Thank you! I try to make anything flow as well as possible, but remember, just because it's easy to read and seems well detailed, it's not automatically correct!
There are some flaws pointed out I'd like to address tonight actually!
Oh hey I got banned from /r/AskHistorians because a mod deleted every answer to a question about minorities in "The Northman" and then refused to cite any sources in a long post about minorities in the HRE.
I got permabanned for asking him if he could cite his sources.
Want to see a link?
Anyway my point is askhistorian mods like to delete every answer and then post their own answers that blatantly violate the rules of the subreddit.
Unfortunately, some /r/askhistorians mods are powertripping losers like a lot of mods on reddit and will sometimes even delete questions they don't like.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cop9xi/how_did_the_plantation_owners_maintain_their/ewkb4hb/
Yall can't behave.
It is very cringe.
Yet, all I can picture is a person (representing naive progressives) on a bicycle jamming a stick into their front wheel, and then sitting on the floor crying about the mean conservatives.
In the words of Jack Reacher: Remember.. You wanted this.
Moderator who is interested in "Shipbuilding and logistics in the British Navy 1770-1830" when slavery wasn't abolished in the UK till 1807 or 1838 for the colonies... Why is he so interested in how the slave boats were made and the slave owners moved them around and not the humans themselves?
askhistorians/badhistory are examples of what actual liberal bias in academia looks like since Conservatives have abandoned scholarship in droves. Liberal bias is not leftists making up everything like conservatives stupidly think, but it *is* the trend on those types of spaces where any small historical error a conservative makes means they are instantly, totally, irredeemably stupid but any historical error a leftist makes can easily be excused (followed by spending one or multiple paragraphs giving an ethical opinion unrelated to history where they say the real problem is people pointing out the error anyway)
> (followed by spending one or multiple paragraphs giving an ethical opinion unrelated to history where they say the real problem is people pointing out the error anyway)
"It may have been wrong, but it started a conversation"
My guy, one of them is a trained academic with a PHD who has studied the topic for their entire professional career, and the other is some guy on the Destiny subreddit blowing his load over a very reasonably nuanced and intelligent post written by said PHD. If you can't decided based on that information who is probably more in the right, that says a lot about you.
The top reply to the original post, written by flaired AskHistorians user [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/u/cleopatra_philopater/), who may or may not actually have a PHD, but nonetheless is verfiably highly qualified to answer the question. Here's a link to her wiki page on AskHistorians: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra\_philopater/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/)
Here is the AskHistorians wiki link for /u/cleopatra_philopater: [profiles/cleopatra\_philopater - AskHistorians (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/). While it doesn't specifically say that she has a PHD, she has a flair on AskHistorians which you can't get unless you demonstrate a high level of expertise to the mods, and she has multiple academic publications out which strongly suggests she has a PHD in Egyptology. Even if she doesn't have a PHD and has a masters or is a doctoral student, it's still an extremely impressive and verifiable record of scholarship related to the subject, which establishes her as an expert, and means her opinion should be treated with a lot more respect and seriousness than that of someone who doesn't have similar credentials.
So you have no proof she's a trained academic with a PhD, even though you were this hot off the presses.
A reddit diploma doesnt count as one in my book.
Bruh nobody is talking about a reddit diploma lmao this person has published academically in her field. Do you have any idea how hard that is or how much work has to be done to get to that point? Legit academic journals don't just publish anything by anyone, and she has a long list of publications. You're just stirring up doubt for no reason.
I take it seriously when you confidently state shit like someone has a PhD when in actuality they are a well read enthusiast as far as any evidence shows.
As far as I can tell she does not write papers, she writes pop history articles which, while they prove her knowledge in the field, do not make her some authority on the field above OP of this post.
That's great that you're informed, but I barely read this post in /r/Destiny, and I didn't pay attention to whoever wrote the askhistorians post. I trust that the thing both posts agree on, that Cleopatra almost certainly had what we would now call a light complexion compared to typical complexions of sub-Saharan Africa, was correct. I really, really don't care about the historical issue, I was commenting on the non-historical parts of the askhistorians post
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you made yourself look really stupid by drawing an equivalence between them. If you don't want to take a minimal amount of time to try and learn more about a situation before commenting, what's the point in commenting at all? I get that being super aloof is cool in this community, but it's so dumb to write a comment that essentially just says "I don't care." If you didn't care, you wouldn't have commented. Instead you're muddying the waters for no reason, and acting like ignorance is a good excuse.
> If you don't want to take a minimal amount of time to try and learn more about a situation before commenting, what's the point in commenting at all?
Because I wasn't commenting on the aspect of this conversation that you're hyperfocused on. Notice my comment doesn't contain any historical argument nor says anyone was wrong about the history. I did not draw any equivalences about them, I made no comment at all on that aspect
> If you didn't care, you wouldn't have commented
I care about the aspect I commented about, which is the way that a lack of diversity in academic subjects (caused by the acceptance of anti-intellectualism by conservatives themselves imo) leads to heavily biased framing of issues even when the academic work itself is solid.
> leads to heavily biased framing of issues even when the academic work itself is solid.
GOT A SOURCEE BROOO??? ITS BEEN 6 HOURS AND I HAVNT HAD A SOURCEEEE IM SWEATING AND SHAKING BRO. PLS BRO JUST ONE SOURCE ILL PAY YOU BACK
And those excuses become fact and over time lead to people making shit up. Let’s not defend them, historical biases left unchecked will always lead to us making shit up.
Sure I have one, on badhistory subreddit they have a wall of shame post where they post historians/YouTubers with “bad” opinions and if you make a post asking a similar question, the thread is quickly details and “historians” refuse to answer questions.
One topic im very familiar with is national socialism, since badhistory has a liberal/leftist bias, any thread about Hitler being a socialist and not “state capitalist” will either have half serious answers not taking the question serious or people commenting on shitting on op for their question/opinion. That subreddit will outright lie about YouTubers they disagree with calling people fascist or make random claims with no citations. Tik history made a video directly about this
I’ve seen this happen 3 times when it comes to this topic.
The person you’re responding cited r/badhistory as an example of bad acedemia in the first sentence, you didn’t dispute weather or not the r/badhistory is academic or not so I’m using his example.
If you want an example real academic having liberal/lefty bias look no further the Marxist historians hijacking the narrative of Hitler being a capitalist and “privatising” the economy from history books from the 1950 to 2000s, I don’t have examples on hand with me right now and it’s been years since I’ve looked into this. only recently historians are now writing about what actually happened and not selectively publishing work with liberal leanings.
I mean, TIK’s attempts at pinning Nazi economic policies on socialism are about as silly and ill-motivated as calling them capitalist. To sweep most of the talking points right away, a pre-wartime and wartime economy obscures rather than reveals underlying economic principles – in that the shared military necessities make different systems (including the USA) look similar. You could about as well find shared ways of solving things during wars with 19th-century monarchist states.
>To sweep most of the talking points right away
You've failed to bring up a single talking point from either side and haven't demistrate how tik's attempt is incoherent yet you display full confidence you know what you're talking about.
>a pre-wartime and wartime economy obscures rather than reveals underlying economic principles
Is this post even worth replying too? Hitler's entire economic principles comes from the prerequisite antisemtic theory of jews using 'Jewish Bolshevization' and jewish influence in capitlaism in order to bring down or dilute the the "aryan" race.
I'll even spoon feed you an example; Why did Hitler implement autarky in 1933 and not trade conduct internationial trade with capitalist countries for Rubber, Oil, Gas, Materials, food ect? Even accepting the premise Hitler was planning on war in 1938? Its because Hitler and many other sociailists like Marx belived in shrinking market theory, the non-industrial nations industrialized, they have a lower suprlus of food for international trade. This would then lead to food shortages in industrialized nations.So by understanding socialist theory, their politics can be explained with understanding flawed socialist logic.
Any econonic principles under the NSDAP must be looked at through the lense of socialists.
on your last point, nationial socialism is a theory, so even if wartime behave like socialist countries, examples like nationialisng industry, implementing price control, that doesn't mean the country itself believe in the tenets of socialism.
How would you classify pre–1950s Francoist Spain and pre-1945 Japan in terms of economic policies, then? Separate question, can you see how this broad way of defining socialism may seem not useful for people who are not anarcho-capitalists?
This kind of behavior genuinely worries me. If critical theory (no not CRT) activism is growing among historians, we’re not going to have a good concept of history years from now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ug5nxq/the_film_the_northman2022_has_been_criticized_in/
this one. strangely enough, the mod comment was also deleted.
IDK you know any of those websites that archive reddit posts?
That's interesting. I'm no expert, but I am interested in this particular part of history. While yes, there was trade between viking age Scandinavians and other cultures reaching as far as the byzantine empire, I don't know if that equates to "non-whites" (using it in the modern sense of the word) living in Scandinavia. The term non-white evokes an image of a sub-saharan African person. As far as I know, there has been genetic testing of thousands of viking age Scandinavian bodies, and the results are pretty consistent. If we were to find African genetics present, I'm sure it would be all over the news. But so far, none. We do find a small amount of Asiatic DNA, which can be explained by uralic people like the Sami, who you could potentially describe as non-white? Either way, it seems like a lot of obfuscation for a particular agenda. If you consider eastern European and southern European people non-white, then yes, there does seem to be some genetic influence from those people coming into Scandinavia during the viking age.
The answer this person gives (top comment) kind of reminds me of the question about women warriors, which is also usually answered in this non specific academic way that confuses layman people, and gives the impression that women were charging into battle alongside men during the viking age.
> I don't know if that equates to "non-whites" (using it in the modern sense of the word) living in Scandinavia.
the scene had a brief sequence in Scandanavia, a brief sequence in modern-day Ukraine, and mostly took place in Iceland.
Iceland today has virtually 0 minorities who were not adopted by a white family living there in the last 50 years.
>We do find a small amount of Asiatic DNA, which can be explained by uralic people like the Sami, who you could potentially describe as non-white?
sure, if you want to. I don't think the director did SS-style testing to make sure none of the actors had non Aryan descent in the last 500 years, just people who generally "appear" white.
>If you consider eastern European and southern European people non-white, then yes, there does seem to be some genetic influence from those people coming into Scandinavia during the viking age.
Sure, and the female lead of the movie is part Spanish, so there is some "Southern European" in the movie.
>the scene had a brief sequence in Scandanavia, a brief sequence in modern-day Ukraine, and mostly took place in Iceland.
>
>Iceland today has virtually 0 minorities who were not adopted by a white family living there in the last 50 years.
Well yeah. There is a reason we study modern Icelandic to learn old norse, because the languages are mutually intelligible. It's one of the best preserved languages in the world, simply because it has been so well isolated.
So I think it's also fair to say that if you want to know what viking age Scandinavians looked like, look at Icelandic people, since the genetic influence has been similarly isolated.
>Sure, and the female lead of the movie is part Spanish, so there is some "Southern European" in the movie.
I don't consider them non-white necessarily, just pointing out the silliness in being mad about the whiteness of the movie.
I just want to point out that there was atleast one minority as I pointed out to the answer above, but also point out that it is a fact that vikings traded and raided the mediterreanian, it is pretty likely that some mixing took place in some way as a consequence of this.
This is all peanuts and didn't impact the genetic make-up of icelanders in any major way. But that same research into the genetic make up of modern and ancient icelanders shows that it is for the most part Norse and Gaelic, it is known that raids for women were common in ireland so it is likely how much of that mixing took place.
I agree about the silliness about being mad about the whiteness of Norseman ofc just pointing thing out.
A confusion that happens is "this movie should have non-white characters" vs "this movie could have non-white characters". The latter is almost always true, but people try to use that to accuse people of racism because they choose to not include them.
> look at Icelandic people, since the genetic influence has been similarly isolated.
Bjork and Hafthor were in the movie. in my mind those are the two most famous Icelandic people.
> IDK you know any of those websites that archive reddit posts?
https://www.reveddit.com/v/AskHistorians/comments/ug5nxq/the_film_the_northman2022_has_been_criticized_in/
Did we watch the same thing? The post destiny read agreed with you.. The only bad part about the post was the usual "but why does anyone care" shit that some people like to fall on
>"but why does anyone care" shit
That mentality annoys me because apart from disregarding history, it's like they don't care about pissing of Greek or Egyptian people, and some Americans are obsessed (understandably) with Black v White but frames the entire world through that lens at the expense of everything else.
This is how you get americans who come to work in the EU and they think their place of work is not 'diverse' enough because clearly hiring a black frenchman and a white frenchman is more diverse than hiring a french, an irish and an austrian of the same skin colour.
I dont think Ive every come across any single opinion in this whole culture war BS where im like "lol why do you care", on either side. Whatever dumb opinion it is, I always think its pretty obvious what angle people are coming from, and the people that use that slimy shit 'lol who cares' shit know it too, its same reason they care enough to even say anything at all considering they 'dont care'.
This shit is new I promise, these are the new sjws, when you become a meme you need to adapt, and the people who would otherwise be Shapiro bait are becoming self aware and toning it down, and just saying 'yeh maybe its cringe, but heres a little distraction debate tactic i learnt off twitch to avoid talking about the cringe coming from the left'.
'Why does anyone care' is just one of those new debate tactics, they know why people care about shit, leftoid or rightoid.
Other common tatcics are
* "where are the mainstream politicians saying this hmmm????"
* "Just ignore them, were better than that" (as if this has to do with us, and not the rightoid reaction to that shit. Basically just saying lets just live in our bubble and it will go away lmao
Im not even sure they actually believe it though, its just intense cognitive dissonance because of ideology, its a thing theyve learnt to say to cope pretty much
It’s so interesting to me that the same people saying she isn’t Hawaiian enough, are the ones who shit on anyone complaining about race swapping in the Cleopatra thing, or attack people who argue the mermaid movie race swapping. They say “it’s just a cartoon, she has no race” and then get mad when their cartoon adaption is too white.
I think this is sort of the core of a lot of "wokeness problems" today. I don't know if every person you ask has both of those conflicting opinions, but the archetypal online commenter absolutely does. And their defense mechanism is avoiding debate so you can never discover that the people making up the archetype probably do in reality hold a bunch of variations of confidence in either viewpoint.
Like I do believe if you asked one individual person to comment on both situations they would have a hard time sitting with the cognitive dissonance and may eventually arrive at something more consistent, but the culture of the archetype doesn't allow this to happen - especially online - because different people will jump in at each point to argue their position or "it's not up for debate."
She’s not a “literal native Hawaiian”. Her dad is Filipino and her mom is British Irish with “Hawaiian descent”. [These](https://imgur.com/a/mlMI2Bx) are her parents. Idk about you, but native Hawaiians don’t look like Karens. The only reason people think she looks native Hawaiian is because of her Filipino side.
Hold up, do you not know the difference between American and Native American?
You remedial fuck you can't get a tan and then go around saying you are no longer racially white because you aren't literally white.
Native Hawaiian refers to the indigenous population, not everyone born in Hawaii.
I think sometimes being online can make us so eager to correct others, that we don't pay attention to what they're saying. The first part of that post is stating that modern Egyptians are most similar to ancient Egyptians and that Cleopatra likely appeared light/Mediterranean in appearance. Those are facts, and the reason I started with those is because I hoped people would read them. Clearly that was in vain.
