page_title: The race of Cleopatra
hierarchical_section_title: The race of Cleopatra
caption_attribution_description: English: Ancient Roman sculptures in the Antikensammlung Berlin
context_page_description: The race of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, has caused some debate in non-scholarly circles. For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in Ebony magazine in 2012, Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, traces the origins of the Black Cleopatra claim to the 1972 book by J.A. Rogers called "World's Great Men of Color." Lefkowitz refutes Rogers' hypothesis, on various scholarly grounds. The black Cleopatra claim was further revived in an essay by afrocentrist John Henrik Clarke, chair of African history at Hunter College, entitled "African Warrior Queens." Lefkowitz notes the essay includes the claim that Cleopatra described herself as black in the New Testament's Book of Acts – when in fact Cleopatra had died more than sixty years before the death of Jesus Christ.
  Scholars identify Cleopatra as having been essentially of Greek ancestry with some Persian and Syrian ancestry, based on the fact that her Macedonian Greek family had intermingled with the Seleucid aristocracy of the time.
context_section_description: The race of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, has caused some debate in non-scholarly circles. For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in Ebony magazine in 2012, Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, traces the origins of the Black Cleopatra claim to the 1972 book by J.A. Rogers called "World's Great Men of Color." Lefkowitz refutes Rogers' hypothesis, on various scholarly grounds. The black Cleopatra claim was further revived in an essay by afrocentrist John Henrik Clarke, chair of African history at Hunter College, entitled "African Warrior Queens." Lefkowitz notes the essay includes the claim that Cleopatra described herself as black in the New Testament's Book of Acts – when in fact Cleopatra had died more than sixty years before the death of Jesus Christ. 
  Scholars identify Cleopatra as having been essentially of Greek ancestry with some Persian and Syrian ancestry, based on the fact that her Macedonian Greek family (the Ptolemaic dynasty) had intermingled with the Seleucid aristocracy of the time. Grant states that Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood and that she "would have described herself as Greek." Roller notes that "there is absolutely no evidence" that Cleopatra was racially black African as claimed by what he dismisses as generally not "credible scholarly sources."
  Cleopatra's official coinage (which she would have approved) and the three portrait busts of her considered authentic by scholars (which match her coins) portray Cleopatra as a Greek woman in style. Polo writes that Cleopatra's coinage present her image with certainty and asserts that the sculpted portrait of the "Berlin Cleopatra" head is confirmed as having a similar profile.
  In 2009, a BBC documentary speculated that Cleopatra might have been part North African. This was based largely on the examination of a headless skeleton of a female child in a 20 BCE tomb in Ephesus (modern Turkey), together with the old notes and photographs of the now-missing skull. The remains were hypothesized to be those of Arsinoe IV, half-sister to Cleopatra, and conjecture based on discredited processes suggested that the remains belonged to a girl whose "race" may have been "North African". This claim is rejected by scholars, based on the remains being impossible to identify as Arsinoe, the race of the remains being impossible to identify at all, the fact that the remains belonged to a child much younger than Arsinoe when she died, and the fact that Arsinoe and Cleopatra shared the same father but had different mothers,
caption: The Berlin Cleopatra, a Roman sculpture and marble portrait of the queen in the Altes Museum, 1st century BC [24]
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 700D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:06:08 22:06:43", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image ExifOffset": "2304", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "5324", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5438", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4910", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "500", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:03:07 14:16:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:03:07 14:16:50", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "45/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "37/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "35", "EXIF SubSecTime": "83", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "83", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "83", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1880", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2728", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "5292", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "576000/149", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "768000/199", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "148032014662", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[18, 135, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000007ec3f", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4070"}