Top Egyptologist and Minister of Antiquities Criticizes Netflix’s “Cleopatra”
quote: Dr. Zahi Hawass, one of the most famous Egyptologists and the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, has criticized Netflix for its controversial decision to cast Cleopatra with a black actress in an upcoming docuseries. The new Netflix series, dubbed “Queen Cleopatra”, which is produced and narrated by the American actress Jada Pinkett Smith, has sparked fierce debate over the misrepresentation of history and representation in TV and media. Hawass, who is Egypt’s most recognizable archaeologist, decried the decision by Netflix to portray Cleopatra as being of black descent, pointing out that the historical figure “was Greek”. Zahi Hawass criticizes portrayal of Cleopatra by Netflix “I announced these days to the media that Cleopatra was not black,” Zahi posted on his Facebook account in response to the controversy surrounding the new Netflix series. “The film that is coming on Netflix is not accurate and gives wrong information on ancient Egypt,” the famous Egyptologist continued. “Cleopatra was Greek and she was similar to the queens and princesses of Macedonia,” wrote Zahi, alluding to the fact that Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty who ruled over Egypt between 305 BC and 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Dynasty was founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek who served Alexander the Great as a general, bodyguard, and historian. When Alexander died and his empire was split between his squabbling generals, Ptolemy established his own kingdom in Egypt. Misrepresentation of Egyptian history The Netflix series appears to have angered many Egyptians, as well as Greeks and people with a general interest in history who expressed their disappointment online. A petition started by two Egyptians calling on Netflix to cancel their upcoming Cleopatra documentary garnered well over 60,000 signatures until it was removed by Change.org for “violating community guidelines”. In his Facebook Zahi further discussed the historicity of the Netflix documentary vis-a-vis ancient Egypt even beyond the period of Ptolemaic rule. “If we look at the scenes on the Egyptian temples, we can see that the pharaohs are depicted and in front of them were Nubian, Libyan, and Asian captives; the king is always completely different from all of them,” he wrote. “During the 25th dynasty, the Kingdom of Kush ruled Egypt and those were Kushite pharaohs but they had nothing to do with ancient Egyptian civilization,” he continued. The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian civilization of the Nile Valley. Its territory spanned what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt. At various points throughout their history, the Kushites were both ruled by and ruled over the ancient Egyptians. Like the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty, they were a foreign people who once ruled over the ancient Egyptians after the foundation of the 25th Dynasty by the Kushite King Piye in the 8th century BC. Zahi concluded the Facebook post by saying “I am not against black people at all but here I am just listing the evidence that Cleopatra was not black.”
Top Egyptologist and Minister of Antiquities Criticizes Netflix’s “Cleopatra” “The film that is coming on Netflix is not accurate and gives wrong information on ancient Egypt,” the famous Egyptologist continued. “Cleopatra was Greek and she was similar to the queens and princesses of Macedonia,” wrote Zahi, alluding to the fact that Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty who ruled over Egypt between 305 BC and 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Dynasty was founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek who served Alexander the Great as a general, bodyguard, and historian. When Alexander died and his empire was split between his squabbling generals, Ptolemy established his own kingdom in Egypt. Misrepresentation of Egyptian history The Netflix series appears to have angered many Egyptians, as well as Greeks and people with a general interest in history who expressed their disappointment online. GREEKS AND EGYPTIANS DEMAND AN END TO THE FALSIFICATION OF QUEEN CLEOPATRA'S HISTORY: ALMOST 60K SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP NETFLIX'S NEW DOCUMENTARY https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/greeks-and-egyptians-demand-an-end-to-the-falsification-of-queen-cleopatras-history-almost-60k-sign-the-petition-to-stop-netflixs-new-document ary
One can wonder what the Egyptans will say about an upcoming Cleopatra film with the Israeli actress Gal Gadot in the leading role? Sounds also like a touchy subject.
quote:Gal Gadot fans slam haters saying: ‘Cleopatra was Greek not black or Arab’
The casting decision has some social media users riled up, with journalist Sameera Khan calling Gal Gadot a 'bland' Israeli and others stating that she is ‘not Black enough’ to play Cleopatra’.
Supporters have scrambled to defend her amidst accusations by online trolls that casting Gadot as Cleopatra was another example of ‘hollywood whitewashing’ - the term used to refer to the growing debate about the occurrence of white actors portraying non-white roles.
Was Cleopatra Black? Gal Gadot's Cleopatra Film Controversy | Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
quote: In this episode Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy takes us into another intense history debate and that is the question of "Was Cleopatra Black?"
In light of the upcoming movie and controversy surrounding Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra I felt like this was an excellent time to use this episode.
What was her ethnicity? Why is it controversial? Was she Macedonian? Are Macedonians even Greek? Was there an African in the Ptolemy family tree?
Is this argument merely people attempting to project their modern narratives and politics on the past?
Why does it even matter? Can we even answer the question?
In this talk Dr. Kennedy explains that until we stop attempting to remove black Africans from Egyptian history and until we stop using the modern and inaccurate term Sub-Saharan in our dialogue involving ancient Africa and Egypt it doesn't matter.
Again, in many ways this talk merely shows that this debate revolves more around modern politics and narratives rather than Cleopatra herself, the Ptolemies and how the ancient Egyptians saw them or themselves.
quote: Why is it that so many so-called conscious and Afrocentric people pay so much attention to Kemet, yet ignore the rest of Africa, especially the regions where their ancestors came from, which is Central and Western Africa?