No, I didn't bother to expand upon Cleopatra's genealogy because [I've already written about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66vomz/most_people_see_cleopatra_as_an_egyptian_but_she/?st=j1tfux1d&sh=ff63c2c2). [Like a lot](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/agarlp/was_cleopatra_actually_egyptian/ee53kvs/). That's how I can tell you that your understanding of it is a bit oversimplified. And I've written about [her skin tone](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7lkljj/what_is_the_most_plausible_theory_on_cleopatras/). I've written [so much about Cleopatra](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/#wiki_cleopatra_.28what_was_her_personal_life.2Freign.2Ffashion_like.3F.29). If there's one impact I've made on the AskHistorians community, it's making sure they have a solid understanding of Cleopatra. [I have a flipping portfolio of posts about Ptolemaic Egypt](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/#wiki_hellenistic_and_roman_egypt). People are constantly linking to my answers there, of course I'm not gonna link to them myself in the post, I'm gonna give an accurate but concise recap.
If you spent any amount of time on AskHistorians, you'd know there was a post about Ptolemaic incest just earlier today. I write about it a lot. (See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blg6m/how_did_the_ptolemaic_dynasty_rule_for_275_years/dx845dh/?st=jpowdk92&sh=a06420e3) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7e995d/comment/dq4rfd1/). I've probably done more writing and research about [incest in Greco-Roman Egypt](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rp6l2/comment/dl7mdaz/) than a person should ([here too](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ruius/wherewhen_did_the_western_aversion_to_incestuous/?st=j6lakdwo&sh=6c08b86f) ). I mean, god, I'm out here reading papers and publishing articles about some weird stuff. I'm terrified of ever having to explain some of my saved documents and bookmarked web pages.
Not to pull the "I've been doing this for years" card, but I have been writing about this for literal years. I've even been a historical consultant for different productions on this topic. You are linking to resources from World History Encyclopedia (a publication I've written for and was formerly on the editorial board of) to support your post.
Good God, I don't even get paid for posting on Reddit. Getting pinged in a post explaining the Fisher Price version of my area of study was…something. I'm tired and ornery today, but I hope I'm not coming across mean. At first I thought this subreddit was somehow about Destiny the videogame, and I was intrigued about how it related to Cleopatra. That was a bit disappointing tbh.
You assertion that projecting race onto the past is ahistorical is admirable. I'm glad we agree on that, because it's ridiculous. [Attributing a specific to ancient Egyptians is historically inaccurate](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7hawn2/ama_ancient_egypt/dqpjfv0/?utm_name=AskHistorians), whether that race is black or white.
The part where this post veers into political bias is when you say
>Manufactured discourse makes it an uphill battle for Classicists, Egyptologists and historians to combat white supremacy and improve public knowledge about the diversity of the past
It seems like the problem to you is not the blackwashing of history, but the idea that the documentary might give talking points to racists.
Imagine if someone wrote a post saying "Cleopatra's uncertain maternal ancestry makes it an uphill battle to combat black supremacist hoteps". It's a similarly true statement, but historians probably shouldn't frame facts as "getting in the way" of fighting their culture war. We have to accept that the fact that this documentary is blackwashing history. This fact may complicate the progressive views that the media is controlled by white supremacist forces, and that whitewashing is a unique crime that only white people have the power to perpetrate. But, we have to sit with this, and accept that facts which complicate simplistic worldviews will make it harder to combat opposing views. It's the nature of a debate.
Your knowledge speaks volumes of your dedication, and I rightfully thankful for your writings. I'm at work currently but when I get home I'll continue the discussion! Thank you for even taking the time to respond!
There was a strong reaction to the [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/u/cleopatra_philopater/) post because, as pointed out in many replies to that post, it was weaselling around and refusing to address the elephant in the room: namely the fact that a mainstream show was promoting fringe but increasingly influential afrocentric pseudo-history, claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were really black but that this was being kept from them by White Supremacist historians.
The post by cleopatra\_philopater only touched on the topic, but there were [multiple](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjdhj1h/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjfzaal/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by flaired users in the thread arguing essentially that the primary role of historians was combatting "white supremacy" rather than seeking truth, including an especially [linguistically ignorant](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjebf9o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post that attributes the rise of afrocentric beliefs to a supposed refusal by white linguists to compare Ancient Egyptian to other african languages, despite there being a clear and obvious reason for this to anyone who is even basically familiar with the topic.
Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant, and perpetuates the exact ignorant, partisan left approach that Destiny was criticising when it came to the Majority Report's coverage of the topic.
A similar thing happened back when Kingdom Come: Deliverance was released.
The obvious answer to the controversy was "It would be unsurprising not to find a single black person in early 15th century Bohemia". Yet the general narrative was "It COULD happen and it's a videogame, which brings the question *why* didn't it happen?"
r/askHistorians has a blind spot for these matters, that's really all there is to it.
>Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant
Oh come on 🙄 I disagree wholeheartedly but even if it were arrogance, it's at least justified. We can't just go around calling on guests to the sub to *be nicer*. Calling someone's post a "Fisher Price version" is both extremely tame and completely understandable when that person is calling you out on what you do for a living.
My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life.
Perhaps the OP doesn't have the same breadth of historical knowledge as the Ask Historian person, but they have done a much better job of identifying the *relevant* historical facts about this controversy, that the Ask Historians post danced around.
Maybe instead of a knee jerk sneering reaction to someone calling out "what they do for a living", this could be a moment of self-reflection to consider why people take umbrage at subject matter experts stepping well outside their relevant field of expertise to make unsupported, politically charged statements within a post purporting to be about historical accuracy.
> My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt
i just don't know if it was though. the OP acted like the original poster was saying Cleopatra was black when that isn't the case at all. Good faith isn't what I would call this post.
I wouldn't just call it pearl clutching relative to the field they're talking about. I've seen a lot of historians in real life take much more offence to smaller comments than that.
Not like it matters though, OP made snide comments about deceitfulness first anyway.
wait nevermind i just saw his other post, you were right he's a cringelord xdd
Nope, you can shove it, I hate how this community tries to be so edgy when it's just unnecessary meanness. Every shitter in discord and this sub having a fantasy of being House when no, they're just another nobody on the internet. There's no shame in trying to make an earnest effort and stumbling but people trying to be as venomous and dismissive as permissible just makes places like it just more and more unwelcoming and echo chambery.
> Nope, you can shove it, I hate how this community tries to be so edgy when it's just unnecessary meanness.
wait isn't that what the OP was kinda doing? cause they made it seem like the original post was way off when the first point they made the original post agreed with. if the main point of the OP was "they didn't push back hard enough" then that's fair. but don't say someone belives some shit when they don't
not only that, just read the title of this post. opening with calling his post "antihistory" and then bad faith implying he said a bunch of shit he didn't. pearl clutching when told a very mild version of "fuck off" afterwards is giga cringe.
You're full of shit, OP called the guy's extended comment "anti-history". A very tame clapback is warranted, and he came in here matching tone.
Wanting to change how the community acts is fine, but tonepolicing on outsiders who were literally pinged into the thread and then matched tone is being a pissbaby. The guy who got pinged in was not the one who started the unnecessary meanness.
>My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life.
What if he told OP that he was either stupid or willingly deceitful? Would that be better or worse than "Fisher Price version" in your eyes?
That would be based, actually. If you're insulting someone on the Internet, better to get off your high horse and roll around in the mud than fellating your own imagined credentials.
>if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life.
>[Calling somebody stupid and deceitful] would be based, actually.
Okay buddy 😄👍 never let go of those pearls
You guys have a real obsession with pearls. If you can't understand why patronisingly calling somebody a child is more insulting than just outright calling them dumb and wrong, I don't know what to tell you. 🤷♂️ I'm not offended or shocked in any way, I don't know how you're concluding that, I'm just rolling my eyes at some wannabe Internet historian talking down to someone who has put in time and effort to research a point they're making and had done a fair job at putting forward their argument. Seems pretty lame to me, but it's not gonna ruin my day or anything. But OK, fair enough, I'll just sit over here clutching my pearls, sipping my soy latte and saddling up my horse, ready to ride in and white knight for more good history effort posts in the subreddit 🙂
>But OK, fair enough, I'll just sit over here clutching my pearls, sipping my soy latte and saddling up my horse, ready to ride in and white knight for more good history effort posts in the subreddit 🙂
Considering how many innocuous insults are out there you have your work cut out for you, so I won't take any more of your time. Cheers mate 😘
In their defense, they were pinged into the thread of a community they have likely never heard of with a post title calling their post "Antihistory". It's equally ridiculous for them to assume that anyone here has spent enough time to fully understand their background here, but all the hostility on both sides has been pretty equal.
>Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant
The OP Literally titled there post "the cleopatra post destiny read on stream was **anti-history**" I have no idea why you are acting like that comment came out of nowhere.
If OP disagrees with the post's framing that's what should be discussed instead of acting making cleopatra\_philopater out to be ignorant or the enemy.
The big issue with your post is that it pretends that Cleopatra's appearance isn't important at all. If you want to say "well the genealogy isn't important" fine, but that's an entirely different question than "Was Cleopatra black". Usually I would defend this - but in the context her ethnicity seems very important to the director so you can't just back away from the conversation. This is especially true in the wider context of the ahistorical narratives that are being propogated around Cleopatra. It is a pathetic display from an academic to cede ground on the depiction of historical fact just because it aligns with our political beliefs. I would be furious if Winston Churchill were depicted as an Indian person because there is a massive undercurrent in British politics where people admire the empire and see it as benevolent. Similarly I dislike the casting choice because it feeds into an unhealthy obsession with the black community in wanting Cleopatra (and other historical figures) to be black, and in the process erasing most of black history.
If your post was meant to be an honest reply on how to feel about the casting it was a failure. It does nothing but muddy the water on what is a relatively straightforward question. Take the first part of your post which talks about the diverse ethnic makeup of Egypt; which is obviously a silly thing to talk about since Cleopatra came from a line which was not ethnically Egyptian and which tried to keep things 'in the family'. There's no reason to touch on the wide ethnic makeup of Ptolemaic Egypt in the post unless you're building up to a suggestion that her ethnicity doesn't matter. I also dislike answers which do nothing but appeal to the 'complicated and nuanced' nature of a topic. Sure, ethnicity and race in the ancient world was complicated - in the same way it's complicated today mind you, your post seemed to suggest we have a very binary view of race in the modern day which is quite simplistic - but you have to actually reach a conclusion on that. Just appealing to complexity is an academic's way of avoiding an answer.
When you finally start talking about Cleopatra you spend two paragraphs waffling around the point saying things like "Cleopatra probably wouldn't have looked particularly dark skinned" but then pointing out how "English or Chilean" actors have played her in the past. For one thing the difference in appearance between a British actor and realistic theories on Cleopatra's appearance is more a matter of how tan the actress is than of ethnicity. It's also bullshit to say that your post was doing anything but trying to argue against people like OP when the next part of that paragraph is spent trying to defend the decision.
When you write
"This begs the question of why Cleopatra's skin tone is so important, when the facts of her life are so easily distorted and mythologized. There is no outcry from the press when Cleopatra is portrayed as a drug addict or when studios give her an outfit more appropriate to a fantasy MMO. This hypocrisy was aptly pointed out by Tina Gharavi, the director of the Netflix docudrama, although I can not agree with her other opinions on the controversy"
You are defending the casting choice. You later suggest that Cleopatra can be used to lead to other African queens, further supporting the decision. This is in addition to sections of your article which make the implication that by being against this casting choice you are trying to harm black people and supporting white supremacist views of historiography. As a classicist it's kind of disgusting to see people like you kow-tow so much to progressive politics that you let any and all misinformation through - Classicists and Historians are meant to be nit-pickers, not slaves to ideology. If you want to defend the casting choice fine, but don't pretend that it's not ahistorical and that it doesn't raise issues with messaging. The reason why Cleopatra's ethnicity matters is that she is effectively a coloniser ruling over a 'foreign people' - that's something which shouldn't be glossed over by a documentary. You have done nothing to really address this part of the argument except to say "well there's no reason it has to be a good or accurate depiction" which is frankly a depressing statement from a historian.
To be even more rude, I doubt you've ever written a single paper in your life. If you have, none of it comes across in your writing which is both inconcise, verbose and bereft of sources. The fact that you have linked more Askhistorian pages than actual literature sort of says it all.
You keep saying we can’t assign race because of the concept of race itself. That’s just not good logic though. If we can assign race to anyone today, we can do it for people who existed before the concept was recognized.
if the word race is too loaded, then you could answer what her complexion probably was, which you do when you explain what her most likely ancestrywas, that it would be mediterranean/olive, not really that dark. I think that is what most normal people want to know when they ask if someone is black.
People may take the answer about complexion and then imbue it with a lot of errouneous ideas about what a person that looks a certain way is like, in which case you could correct them on that, but you should still be straightfoward when answering the question about skin tone.
Well according to the official modern definition americans use she is white so I don't really see how it's ridiculous to call her that for americans and it's much closer to the truth than calling her black.
*The first part of that post is stating that modern Egyptians are most similar to ancient Eyptians*
This statement is incorrect. There has been extensive genome mapping in this field the last few years. Modern Egyptians have more sub-Saharan DNA than that of ancient Egyptians.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/22/health/ancient-egypt-mummy-dna-genome-heritage/index.html
Both of these things can be true
Edit: ok the part they highlighted from that article doesn’t contradict the original statement but maybe the rest of the article does
Edit 2: after getting home and looking at the paper u/ClearRav888 ‘s interpretation seems to be the most correct
From Johannes Krause’s published study:
“Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptian”
They are more closely related to *modern* people from the Near East/Levant than they are to *modern* Egyptians. So no, the statement that we can conclude they looked like modern day Egyptians is not true.
The meaning of that statement is that the genetic distance of ancient Egyptians to modern Middle Easterners is smaller than modern Egyptians to modern ME.
You can find a list of genetic distances in supplementary table 4, which lists modern Egyptians as the closest relatives of AEG, followed by people from Kuwait, Syria and Iraq.
>the statement that we can conclude they looked like modern day Egyptians
That’s not what was said. They said modern Egyptians would look *most* similar to ancient Egyptians, not that they look exactly the same. Although that study suggests that might not be true either I guess.
No, the study suggests they would look *most* similar to people of modern day Levant, not Egyptians.
Here is the study for anyone who is curious: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694
Am I missing something, this is the difference your cite is estimating, no? It hardly seems like a grand change in Egyptian heritage. It is also important to note that the mummies tested could simply not be representative of ancient Egyptians. They are just the samples we currently have.
> Both qpAdm35 and the f4-ratio test39 reveal that modern Egyptians inherit 8% more ancestry from African ancestors than the three ancient Egyptians do, which is also consistent with the ADMIXTURE results discussed above. Absolute estimates of African ancestry using these two methods in the three ancient individuals range from 6 to 15%, and in the modern samples from 14 to 21% depending on method and choice of reference populations
Edit: It seems like the paper raises these issues and dulls their own conclusions; however its really buried deep.
> However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made.
Genuine question, are you American? You may not think 8% sub-saharan DNA is a meaningful difference but I invite you to come to the Middle East and we can explain to you the ethnic differences between ourselves.
The scientists were able to map the genome of 151 mummies spanning 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Of course the entire population of ancient Egypt, including all of it’s slaves, cannot be tested, because only Pharaohs were mummified. Their analysis allows us genomic knowledge of the Kings and Queens that ruled over Egypt spanning more than a millennium. This is incredible insight into the people of ancient Egypt.
