TV REVIEWS : ‘Who Was Cleopatra?’: Setting Record Straight

With Elizabeth Taylor firmly in mind, many movie fans hold an image of Cleopatra as a sultry siren who seduced both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony into steamy affairs.

More recently, revisionist historians such as Martin Bernal have portrayed her as a Nubian queen, a black African who not only ruled over Egypt in the 1st Century BC but who also successfully confronted the mighty armies of Rome. Historians more radical than Bernal have even argued that white Western anthropologists and historians have deliberately distorted history, damaging artifacts that show Cleopatra with the characteristic nose and full lips that revealed her African heritage.

The truth, as portrayed in an episode of “Archaeology” called “Who Was Cleopatra?” (at 6 and 10 tonight on cable’s Learning Channel), is not as dramatic as either extreme would suggest.

Cleopatra was, in fact, not African but Greek, and not beautiful but, in the politically correct terms of anthropologist Robert Bianchi, “beauty-challenged.” Her liaison with Julius Caesar was not steamy, but a union of convenience that reflected the desire of the participants to unify the two superpowers of the ancient world. Her forces were defeated by Rome’s in the last great naval battle of the ancient world, and she committed suicide to avoid the ultimate humiliation of having Augustus Caesar drag her through the streets of Rome in chains.

In their understandable efforts to provide strong role models for African-Americans, many scholars have overstated the role of “black” Egypt and Cleopatra in the formative years of Western civilization. “Who Was Cleopatra?” demonstrates where they have gone wrong.

Ironically, much better role models can be found readily in Nubia and other civilizations farther south in Africa. Perhaps if this enjoyable series makes it past its first 13 weeks, it will have the opportunity to explore them in more depth.