Why is it they can talk to you for days on end about the blackness of Kemet, yet not be able to name you even one civilization in West Africa? Or if they can, they have the need to invent history and claim these people are Egyptian immigrants when there is absolutely no hard evidence to support such a notion?
Why is it so outrageous to accept the fact that Egypt was only one of many civilizations and cultures on the African Continent and that peoples in the other regions had their own unique cultures and achievements?
Why can't we as people of African descent have just as much reverence for the ancestors of our own bloodline as we do for people who are most likely not related to us at all?
Yes, they were fellow Africans, but they were not of our direct bloodline. Pay homage to your own house first before pat homage to your neighbor's. Take care of the children of your own house before you try to take care of some other child in the neighborhood.
by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
quote: Sure. I've said the same thing for years, and disputed those who see Kemet as some sort of "central headquarters" of civilization or advanced culture in Africa. To the contrary, the opposite seems more appropriate- Africa itself is the "headquarters" and Egypt is a "branch office" thereof. To rework the title of Van Sertima's book- "Egypt- Child of Africa," Kemet is is a very important child to be sure, but ultimately just one of the many offspring Africa gave birth to.
I agree with many parts of the critique in the video but would point out that African people do not seem to be any more obsessed with Egypt compared to white people, who are the biggest appropriators and users of Kemet's cultural iconography, art and much else. Many white people are the biggest hypocrites in this area- they themselves being massively obsessed with Kemet while presumptuously lecturing black folk bout how they should "focus" on Nubia and elsewhere, as if only white people are "qualified" to study and comment on things in the field. White people even appropriated and consumed the dead flesh of Egyptian mummies at one time for their medicinal systems.
And black popular culture in the US on a whole is not that heavy into Kemet. Most cultural linkups focus on West Africa or East Africa (the Swahili cultural orbit) not Kemet. Kwanza is an example, as are black baby names. When the last time you run into some black kid named "Tutankhamen" compared to the much larger number of "sub-Saharan" or Islamic origin names? It was not Kareem Amenhotep, but Kareem Abdul Jabbar, or Malcolm El Shabazz.
In the 1960s the inspiration was mostly West African- with dashikis and NATURAL "Afro" hair styles not wigs as in popular Kemet. So-called "black militants" were not running much to Egypt compared to West Africa- as Stokely Carmichael, aka Kwame Ture can attest.
Do SOME black people go overboard with Kemet? YEs. Is there an almost cultish obsession with SOME "Afrocentric" types? Certainly. But viewed in larger context, let's not overplay things. White obsession is miles ahead of what black folk are doing. And Kemet does not really resonate in black popular culture, compared to West/East African/Islamic influences. Among a small minority? Sure but overall there does not appear to be an "Kemetic" movement. Hell its sometimes hard to get some among that small minority to update their knowledge with modern data. Some are still preaching Chancellor Williams 1970, or Diop 1964- good foundational background to be sure with the data available at the time, but the field has since moved on. And that plays into the hands of assorted dishonest enemies who go around acting as of every black student in the country is a "disciple" of George James circa 1959. My critique of the bogus strawman book "White Athena" on Amazon makes this very point. The same critique can be applied to the Arabist hypocrites desperately trying to "distance" themselves from "anything too African" when hard data shows that the foundation of Kemet is precisely that which is "African". The above being said there is a need to of course learn more about ALL parts of the continent.
by Nodnarb
quote:
Along with the obvious fact that ancient Egypt receives more mainstream media exposure than other African cultures, I believe it has a special attraction to "Afrocentric" types because it's perceived as a major influence on the development of so-called Western civilization (through the proxies of Greece and then Rome of course). Not to mention the irony of an advanced civilization thriving in Africa when most of northern Europe was still at a "tribal" level of organization. It would be the ultimate rebuttal to the white supremacist narrative that Africans are naturally less capable of civilization than Europeans. So that's probably why Egypt is more contentious territory than, say, Mali or Zimbabwe.
by Oshun
quote: Egypt given lots of attention cause the discoveries and science and math were the foundation for a lot of progress in those field for ancient Europe. Much of their ideas are still directly relevant today in technology, science and mathematics. While we know now by a few resources that West African civilizations contemporary to Egypt existed, it's not really known like it is with Egypt what they were like, let alone what they could've been accomplishin still relevant today (see Tichitt)
by Nodnarb
quote: I agree with this as well. The African quality of Kush, Mali, or Zimbabwe doesn't get ignored or denied as much as Egypt's. Instead it's pretty much taken for granted. So yeah, even people who don't necessarily gravitate towards Egypt more than other African civilizations might still find themselves arguing about it more since it's more contested territory.
Piers Morgan interviews Bassem Yousuff and Ernest Owen about Netflix Cleopatra
quote: Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef and author Ernest Owens to debate Netflix hiring non-Egyptian actress Adele James to play Cleopatra in a new Netflix show about the Pharaoh Queen.
Bassem Yousuff is also opposed to Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra. He says
quote:... a couple of years ago they announced that Gal Gadot, an ex Israeli soldier who condones her government actions atrocities against Palestinian children she was going to play Cleopatra, for me this is even a bigger insult and Gal Gadot is not black .. it's not about black and white it's about this idea of Hollywood always stealing by the culture of my own people
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Zendaya steals important role from Gal Gadot by Daniela Aguilera April 4, 2023
After her roles in “Spiderman” and “Euphoria,” Zendaya, a former Disney star, has managed to establish herself as one of the most significant actresses in the business. For this reason, Zendaya was considered to play Queen Cleopatra in a movie directed by Denis Villeneuve, who also oversaw “Dune.”