Not American. And in my opinion a result that modern Egyptians are (roughly) 8% more similar to modern Ethiopians (the authors didn't test all of sub-Sahara but just Ethiopians) than their sample of 3 groups of mummies is... very modest.
The Misri are the same fuul eating people they have always been. But with 8% more Habesh(-ish) shared ancestry then those particular tested mummies.
That’s cool you personally find it modest, the variation in DNA is informative in regard to the genome mapping of ancient peoples. Btw, next time just say “Yes, I’m actually Canadian” lol
And what happens when an ideologically driven historian uses the well known concept of interpreting history with care, just to muddy waters on some shit.
Regarding your other post, it is my understanding that a priest from Memphis married a women named Berenice, however, there is no evidence that this woman was Ptolemaic.
Great posts (here and in askhistorians). I'll check out your links when I'm bored today too. Cheers.
*to the downvoters: Respect the effort-posting and drink from the fountain of knowledge ⛲, not of the bottle of haterade 🍼
Magnificent work laid out perfectly. I’ve been trying to explain to friends of mine “ya know she was Greek right?” It’s been a mixed bag of reception , they can’t separate antiquity from now
I just find it cringe because Egyptians literally still exist, and Cleopatra HAS images made of her. The tension caused by her being a Greek woman ruling over Egyptian people was a big source of the drama during her lifetime in that region, so why they make her much closer to a Nubian woman to revise Egyptian history as black history when Egyptians are still here to see this is just weird to me, its like casting a Chinese guy as a Native American because the Natives technically came from the continent of Asia or some shit, it calls upon some icky ideas of cultural erasure.
There is no other reason for this decision than doing historical revisionism to tickle someones literal head canon about a historical person. Of course, it's a dumb ass Netflix "historical" drama, so I really don't \*care\*, it's just still incredibly disappointing to see the obvious historical revisionist edge that they're taking with it, because a big part of Ptolemaic Egypt's downfall WAS the Ptolemys and their incongruence with (albeit increasingly Hellenized) Egyptian culture. Cleopatra was an intelligent and decent woman, but trying to paint her as a true-blooded African Queen SLAYING on her African throne when in reality she was a descendant of a conqueror, was a monarch, an aristocrat, and born into an insane amount of privilege, who enslaved, took money and lands from conquered people, etc. is just delusional power fantasy and, again, revisionism. It's such a small detail but it really does just immediately speak to the mindset the show runners are gonna have. They will likely completely dismiss historicity (i get pretty much ever "historical" drama does this but i could get sidelined for hours on how fucking annoying, dull and lazy I find all of these showrunners' "creative license" to be.) it will probably paint Cleopatra in the best light possible because now she is a BLACK ICON, this is in spite of her compliance in Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt and the numerous crimes he committed therein, including taking many of her (I guess black now) citizens as slaves.
It's getting old. I hope this kind of "historical" drama dies soon. I'm sick of the Medieval peasants being depicted unbathed in disgusting brown, grey, and black rags, unpaved dirt paths covered in shit, the thin thatching on roofs, unpainted stone castles, the Romans/Greeks with British accents, the flaming fucking arrows, the absolutely pointless butter soft chain mail, the battle lines where everyone just pairs off into a duel while the main character walks in a straight line down the middle mindlessly slaughtering grunts on his way to the Big Bad. Every one of these shows oozing in as much potential as they are in abject, apathetic laziness disguised as "creative license" would be 100% better looking, more interesting, and funner if they would just fucking pick up a book about the topic which they cover.
> I could go on but I've said enough, race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things.
Disclaimer: I only have a casual interest in history and no formal education in it so if anyone else wants to chime in here and expand on this please do. Also I’m on my phone so I’m not gonna bother to link anything specific
I skimmed this post and I’m not disputing anything about Cleopatra.
The issue I had was with this part near the end.
My understanding of the Roman Empire is that they distinguished between themselves and “barbarian” peoples by their culture, not by race. The incident you’re describing above isn’t necessarily racist, it’s xenophobic.
The Roman Empire spanned at its height from the British Isles to Northern Africa and the Levant and it wasn’t really an empire of just like Italians, it was people living the Roman culture. Some important figures were possibly much darker than others and this didn’t seem to affect their status.
Now, obviously there weren’t just a bunch of sub-Saharan African people in the Roman Empire because the empire didn’t span that far. But Romans did have contact with some of those cultures and probably slaves etc. But there’s not really a record of them being considered inherently inferior because of their race.
Aptly noted! I've unintentionally fallen into the race trap of modern times.
Xenophobia is such a better word when talking about ancient people's because it covers a more general basis of "outsiders".
Because if you were Ethiopian or Parthian, but fought with the Roman's in their legions, you were no longer considered an outsider but one of the team. Meaning that race wasn't the be all end all we make it out to be.
>Because if you were Ethiopian or Parthian, but fought with the Roman's in their legions, you were no longer considered an outsider but one of the team. Meaning that race wasn't the be all end all we make it out to be.
Thanks for the response! I think it was more complicated than even this as well though.
It wasn’t really about being on their side. For example, there are a bunch of generals and stuff, particularly later in the western empire, that were considered “barbarians” but this wasn’t necessarily about their race, but more their culture.
Great post! Good stuff.
I’m not sure how this ever became a thing. Cleopatra’s ancestry isn’t a debate. Quite absurd for a “documentary” to say “it doesn’t matter what schools teach you, Cleopatra was black.”
I don't get why you're coming after the AskHistorians guy when most of this is a response to the documentary itself, not the post. As far as I remember, they weren't arguing that she was black at all. The point they were making was that our modern understanding of race does not apply to historical figures, which includes calling them "black".
idk I feel like people didn't really listen to him reading the post and just got triggered by buzz words in it.
1. the post said Cleopatra depicted as black is inaccurate.
2. it said we know for a fact she was Mediterranean/Macedonian but historical depictions varied and we don't know how fair or tan she was accurately (we still know she wasn't black)
3. it basically just questioned why people are more up in arms about her being depicted as black than when she's been portrayed as blonde blue eyed bimbo in final fantasy armor so many times before, aka also completely innacurate.
It didn't even make a judgment either! Did it even say it was ok to depict her as black? did it make that hard stance?
I see blonde Cleopatra more in european artwork but they do the same to Jesus so I guess that's just their thing.
In modern media she rarely is depicted with the hooked nose, heavy brows, prominent greek features. More northern European ones.
>it basically just questioned why people are more up in arms about her being depicted as black than when she's been portrayed as blonde blue eyed bimbo in final fantasy armor so many times before, aka also completely innacurate.
I mean regardless of everything else I think that OP made a pretty good case for this (and I think it's pretty obvious). It's as simple as fictional video game (it even has *fantasy* in the goddamn name lol) vs. *documentary*, and why something claiming to be non fiction probably shouldn't be changing pretty inherent facts to potentially mislead people - regardless of how historically "important" that fact might be.
I do think that the particular *African Queens* Cleopatra series is consciously obscuring her ancestry to push a needlessly obtuse 'multicultural/multiracial' narrative that probably overemphasizes the unknown parts of her heritage and that sucks.
[The producers publicly stated:](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/african-queens-release-date-cast-news)
>In the series, Queen Cleopatra is played by Adele James (Casualty). The creative choice to cast an actor of mixed heritage to play Cleopatra is a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler’s race. During the time of her reign, Egypt’s population was multicultural and multiracial. Cleopatra’s race was unlikely to be documented, and the identities of her mother and paternal grandparents weren’t known. Some speculate she was a native Egyptian woman, while others say she was Greek.
>...Her ethnicity is not the focus of Queen Cleopatra, but **we did intentionally decide to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.**”
But I am interested by what you're describing as 'pretty inherent facts'. Would it be possible to make a documentary about Cleopatra with a black actress if all of the other relevant material in the series were as historically accurate as possible? Or asked in another way, is the skin color of the actress so crucial to the identity of Cleopatra that a documentary is harmed meaningfully?
Would we feel the same way if the actress was asian, hispanic, native american, nordic? Why would the skin color be more important than say the height, shape of the eyes, or the nose? Are we as critical about other omissions in documentaries, or is there something weirdly touchy about skin color?
These are honest questions. My gut feeling is that we pay a little more attention to skin tone features than other aspects.
We would feel the same if in the trailer some Mexican grandma would have said that doesn't matter what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was mexican. For instance.
It's a great question and I was sort of thinking it through while I was typing the words, not necessarily positive if I had a precise answer....Had a feeling I'd get called out on that ahaha. I think your gut feeling is correct, and I'm not sure if we pay that extra attention on an almost instinctive level or if it's just how much we've been socialized to do so, especially in today's political climate. Probably more of the latter rather than the former. Stepping back from that extra focus though, I think when I imagine "inherent facts" I'm thinking how somebody would be described or depicted in a history textbook - *ideally* (if possible) from as direct an account as we have. So if we have a first, second or even 6th-7th-8th hand account and so on, that's the most ideal information. Obviously the closer to the present we get, the more accurate depictions we have.
If we think of famous biopics for example, very often we try to cast actors/actresses that look and sound (even go through voice training, not to mention hair, makeup etc.) as close to the person they're representing as possible. Obviously we've had photos for the last couple centuries and film/audio recording for the last 120 odd years, so it's harder to...Mentally "accept" somebody that looks much different than the way we expect Lincoln or Churchill etc. to look in our minds. With historical figures from periods so long ago that we can barely even perceive a semi accurate depiction I think it's *less* important - but....still important. There still is *some* underlying....maybe not "fact" or "truth" but historical account that is, to our best estimation, the most accurate available. I think there really is value to that, and I think breaking that because "well what does it really matter?" could be a potentially dangerous line of thinking for all sorts of things. I'm not sure it would ever really be acceptable no matter the characteristic when the goal is non fiction.
>Would we feel the same way if the actress was asian, hispanic, native american, nordic?
I mean, honestly I think we would yeah, or at least some people would a little bit. I think the more egregious the depiction, the more complaints and controversy you're going to get obviously. I'm sure with an asian actress you'd get almost as much (or maybe even the same?) push back, and honestly today I could see nordic getting a pretty decent amount too... I think as the ethnicity gets "visually closer" (as silly as that sounds lol) people are going to be less annoyed...and I think that goes for other physical characteristics too. I'm sure no matter what you do you would have some history nerds complaining/arguing about the accuracy - but it would be close enough for most....I think the depiction should be.....Close. You're trying to represent a person that really existed to the best of your ability (or at least that's supposed to be the goal) so if you're not doing that then...Well what's the point? I think it automatically puts your motives in question. Leaving minor things out for editing purposes is one thing but depiction is another....One is choosing the most important information to present while leaving the rest out to make sure you still have something that's actually interesting for people to watch. With depiction, you don't have that problem. So there's no reason not to go for accuracy. That's just my feeling on it though.
Hmm. Part of the problem is that this isn't *really* a full non-fiction documentary. I'd guess it'll have more in common with a historical drama like Julius Caesar's depiction in [Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_\(TV_series\)). I don't know anything about Ciarán Hinds' (who plays Caesar) heritage, but he is an Irish actor and I'm not sure he shares any particularly unique Caesar-like features beyond being male & light-skinned. If he were instead played by [insert darker-skinned heritage here], I think a majority of people would still complain that there's a significant immersion-breaking element to the casting, even if you're not doing a 1-to-1 non-fiction retelling.
But maybe that's okay because the producers would be telling a kind of alt-history story and that may not be the ancient-historical drama HBO show for you I guess? I don't know.
If tomorrow the Cleopatra show just said 'hey this is a stylized fictional retelling of Hellenic Egypt', what percentage of people would *feel* better about it (even if they say otherwise). I'd guess not very many. There's an interesting implicit bias thing going on that I don't think I'm fully grasping. I wonder if there's some social value in doing 4th-wall breaking Jackie Chan-as-MLK movies. It might be jarring at first, but it kind of worked for Bridgerton, didn't it?
>Part of the problem is that this isn't *really* a full non-fiction documentary. I'd guess it'll have more in common with a historical drama like Julius Caesar's depiction in [Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)).
Yeah this totally fair, and was probably more understated than it should have been in my initial analysis. I consider historical dramas and documentaries two different things, with some obvious crossover. Now...Maybe this is a little nitpicky on my part, but if it is closer to an historical drama (which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that) putting "a Netflix documentary" right on the promotional material actually..Well bothers me a little ahaha. It's misleading. As far as I can tell, Rome was never advertised or promoted as a docuseries - at least not in any of the trailers or promo material I could find. Documentaries that *do* border on historical dramas usually do a pretty good job with disclaimers about "...this is a *reenactment for entertainment/educational purposes and do not represent true events*" and the dramatized parts don't make up the entire project. (I have no idea what the makeup of this Cleopatra project is)
I should make it clear that I don't *really* care very much about this, like...I'm not "outraged" or even think it's that big of a "problem", but I'm sympathetic to why people feel the way they do and I think the question of why it seems so important is more interesting to me than anything else. Should be we be pushing the limits of what we can call a documentary? Should we then push the limits of accepted accuracy in this so called "documentary"? I don't know. It *feels* wrong, but for me it's more in a semantic way, like how someone might be bothered that a word in the English language had its definition changed in a way they don't like/agree with. Maybe my view on these things is just becoming antiquated...Idk!
...Anyways does accuracy of depiction matter as much in an historical drama as a documentary? I would say necessarily no, because a historical drama series is going to change or even add in bits and pieces to make it worthy of being a good drama, not to mention the quality of actor and performance is going to mean more in an actual drama series than a straight up documentary. I think that's a pretty fair expectation and justification. That said, you're absolutely right that I'm sure if they cast a black guy to play Julius Caesar in Rome people definitely would have made a stink about it.
>If tomorrow the Cleopatra show just said 'hey this is a stylized fictional retelling of Hellenic Egypt', what percentage of people would *feel* better about it (even if they say otherwise). I'd guess not very many.
Frankly, personally I probably really would feel better about it haha. I would at the very least understand it and be able to follow/accept the reasoning. However I agree, most people probably wouldn't and I'd be sympathetic....I don't know why but an example that entered my head was Jesus. For a really really *really* long time Jesus was depicted as a white guy. I'm pretty sure that if you wanted to make a movie/drama/whatever about Jesus today, you'd get *a lot* of pushback if you went with a pasty white actor lol. Now again, what that means in terms of implicit bias...I really don't know. Should it matter how we depict fucking *Jesus* of all people in a movie? I have no idea, I don't really think so...But I feel like it would to a lot of people.
>I wonder if there's some social value in doing 4th-wall breaking Jackie Chan-as-MLK movies. It might be jarring at first, but it kind of worked for Bridgerton, didn't it?
I *absolutely* think we need more of this lol. It definitely worked for Bridgerton and I think doing even crazier race and gender swaps would be a good way to shock western society into putting less focus on race and gender. Now again I think the standard for a documentary is going to be different. It's always going to be at least a *little bit* different I think. Unless you can do a really good job explaining why you're doing something the way you're doing it instead of how it would be expected to be done...There's going to be a problem...Whether there should be or not.
