time period, is Hero/Heron of Alexandria, the Serapeum of Alexandria and the role of Egyptian scholars, priests and philosophers in the Mouseum and the Great Library.
I believe the Serapeum was housed in the Egyptian quarter (Raqedi) of Alexandria, and it also had its own library associated with the Great Library.
Especially during the time of Hero/n, the great minds of Alexandria apparently knew about robotics, programming, electromagnetism and the power of steam.
What was the role of Alexandrians of native Egyptian descent in all those developments? Why did the Alexandrians not start the Industrial Revolution two thousand years ago? To me, those are far more interesting questions, than the obsession moderns have with the skin color of the Ptolemeis' sexual partners.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Especially during the time of Hero/n, the great minds of Alexandria apparently knew about robotics, programming, electromagnetism and the power of steam.
Well, I think that's kind of hyped. Yes, there were various "computers" in the sense of analog devices to compute astronomical things, primitive robotics along the same lines as cuckoo clocks, and simple batteries in some of the early societies. But no general digital computers and programming, nor anything like Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory.
I'm more surprised that the Romans only got a start on an Industrial Revolution. They did have capital ventures, some factories and organized industries, insurance, advanced building techniques, and the beginnings of infrastructure throughout the Empire. I think though that the accumulation and expansion of knowledge and technology through a widespread university system was the missing component to getting their IR off the ground and running permanently.
I'm more surprised that the Romans only got a start on an Industrial Revolution. They did have capital ventures, some factories and organized industries, insurance, advanced building techniques, and the beginnings of infrastructure throughout the Empire.
The reasons why the earliest beginnings of an IR never caught on until a few centuries ago, is something that really intrigues me.
That's a line of research that an ambitious grad student looking to make a name for him/herself might try looking into.
To get back on topic, Cleo was no slouch in the academic department herself. She's more famous for her seductions but Arabic chroniclers noted her sharp intellect as well.
After a bazillion years have passed, I don't know why this is even discussed. Why is her ethnicity relevant?
It's not. But it beats hanging out at McDonalds.
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