In an adaptation about the life of one of the most significant women in Egypt, the young Zendaya will reunite with Denis Villeneuve, with whom she previously collaborated on the film “Dune,” it was revealed this week.
believed that Gal Gadot had been chosen as the ideal candidate to portray the Egyptian woman, circumstances have since altered as it became difficult for the Israeli actress to handle two extremely demanding projects, such as Cleopatra and Wonder Woman.
Gal Gadot was left out by Denis Villeneuve long before he realized that Patty Jenkins’ firing and the cancellation of the projects she had been considered for would leave the DC cinematic universe actor without a job.
Film critic Jeff Sneider stated on the Hot Mic show that the project, which is based on the life of the last queen of Egypt, is still in the long pre-production stage. As a result, there may be additional changes to the cast of celebrities or the plot in the future.
t should be mentioned that, as of right now, neither the project nor the participation of the actresses Gal Gadot or Zendaya, nor the latter, have received any direct statements from director Denis Villeneuve.
Zendaya, also credited as Zendaya Coleman, is an American actress, singer, dancer, and model. She has starred in the films The Greatest Showman, Smallfoot, Malcolm & Marie, Dune, and, as MJ, the Spider-Man franchise; and on television’s Shake It Up, Frenemies, Zapped, K.C. Undercover, and Euphoria.
Her father, Kazembe Ajamu (born Samuel David Coleman), is African-American, from a family from Arkansas. Her mother, Claire Marie (Stoermer), who is white, has German, Irish, English, and Scottish ancestry.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Then we have the Syrian actress who played Cleopatra in an Egyptian - Syrian TV-series from 2010.
----------- Wonder what he would think about the cartoon Cleopatra in Space, where Cleopatra travels to the future and experiences a lot of adventures in a science fiction world? Cleopatra in Space is both a graphic novel series and an animated TV-series.
I'm aware of the debate surrounding Cleo's heritage and how she may or may not have looked.
Nonetheless, I'd like to show a contemporary Roman painting of Cleopatra dressed in Greco-Roman garb rather than white and Egyptian attire.
Besides, Macedonian Greeks appear to be less "Mediterranean" in appearance than Athenians, for example. They seem to be on the fairer side in their own ancient artworks.
Posted by mightywolf (Member # 23402) on :
To be honest, I feel a bit sorry for the actress, who is experiencing a lot of heat, smoke, and disdain. They also made her darker than she actually is in the photo. With that stated, many people were upset that Netflix insisted on their presentation of Cleopatra as a documentary rather than a film with a re-imagined Cleo, in which they could take artistic liberties with her ethnicity or appearance. This actress would, in my opinion, be a better option for the role of Hatshepsut than Cleopatra.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Now Egyptian authorities have issued a statement about the Netflix Cleopatra documentary.
I quote it here translated to English. In the link below the statement you can see the document in Arabic.
quote:Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Thursday
April 27, 2023
- The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities confirms that Queen Cleopatra had light skin and Hellenistic (Greek) features.
- The effects and statues of Queen Cleopatra are the best evidence of her true features and her Macedonian origins
With reference to the series of documentaries that the “Netflix” platform announced its launch during the coming period, foremost of which is a screening of the movie “Queen Cleopatra” on the 10th of next May, in which its heroine, who plays the role of Queen “Cleopatra VII”, appears with African features and dark skin, he confirmed. Dr.. Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the appearance of the heroine in this body is a falsification of Egyptian history and a blatant historical fallacy, especially since the film is classified as a documentary film and not a dramatic work, which requires those in charge of its production to investigate accuracy and rely on historical and scientific facts to ensure that history and civilizations are not falsified. peoples.
He added that it was necessary to refer to specialists in archeology and anthropology when making this kind of documentaries and historical films, which will remain a witness to the civilizations and history of nations, pointing out that there are many antiquities of Queen Cleopatra, including statues and depictions on coins that confirm the shape and true features of her. All of which show the Hellenistic (Greek) features of Queen Cleopatra in terms of fair skin, drawn nose and thin lips.
Dr. confirmed. Mostafa Waziri said that the state of rejection witnessed by the film before its screening comes out of a sense of defending the history of Queen "Cleopatra VII", which is an important and authentic part of the ancient history of Egypt, and far from any ethnic racism, stressing full respect for African civilizations and our brothers in the African continent that unites us all. .
As Dr. added. Nasser Makkawi, Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Faculty of Archeology, Cairo University, said that the appearance of Queen Cleopatra in this film in this body contradicts the simplest historical facts and the writings of historians such as Plutarch and Diocassius, who recorded the events of Roman history in Egypt during the reign of Queen Cleopatra, who confirmed that she was light-skinned and that she had Pure Macedonian ancestry. He pointed out that Queen "Cleopatra VII" descends from an ancient Macedonian family that ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, founded by King "Ptolemy I", one of the Macedonian leaders in the army of "Alexander the Great", to whom the state of Egypt devolved after the death of "Alexander" and the foundations of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Ptolemy I married Queen Berenice I of Macedonian origin as well, and they gave birth to King Ptolemy II, after whom his sons and grandchildren continued to marry their female sisters according to the customs of this era, until Queen Cleopatra VII and her brother Ptolemy 14 maintained The purity of their Macedonian race during all this time period.