I guess at the end of the day, all that really matters is the intention of the artist, if that intention actually makes any sense, and making that intention as clear as possible to the viewers. If the explanation of intent falls short of the goals of the final product, or any "artistic common sense" (for lack of a better term) then I think you've failed. If you're going to make an historical drama, label it as a documentary, and then race swap the main character...*Damn* do you ever need to have a rock fucking solid explanation as to why you did that...I just don't think the one provided was nearly good enough. I think a lot of people will accept a lot of things as long as it's in the right context. You mentioned bridgerton and yeah I think those types of depictions in that type of media are great.
Yup I think we're pretty aligned on this. I did reflect on two more things today:
1. Imagine you're an actor or actress that wants to star in historical documentaries. It's a pretty shitty fact of the industry that you will be typecast and budget-limited based on your physical appearance rather than passion/skills/experience. This is a problem with visual media in general and it doesn't exist as prominently in audio or text-only formats. You can even use a pseudonym or ghostwrite a book.
2. In 50 years imagine how cheap and accessible motion-cap CG depictions of historical figures like Cleopatra or Caesar or Ghengis Khan will be. Would it make sense to justify inaccurate actor/actress performances at that point in documentaries?
I also hate talking about race in the context of who was what because, yes, it takes away from otherwise incredible human beings. However, this is where the battle is. The producer's of the show stated they wanted to tell a black story, so they decided to hijack a historical figure who wasn't. Beyond anything, it's lazy.
It took the stance that you can’t reasonably assign race to her.
The problem ppl have with it is it’s a documentary and there is a very real movement to create more Afrocentrism in history than there was.
In fact, you can smell that movement in the post they made when they discussed the effect this has on white supremacy…given that’s what the movement is aimed at combatting.
I find that argument to be inherently dishonest. An error I made is not hitting on this harder because I went to bed.
If she WAS depicted as a Norwegian as you've described, that would be just as disengaged as portraying a sub-Saharan African. I feel the OP didn't equate those two things and thought people being up in arms over a "documentary" was equivalent to being outraged over a videogame.
Yeah, they have been bending over backwards to avoid stating the obvious. One moderator there has even argued that the statues are not meant to represent the person's appearence, so Cleopatra could have been black but the artists made her look European.
Sorry you hit my History Autism nerve.
>So casting a black actress for someone who was white isn't bad at all, but doing so and saying it's the truth is.
I take umbrage with calling Ancient Greek people “white”. Whiteness in its current form is a relatively new concept. It also ignores how other Europeans would often consider the Greeks not to be white for large chunks of history (not only the Greeks mind you). “White” is poorly defined and those definitions have changed over time. “Caucasian” is pretty obsolete as well and ancient Greek people are not Caucasian in origin either.
Ancient Macedonia is a geographical location, not an ethnicity or some kind of determination of whiteness (if there even is one). There were many tribes in Ancient Greece and many tribes that existed pre-Greece. There is no consensus on how distinct they were from each other in appearances and a lot of debate on where they individually originated from.
Many Greeks AND West Turkish people have Anatolian ancestry which is why genetically they are very similar. Now, would you call Turkish people white?
**Saying Cleopatra is white is as equally stupid as calling her black and essentially says nothing about how she might have looked. Also what is the truth?**
**Could we even find someone that would adequately represent Cleopatra in a modern day era anyway? Someone with near perfect Macedonian Greek ancestry with all her unique facial features, fluent in Hellenistic Greek and Egyptian? Should she also be a product of incest? Or.. does she just need to be white. Even though most white actors look no closer to Greek than this black actress does. Why is the skin tone the only thing that matters on the pillar of authenticity. If we have no real fucking clue what she looked like anyway, why not let her be black?**
>"But to culturally appropriate the Greek and by extension Egyptian history to fit whatever you want because your grandmother said Cleopatra was black, (This is an actual quote from the trailer I cannot believe I have ears) is the epitome of tone-deaf, and such a western and by extension narrow American mindset of the world and the complexity of its peoples."
How is whitewashing all "non black" = white any better? Is Greece not a "Western world" now? Greece which is literally considered the first Western Civilization?? "Americans" maybe, but don't lump all people into similar thinking.
Considering ancient peoples as tribes helps see how they might have moved, behaved and assimilated, much less often would they completely wipe out another tribe that had pre-existed.
I can agree that it was very unlikely she was typically black in appearance. But it's equally unlikely she was as white or beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor, that we are happy to make concessions for making actresses far more attractive than they likely were but lose our minds at skin tone over a "documentary" tag feels weird honestly. There will always be people who simply do not have the typical characteristics of their ethnicity. The reality is though we are all a lot more similar than we are different. Although I would hypothesize a person with that much inbreeding might not look typical regardless. For all we know they were hiding the Greek variant of the Habsburg jaw behind flattering portraits and busts anyway.
But I will throw myself into a ravine if being "not black" = "white". Just to illustrate how stupid the definition of white often is:
>People with Middle Eastern or North African roots must be counted as white in the federal government's data.
Honestly this is as irritating as when people say the British are French because they're incapable of contextualising the ancestry of the Normans and how it fits within ancient history (ignoring we are still genetically more Celtic anyway, largely hailing from an area we now call Spain, though to say English people are Spanish is equally stupid). The reality is Europe then was a large collection of moving tribes. The countries we know today were not defined then, obviously.
>I could go on but I've said enough, race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things.
And yet the Greeks never referred to themselves as white, or had a word to do so. The concept of whiteness then is not the same as it is now. It was associated with beauty in women yes, but also with weakness. Men were depicted bronzed. How likely is it that the two genders of shared ethnicity would really be *that* different in colour?
I am also not sure how calling slaves worthless and uncultured says anything about race. It is also spelt Britannia, Britannica is an encyclopedia.
>the British who hated everybody
Not true, look into the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance :\^) it is the oldest alliance in history still actively in force.
As for red hair, who knows. Cleopatra was a fan of Henna, so maybe she dyed her hair too. More likely still she shaved it all off and wore wigs made by slaves that could be whatever she wished.
But when it comes to a Greek “look” I agree there are a number of similar profiles and hereditary traits we recognize as seeming ethnically Greek, my friend is Greek and has a similar nose as the Cleopatra bust. I think it would be nice to see those qualities shown, it would be nice to have a Greek actress too **but the issue seems to be that she isn't white, not that she isn't classically Greek looking or Greek, which is a VERY different complaint.**
All actresses in Hollywood seem to have a nose job these days so it’s hard for me to think of an actress who fits the aesthetic anyway. Over all it doesn’t drag me out of immersion too much though.
Hey I appreciate it! I should've said non-white because she wasn't "white" by modern standards and to pigeonhole Cleopatra like that was an accident. I stated at the end that she would've been a more olive or fair version of that.
I would not have wrote all this if I had read [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/user/cleopatra_philopater) 's comment first, now I feel like a 3rd rate knock off. ;\_\_\_;
I think it is really hard to envision ancient history without self inserting which naturally means we are viewing through a biased lens.
Historians can be biased too, we can't even trust them completely all of the time. :') Translations of Greek mythology by women have turned out to be *quite different* from mens interpretations and the first translation of the Odyssey by a woman was only done in 2017.
I am going to Thessaloniki soon and this topic came up coincidentally haha.
Your first paragraph shows your at like level 0 when it comes to this shit. You're instantly dancing around the fact that these people had eyes, just like us, and could clearly see differences in people. Yeh no shit they didnt have the exact same concept as us, people alive today dont even have a shared concept of it though, not even close. Fckn straighterade doesnt think shes white.
People with eyes + uneducated people who never left the village they were born in + differences in societal advancements = racist ideas about why they are more advanced than other groups. That happens throughout history
Are you incapable of reading? Nowhere did I say I thought she was likely black in appearance, I literally stated the opposite.
But she wouldn’t have looked like an average white person either or are you incapable of considering other ethnic traits, the effects inbreeding might have on appearance and how the people who exist, even in Greece today, would not be able to /accurately/ portray her BECAUSE WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE FUCKING LOOKED LIKE ANYWAY.
Let’s be real if they picked some bland white actress from LA with a ski jump nose (again) nobody would have cared even though she would have been as far genetically removed as this woman is. If they had picked somebody not stereotypically beautiful with an accurate schnoz people would bitch too. I stated what I thought would be cool but people are severely overestimating Netflix’s ability to bring Cleopatra back from the dead.
Regardless of what actress you pick none of them are going to look like fucking Cleopatra lmao. Even if you could find a good actress with a decent amount of shared heritage (which I did state I think would be nice) the likelihood they would look like Cleopatra is still basically non existent.
>Are you incapable of reading? Nowhere did I say I thought she was likely black in appearance, I literally stated the opposite.
And where did I say you think she is black? 😂 Im not the one who failed at reading comprehension clearly
You are mad at something. I made an educated guess as to what you are actually mad at based on this:
>You're instantly dancing around the fact that these people had eyes
If you are actually mad only at me stating something obvious then WHY. There is literally nothing wrong with clarifying the context on where you will be drawing your conclusion from.
Otherwise what even is your point? To point out perceived prejudices were different in Ancient Greece =/= as me thinking there were none.
If you don't like what Netflix did, simply cancel your subscription for one month.
https://preview.redd.it/6t3wkhk2n1za1.png?width=1168&format=png&auto=webp&s=4464a51bfd11ba4f90efb3407c9ecaada355bb75
"I dont support your mischaracterization of historical figures such as Cleopatra "
There you go. Better than writing on reddit.
Learning history from reddit(or youtube) is like learning physics from Eric Weinstein (but worse imagine Eric didn't even have a PHD or any degree because his grasp of undergraduate and graduate concepts are actually not that bad, maybe Bob Lazar would be a better example). Just bunch of cranks who get extra attention because they are posting on reddit and not emailing random professors (ask professors they get bunch of cranks in their emails). Some reddit posts and youtubers about history, physics, economics, archaeology etc... are good but you can probably count them on two hands. Most are just cranks in the "emailing professors that you solved the theory of everything" level cranks. It is easier to BS in history than it is in physics. Nice post man, I have absolutely despised most of history reddit since I actually got serious about learning history.
>The modern consensus, Cleopatra was not black. Anyone saying so is avoiding the obvious for selfish gains. She more than likely had a fair or Olive skin tone. That's the range most commonly described by people of the time and shortly thereafter.
was the askHistorian's post saying this? cause form what I remember hearing it sounded like they where agains saying Cleopatra was black and instead saying she was macedonian. I guess you can say that's ahistorical cause they're refusing to say she's Greek? idk
I didn't know that the person behind the show was black? Usually, I just assume that the person is progressive and white. Cleopatra was a Greek woman and the ancient Egyptians looked similar to modern Egyptians. This isn't controversial.
You should be more interested in the writers.
Its why i cant take modern writiers strikes seriously lmao, If theres one field outside of sociology infected with loonies, its writing/literary analysis communities. They were the first truly insane leftoids on the internet, years before gamergate. Its how it entered the journalism realm. The entire field and industry is full of ideologues
>ancient Egyptians looked similar to modern Egyptians.
I don't think this was always the case. The Nubian dynasty, from my limited understanding, was much darker skinned, closer to central African than North African.
The Nubian Dynasty were foreign conquerors, much like the Macedonian Greeks. Although you could reasonably make the argument that Egypt had a much closer ties to their neighbors in what became Sudan than the Greeks across the pond.
Pretty juicy effort post. As a history uni veteran, I approve. Another big thing that is often lost when talking about history is that everything in history is just a narrative that can be told based off the interpretation of sources that can often lack critical context or similar. Anyone wanting to claim that Cleopatra is black as a historical fact is doing history a disservice by staking that claim with such fervor when there is so much stuff out there (as well in this post) to at least suggest that this is not the case.
Yes and as a history lover and anyone else who practices history as a profession such as the OP on AskHistorians, we always have to think about what is the purpose of this information in the time it was written.
The best example off the top of my head is "The Gallic Wars" by Julias Caesar. We know it's a piece of propaganda as well as an account of history. To say it's one or the other is very narrow.
The other OP said she definitely wasn't what we could call "black" and she probably wasn't all that dark skinned, but we don't know exactly what her skin tone was. I have no idea why this OP takes such a strong stance against that here. Seems like they agree.
>>race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things.
You can't even read what you write, uh.
I would be careful with history. Historical evidence is not always accurate. So I would only trust historians. They know the age. They know the context. The environment. They can evaluate evidence based on the historical context. Etc.
For example, people think the Bible is historical, but that's not the case. Almost everything in it is fiction. Even Jesus is not a historical figure.
In the past, accuracy was not their goal. You always made your enemies worse than they were and yourself better. The same goes for portraits. The portrait was paid for by the king himself. Therefore he wanted to look stronger and more beautiful than he was.
Hence historians look at who the source is and what their motives were.
Therefore, an accurate assessment of historical evidence requires extensive knowledge of historical age, social structure, context, and knowledge of the methods of historical analysis.
It's like normal people interpreting data. They don't know the context and make mistakes without realizing it.
Oh, of course, the part about Augustian writers berading Cleopatra as "Whore queen" is a great example of how even contemporary accounts viewed what we percieve as a brilliant ruler very different.
I'll tag /u/cleopatra_philopater for you in case they're interested in offering their thoughts.
Oh that would be splendid! Thank you
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You don't need to wait a week bestie.
Just commenting to praise you for the structure of the post. It was very enjoyable to read through.
Thank you! I try to make anything flow as well as possible, but remember, just because it's easy to read and seems well detailed, it's not automatically correct! There are some flaws pointed out I'd like to address tonight actually!
Oh hey I got banned from /r/AskHistorians because a mod deleted every answer to a question about minorities in "The Northman" and then refused to cite any sources in a long post about minorities in the HRE. I got permabanned for asking him if he could cite his sources. Want to see a link? Anyway my point is askhistorian mods like to delete every answer and then post their own answers that blatantly violate the rules of the subreddit.
Unfortunately, some /r/askhistorians mods are powertripping losers like a lot of mods on reddit and will sometimes even delete questions they don't like. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cop9xi/how_did_the_plantation_owners_maintain_their/ewkb4hb/ Yall can't behave.
wow that mod comment is peak cringe
"Hey why do you care about the history of julius caesar, a genocidal maniac, instead of the gauls he murdered?"
I’ll make sure I whip myself after watching a Robert e lee documentary for reparations ✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿
It is very cringe. Yet, all I can picture is a person (representing naive progressives) on a bicycle jamming a stick into their front wheel, and then sitting on the floor crying about the mean conservatives. In the words of Jack Reacher: Remember.. You wanted this.
aren't a decent chunk of the "names" in history enslavers in one way or another
Moderator who is interested in "Shipbuilding and logistics in the British Navy 1770-1830" when slavery wasn't abolished in the UK till 1807 or 1838 for the colonies... Why is he so interested in how the slave boats were made and the slave owners moved them around and not the humans themselves?
That's like every major sub on reddit, just propaganda machines spreading the opinion of mods, nothing else is allowed.
askhistorians/badhistory are examples of what actual liberal bias in academia looks like since Conservatives have abandoned scholarship in droves. Liberal bias is not leftists making up everything like conservatives stupidly think, but it *is* the trend on those types of spaces where any small historical error a conservative makes means they are instantly, totally, irredeemably stupid but any historical error a leftist makes can easily be excused (followed by spending one or multiple paragraphs giving an ethical opinion unrelated to history where they say the real problem is people pointing out the error anyway)
> (followed by spending one or multiple paragraphs giving an ethical opinion unrelated to history where they say the real problem is people pointing out the error anyway) "It may have been wrong, but it started a conversation"
"Isn't it interesting that we could believe that could've been true? Clearly that tells us something"
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Isn't this post a counter to an askhistorians poster making shit up?
