The second part of the thread, as well as later posts, didn't make it in to the archive. I find it somewhat interesting how often the posts written against the afrocentric position had already been deleted by the time I showed up, while almost all of the afrocentric ones were still in place.
The Nisut's mixture of arrogance and cowardice would seem to be contagious. Watch MeryBast (Stephanie Cass) slip up here, and go against what was to be the party line, only to refer to similar commentary later on as "trolling", when others offer it.At the time I first encountered this thread on the boards, Cass' post had already been deleted. (I found a copy of it in the Internet Archive). I find that this casts later complaints that I had "resurrected a dead thread" in a new light. Somebody had something to hide - the fact of her own hypocrisy. While she may pay lip service to the political demands of the historical revisionists on the board, she knows better.
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5/18/00 04:45 PM
151.198.187.98
| Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity
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The Assyrian invasion of 871 B.C. drove the Kushite forces to the south and began the harshness and misrule that destroyed the grandeur that once was Egypt. Egypt continued to decline while a young nation on the other side of the MediterraneanGreecebegan to gather, its power around 500 B.C. In the year 332 B.C. Alexander the Great, a student of Aristotle, invaded Egypt. This was the first purely European invasion of Africa. The aftermath of this invasion, and the new European interest in dominating the trade of the Mediterranean world, led to the Punic Wars and the invasion by the Romans.
In Egypt a strong and shrewd young girl tried to deal with the plight of her country under the threat of Roman domination. Her name was Cleopatra.
More nonsense has been written about Cleopatra than about any other African queen, mainly because it has been the desire of many writers to paint her white. She was not a white woman, she was not a Greek. Let us dispose of this matter before explaining the more important aspects of her life. Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color. Shakespeare in the opining line of "Anthony and Cleopatra" calls her "tawny." In his day, mulattos were called "tawny Moors." The word "Moor" came into the European languages meaning black or blackamoor. In the Book of Acts, Cleopatra describes herself as "black."
Born in 69 B.C., Cleopatra came to the throne that she shared with her brother, Ptolemy XIII, when she was 18 years old. Egypt, now a Roman protectorate, was beset with internal strife and intrigue. Cleopatra aligned herself with Julius Caesar, who reinforced her power. Their political and sexual relationship was a maneuver to save Egypt from the worst aspects of Roman domination. After Julius Caesar was murdered, Cleopatra, still in her early twenties, met Mark Anthony and a love affair strongly motivated by politics began.
Her effect on Mark Anthony was profound. This noble Roman turned traitor to his own people when he attempted to save the country of this fascinating black queen from Roman domination. After Anthony's death, the victor, Octavius, assumed full control of Egypt, and Cleopatra, now without a protector or champion, committed suicide. After Cleopatra's death, Egypt became a Roman colony and the harsher aspects of Roman rule settled over Egypt and the Middle East. To the south, in the lands untouched by Rome, new proud civilizations were rising. And in the centuries that followed, black women once again began to play major roles in the theatre of history.
Lights of achievement did shine in other parts of Africa, though the second Golden Age was over.
The more ruthless aspects of Roman rule made African and Middle Eastern people question old gods and search for new ones. This led to the development of Christianity and subsequently Islam. From the beginning these were religions of the oppressed.
When the oppressor, the Romans, stopped killing Christians and became "Christian" the religion was dramatically changed. Their misuse of this religion and widespread dissatisfaction in the Roman colonies of North Africa and the Middle East facilitated the rise of Islam.
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5/18/00 08:53 PM
198.83.204.39
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Em hotep (in peace),
More nonsense has been written about Cleopatra than about any other African queen, mainly because it has been the desire of many writers to paint her white. She was not a white woman, she was not a Greek.
You are correct, Cleopatra was not a Greek -- she was a Macedonian. The Ptolemies guarded their bloodline very closely, to the point of inter-family marriages that were enforced by Egyptian laws they themselves instituted. Cleopatra VII herself married her own brother, and the likelihood that Cleopatra wasn't Macedonian is slim. While we don't know who her mother was, we DO know who her father was (Ptolemy Auletes), a clearly Macedonian ruler and a distant descendant of the famous Alexander.
Let us dispose of this matter before explaining the more important aspects of her life. Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color.
Cleopatra was depicted on her own coins and busts as a Macedonian woman, with Greek hair style and distinctly Macedonian features. The African portrayal, to my knowledge, is mainly modern, though there may have been some attempts in the past to portray her as African simply by virtue of being Egyptian.