On her part, Dr. said. Samia Al-Mirghani, former Director General of the Center for Research and Conservation of Antiquities at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that biological anthropology studies and DNA studies that were conducted on ancient Egyptian mummies and human bones confirmed that the Egyptians did not bear the features of sub-Saharan Africans, whether in the shape of the skull, the width of the cheeks and nose, the widening and advancement of the upper jaw, or the shape Al-Zahiri for hair, proportions of body parts, height, distribution and density of body hair. And what we see of a great diversity among the features of the Egyptians is due to the age of the ages of this land and the stability of its inhabitants and their melting of every stranger within their crucible.
She added that all the inscriptions and statues left for us by the ancient Egyptians on the temples and tombs depicted the Egyptians with features as close as possible to the contemporary Egyptians in terms of eye, hair and skin color, the degree of smoothness and density of hair for men and women, and even the color of the skin and the presence of a proportion of colored eyes, which are depicted in some statues of the Old Kingdom. Even when some mummification techniques changed in the 21st Dynasty and they began to paint the mummy's skin to make it look as it was in her first life, they painted the man's skin in brick color and painted the woman's skin in light yellow, which confirms that what was drawn and confirmed on the walls is the truth that the ancient Egyptian recorded about himself. .
As Dr. said. Catharina Martinez, the head of the Dominican mission and a worker at the Taposiris Magna temple in western Alexandria, said that despite the existence of conflicting opinions about her race, it is certain that she was born in Egypt in the year 69 BC of Macedonian origin, pointing out that with reference to the statues and coins left to us by the queen She confirms beyond any doubt her Hellenistic features, which is evident in the bust made of marble preserved in the Berlin Museum from the first century BC, in which she appears wearing a royal wreath, almond eyes, a drawn nose and thin lips, in addition to another bust preserved in the Vatican that shows her With soft features, and a marble head in which she appears wearing a headdress, as well as a number of coins that show her in the same Hellenistic form. ---- Ministry of Tourism
Queen Cleopatra’ Director Speaks Out: ‘What Bothers You So Much About a Black Cleopatra?’(EXCLUSIVE) "It is more likely that Cleopatra looked like our actor than Elizabeth Taylor ever did."
By Tina Gharavi
Tina Gharavi
Last summer, I was living in Venice Beach and had decided, due to a friend’s persistence, to visit a fortune teller. Me, ever the sceptic but game for a laugh, agreed to go along. What the fortune teller said made me roll my eyes: “I am not saying you are Cleopatra but somehow you share her story and are connected.”
Less than a month later, I got a call from a production company making Jada Pinkett Smith’s “African Queens” and was subsequently hired to direct four episodes of a drama-documentary on the life of the controversial leader. The joke was on me.
I remember as a kid seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated, but even then, I felt the image was not right. Was her skin really that white? With this new production, could I find the answers about Cleopatra’s heritage and release her from the stranglehold that Hollywood had placed on her image?
Born in Iran, I am a Persian, and Cleopatra’s heritage has been attributed at one time or another to the Greeks, the Macedonians and the Persians. The known facts are that her Macedonian Greek family — the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Asian’s Seleucid dynasty and had been in Egypt for 300 years. Cleopatra was eight generations away from these Ptolemaic ancestors, making the chance of her being white somewhat unlikely. After 300 years, surely, we can safely say Cleopatra was Egyptian. She was no more Greek or Macedonian than Rita Wilson or Jennifer Aniston. Both are one generation from Greece.
Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress. For me, the idea that people had gotten it so incredibly wrong before — historically, from Theda Bara to Monica Bellucci, and recently, with Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot in the running to play her — meant we had to get it even more right. The hunt was on to find the right performer to bring Cleopatra into the 21st century.
Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter.
After much hang-wringing and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actor who could convey not only Cleopatra’s beauty, but also her strength. What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.
As production got nearer, I realized the magnitude and political nature of this job. It was important to get things right, but also to find a way of telling the story with humanism and nuance: The last thing we needed was another Cleopatra divorced from her womanhood and her power only sexualized. The HBO series “Rome” portrayed one of the most intelligent, sophisticated and powerful women in the world as a sleazy, dissipated drug addict, yet Egypt didn’t seem to mind. Where was the outrage then? But portraying her as Black? Well.
Perhaps, it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that. I am okay with this.
While shooting, I became the target of a huge online hate campaign. Egyptians accused me of “blackwashing” and “stealing” their history. Some threatened to ruin my career — which I wanted to tell them was laughable. I was ruining it very well for myself, thank you very much! No amount of reasoning or reminders that Arab invasions had not yet happened in Cleopatra’s age seemed to stem the tide of ridiculous comments. Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian.
So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with.
Most of all, we need to realize that Cleopatra’s story is less about her than it is about who we are.
It’s almost as if we don’t realize that misogynoir still has an effect on us today. We need to liberate our imaginations, and boldly create a world in which we can explore our historical figures without fearing the complexity that comes with their depiction. I am proud to stand with “Queen Cleopatra” — a re-imagined Cleopatra — and with the team that made this. We re-imagined a world over 2,000 years ago where once there was an exceptional woman who ruled. I would like to draw a direct line from her to the women in Egypt who rose up in the Arab uprisings, and to my Persian sisters who are today rebelling against a brutal regime. Never before has it been more important to have women leaders: white or Black.