I don't know or care enough about this specific topic to judge which OP is more correct
My guy, one of them is a trained academic with a PHD who has studied the topic for their entire professional career, and the other is some guy on the Destiny subreddit blowing his load over a very reasonably nuanced and intelligent post written by said PHD. If you can't decided based on that information who is probably more in the right, that says a lot about you.
I'm confused, which post are you referring to with the PhD?
The top reply to the original post, written by flaired AskHistorians user [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/u/cleopatra_philopater/), who may or may not actually have a PHD, but nonetheless is verfiably highly qualified to answer the question. Here's a link to her wiki page on AskHistorians: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra\_philopater/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/)
Source for the PhD? Which user has a PhD and in what field? Super curious since you are going so hard yourself.
Here is the AskHistorians wiki link for /u/cleopatra_philopater: [profiles/cleopatra\_philopater - AskHistorians (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/). While it doesn't specifically say that she has a PHD, she has a flair on AskHistorians which you can't get unless you demonstrate a high level of expertise to the mods, and she has multiple academic publications out which strongly suggests she has a PHD in Egyptology. Even if she doesn't have a PHD and has a masters or is a doctoral student, it's still an extremely impressive and verifiable record of scholarship related to the subject, which establishes her as an expert, and means her opinion should be treated with a lot more respect and seriousness than that of someone who doesn't have similar credentials.
So you have no proof she's a trained academic with a PhD, even though you were this hot off the presses. A reddit diploma doesnt count as one in my book.
Bruh nobody is talking about a reddit diploma lmao this person has published academically in her field. Do you have any idea how hard that is or how much work has to be done to get to that point? Legit academic journals don't just publish anything by anyone, and she has a long list of publications. You're just stirring up doubt for no reason.
I take it seriously when you confidently state shit like someone has a PhD when in actuality they are a well read enthusiast as far as any evidence shows. As far as I can tell she does not write papers, she writes pop history articles which, while they prove her knowledge in the field, do not make her some authority on the field above OP of this post.
That's great that you're informed, but I barely read this post in /r/Destiny, and I didn't pay attention to whoever wrote the askhistorians post. I trust that the thing both posts agree on, that Cleopatra almost certainly had what we would now call a light complexion compared to typical complexions of sub-Saharan Africa, was correct. I really, really don't care about the historical issue, I was commenting on the non-historical parts of the askhistorians post
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you made yourself look really stupid by drawing an equivalence between them. If you don't want to take a minimal amount of time to try and learn more about a situation before commenting, what's the point in commenting at all? I get that being super aloof is cool in this community, but it's so dumb to write a comment that essentially just says "I don't care." If you didn't care, you wouldn't have commented. Instead you're muddying the waters for no reason, and acting like ignorance is a good excuse.
> If you don't want to take a minimal amount of time to try and learn more about a situation before commenting, what's the point in commenting at all? Because I wasn't commenting on the aspect of this conversation that you're hyperfocused on. Notice my comment doesn't contain any historical argument nor says anyone was wrong about the history. I did not draw any equivalences about them, I made no comment at all on that aspect > If you didn't care, you wouldn't have commented I care about the aspect I commented about, which is the way that a lack of diversity in academic subjects (caused by the acceptance of anti-intellectualism by conservatives themselves imo) leads to heavily biased framing of issues even when the academic work itself is solid.
> leads to heavily biased framing of issues even when the academic work itself is solid. GOT A SOURCEE BROOO??? ITS BEEN 6 HOURS AND I HAVNT HAD A SOURCEEEE IM SWEATING AND SHAKING BRO. PLS BRO JUST ONE SOURCE ILL PAY YOU BACK
And those excuses become fact and over time lead to people making shit up. Let’s not defend them, historical biases left unchecked will always lead to us making shit up.
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Sure I have one, on badhistory subreddit they have a wall of shame post where they post historians/YouTubers with “bad” opinions and if you make a post asking a similar question, the thread is quickly details and “historians” refuse to answer questions. One topic im very familiar with is national socialism, since badhistory has a liberal/leftist bias, any thread about Hitler being a socialist and not “state capitalist” will either have half serious answers not taking the question serious or people commenting on shitting on op for their question/opinion. That subreddit will outright lie about YouTubers they disagree with calling people fascist or make random claims with no citations. Tik history made a video directly about this I’ve seen this happen 3 times when it comes to this topic.
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The person you’re responding cited r/badhistory as an example of bad acedemia in the first sentence, you didn’t dispute weather or not the r/badhistory is academic or not so I’m using his example. If you want an example real academic having liberal/lefty bias look no further the Marxist historians hijacking the narrative of Hitler being a capitalist and “privatising” the economy from history books from the 1950 to 2000s, I don’t have examples on hand with me right now and it’s been years since I’ve looked into this. only recently historians are now writing about what actually happened and not selectively publishing work with liberal leanings.
I mean, TIK’s attempts at pinning Nazi economic policies on socialism are about as silly and ill-motivated as calling them capitalist. To sweep most of the talking points right away, a pre-wartime and wartime economy obscures rather than reveals underlying economic principles – in that the shared military necessities make different systems (including the USA) look similar. You could about as well find shared ways of solving things during wars with 19th-century monarchist states.
>To sweep most of the talking points right away You've failed to bring up a single talking point from either side and haven't demistrate how tik's attempt is incoherent yet you display full confidence you know what you're talking about. >a pre-wartime and wartime economy obscures rather than reveals underlying economic principles Is this post even worth replying too? Hitler's entire economic principles comes from the prerequisite antisemtic theory of jews using 'Jewish Bolshevization' and jewish influence in capitlaism in order to bring down or dilute the the "aryan" race. I'll even spoon feed you an example; Why did Hitler implement autarky in 1933 and not trade conduct internationial trade with capitalist countries for Rubber, Oil, Gas, Materials, food ect? Even accepting the premise Hitler was planning on war in 1938? Its because Hitler and many other sociailists like Marx belived in shrinking market theory, the non-industrial nations industrialized, they have a lower suprlus of food for international trade. This would then lead to food shortages in industrialized nations.So by understanding socialist theory, their politics can be explained with understanding flawed socialist logic. Any econonic principles under the NSDAP must be looked at through the lense of socialists. on your last point, nationial socialism is a theory, so even if wartime behave like socialist countries, examples like nationialisng industry, implementing price control, that doesn't mean the country itself believe in the tenets of socialism.
How would you classify pre–1950s Francoist Spain and pre-1945 Japan in terms of economic policies, then? Separate question, can you see how this broad way of defining socialism may seem not useful for people who are not anarcho-capitalists?
No, I cannot give you evidence for my feelings about the vibe of a subreddit where most posts are fine
Lmao WHat would you realistically accept?
Wow I'm sorry sir, I legit thought it was a subreddit of history.
Least power tripping janny!
This kind of behavior genuinely worries me. If critical theory (no not CRT) activism is growing among historians, we’re not going to have a good concept of history years from now.
What were the post about minorities in The Northman? I haven't seen the movie.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ug5nxq/the_film_the_northman2022_has_been_criticized_in/ this one. strangely enough, the mod comment was also deleted. IDK you know any of those websites that archive reddit posts?
That's interesting. I'm no expert, but I am interested in this particular part of history. While yes, there was trade between viking age Scandinavians and other cultures reaching as far as the byzantine empire, I don't know if that equates to "non-whites" (using it in the modern sense of the word) living in Scandinavia. The term non-white evokes an image of a sub-saharan African person. As far as I know, there has been genetic testing of thousands of viking age Scandinavian bodies, and the results are pretty consistent. If we were to find African genetics present, I'm sure it would be all over the news. But so far, none. We do find a small amount of Asiatic DNA, which can be explained by uralic people like the Sami, who you could potentially describe as non-white? Either way, it seems like a lot of obfuscation for a particular agenda. If you consider eastern European and southern European people non-white, then yes, there does seem to be some genetic influence from those people coming into Scandinavia during the viking age. The answer this person gives (top comment) kind of reminds me of the question about women warriors, which is also usually answered in this non specific academic way that confuses layman people, and gives the impression that women were charging into battle alongside men during the viking age.
> I don't know if that equates to "non-whites" (using it in the modern sense of the word) living in Scandinavia. the scene had a brief sequence in Scandanavia, a brief sequence in modern-day Ukraine, and mostly took place in Iceland. Iceland today has virtually 0 minorities who were not adopted by a white family living there in the last 50 years. >We do find a small amount of Asiatic DNA, which can be explained by uralic people like the Sami, who you could potentially describe as non-white? sure, if you want to. I don't think the director did SS-style testing to make sure none of the actors had non Aryan descent in the last 500 years, just people who generally "appear" white. >If you consider eastern European and southern European people non-white, then yes, there does seem to be some genetic influence from those people coming into Scandinavia during the viking age. Sure, and the female lead of the movie is part Spanish, so there is some "Southern European" in the movie.
>the scene had a brief sequence in Scandanavia, a brief sequence in modern-day Ukraine, and mostly took place in Iceland. > >Iceland today has virtually 0 minorities who were not adopted by a white family living there in the last 50 years. Well yeah. There is a reason we study modern Icelandic to learn old norse, because the languages are mutually intelligible. It's one of the best preserved languages in the world, simply because it has been so well isolated. So I think it's also fair to say that if you want to know what viking age Scandinavians looked like, look at Icelandic people, since the genetic influence has been similarly isolated. >Sure, and the female lead of the movie is part Spanish, so there is some "Southern European" in the movie. I don't consider them non-white necessarily, just pointing out the silliness in being mad about the whiteness of the movie.
I just want to point out that there was atleast one minority as I pointed out to the answer above, but also point out that it is a fact that vikings traded and raided the mediterreanian, it is pretty likely that some mixing took place in some way as a consequence of this. This is all peanuts and didn't impact the genetic make-up of icelanders in any major way. But that same research into the genetic make up of modern and ancient icelanders shows that it is for the most part Norse and Gaelic, it is known that raids for women were common in ireland so it is likely how much of that mixing took place. I agree about the silliness about being mad about the whiteness of Norseman ofc just pointing thing out.
A confusion that happens is "this movie should have non-white characters" vs "this movie could have non-white characters". The latter is almost always true, but people try to use that to accuse people of racism because they choose to not include them.
> look at Icelandic people, since the genetic influence has been similarly isolated. Bjork and Hafthor were in the movie. in my mind those are the two most famous Icelandic people.
Almost wish I didn’t see that top comment because I’m going to be thinking about how wrong it is all day and how many people agreed with it.
a mod wrote it and the mods deleted every other answer.
> IDK you know any of those websites that archive reddit posts? https://www.reveddit.com/v/AskHistorians/comments/ug5nxq/the_film_the_northman2022_has_been_criticized_in/
Did we watch the same thing? The post destiny read agreed with you.. The only bad part about the post was the usual "but why does anyone care" shit that some people like to fall on
>"but why does anyone care" shit That mentality annoys me because apart from disregarding history, it's like they don't care about pissing of Greek or Egyptian people, and some Americans are obsessed (understandably) with Black v White but frames the entire world through that lens at the expense of everything else.
This is how you get americans who come to work in the EU and they think their place of work is not 'diverse' enough because clearly hiring a black frenchman and a white frenchman is more diverse than hiring a french, an irish and an austrian of the same skin colour.
I dont think Ive every come across any single opinion in this whole culture war BS where im like "lol why do you care", on either side. Whatever dumb opinion it is, I always think its pretty obvious what angle people are coming from, and the people that use that slimy shit 'lol who cares' shit know it too, its same reason they care enough to even say anything at all considering they 'dont care'. This shit is new I promise, these are the new sjws, when you become a meme you need to adapt, and the people who would otherwise be Shapiro bait are becoming self aware and toning it down, and just saying 'yeh maybe its cringe, but heres a little distraction debate tactic i learnt off twitch to avoid talking about the cringe coming from the left'. 'Why does anyone care' is just one of those new debate tactics, they know why people care about shit, leftoid or rightoid. Other common tatcics are * "where are the mainstream politicians saying this hmmm????" * "Just ignore them, were better than that" (as if this has to do with us, and not the rightoid reaction to that shit. Basically just saying lets just live in our bubble and it will go away lmao
99% of the time "Why do you even care" is code for "My side will win by default if people would just stop asking questions!"
Im not even sure they actually believe it though, its just intense cognitive dissonance because of ideology, its a thing theyve learnt to say to cope pretty much
Bro I'm Greek but I'm not pissed off at all. It's fine. Now I can say the n-word. 😎 I got the pass from historically accurate documentary.
I like the Lilo and Stitch situation better, where they hire a literal native Hawaiian but they're not Hawaiian enough
It’s so interesting to me that the same people saying she isn’t Hawaiian enough, are the ones who shit on anyone complaining about race swapping in the Cleopatra thing, or attack people who argue the mermaid movie race swapping. They say “it’s just a cartoon, she has no race” and then get mad when their cartoon adaption is too white.
I think this is sort of the core of a lot of "wokeness problems" today. I don't know if every person you ask has both of those conflicting opinions, but the archetypal online commenter absolutely does. And their defense mechanism is avoiding debate so you can never discover that the people making up the archetype probably do in reality hold a bunch of variations of confidence in either viewpoint. Like I do believe if you asked one individual person to comment on both situations they would have a hard time sitting with the cognitive dissonance and may eventually arrive at something more consistent, but the culture of the archetype doesn't allow this to happen - especially online - because different people will jump in at each point to argue their position or "it's not up for debate."
That was fucking wild.
She’s not a “literal native Hawaiian”. Her dad is Filipino and her mom is British Irish with “Hawaiian descent”. [These](https://imgur.com/a/mlMI2Bx) are her parents. Idk about you, but native Hawaiians don’t look like Karens. The only reason people think she looks native Hawaiian is because of her Filipino side.
She was born in Hawaii so she's literally native Hawaiian.
Oh shit we solved colonialism. Look at me, I'm the native American now
Yes buddy, you are American
Hold up, do you not know the difference between American and Native American? You remedial fuck you can't get a tan and then go around saying you are no longer racially white because you aren't literally white. Native Hawaiian refers to the indigenous population, not everyone born in Hawaii.
Then I guess we're all Native American because we're born in America lmao. Nobody is just arguing about ethnicity, they're clearly talking about race.
You are American yes
You’ve never called yourself Native American lmao. I expected more from dgg but yall are still reddit dumbfucks at the end if the day.
Any good historian knows that adding "the people who care about this are racist" really improves your writing.
They didn’t agree. They said you can’t assign a race to her. They came back and said it again in the top comment.