You can see images of Cleopatra from her time via the following links:
(Comment inserted by Antistoicus : the last two pages were removed. I've linked to a copy of the second page in the Internet Archive. As the reader can see by looking over the copies of the third page to be found in the Internet Archive, the page made it in, but at the time of this revision, the image did not. I'll leave a link to a menu page with all of the copies just in case the archive manager is able to fix this problem in the case of at least one of the copies)
It is unfortunate, but in recent times we have had the notion of Cleopatra VII as a black woman pushed down our throats by scholars who ought to know better. There are many fine leaders and queens of Kemet who were women who come to mind for which one does not need to invent history around -- Hatshepsut, Nefertari-Ahmose, Ahhotep are just a few that immediately spring to mind. All strong women with Southern Egyptian bloodlines.:
But I think the point that the House of Netjer has made many, many times over is that skin color really didn't matter. The Egyptians accepted a Ptolemeic queen not on the basis of her skin color but on the basis of her love for them and her desire to restore the country.:
Ankh udja seneb,
Rev. Stephanie Cass
Imakhu meryBast ("Whom Bast Loves")
Hemt-Bast, House of Netjer
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5/18/00 11:24 PM
198.30.121.58
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new ______________________________________________________________________
Em hotep!
I was talking with my Dad about this tonight; he's a historian, though not an ancient historian (he teaches Theatre History) and he did remind me of something pretty important: that depictions of rulers may not necessarily be accurate portraiture. The question becomes: did the Greeks -- and the Graeco-Egyptians -- create naturalistic, accurate portraits for their busts and coins or were the depictions done according to accepted artistic canon -- to an "ideal" of what a Graeco-Egyptian ruler /should/ look like?
We already know that the majority of Egyptian art followed certain artistic conventions (though how closely this was followed varied widely from time to time -- we /are/ talking about 4,000 years here). In fact, Hornung (in "Depictions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many") makes the statement that depictions of the gods themselves weren't meant to be portraits, but were rather "meta-hieroglyphs" -- symbols in and of themselves -- with features such as animal heads and fantastic crowns symbolic of attributes and powers of the Names rather than strict illustrative depictions of Them. I'm sure that this extended to many of the portraits that we have of rulers.
So it would be pretty fitting with Ancient Egyptian artistic canon if the depictions of Cleopatra were idealised and symbolic rather than strictly portraitive. Of course, all of this is pretty speculative. I couldn't say it was one way or another without actually engaging in a survey of royal portraits at the time assuming that I had some direct, solid evidence as to what the person actually looked like. Like having access to Cleopatra's skeleton -- as far as I know, that hasn't been found, right? Or having access to some other royal schmoe's skeleton and being able to say, for sure, whether his or her portrait was representational. Do you know of any such studies?
Another thing that I wanted to point out is that if we don't know who her mother was, she very well could have been at least half black. Especially if portraits were "idealised" and assuming that looking Greek was the ideal. You know a lot more about the Ptolemies than I do, Imakhu, but what comes to my mind is the long, long, long, long Egyptian tradition of having multiple wives and a large harem whose inhabitants consisted of "princesses" from all over the place. For example, Thutmosis III was the son of Thutmosis II by Isis, a harem girl (or so the history goes) -- not by Queen Hapshetsut, his wife. So in theory, Ptolemy could have had a harem consisting of women from his allied countries and provinces (including Nubia), and so in theory, Cleopatra could have been at least half-black (or maybe more, if her predecessors had likewise been children of black mothers). She could have been half of a number of different ethnicities, I imagine. I say 'in theory' a lot. Because, again, it's all speculation. As far as I know (and you can tell me whether I'm right or not), we have very little information about the makeup of the royal family -- especially if we don't know who Cleopatra's Mom was.
But honestly, I don't think Cleopatra would have been any less interesting or remarkable if she were purple with yellow polka-dots.
--Kat
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
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5/19/00 01:46 PM
160.79.89.3
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Michael Grant, a classical historian, wrote a biography about Cleopatra. The Ptolemies were Macedonians--they were not Vikings, Swedes, from Madagascar or from Sicily. They were from a region in what is today known as Greece. Cleopatra's great great grandfather married into the Seleucid dynasty, of Persian/Iranian/Syrian blood.
But the Ptolemies wed their siblings. Ptolemy Auletes, Cleopatra's own father, married his sister, who is on record as being mother of at least several of the 6 children. While it seems that Cleopatra's own mother is unnamed, it is unlikely that she was not at least a queen. The Stuffy old Romans would have made an issue of Cleopatra being child of a mere concubine. Michael Grant asserts that of all the negative things her contemporaries said about her, being illegitimate was not one of them.
THe ancients did not take note of a person's looks so much as whether or not the person came from within their area of civilization. The Egyptians called everyone outside their borders as Asiatics and foreigners. Rome called everyone outside its own borders a barbarian. Cleopatra was not called anything but an exotic Queen who was stealing away their Consul.