“Queen Cleopatra” debuts on Netflix on May 10. Gharavi is a BAFTA and Sundance-nominated filmmaker. Her debut, “I Am Nasrine” was nominated for a BAFTA in 2013. Her next feature documentary, “Tribalism is Killing Us,” which resulted from visiting Angola State Prison, will release later this year. Gharavi teaches filmmaking around the world, and was awarded an MIT Fellowship. She was elected into BAFTA in 2017. Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Ahmed Issa Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt
Posted by Karem (Member # 22585) on :
Not that I agree with trying to 'cancel' this show, but its interesting Bassem Youssef talks about disaproval of non-Black actors playing AE's too, links it to the political climate, and isnt automatically trying to claim 'Arab' either as some seem to say. It was either here or elsewhere that I heard the claim that the Sadat film was banned for the same reason, and despite the lack of evidence for it, now all this is unfolding its more beleivable, although still wouldnt rule out the primacy of politics in the decision given the nature of that films subject matter. Egyptians understandably feel touchy on the national culture, which theyve historically been blocked from, but energy would be better spent trying to improve the country.
Posted by Mighty Mack (Member # 17601) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Piers Morgan interviews Bassem Yousuff and Ernest Owen about Netflix Cleopatra
quote: Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef and author Ernest Owens to debate Netflix hiring non-Egyptian actress Adele James to play Cleopatra in a new Netflix show about the Pharaoh Queen.
Bassem Yousuff is also opposed to Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra. He says
quote:... a couple of years ago they announced that Gal Gadot, an ex Israeli soldier who condones her government actions atrocities against Palestinian children she was going to play Cleopatra, for me this is even a bigger insult and Gal Gadot is not black .. it's not about black and white it's about this idea of Hollywood always stealing by the culture of my own people
This guy is insane. His culture? Im sure he doesn't even know a damn thing about black people let alone African culture. Also, he doesnt even look like any of the Pharoahs depicted during the dynastic period.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
@Archeopteryx. I know that those are all real Bassem Yousuff quotes but who made that into a poster? Can you go back in and put the link. I assume it's Egyptian History Defenders on Facebook or the other group listed on the lower right but I wonder if Bassem Yousuff endorses this as a poster or likes these groups
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: This guy is insane. His culture? Im sure he doesn't even know a damn thing about black people let alone African culture. Also, he doesnt even look like any of the Pharoahs depicted during the dynastic period.
Bassem Yousuff could be 90% Arab and 10% native Egyptian he could claim ancient Egyptian ancestors. But his Egyptian ancestry could be higher, it could be 60%, who knows or it could be none at all, zero
Somebody described as black who lives in Sudan or Chad or DRC for instance, who might have an ancestor who was an ancient Egyptian or they might have 0% Egyptian ancestry.
We can't tell by looking
It is peculiar for anybody to claim Ancient Egyptian culture since Egyptian culture has been dead for 2,000 years and many of these tombs have only been excavated in recent times. I doubt Bassem Yousuff practices Ancient Egyptian culture but I don't know much about him
Posted by mightywolf (Member # 23402) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack:
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Piers Morgan interviews Bassem Yousuff and Ernest Owen about Netflix Cleopatra
quote: Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef and author Ernest Owens to debate Netflix hiring non-Egyptian actress Adele James to play Cleopatra in a new Netflix show about the Pharaoh Queen.
Bassem Yousuff is also opposed to Gal Gadot playing Cleopatra. He says
quote:... a couple of years ago they announced that Gal Gadot, an ex Israeli soldier who condones her government actions atrocities against Palestinian children she was going to play Cleopatra, for me this is even a bigger insult and Gal Gadot is not black .. it's not about black and white it's about this idea of Hollywood always stealing by the culture of my own people
This guy is insane. His culture? Im sure he doesn't even know a damn thing about black people let alone African culture. Also, he doesnt even look like any of the Pharoahs depicted during the dynastic period.
Don't you agree with him that African Americans have their own wonderful ancestral culture in West Africa? Bassem, although critical, wasn't disrespectful toward black people, unlike many who oppose with Afrocentrism. He also made it clear that Egyptians are equally upset when white Europeans play Ancient Egyptians. And Gal Gadot also received a lot of backlash from the Egyptians for playing Cleopatra, and she is a Mediterranean-looking woman.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by mightywolf: He also made it clear that Egyptians are equally upset when white Europeans play Ancient Egyptians.
I am not sure if that is the case, would need to see evidence of such upset that is dated close to a release date (rather than years later saying "oh, yeah, we didn't like that either, we're fair")
quote:Originally posted by mightywolf: And Gal Gadot also received a lot of backlash from the Egyptians for playing Cleopatra, and she is a Mediterranean-looking woman.
yes but the reason >
Bassem Yousuff: "... a couple of years ago they announced that Gal Gadot, an ex Israeli soldier who condones her government actions atrocities against Palestinian children she was going to play Cleopatra, for me this is even a bigger insult and Gal Gadot is not black .. it's not about black and white it's about this idea of Hollywood always stealing by the culture of my own people"
^^ not complaining about her "whiteness", her Israeliness rather
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Actually, my citation of Hawass's claims are not about Tut or the Amarna family but go back to the late 90s in regards to DNA tests on Old Kingdom Giza mummies which have yet to be released. Again he claims it's because the results are misconstrued to be "Jewish" but many have noted such to be a load of pigcrap based on the simple reason that there is no DNA specific to "Jews" per say other than those associated with Southwest Asia ( paternal hg J) or Africa (paternal hg E). They've released the results on the Amarna family (though not entirely) and the same with the Ramessides (but again not entirely). Yet they haven't released the Giza results at all. No STRs or SNPs not one.
2014:
The editor of Archaeology magazine, Mark Rose, reported in 2002 that the work was cancelled “due to concern that the results might strengthen an association between the family of Tutankhamun and the Biblical Moses.” An Egyptologist with close links to the antiquities service, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, agreed: “There was a fear it would be said that the pharaohs were Jewish.”