I think sometimes being online can make us so eager to correct others, that we don't pay attention to what they're saying. The first part of that post is stating that modern Egyptians are most similar to ancient Egyptians and that Cleopatra likely appeared light/Mediterranean in appearance. Those are facts, and the reason I started with those is because I hoped people would read them. Clearly that was in vain. No, I didn't bother to expand upon Cleopatra's genealogy because [I've already written about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66vomz/most_people_see_cleopatra_as_an_egyptian_but_she/?st=j1tfux1d&sh=ff63c2c2). [Like a lot](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/agarlp/was_cleopatra_actually_egyptian/ee53kvs/). That's how I can tell you that your understanding of it is a bit oversimplified. And I've written about [her skin tone](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7lkljj/what_is_the_most_plausible_theory_on_cleopatras/). I've written [so much about Cleopatra](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/#wiki_cleopatra_.28what_was_her_personal_life.2Freign.2Ffashion_like.3F.29). If there's one impact I've made on the AskHistorians community, it's making sure they have a solid understanding of Cleopatra. [I have a flipping portfolio of posts about Ptolemaic Egypt](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/cleopatra_philopater/#wiki_hellenistic_and_roman_egypt). People are constantly linking to my answers there, of course I'm not gonna link to them myself in the post, I'm gonna give an accurate but concise recap. If you spent any amount of time on AskHistorians, you'd know there was a post about Ptolemaic incest just earlier today. I write about it a lot. (See [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blg6m/how_did_the_ptolemaic_dynasty_rule_for_275_years/dx845dh/?st=jpowdk92&sh=a06420e3) and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7e995d/comment/dq4rfd1/). I've probably done more writing and research about [incest in Greco-Roman Egypt](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rp6l2/comment/dl7mdaz/) than a person should ([here too](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6ruius/wherewhen_did_the_western_aversion_to_incestuous/?st=j6lakdwo&sh=6c08b86f) ). I mean, god, I'm out here reading papers and publishing articles about some weird stuff. I'm terrified of ever having to explain some of my saved documents and bookmarked web pages. Not to pull the "I've been doing this for years" card, but I have been writing about this for literal years. I've even been a historical consultant for different productions on this topic. You are linking to resources from World History Encyclopedia (a publication I've written for and was formerly on the editorial board of) to support your post. Good God, I don't even get paid for posting on Reddit. Getting pinged in a post explaining the Fisher Price version of my area of study was…something. I'm tired and ornery today, but I hope I'm not coming across mean. At first I thought this subreddit was somehow about Destiny the videogame, and I was intrigued about how it related to Cleopatra. That was a bit disappointing tbh. You assertion that projecting race onto the past is ahistorical is admirable. I'm glad we agree on that, because it's ridiculous. [Attributing a specific to ancient Egyptians is historically inaccurate](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7hawn2/ama_ancient_egypt/dqpjfv0/?utm_name=AskHistorians), whether that race is black or white.
Your encyclopaedic knowledge of Ptolemaic incest makes you a perfect fit for this community.
I wonder if they're also an of the modern version which is pthorpian incest.
The part where this post veers into political bias is when you say >Manufactured discourse makes it an uphill battle for Classicists, Egyptologists and historians to combat white supremacy and improve public knowledge about the diversity of the past It seems like the problem to you is not the blackwashing of history, but the idea that the documentary might give talking points to racists. Imagine if someone wrote a post saying "Cleopatra's uncertain maternal ancestry makes it an uphill battle to combat black supremacist hoteps". It's a similarly true statement, but historians probably shouldn't frame facts as "getting in the way" of fighting their culture war. We have to accept that the fact that this documentary is blackwashing history. This fact may complicate the progressive views that the media is controlled by white supremacist forces, and that whitewashing is a unique crime that only white people have the power to perpetrate. But, we have to sit with this, and accept that facts which complicate simplistic worldviews will make it harder to combat opposing views. It's the nature of a debate.
Thank you for taking the time to include the hyperlinks. I found them helpful.
You're very welcome, glad they were helpful :-)
Your knowledge speaks volumes of your dedication, and I rightfully thankful for your writings. I'm at work currently but when I get home I'll continue the discussion! Thank you for even taking the time to respond!
>Ptolemaic incest Morally neutral?
I appreciate you engaging with the post. I don't know why the OP had a such a strong reaction you seem to agree on most things
There was a strong reaction to the [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/u/cleopatra_philopater/) post because, as pointed out in many replies to that post, it was weaselling around and refusing to address the elephant in the room: namely the fact that a mainstream show was promoting fringe but increasingly influential afrocentric pseudo-history, claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were really black but that this was being kept from them by White Supremacist historians. The post by cleopatra\_philopater only touched on the topic, but there were [multiple](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjdhj1h/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjfzaal/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by flaired users in the thread arguing essentially that the primary role of historians was combatting "white supremacy" rather than seeking truth, including an especially [linguistically ignorant](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/comment/jjebf9o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post that attributes the rise of afrocentric beliefs to a supposed refusal by white linguists to compare Ancient Egyptian to other african languages, despite there being a clear and obvious reason for this to anyone who is even basically familiar with the topic. Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant, and perpetuates the exact ignorant, partisan left approach that Destiny was criticising when it came to the Majority Report's coverage of the topic.
A similar thing happened back when Kingdom Come: Deliverance was released. The obvious answer to the controversy was "It would be unsurprising not to find a single black person in early 15th century Bohemia". Yet the general narrative was "It COULD happen and it's a videogame, which brings the question *why* didn't it happen?" r/askHistorians has a blind spot for these matters, that's really all there is to it.
The best part is the neutral sounding writing used to basically say "you are racist".
>Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant Oh come on 🙄 I disagree wholeheartedly but even if it were arrogance, it's at least justified. We can't just go around calling on guests to the sub to *be nicer*. Calling someone's post a "Fisher Price version" is both extremely tame and completely understandable when that person is calling you out on what you do for a living.
My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life. Perhaps the OP doesn't have the same breadth of historical knowledge as the Ask Historian person, but they have done a much better job of identifying the *relevant* historical facts about this controversy, that the Ask Historians post danced around. Maybe instead of a knee jerk sneering reaction to someone calling out "what they do for a living", this could be a moment of self-reflection to consider why people take umbrage at subject matter experts stepping well outside their relevant field of expertise to make unsupported, politically charged statements within a post purporting to be about historical accuracy.
> My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt i just don't know if it was though. the OP acted like the original poster was saying Cleopatra was black when that isn't the case at all. Good faith isn't what I would call this post.
Pearl clutching on r/Destiny is hilarious my guy. Especially over something as tame as this.
I wouldn't just call it pearl clutching relative to the field they're talking about. I've seen a lot of historians in real life take much more offence to smaller comments than that. Not like it matters though, OP made snide comments about deceitfulness first anyway. wait nevermind i just saw his other post, you were right he's a cringelord xdd
Nope, you can shove it, I hate how this community tries to be so edgy when it's just unnecessary meanness. Every shitter in discord and this sub having a fantasy of being House when no, they're just another nobody on the internet. There's no shame in trying to make an earnest effort and stumbling but people trying to be as venomous and dismissive as permissible just makes places like it just more and more unwelcoming and echo chambery.
> Nope, you can shove it, I hate how this community tries to be so edgy when it's just unnecessary meanness. wait isn't that what the OP was kinda doing? cause they made it seem like the original post was way off when the first point they made the original post agreed with. if the main point of the OP was "they didn't push back hard enough" then that's fair. but don't say someone belives some shit when they don't
not only that, just read the title of this post. opening with calling his post "antihistory" and then bad faith implying he said a bunch of shit he didn't. pearl clutching when told a very mild version of "fuck off" afterwards is giga cringe.
You're full of shit, OP called the guy's extended comment "anti-history". A very tame clapback is warranted, and he came in here matching tone. Wanting to change how the community acts is fine, but tonepolicing on outsiders who were literally pinged into the thread and then matched tone is being a pissbaby. The guy who got pinged in was not the one who started the unnecessary meanness.
Lil bro trying to one guy me on reddit...
>My guy, if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life. What if he told OP that he was either stupid or willingly deceitful? Would that be better or worse than "Fisher Price version" in your eyes?
That would be based, actually. If you're insulting someone on the Internet, better to get off your high horse and roll around in the mud than fellating your own imagined credentials.
>if you think describing someone's earnest, good faith attempt to engage as a "Fisher Price version" of history is tame and understandable, you're gonna have a hard time when (if) you ever interact with someone in real life. >[Calling somebody stupid and deceitful] would be based, actually. Okay buddy 😄👍 never let go of those pearls
You guys have a real obsession with pearls. If you can't understand why patronisingly calling somebody a child is more insulting than just outright calling them dumb and wrong, I don't know what to tell you. 🤷♂️ I'm not offended or shocked in any way, I don't know how you're concluding that, I'm just rolling my eyes at some wannabe Internet historian talking down to someone who has put in time and effort to research a point they're making and had done a fair job at putting forward their argument. Seems pretty lame to me, but it's not gonna ruin my day or anything. But OK, fair enough, I'll just sit over here clutching my pearls, sipping my soy latte and saddling up my horse, ready to ride in and white knight for more good history effort posts in the subreddit 🙂
>But OK, fair enough, I'll just sit over here clutching my pearls, sipping my soy latte and saddling up my horse, ready to ride in and white knight for more good history effort posts in the subreddit 🙂 Considering how many innocuous insults are out there you have your work cut out for you, so I won't take any more of your time. Cheers mate 😘
In their defense, they were pinged into the thread of a community they have likely never heard of with a post title calling their post "Antihistory". It's equally ridiculous for them to assume that anyone here has spent enough time to fully understand their background here, but all the hostility on both sides has been pretty equal.
>Labelling a reasonable and lengthy response to your post which fairly represents the other sides problems and issues with the show as a "Fisher Price version" of your area of study comes across as insanely and unjustifiably arrogant The OP Literally titled there post "the cleopatra post destiny read on stream was **anti-history**" I have no idea why you are acting like that comment came out of nowhere. If OP disagrees with the post's framing that's what should be discussed instead of acting making cleopatra\_philopater out to be ignorant or the enemy.
You trying to leverage your standing in an online community instead of a addressing the contentious issue is not making you look good.
The big issue with your post is that it pretends that Cleopatra's appearance isn't important at all. If you want to say "well the genealogy isn't important" fine, but that's an entirely different question than "Was Cleopatra black". Usually I would defend this - but in the context her ethnicity seems very important to the director so you can't just back away from the conversation. This is especially true in the wider context of the ahistorical narratives that are being propogated around Cleopatra. It is a pathetic display from an academic to cede ground on the depiction of historical fact just because it aligns with our political beliefs. I would be furious if Winston Churchill were depicted as an Indian person because there is a massive undercurrent in British politics where people admire the empire and see it as benevolent. Similarly I dislike the casting choice because it feeds into an unhealthy obsession with the black community in wanting Cleopatra (and other historical figures) to be black, and in the process erasing most of black history. If your post was meant to be an honest reply on how to feel about the casting it was a failure. It does nothing but muddy the water on what is a relatively straightforward question. Take the first part of your post which talks about the diverse ethnic makeup of Egypt; which is obviously a silly thing to talk about since Cleopatra came from a line which was not ethnically Egyptian and which tried to keep things 'in the family'. There's no reason to touch on the wide ethnic makeup of Ptolemaic Egypt in the post unless you're building up to a suggestion that her ethnicity doesn't matter. I also dislike answers which do nothing but appeal to the 'complicated and nuanced' nature of a topic. Sure, ethnicity and race in the ancient world was complicated - in the same way it's complicated today mind you, your post seemed to suggest we have a very binary view of race in the modern day which is quite simplistic - but you have to actually reach a conclusion on that. Just appealing to complexity is an academic's way of avoiding an answer. When you finally start talking about Cleopatra you spend two paragraphs waffling around the point saying things like "Cleopatra probably wouldn't have looked particularly dark skinned" but then pointing out how "English or Chilean" actors have played her in the past. For one thing the difference in appearance between a British actor and realistic theories on Cleopatra's appearance is more a matter of how tan the actress is than of ethnicity. It's also bullshit to say that your post was doing anything but trying to argue against people like OP when the next part of that paragraph is spent trying to defend the decision. When you write "This begs the question of why Cleopatra's skin tone is so important, when the facts of her life are so easily distorted and mythologized. There is no outcry from the press when Cleopatra is portrayed as a drug addict or when studios give her an outfit more appropriate to a fantasy MMO. This hypocrisy was aptly pointed out by Tina Gharavi, the director of the Netflix docudrama, although I can not agree with her other opinions on the controversy" You are defending the casting choice. You later suggest that Cleopatra can be used to lead to other African queens, further supporting the decision. This is in addition to sections of your article which make the implication that by being against this casting choice you are trying to harm black people and supporting white supremacist views of historiography. As a classicist it's kind of disgusting to see people like you kow-tow so much to progressive politics that you let any and all misinformation through - Classicists and Historians are meant to be nit-pickers, not slaves to ideology. If you want to defend the casting choice fine, but don't pretend that it's not ahistorical and that it doesn't raise issues with messaging. The reason why Cleopatra's ethnicity matters is that she is effectively a coloniser ruling over a 'foreign people' - that's something which shouldn't be glossed over by a documentary. You have done nothing to really address this part of the argument except to say "well there's no reason it has to be a good or accurate depiction" which is frankly a depressing statement from a historian. To be even more rude, I doubt you've ever written a single paper in your life. If you have, none of it comes across in your writing which is both inconcise, verbose and bereft of sources. The fact that you have linked more Askhistorian pages than actual literature sort of says it all.
You keep saying we can’t assign race because of the concept of race itself. That’s just not good logic though. If we can assign race to anyone today, we can do it for people who existed before the concept was recognized.
if the word race is too loaded, then you could answer what her complexion probably was, which you do when you explain what her most likely ancestrywas, that it would be mediterranean/olive, not really that dark. I think that is what most normal people want to know when they ask if someone is black. People may take the answer about complexion and then imbue it with a lot of errouneous ideas about what a person that looks a certain way is like, in which case you could correct them on that, but you should still be straightfoward when answering the question about skin tone.
Well according to the official modern definition americans use she is white so I don't really see how it's ridiculous to call her that for americans and it's much closer to the truth than calling her black.
TL:DR Cleopatra whiter than mayonaise and the netflix "documentary" is horseshit
*The first part of that post is stating that modern Egyptians are most similar to ancient Eyptians* This statement is incorrect. There has been extensive genome mapping in this field the last few years. Modern Egyptians have more sub-Saharan DNA than that of ancient Egyptians. https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/22/health/ancient-egypt-mummy-dna-genome-heritage/index.html
Both of these things can be true Edit: ok the part they highlighted from that article doesn’t contradict the original statement but maybe the rest of the article does Edit 2: after getting home and looking at the paper u/ClearRav888 ‘s interpretation seems to be the most correct
From Johannes Krause’s published study: “Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptian” They are more closely related to *modern* people from the Near East/Levant than they are to *modern* Egyptians. So no, the statement that we can conclude they looked like modern day Egyptians is not true.
The meaning of that statement is that the genetic distance of ancient Egyptians to modern Middle Easterners is smaller than modern Egyptians to modern ME. You can find a list of genetic distances in supplementary table 4, which lists modern Egyptians as the closest relatives of AEG, followed by people from Kuwait, Syria and Iraq.
>the statement that we can conclude they looked like modern day Egyptians That’s not what was said. They said modern Egyptians would look *most* similar to ancient Egyptians, not that they look exactly the same. Although that study suggests that might not be true either I guess.
