EGYPT:
Contemporary depictions of historical figures shape our idea of what a person might have looked like. Since her starring role in the Oscar-winning 1963 film Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor has been regarded as the logical and rarely questioned portrayal of the Egyptian pharaoh.
A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy, a Macedonian-Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. But no one really knows what Cleopatra really looked like. Her mother's ethnicity, meanwhile, is unclear.
The Netflix series now paints a new picture of the queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC. The four-part documentary series Queen Cleopatra starts on May 10. Even before the start of the series, its trailer caused a stir. Why? Adele James, who is a self-described "bi-racial woman" in an interview with the British Express, took on the lead role.
Egyptian identity "erased?"
The casting of the British actor sparked criticism in Egypt. Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Sem ary filed a complaint against Netflix with the prosecutor's office, saying the streaming service should be blocked, adding that casting Cleopatra as a black woman would "distort and erase Egyptian identity."
Historians - among them Egyptologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Haw ass - said: "Cleopatra was Greek, which means she was light-skinned, not black."
The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities also joined the fray, releasing a lengthy statement citing experts who all agreed that Cleopatra had "white skin and Hellenistic features". For Mostafa Waziri, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the depiction of the famous queen as Black is nothing less than "a falsification of Egyptian history". He says it's not racist, it's just "defending the history of Queen Cleopatra, which is an important part of Egyptian history in ancient times."
What is it really about?
There is pictorial evidence of Cleopatra VII, born in 69 BC. She is depicted on coins from Alexandria in 51 BC and from the Palestinian city of As cal on in 49 BC.
The Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities owns a bust that was made between 50 and 26 BC and is very similar to the images on the coins. Historical records do not provide any information about skin color.
Cleopatra is more likely to have looked like Adele than Elizabeth, wrote Queen Cleopatra director Tina GHA Ravi in an article for Variety. White skin color apparently gives the figure a special value, "and it seems to be really important to some Egyptians."
'Creative decision'
GHA Ravi points out that Cleopatra's family had lived in Egypt for 300 years at the time of her birth: "Was Cleopatra also Black? We don't know for sure, but we can be sure that she was not white like Elizabeth."
The director calls for a conversation about the "intrinsic white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us into."
Netflix called Adele's casting in the role a "creative decision" that should be seen as "an allusion to the centuries-old debate about the ruler's ethnicity" as well as Egypt's multicultural population at the time.
Appearance engages science and culture
Debates persist about Cleopatra, who died more than 2,000 years ago. Using elaborate reconstructions and forensic procedures, scientists tried to find out what the ruler might have looked like.
Projects in the cultural sector are causing a far greater stir. When Angelina Jolie was slated to play the pharaoh in the film version, which has since been scrapped, it was met with criticism, as was the casting of Israeli actor Gal Gadot in the film, due for release in 2024.
"If you want to stick to the facts, Cleopatra was Macedonian. We were looking for a Macedonian actor, there was none," Ga dot told BBC Arabic.
In both cases, it was an accusation of so-called whitewashing, the casting of non-white roles by white actors. In the case of Queen Cleopatra, Egyptian critics now accuse the production of doing the same, but with the ethnicity reversed.
Culture war over Cleopatra
"We don't often see or hear the stories of black queens," Netflix quotes series producer Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith's wife, in advance. Access to historically significant women is difficult but important because they "formed the backbone of African nations".
The culture war over Cleopatra has a deep reason. Cleopatra was "a representative and representative of Egyptian high culture with its influence on Greece and thus on the emergence of Western civilization," Ge sine Krüger, a professor of modern and non-European history at the University of Zurich, wrote in 2013. Her article From Africa? Black Cleopatra in contemporary debates.
In the United States, blacks were primarily portrayed as protagonists of slavery and, more recently, liberation, Krüger writes, but certainly "as part of a white history of emancipation and progress."
Through reference to Cleopatra and African Egypt, the black community "not only has something to contribute to American history, but in a sense stands at the beginning of its civilization."
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