Specifically, if the results showed that Tutankhamun shared DNA with Jewish groups, there was concern that this could be used by Israel to argue that Egypt was part of the Promised Land.
Comedian Bassem Yousuff is a buddy of John Stewart. John Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz) is probably having a hard time figuring out how he is going to react to this, if asked about Bassem's remarks on Cleo and more if Bassem's remarks on Gal Godot are brought up, sticky situation
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
REAL Egyptian DESTROYS Anti-Black Arab "Egyptians" (With RECEIPTS)
If Cleopatra was a Macedonian occupier why are all these Egyptians so concerned?
On the flip side why did Jada Pinket-Smith pick Cleopatra when she could have picked an Egyptian queen who was undisputedly Egyptian?
Posted by Karem (Member # 22585) on :
@Lioness - the Liz Taylor version was officially banned in Egypt at the time.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Also the choice of Gal Gadot for a role as Cleopatra was criticised, both by Egyptians (because she is an Israeli), and westerners (because she is white).
quote: Gal Gadot defends Cleopatra casting after 'whitewashing' controversy
Israeli film star Gal Gadot has defended her plan to play Cleopatra following accusations of whitewashing.
Critics say an Arab or African actress should play the ancient Egyptian queen.
"First of all if you want to be true to the facts then Cleopatra was Macedonian," the Wonder Woman actress told BBC Arabic's Sam Asi.
"We were looking for a Macedonian actress that could fit Cleopatra. She wasn't there, and I was very passionate about Cleopatra."
Controversy erupted in October after Gadot announced that she would star in and co-produce the film. The Guardian's Hanna Flint called it "a backwards step for Hollywood representation", while director Lexi Alexander said a black actress should be cast, citing a reconstruction of Cleopatra's face.
Gadot said: "I have friends from across the globe, whether they're Muslims or Christian or Catholic or atheist or Buddhist, or Jewish of course... People are people, and with me I want to celebrate the legacy of Cleopatra and honour this amazing historic icon that I admire so much."
She said other people were welcome to make their own films. "You know, anybody can make this movie and anybody can go ahead and do it. I'm very passionate that I'm going to do my own too."
Cleopatra, born in the ancient Egyptian capital Alexandria, was the last ruler in the dynasty founded by Alexander the Great's Macedonian general Ptolemy, whose descendants ruled Egypt for 300 years.
They have long been thought to have been white with a high degree of inbreeding. But there is mystery over the identity of her mother, leading to speculation that Cleopatra may have been of mixed heritage.
In 2008, Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton from the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge created a reconstruction of her face from images on ancient artefacts. It showed her with mixed ethnicity.
"She probably wasn't just completely European," Dr Ashton told The Daily Mail at the time. "You've got to remember that her family had actually lived in Egypt for 300 years by the time she came to power."
The following year, a BBC documentary about the discovery of the possible skeleton of Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe suggested she may have had mixed ancestry.
But earlier this year, Kathryn Bard, Professor of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Boston University, told Newsweek: "Cleopatra VII was white - of Macedonian descent, as were all of the Ptolemy rulers, who lived in Egypt."
The celebrated queen has been played on screen by a string of white actresses, most famously Elizabeth Taylor in the big-budget 1963 film.
quote:Zack Galante 15 hours ago (edited) I love your videos … but im surprised u left out Strabo a Greek historian and the only person to see cleopatra & her family and he quoted "Three classes inhabited the city (Alexandria in Egypt): first the Aegyptian or native stock of people, who were quick-tempered and not inclined to civil life; and secondly the mercenary class, who were severe and numerous and intractable..; and, third, the tribe of the Alexandrians, who also were not distinctly inclined to civil life, and for the same reasons, but still they were better than those others, for even though they were a mixed people, still they were Greeks by origin and mindful of the customs common to the Greeks."
Starbo also stated that cleopatra was the only illegitimate child of Ptolemy XII Auletes.
quote:SignalHillTV 14 hours ago You are close Zach lol Strabo is reporting in the third person. He is saying the Egyptians are stating why she is ineligible to be queen and why Bernice Iv could rule. So he states he had three daughters with only Bernice Iv being legitimate and the rest of the kids, Cleopatra Vii, and Arisinoe Vi, are illegitimate, and the sons were too young to rule. They expelled Ptolemy Xii Auletes. So most scholars believe their mother/mothers were Egyptian because they could write in hieroglyphics. Then remember Alexander the Great married Roxanna. Not sure what happens to Cleopatra V she is not mentioned again after Bernice Vi's birth which was recorded. "Strabo Geography Book 1" Then Zack you can also see how they are represented in Hieroglyphics they both clearly have skin tone) Perfume Payparus. Getty Images
quote: SignalHillTV 14 hours ago Now Zach before I go cut and paste and it will take you to the scholarly article. "From the reconstruction, Thur and her colleagues concluded that Arsinoe had an African mother (the Ptolemies were an ethnically Greek dynasty). That conclusion led to splashy headlines suggesting that Cleopatra, too, was African" everything in parentheses, now her, and Cleopatra could have had a different mother. But when you get a chance in your free time notice how they were excited when they found her remains in Esphues, and how they try to challenge and dismiss them when they said her mother was African. So think about that when you see how Cleopatra is depicted in Hieroglyphics standing next to Arisinoe because they are the same complexion.
quote:Zack Galante 14 hours ago @SignalHillTV Duane W. Roller in his book Cleopatra: A Biography, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Roller argues that Cleopatra’s mother may have been a 2nd wife of Ptolemaios XII & that she may have been a member of the Ptolemaic royal family named Berenike & her husband Psenptais, who was an Egyptian high priest. Concluding cleopatra having a black Egyptian mother.