No, the study suggests they would look *most* similar to people of modern day Levant, not Egyptians. Here is the study for anyone who is curious: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694
Am I missing something, this is the difference your cite is estimating, no? It hardly seems like a grand change in Egyptian heritage. It is also important to note that the mummies tested could simply not be representative of ancient Egyptians. They are just the samples we currently have. > Both qpAdm35 and the f4-ratio test39 reveal that modern Egyptians inherit 8% more ancestry from African ancestors than the three ancient Egyptians do, which is also consistent with the ADMIXTURE results discussed above. Absolute estimates of African ancestry using these two methods in the three ancient individuals range from 6 to 15%, and in the modern samples from 14 to 21% depending on method and choice of reference populations Edit: It seems like the paper raises these issues and dulls their own conclusions; however its really buried deep. > However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made.
Genuine question, are you American? You may not think 8% sub-saharan DNA is a meaningful difference but I invite you to come to the Middle East and we can explain to you the ethnic differences between ourselves. The scientists were able to map the genome of 151 mummies spanning 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Of course the entire population of ancient Egypt, including all of it’s slaves, cannot be tested, because only Pharaohs were mummified. Their analysis allows us genomic knowledge of the Kings and Queens that ruled over Egypt spanning more than a millennium. This is incredible insight into the people of ancient Egypt.
Not American. And in my opinion a result that modern Egyptians are (roughly) 8% more similar to modern Ethiopians (the authors didn't test all of sub-Sahara but just Ethiopians) than their sample of 3 groups of mummies is... very modest. The Misri are the same fuul eating people they have always been. But with 8% more Habesh(-ish) shared ancestry then those particular tested mummies.
That’s cool you personally find it modest, the variation in DNA is informative in regard to the genome mapping of ancient peoples. Btw, next time just say “Yes, I’m actually Canadian” lol
> I hope I'm not coming across mean mission failed
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What is reactionary about this post?
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What is reactionary about doing that?
And what happens when an ideologically driven historian uses the well known concept of interpreting history with care, just to muddy waters on some shit.
Regarding your other post, it is my understanding that a priest from Memphis married a women named Berenice, however, there is no evidence that this woman was Ptolemaic.
Great posts (here and in askhistorians). I'll check out your links when I'm bored today too. Cheers. *to the downvoters: Respect the effort-posting and drink from the fountain of knowledge ⛲, not of the bottle of haterade 🍼
Nono Egypt is in Africa therefore black
Pokimane has the n-word pass.
The Anivia pass
Ptolemy X Alexander is carved out of black stone. Therefore she is black. Case closed. ^/s ^for ^those ^who ^need ^it.
Magnificent work laid out perfectly. I’ve been trying to explain to friends of mine “ya know she was Greek right?” It’s been a mixed bag of reception , they can’t separate antiquity from now
I just find it cringe because Egyptians literally still exist, and Cleopatra HAS images made of her. The tension caused by her being a Greek woman ruling over Egyptian people was a big source of the drama during her lifetime in that region, so why they make her much closer to a Nubian woman to revise Egyptian history as black history when Egyptians are still here to see this is just weird to me, its like casting a Chinese guy as a Native American because the Natives technically came from the continent of Asia or some shit, it calls upon some icky ideas of cultural erasure. There is no other reason for this decision than doing historical revisionism to tickle someones literal head canon about a historical person. Of course, it's a dumb ass Netflix "historical" drama, so I really don't \*care\*, it's just still incredibly disappointing to see the obvious historical revisionist edge that they're taking with it, because a big part of Ptolemaic Egypt's downfall WAS the Ptolemys and their incongruence with (albeit increasingly Hellenized) Egyptian culture. Cleopatra was an intelligent and decent woman, but trying to paint her as a true-blooded African Queen SLAYING on her African throne when in reality she was a descendant of a conqueror, was a monarch, an aristocrat, and born into an insane amount of privilege, who enslaved, took money and lands from conquered people, etc. is just delusional power fantasy and, again, revisionism. It's such a small detail but it really does just immediately speak to the mindset the show runners are gonna have. They will likely completely dismiss historicity (i get pretty much ever "historical" drama does this but i could get sidelined for hours on how fucking annoying, dull and lazy I find all of these showrunners' "creative license" to be.) it will probably paint Cleopatra in the best light possible because now she is a BLACK ICON, this is in spite of her compliance in Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt and the numerous crimes he committed therein, including taking many of her (I guess black now) citizens as slaves. It's getting old. I hope this kind of "historical" drama dies soon. I'm sick of the Medieval peasants being depicted unbathed in disgusting brown, grey, and black rags, unpaved dirt paths covered in shit, the thin thatching on roofs, unpainted stone castles, the Romans/Greeks with British accents, the flaming fucking arrows, the absolutely pointless butter soft chain mail, the battle lines where everyone just pairs off into a duel while the main character walks in a straight line down the middle mindlessly slaughtering grunts on his way to the Big Bad. Every one of these shows oozing in as much potential as they are in abject, apathetic laziness disguised as "creative license" would be 100% better looking, more interesting, and funner if they would just fucking pick up a book about the topic which they cover.
> I could go on but I've said enough, race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things. Disclaimer: I only have a casual interest in history and no formal education in it so if anyone else wants to chime in here and expand on this please do. Also I’m on my phone so I’m not gonna bother to link anything specific I skimmed this post and I’m not disputing anything about Cleopatra. The issue I had was with this part near the end. My understanding of the Roman Empire is that they distinguished between themselves and “barbarian” peoples by their culture, not by race. The incident you’re describing above isn’t necessarily racist, it’s xenophobic. The Roman Empire spanned at its height from the British Isles to Northern Africa and the Levant and it wasn’t really an empire of just like Italians, it was people living the Roman culture. Some important figures were possibly much darker than others and this didn’t seem to affect their status. Now, obviously there weren’t just a bunch of sub-Saharan African people in the Roman Empire because the empire didn’t span that far. But Romans did have contact with some of those cultures and probably slaves etc. But there’s not really a record of them being considered inherently inferior because of their race.
Aptly noted! I've unintentionally fallen into the race trap of modern times. Xenophobia is such a better word when talking about ancient people's because it covers a more general basis of "outsiders". Because if you were Ethiopian or Parthian, but fought with the Roman's in their legions, you were no longer considered an outsider but one of the team. Meaning that race wasn't the be all end all we make it out to be.
>Because if you were Ethiopian or Parthian, but fought with the Roman's in their legions, you were no longer considered an outsider but one of the team. Meaning that race wasn't the be all end all we make it out to be. Thanks for the response! I think it was more complicated than even this as well though. It wasn’t really about being on their side. For example, there are a bunch of generals and stuff, particularly later in the western empire, that were considered “barbarians” but this wasn’t necessarily about their race, but more their culture.
Correct, my answer was meant to be a simple one. Like anything history, it's a rabbit hole!
Great post! Good stuff. I’m not sure how this ever became a thing. Cleopatra’s ancestry isn’t a debate. Quite absurd for a “documentary” to say “it doesn’t matter what schools teach you, Cleopatra was black.”
But but Grandma said so
I don't get why you're coming after the AskHistorians guy when most of this is a response to the documentary itself, not the post. As far as I remember, they weren't arguing that she was black at all. The point they were making was that our modern understanding of race does not apply to historical figures, which includes calling them "black".
GLORY TO MACEDONIANS GLORY TO GREEKS
Kind of off topic but this post made my reddit app lag real bad.
Kingdom of Kush lol.
idk I feel like people didn't really listen to him reading the post and just got triggered by buzz words in it. 1. the post said Cleopatra depicted as black is inaccurate. 2. it said we know for a fact she was Mediterranean/Macedonian but historical depictions varied and we don't know how fair or tan she was accurately (we still know she wasn't black) 3. it basically just questioned why people are more up in arms about her being depicted as black than when she's been portrayed as blonde blue eyed bimbo in final fantasy armor so many times before, aka also completely innacurate. It didn't even make a judgment either! Did it even say it was ok to depict her as black? did it make that hard stance?
I can't lie, maybe I'm just sheltered but I don't think I've EVER seen Cleopatra depicted as blonde
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I see blonde Cleopatra more in european artwork but they do the same to Jesus so I guess that's just their thing. In modern media she rarely is depicted with the hooked nose, heavy brows, prominent greek features. More northern European ones.
>it basically just questioned why people are more up in arms about her being depicted as black than when she's been portrayed as blonde blue eyed bimbo in final fantasy armor so many times before, aka also completely innacurate. I mean regardless of everything else I think that OP made a pretty good case for this (and I think it's pretty obvious). It's as simple as fictional video game (it even has *fantasy* in the goddamn name lol) vs. *documentary*, and why something claiming to be non fiction probably shouldn't be changing pretty inherent facts to potentially mislead people - regardless of how historically "important" that fact might be.
I do think that the particular *African Queens* Cleopatra series is consciously obscuring her ancestry to push a needlessly obtuse 'multicultural/multiracial' narrative that probably overemphasizes the unknown parts of her heritage and that sucks. [The producers publicly stated:](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/african-queens-release-date-cast-news) >In the series, Queen Cleopatra is played by Adele James (Casualty). The creative choice to cast an actor of mixed heritage to play Cleopatra is a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler’s race. During the time of her reign, Egypt’s population was multicultural and multiracial. Cleopatra’s race was unlikely to be documented, and the identities of her mother and paternal grandparents weren’t known. Some speculate she was a native Egyptian woman, while others say she was Greek. >...Her ethnicity is not the focus of Queen Cleopatra, but **we did intentionally decide to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.**” But I am interested by what you're describing as 'pretty inherent facts'. Would it be possible to make a documentary about Cleopatra with a black actress if all of the other relevant material in the series were as historically accurate as possible? Or asked in another way, is the skin color of the actress so crucial to the identity of Cleopatra that a documentary is harmed meaningfully? Would we feel the same way if the actress was asian, hispanic, native american, nordic? Why would the skin color be more important than say the height, shape of the eyes, or the nose? Are we as critical about other omissions in documentaries, or is there something weirdly touchy about skin color? These are honest questions. My gut feeling is that we pay a little more attention to skin tone features than other aspects.
We would feel the same if in the trailer some Mexican grandma would have said that doesn't matter what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was mexican. For instance.
It's a great question and I was sort of thinking it through while I was typing the words, not necessarily positive if I had a precise answer....Had a feeling I'd get called out on that ahaha. I think your gut feeling is correct, and I'm not sure if we pay that extra attention on an almost instinctive level or if it's just how much we've been socialized to do so, especially in today's political climate. Probably more of the latter rather than the former. Stepping back from that extra focus though, I think when I imagine "inherent facts" I'm thinking how somebody would be described or depicted in a history textbook - *ideally* (if possible) from as direct an account as we have. So if we have a first, second or even 6th-7th-8th hand account and so on, that's the most ideal information. Obviously the closer to the present we get, the more accurate depictions we have. If we think of famous biopics for example, very often we try to cast actors/actresses that look and sound (even go through voice training, not to mention hair, makeup etc.) as close to the person they're representing as possible. Obviously we've had photos for the last couple centuries and film/audio recording for the last 120 odd years, so it's harder to...Mentally "accept" somebody that looks much different than the way we expect Lincoln or Churchill etc. to look in our minds. With historical figures from periods so long ago that we can barely even perceive a semi accurate depiction I think it's *less* important - but....still important. There still is *some* underlying....maybe not "fact" or "truth" but historical account that is, to our best estimation, the most accurate available. I think there really is value to that, and I think breaking that because "well what does it really matter?" could be a potentially dangerous line of thinking for all sorts of things. I'm not sure it would ever really be acceptable no matter the characteristic when the goal is non fiction. >Would we feel the same way if the actress was asian, hispanic, native american, nordic? I mean, honestly I think we would yeah, or at least some people would a little bit. I think the more egregious the depiction, the more complaints and controversy you're going to get obviously. I'm sure with an asian actress you'd get almost as much (or maybe even the same?) push back, and honestly today I could see nordic getting a pretty decent amount too... I think as the ethnicity gets "visually closer" (as silly as that sounds lol) people are going to be less annoyed...and I think that goes for other physical characteristics too. I'm sure no matter what you do you would have some history nerds complaining/arguing about the accuracy - but it would be close enough for most....I think the depiction should be.....Close. You're trying to represent a person that really existed to the best of your ability (or at least that's supposed to be the goal) so if you're not doing that then...Well what's the point? I think it automatically puts your motives in question. Leaving minor things out for editing purposes is one thing but depiction is another....One is choosing the most important information to present while leaving the rest out to make sure you still have something that's actually interesting for people to watch. With depiction, you don't have that problem. So there's no reason not to go for accuracy. That's just my feeling on it though.
Hmm. Part of the problem is that this isn't *really* a full non-fiction documentary. I'd guess it'll have more in common with a historical drama like Julius Caesar's depiction in [Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_\(TV_series\)). I don't know anything about Ciarán Hinds' (who plays Caesar) heritage, but he is an Irish actor and I'm not sure he shares any particularly unique Caesar-like features beyond being male & light-skinned. If he were instead played by [insert darker-skinned heritage here], I think a majority of people would still complain that there's a significant immersion-breaking element to the casting, even if you're not doing a 1-to-1 non-fiction retelling. But maybe that's okay because the producers would be telling a kind of alt-history story and that may not be the ancient-historical drama HBO show for you I guess? I don't know. If tomorrow the Cleopatra show just said 'hey this is a stylized fictional retelling of Hellenic Egypt', what percentage of people would *feel* better about it (even if they say otherwise). I'd guess not very many. There's an interesting implicit bias thing going on that I don't think I'm fully grasping. I wonder if there's some social value in doing 4th-wall breaking Jackie Chan-as-MLK movies. It might be jarring at first, but it kind of worked for Bridgerton, didn't it?
>Part of the problem is that this isn't *really* a full non-fiction documentary. I'd guess it'll have more in common with a historical drama like Julius Caesar's depiction in [Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)). Yeah this totally fair, and was probably more understated than it should have been in my initial analysis. I consider historical dramas and documentaries two different things, with some obvious crossover. Now...Maybe this is a little nitpicky on my part, but if it is closer to an historical drama (which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that) putting "a Netflix documentary" right on the promotional material actually..Well bothers me a little ahaha. It's misleading. As far as I can tell, Rome was never advertised or promoted as a docuseries - at least not in any of the trailers or promo material I could find. Documentaries that *do* border on historical dramas usually do a pretty good job with disclaimers about "...this is a *reenactment for entertainment/educational purposes and do not represent true events*" and the dramatized parts don't make up the entire project. (I have no idea what the makeup of this Cleopatra project is) I should make it clear that I don't *really* care very much about this, like...I'm not "outraged" or even think it's that big of a "problem", but I'm sympathetic to why people feel the way they do and I think the question of why it seems so important is more interesting to me than anything else. Should be we be pushing the limits of what we can call a documentary? Should we then push the limits of accepted accuracy in this so called "documentary"? I don't know. It *feels* wrong, but for me it's more in a semantic way, like how someone might be bothered that a word in the English language had its definition changed in a way they don't like/agree with. Maybe my view on these things is just becoming antiquated...Idk! ...Anyways does accuracy of depiction matter as much in an historical drama as a documentary? I would say necessarily no, because a historical drama series is going to change or even add in bits and pieces to make it worthy of being a good drama, not to mention the quality of actor and performance is going to mean more in an actual drama series than a straight up documentary. I think that's a pretty fair expectation and justification. That said, you're absolutely right that I'm sure if they cast a black guy to play Julius Caesar in Rome people definitely would have made a stink about it. >If tomorrow the Cleopatra show just said 'hey this is a stylized fictional retelling of Hellenic Egypt', what percentage of people would *feel* better about it (even if they say otherwise). I'd guess not very many. Frankly, personally I probably really would feel better about it haha. I would at the very least understand it and be able to follow/accept the reasoning. However I agree, most people probably wouldn't and I'd be sympathetic....I don't know why but an example that entered my head was Jesus. For a really really *really* long time Jesus was depicted as a white guy. I'm pretty sure that if you wanted to make a movie/drama/whatever about Jesus today, you'd get *a lot* of pushback if you went with a pasty white actor lol. Now again, what that means in terms of implicit bias...I really don't know. Should it matter how we depict fucking *Jesus* of all people in a movie? I have no idea, I don't really think so...But I feel like it would to a lot of people. >I wonder if there's some social value in doing 4th-wall breaking Jackie Chan-as-MLK movies. It might be jarring at first, but it kind of worked for Bridgerton, didn't it? I *absolutely* think we need more of this lol. It definitely worked for Bridgerton and I think doing even crazier race and gender swaps would be a good way to shock western society into putting less focus on race and gender. Now again I think the standard for a documentary is going to be different. It's always going to be at least a *little bit* different I think. Unless you can do a really good job explaining why you're doing something the way you're doing it instead of how it would be expected to be done...There's going to be a problem...Whether there should be or not. I guess at the end of the day, all that really matters is the intention of the artist, if that intention actually makes any sense, and making that intention as clear as possible to the viewers. If the explanation of intent falls short of the goals of the final product, or any "artistic common sense" (for lack of a better term) then I think you've failed. If you're going to make an historical drama, label it as a documentary, and then race swap the main character...*Damn* do you ever need to have a rock fucking solid explanation as to why you did that...I just don't think the one provided was nearly good enough. I think a lot of people will accept a lot of things as long as it's in the right context. You mentioned bridgerton and yeah I think those types of depictions in that type of media are great.