She was THE QUEEN. A Macedonian Greek who spoke Greek and was Hellenic in her education. But she loved Egypt. Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Merneith---these were all Pharaohs, Great Wives, of no doubt fuller Egyptian blood than Cleopatra was. Cleopatra took their legacy, their precedence, and became more glorious in modern memory than they remained. A woman at least half-non-Egyptian, who was proud of the country she ruled.
Yet of all those Queens, only one has been deified. Ahmose-Nefertari, wife of Amenhotep I, who both are considered the patrons of the Tomb Builders of the Valley of the Kings, was worshiped as a patron deity. This is a legacy worth passing on to generations.
I wonder what Cleopatra would make of all the controversy surrounding her today. I wuld like to think that what she woudl say is "Just get on with it. THere are nations to be put in order. Just do it. I would."
Seek the Divine. It is there Waiting.
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5/22/00 10:00 AM
151.198.187.98
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra in Syria regarded Cleopatra a distant relative of hers as her mentor, basically because of their "DARK," complexion and likeliness. Again another plight night to give credit where credit is due.
I don't care what nationality Cleopatra was, she was a "NEGROID," woman! Greek isn't a color, Macedonian isn't a color. That ugly depiction of a Celtic Amazon on that coin is not Cleopatra.
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5/22/00 10:40 AM
199.18.97.169
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Well, if Cleopatra's predecesors married members of Persian families, then there's no reason why they might not have occassionally married into other royal families (i.e., Nubian, Libyan, etc...). Also, I'm not so convinced that "those stuffy Romans" would have made a big deal out of Cleopatra being the daughter of a harem woman - as far as I know, the Ptolemies probably wouldn't have considered Cleopatra as being an illegitimate daughter if she were a harem woman's daughter (the ancient Kemetics wouldn't have) and I'm not sure that the Romans would have caused a stew over this. Of course, I don't know, having little to no knowledge of contemporary Roman writing about foreign royal families and how they viewed familial relationships that were normal in other countries but perhaps scandalous in theirs.
It's also possible that she was the daughter of another wife; the ancient Kemetic pharoahs often had more than one.
I'm not saying that she /definitely/ wasn't the daughter of a Ptolemy King and his Ptolemy sister. I'm just saying that just as it's quite possible that she /was/, it's also quite possible that she /wasn't/ (i.e., that she had some mixed blood). The evidence that we have so far conjecture because we don't know for sure who her Mom was.
We /do/ have the portraiture, but we also have a strong tradition of royal portraits being modelled on an ideal rather than on strict representation. That isn't to say that the statues and coin images of her aren't accurate; I couldn't say /that/ either until I've done a survey of contemporary royal portrait art, which I haven't done -- or until someone who's done said research can come here and give us a proper report (with references, please).
Senebty!
--Kat
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
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5/22/00 10:46 AM
199.18.97.169
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Hello & em hotep!
> The Ptolemies guarded their bloodline very closely, to the point of inter-family marriages that were enforced by Egyptian laws they themselves instituted. <
I'm intrigued by this; could you point me towards a starting point where I could find information about these laws? I've got Grimal's "History of Ancient Egypt" and will look into it tonight to see if it mentions them, but if you could push me in the direction of some reference I'd be very appreciative. I'll try to do some research to find out, also, whether these kinds of laws were common in Macedonia in the time of Alexander or whether it was something the Ptolemies came up with to keep their bloodlines as Macedonian as possible....
Senebty,
--Kat
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." - Japanese Proverb
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5/22/00 11:02 AM
151.198.187.98
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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Let me put you up on something. In the Beginning the enitre world was "Black & Brown." The original Romans were Black. The Moors from Northern Africa did more than their share to populate this world. Do some studying on the "BlackaMoors."
Nationality is one thing, and Hue(color) is another. Greek is not a color, Roman is not a color, it's a nationality. Africans(Alkebulans) did not stay put in one place either.
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5/31/00 04:58 PM
152.163.213.212
| Re: Cleopatra & the rise of Christianity new
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As I mentioned before my mother is Jewish. My family was from around the area that was regarded as Macedonia. The people of that area were all types of colors black, white, and a great many brown (as in the Arabs of today). So there is really no way to be sure what color she was. If I had to guess I would say she was probably brown like the Arabian/Mongol type people. Someone mentioned the Antony and Cleopatra play by Shakesphere. I would like to point out another line which says "My desire to please you Ceaser is slight I would be very interested to know if you are black or white."
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1/17/01 03:51 AM
208.24.179.211
| Post deleted by Ramessu new
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