quote: 13 hours ago @Zack Galante Yeah Zach if I had the present a case in Crimal court I would say her mother is unknown. However in Civil court more than likely I would agree with Duane Roller that her mother was Egyptian from a Memphis priestess family. Then I would argue that she and Arisnoe VI have the same African mother. It's a reason why Bernice VI could not read or write the Egyptian language but they both could. Now Elizabeth Taylor they actually copied her look from hieroglyphics braids etc So whenever you get a chance to check out the getting images the person she is always holding hands with is Arisnoe IV. They found Arsinoe IV remains but they have not found Cleopatra Vii's (yet) maybe they never will./QUOTE]
[QUOTE]SignalHillTV 13 hours ago @Zack Galante Yeah Zack he mentions Cleopatra she is one of the three daughters. He is talking about Bernice IV it appears you are saying Bernike. The other two daughters are Arisnoe IV and Cleopatra. If I picked someone to play Cleopatra I would go with Zendaya. So if you watch the channel in Egypt the Royal Wife Cleopatra's V offspring would be eligible to rule. Children by a lesser wife could not unless they were male, so that is why is stated they were too young. So Zach people may try to stump you and state what the Greek word for illegitimate is or state what Strabo meant. But he is just reporting, the Egyptians expelled him. Once Bernice VI is executed now they are eligible to be co-regent with one of the sons
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
In his article Zahi Hawass says this about some depictions of Cleopatra
quote: As one talking head in the film says, “I remember my grandmother saying to me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black’.”
But, as all the evidence shows, she wasn’t.
One need only look at all the known statues of Cleopatra VII, such as the head of the queen that I and fellow archaeologist Kathleen Martinez found inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria, during our search for Cleopatra’s tomb.
None of these statues, including the one we found, which was made of alabaster, gives any indication that Cleopatra was black.
During our excavation inside the temple, we also found a large number of coins bearing the face and name of Cleopatra. Again, not one of the depictions supports the decision of the producers of the series to portray their queen as black.
quote:Originally posted by Karem: @Lioness - the Liz Taylor version was officially banned in Egypt at the time.
Taylor had converted to Judaism a few years earlier, before her marriage to singer Eddie Fisher, and had become outspokenly supportive of Israel. At the time, Egypt saw Israel as its enemy and banned any kind of relations with Jews and Israelis. So when the film first came out, Egypt banned the film. Taylor’s conversion to Judaism and her outspoken support of Israel made her persona non grata in Egypt, which later recanted once it realized the great publicity it was receiving.
In 1959, Taylor made her Zionist support public in a big way, buying $100,000 of Israel bonds at a fundraiser dinner in Los Angeles with her new husband Fisher (who bought $10,000 himself). She had already finished her conversion with a big ceremony at Hollywood’s Temple Israel and spoken to the press about her love of Judaism. She was not converting for her husband, she made clear — she claimed she had admired the religion “for a long time.”
Taylor’s big Israel bonds purchase made waves in the Arab world, and not long after, JTA reported that the US State Department had received some startling news: The United Arab Republic — what was then a unified state consisting of Egypt and Syria — “officially banned all motion pictures” featuring Taylor.
Filming for “Cleopatra” took place in 1962, mostly in Rome, but the crew planned to film some shots in Egypt, for authenticity’s sake. But Taylor was banned from even entering the country, so the crew didn’t travel to Egypt. Still, JTA noted at the time: “Officially, Miss Taylor’s movies have been on the Egyptian blacklist for a long time. However, some of her films are shown occasionally in Egypt, and receive enthusiastic support from Egyptian audiences.”
“Cleopatra” ended up doing just fine — it was released in 1963, became the most financially successful movie of the year and won four Academy Awards in 1964. Furthermore, Egyptian officials enjoyed it so much that they removed Taylor from the travel blacklist. As JTA reported: “The officials decided the film was good publicity for Egypt which is mentioned 122 times in the movie.”
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: In his article Zahi Hawass says this about some depictions of Cleopatra
quote: As one talking head in the film says, “I remember my grandmother saying to me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black’.”
But, as all the evidence shows, she wasn’t.
One need only look at all the known statues of Cleopatra VII, such as the head of the queen that I and fellow archaeologist Kathleen Martinez found inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria, during our search for Cleopatra’s tomb.
None of these statues, including the one we found, which was made of alabaster, gives any indication that Cleopatra was black.
During our excavation inside the temple, we also found a large number of coins bearing the face and name of Cleopatra. Again, not one of the depictions supports the decision of the producers of the series to portray their queen as black.
All the remarks here pertain to unpainted artifacts
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: Deleted.
why did you delete that video link?
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: Deleted.
why did you delete that video link?
Here is another video. IT'S better and funny also. The Ancient Egyptians were BLACK: Proof!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BajW2ptj6_0 Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
In his article he mentions archaeologist Kathleen Martinez
quote:... such as the head of the queen that I and fellow archaeologist Kathleen Martinez found inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna...
It seems that she had to mail him many times before they could start to work together.
quote: Martinez first came to Egypt in search of Cleopatra’s tomb some 20 years ago, convinced after more than a decade of research that Taposiris Magna, located on outskirts of Alexandria and dedicated to Osiris, the god of the dead, was a leading candidate for the queen’s burial spot.
After hundreds of ignored emails, Martinez managed to secure a meeting in Cairo with archaeologist Zahi Hawass, then the country’s minister of Egypt’s antiquities affairs.
