Arguing the Race of ‘the Most Fascinating Figure in History’
Until the rise of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) was generally pictured as “coloured.”
Shakespeare, in “Antony and Cleopatra,” calls her “tawny.” (In his day mulattoes were called “Tawny-Moors.”) In Act I, Scene 5, Cleopatra calls herself black: “Think on me, that am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black.”
C. W. King, in “Antique Gems and Rings,” 1872, says, “As late as the 16th Century, Cleopatra was regarded as a Negro woman.”
Plutarch describes her as “a brown-skin girl with crinkly hair and voluptuous figure.”
Most anthropologists accept that populations with extensive contacts interbreed. And they do not deny that some historians have claimed for their own races the achievements of prominent figures of other races. The Greeks performed such a transformation on Aesop, the black Ethiopian slave, and his fables.
Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, shows pronounced Negro traits. As for Cleopatra VII there is no bona fide portrait of her--Hollywood and Ms. Taylor notwithstanding.
RALPH FRYE
San Bernardino
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