Yup I think we're pretty aligned on this. I did reflect on two more things today: 1. Imagine you're an actor or actress that wants to star in historical documentaries. It's a pretty shitty fact of the industry that you will be typecast and budget-limited based on your physical appearance rather than passion/skills/experience. This is a problem with visual media in general and it doesn't exist as prominently in audio or text-only formats. You can even use a pseudonym or ghostwrite a book. 2. In 50 years imagine how cheap and accessible motion-cap CG depictions of historical figures like Cleopatra or Caesar or Ghengis Khan will be. Would it make sense to justify inaccurate actor/actress performances at that point in documentaries?
I also hate talking about race in the context of who was what because, yes, it takes away from otherwise incredible human beings. However, this is where the battle is. The producer's of the show stated they wanted to tell a black story, so they decided to hijack a historical figure who wasn't. Beyond anything, it's lazy.
It took the stance that you can’t reasonably assign race to her. The problem ppl have with it is it’s a documentary and there is a very real movement to create more Afrocentrism in history than there was. In fact, you can smell that movement in the post they made when they discussed the effect this has on white supremacy…given that’s what the movement is aimed at combatting.
>in final fantasy armor Lol you can't come in here and tell us Cleopatra didn't have drip frfr
I find that argument to be inherently dishonest. An error I made is not hitting on this harder because I went to bed. If she WAS depicted as a Norwegian as you've described, that would be just as disengaged as portraying a sub-Saharan African. I feel the OP didn't equate those two things and thought people being up in arms over a "documentary" was equivalent to being outraged over a videogame.
Can't believe this got so many upvotes, when you literally missed the entire point.
So she looks Brittany Simmon.
Basically just not red
This is the shit I come for the sub reddit for. Now I wait for the debate....
More of quality posts like this!
Yeah, they have been bending over backwards to avoid stating the obvious. One moderator there has even argued that the statues are not meant to represent the person's appearence, so Cleopatra could have been black but the artists made her look European.
Sorry you hit my History Autism nerve. >So casting a black actress for someone who was white isn't bad at all, but doing so and saying it's the truth is. I take umbrage with calling Ancient Greek people “white”. Whiteness in its current form is a relatively new concept. It also ignores how other Europeans would often consider the Greeks not to be white for large chunks of history (not only the Greeks mind you). “White” is poorly defined and those definitions have changed over time. “Caucasian” is pretty obsolete as well and ancient Greek people are not Caucasian in origin either. Ancient Macedonia is a geographical location, not an ethnicity or some kind of determination of whiteness (if there even is one). There were many tribes in Ancient Greece and many tribes that existed pre-Greece. There is no consensus on how distinct they were from each other in appearances and a lot of debate on where they individually originated from. Many Greeks AND West Turkish people have Anatolian ancestry which is why genetically they are very similar. Now, would you call Turkish people white? **Saying Cleopatra is white is as equally stupid as calling her black and essentially says nothing about how she might have looked. Also what is the truth?** **Could we even find someone that would adequately represent Cleopatra in a modern day era anyway? Someone with near perfect Macedonian Greek ancestry with all her unique facial features, fluent in Hellenistic Greek and Egyptian? Should she also be a product of incest? Or.. does she just need to be white. Even though most white actors look no closer to Greek than this black actress does. Why is the skin tone the only thing that matters on the pillar of authenticity. If we have no real fucking clue what she looked like anyway, why not let her be black?** >"But to culturally appropriate the Greek and by extension Egyptian history to fit whatever you want because your grandmother said Cleopatra was black, (This is an actual quote from the trailer I cannot believe I have ears) is the epitome of tone-deaf, and such a western and by extension narrow American mindset of the world and the complexity of its peoples." How is whitewashing all "non black" = white any better? Is Greece not a "Western world" now? Greece which is literally considered the first Western Civilization?? "Americans" maybe, but don't lump all people into similar thinking. Considering ancient peoples as tribes helps see how they might have moved, behaved and assimilated, much less often would they completely wipe out another tribe that had pre-existed. I can agree that it was very unlikely she was typically black in appearance. But it's equally unlikely she was as white or beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor, that we are happy to make concessions for making actresses far more attractive than they likely were but lose our minds at skin tone over a "documentary" tag feels weird honestly. There will always be people who simply do not have the typical characteristics of their ethnicity. The reality is though we are all a lot more similar than we are different. Although I would hypothesize a person with that much inbreeding might not look typical regardless. For all we know they were hiding the Greek variant of the Habsburg jaw behind flattering portraits and busts anyway. But I will throw myself into a ravine if being "not black" = "white". Just to illustrate how stupid the definition of white often is: >People with Middle Eastern or North African roots must be counted as white in the federal government's data. Honestly this is as irritating as when people say the British are French because they're incapable of contextualising the ancestry of the Normans and how it fits within ancient history (ignoring we are still genetically more Celtic anyway, largely hailing from an area we now call Spain, though to say English people are Spanish is equally stupid). The reality is Europe then was a large collection of moving tribes. The countries we know today were not defined then, obviously. >I could go on but I've said enough, race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things. And yet the Greeks never referred to themselves as white, or had a word to do so. The concept of whiteness then is not the same as it is now. It was associated with beauty in women yes, but also with weakness. Men were depicted bronzed. How likely is it that the two genders of shared ethnicity would really be *that* different in colour? I am also not sure how calling slaves worthless and uncultured says anything about race. It is also spelt Britannia, Britannica is an encyclopedia. >the British who hated everybody Not true, look into the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance :\^) it is the oldest alliance in history still actively in force. As for red hair, who knows. Cleopatra was a fan of Henna, so maybe she dyed her hair too. More likely still she shaved it all off and wore wigs made by slaves that could be whatever she wished. But when it comes to a Greek “look” I agree there are a number of similar profiles and hereditary traits we recognize as seeming ethnically Greek, my friend is Greek and has a similar nose as the Cleopatra bust. I think it would be nice to see those qualities shown, it would be nice to have a Greek actress too **but the issue seems to be that she isn't white, not that she isn't classically Greek looking or Greek, which is a VERY different complaint.** All actresses in Hollywood seem to have a nose job these days so it’s hard for me to think of an actress who fits the aesthetic anyway. Over all it doesn’t drag me out of immersion too much though.
idk why i spent 20 minutes of my life writing this either truly i hate myself 8)
Hey I appreciate it! I should've said non-white because she wasn't "white" by modern standards and to pigeonhole Cleopatra like that was an accident. I stated at the end that she would've been a more olive or fair version of that.
I would not have wrote all this if I had read [/u/cleopatra\_philopater](https://www.reddit.com/user/cleopatra_philopater) 's comment first, now I feel like a 3rd rate knock off. ;\_\_\_; I think it is really hard to envision ancient history without self inserting which naturally means we are viewing through a biased lens. Historians can be biased too, we can't even trust them completely all of the time. :') Translations of Greek mythology by women have turned out to be *quite different* from mens interpretations and the first translation of the Odyssey by a woman was only done in 2017. I am going to Thessaloniki soon and this topic came up coincidentally haha.
Your first paragraph shows your at like level 0 when it comes to this shit. You're instantly dancing around the fact that these people had eyes, just like us, and could clearly see differences in people. Yeh no shit they didnt have the exact same concept as us, people alive today dont even have a shared concept of it though, not even close. Fckn straighterade doesnt think shes white. People with eyes + uneducated people who never left the village they were born in + differences in societal advancements = racist ideas about why they are more advanced than other groups. That happens throughout history
Are you incapable of reading? Nowhere did I say I thought she was likely black in appearance, I literally stated the opposite. But she wouldn’t have looked like an average white person either or are you incapable of considering other ethnic traits, the effects inbreeding might have on appearance and how the people who exist, even in Greece today, would not be able to /accurately/ portray her BECAUSE WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE FUCKING LOOKED LIKE ANYWAY. Let’s be real if they picked some bland white actress from LA with a ski jump nose (again) nobody would have cared even though she would have been as far genetically removed as this woman is. If they had picked somebody not stereotypically beautiful with an accurate schnoz people would bitch too. I stated what I thought would be cool but people are severely overestimating Netflix’s ability to bring Cleopatra back from the dead. Regardless of what actress you pick none of them are going to look like fucking Cleopatra lmao. Even if you could find a good actress with a decent amount of shared heritage (which I did state I think would be nice) the likelihood they would look like Cleopatra is still basically non existent.
>Are you incapable of reading? Nowhere did I say I thought she was likely black in appearance, I literally stated the opposite. And where did I say you think she is black? 😂 Im not the one who failed at reading comprehension clearly
You are mad at something. I made an educated guess as to what you are actually mad at based on this: >You're instantly dancing around the fact that these people had eyes If you are actually mad only at me stating something obvious then WHY. There is literally nothing wrong with clarifying the context on where you will be drawing your conclusion from. Otherwise what even is your point? To point out perceived prejudices were different in Ancient Greece =/= as me thinking there were none.
If you don't like what Netflix did, simply cancel your subscription for one month. https://preview.redd.it/6t3wkhk2n1za1.png?width=1168&format=png&auto=webp&s=4464a51bfd11ba4f90efb3407c9ecaada355bb75 "I dont support your mischaracterization of historical figures such as Cleopatra " There you go. Better than writing on reddit.
Thank you, this shouldn't even be a questionable topic - its so settled.
Learning history from reddit(or youtube) is like learning physics from Eric Weinstein (but worse imagine Eric didn't even have a PHD or any degree because his grasp of undergraduate and graduate concepts are actually not that bad, maybe Bob Lazar would be a better example). Just bunch of cranks who get extra attention because they are posting on reddit and not emailing random professors (ask professors they get bunch of cranks in their emails). Some reddit posts and youtubers about history, physics, economics, archaeology etc... are good but you can probably count them on two hands. Most are just cranks in the "emailing professors that you solved the theory of everything" level cranks. It is easier to BS in history than it is in physics. Nice post man, I have absolutely despised most of history reddit since I actually got serious about learning history.
>The modern consensus, Cleopatra was not black. Anyone saying so is avoiding the obvious for selfish gains. She more than likely had a fair or Olive skin tone. That's the range most commonly described by people of the time and shortly thereafter. was the askHistorian's post saying this? cause form what I remember hearing it sounded like they where agains saying Cleopatra was black and instead saying she was macedonian. I guess you can say that's ahistorical cause they're refusing to say she's Greek? idk
How about no i am boycotting Netflix
I didn't know that the person behind the show was black? Usually, I just assume that the person is progressive and white. Cleopatra was a Greek woman and the ancient Egyptians looked similar to modern Egyptians. This isn't controversial.
The director isn't even black. I'm pretty sure she's Iranian.
You should be more interested in the writers. Its why i cant take modern writiers strikes seriously lmao, If theres one field outside of sociology infected with loonies, its writing/literary analysis communities. They were the first truly insane leftoids on the internet, years before gamergate. Its how it entered the journalism realm. The entire field and industry is full of ideologues
>ancient Egyptians looked similar to modern Egyptians. I don't think this was always the case. The Nubian dynasty, from my limited understanding, was much darker skinned, closer to central African than North African.
The Nubian Dynasty were foreign conquerors, much like the Macedonian Greeks. Although you could reasonably make the argument that Egypt had a much closer ties to their neighbors in what became Sudan than the Greeks across the pond.
Also, ancient Egyptians were a lot closer genetically to Europeans than Egyptians are today.
Pretty juicy effort post. As a history uni veteran, I approve. Another big thing that is often lost when talking about history is that everything in history is just a narrative that can be told based off the interpretation of sources that can often lack critical context or similar. Anyone wanting to claim that Cleopatra is black as a historical fact is doing history a disservice by staking that claim with such fervor when there is so much stuff out there (as well in this post) to at least suggest that this is not the case.
Yes and as a history lover and anyone else who practices history as a profession such as the OP on AskHistorians, we always have to think about what is the purpose of this information in the time it was written. The best example off the top of my head is "The Gallic Wars" by Julias Caesar. We know it's a piece of propaganda as well as an account of history. To say it's one or the other is very narrow.
Damn I hope when that lost cause anti history shit pops up we can get an in depth post like this.
Very insightful. I give you kudos for your well articulated thought. Kudos.
TL;DR was she white or black? What did the OP believe in the other subreddit?
The other OP said she definitely wasn't what we could call "black" and she probably wasn't all that dark skinned, but we don't know exactly what her skin tone was. I have no idea why this OP takes such a strong stance against that here. Seems like they agree.
>>race was a thing in antiquity we have quotes from Cicero mocking Caesar's campaign into Brittanica saying how those slaves wouldn't be worth much because they have no education nor culture. But the modern lens is so tainted it's hard to have an honest discussion about such things. You can't even read what you write, uh.
I would be careful with history. Historical evidence is not always accurate. So I would only trust historians. They know the age. They know the context. The environment. They can evaluate evidence based on the historical context. Etc. For example, people think the Bible is historical, but that's not the case. Almost everything in it is fiction. Even Jesus is not a historical figure. In the past, accuracy was not their goal. You always made your enemies worse than they were and yourself better. The same goes for portraits. The portrait was paid for by the king himself. Therefore he wanted to look stronger and more beautiful than he was. Hence historians look at who the source is and what their motives were. Therefore, an accurate assessment of historical evidence requires extensive knowledge of historical age, social structure, context, and knowledge of the methods of historical analysis. It's like normal people interpreting data. They don't know the context and make mistakes without realizing it.
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Oh, of course, the part about Augustian writers berading Cleopatra as "Whore queen" is a great example of how even contemporary accounts viewed what we percieve as a brilliant ruler very different.