She convinced him to give her two months to conduct excavations on the site. Work has been ongoing since 2004—but the new find is the most compelling evidence to date that Martinez is on the right track.
After that the excavations have yielded very interesting results, among others a 1,2 Km long tunnel. Martinez still hopes they can find Cleopatras tomb. If there still is a body there it could give valuable clues to her looks and her family.
An alabaster statue of Cleopatra is shown to the press at the temple of Tasposiris Magna on the outskirts of Alexandria, on April 19, 2009. Archaeologists are now more convinced than ever that the tomb of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra lies nearby (From Artnet News)
They also found 22 coins with her image.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
The whole article of Zahi Hawass
quote:No Cleopatra was not black — here are the facts
The “docudrama” Queen Cleopatra, which purports to be a historically accurate account of the life and reign of the ruler of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt in the first century BC, will be released on Netflix on May 10.
The series, produced by Jada Pinkett Smith, the wife of American actor Will Smith, has already attracted much controversy for the decision to cast the black British actress Adele James in the title role. Cleopatra was not black. As well documented history attests, she was the descendant of a Macedonian Greek general who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. Her first language was Greek and in contemporary busts and portraits she is depicted clearly as being white.
The evidence for Cleopatra’s true heritage is overwhelming – and not, as Pinkett Smith has said in defense of the show, “highly debated.”
The actress playing Cleopatra has offered this advice to the show’s many critics: "If you don't like the casting, don't watch the show." It is advice that I, and I suspect countless Egyptians, intend to take.
There are many words that could be used to describe the falsehood at the heart of this series, and headlines in newspapers around the world – from the US to Egypt and Greece – have carried several of them, including “historical revisionism,” “cultural appropriation,” and “black-washing.”
The protests are not motivated by racism. As the Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud Al-Semary, who has launched a legal bid to have access to Netflix blocked in Egypt, has pointed out, this is outrage provoked by a form of cultural identity theft.
Al-Semary has accused Netflix of an attempt to "promote the Afrocentric thinking ... which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.” He makes a sound case.
I met Pinkett Smith in 2006. At the time I was the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and she and I were named by Time magazine as being among “the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world.”
I went to the ceremony at the Lincoln Center in New York and, at dinner, sat at a table with both Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. I invited Smith to come to Egypt and, 11 years later, in company with most of the members of his family, but not his wife, he did.
That, as it now turns out, was a pity. As one talking head in the film says, “I remember my grandmother saying to me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black’.”
But, as all the evidence shows, she wasn’t.
One need only look at all the known statues of Cleopatra VII, such as the head of the queen that I and fellow archaeologist Kathleen Martinez found inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria, during our search for Cleopatra’s tomb.
None of these statues, including the one we found, which was made of alabaster, gives any indication that Cleopatra was black.
During our excavation inside the temple, we also found a large number of coins bearing the face and name of Cleopatra. Again, not one of the depictions supports the decision of the producers of the series to portray their queen as black.
There is a similar lack of evidence for Cleopatra having been black to be found in a depiction on the facade of the temple at Dendera, which shows her with the goddess Hathor and her child Caesarion, the son of Caesar.
Why is this series appearing now? It is, perhaps, timed to take commercial advantage of the current contention among some in the black American community that their origins lie in ancient Egypt.
I can’t say if this is true or not. If there were evidence to support this theory, I would accept it completely, but there is no such evidence.
The truth as we know it can be found in the many scenes depicted in temples throughout Egyptian history. Here we see the pharaohs smiting the enemies of Egypt and, in front of them, all of the people of the surrounding regions, including Nubia, Libya and Mesopotamia.
Luckily for historians and archaeologists, the ancient Egyptian artists were sticklers for detail – examine the faces, and the racial characteristics of each of the figures are clearly shown.
This can be seen in one of the great scenes that was found during our excavation and conservation inside the tomb of Ramses II in the Valley of the Kings. It shows the sun god Ra on his boat and, standing in front of him, people of four clearly identifiable races: Egyptians, Africans, Libyans and Asiatics.
In February it was announced that black American comedian Kevin Hart had cancelled an upcoming show in Egypt, because of controversy over Afrocentric remarks he had made previously, claiming that the kings of Egypt had been black Africans.
I was unhappy about the cancellation because dialogue between all of us is very important. If we could have met, I’d have explained to Hart that the people from the Nubian Kingdom of Kush did indeed come to Egypt as conquerors who ruled for about a century, from 744 to 656 BC, but they were not, as has been repeatedly and wrongly claimed, the originators of pharaonic civilization.
A few years ago, I went to Philadelphia to give a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania on the origins of the ancient Egyptians and, such is the interest in this subject, the lecture was sold out. I said there were three opinions on the subject.
Some scholars say that the first ancient Egyptians came from Asia and Africa. As evidence they cite the shape and color of the people in the Nile Delta today, who are white, while the color of the people in Upper Egypt is darker. They also suggest that the grammar in hieroglyphic script is similar to that in Arabic and Hebrew.
The second opinion was published by Cheikh Anta Diop, from Senegal, who claimed that the ancient Egyptians were of black origin, and pointed to statues of Tutankhamun and Ramses, which had been carved from dark stone. He also said that the grammar in hieroglyphic script was similar to some African languages, but a UNESCO conference in Paris attended by many Egyptologists dismissed the theory as lacking real evidence.
The third opinion is based on the excavation of Naqada in Upper Egypt by the British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, who is regarded as the father of Egyptology and a pioneer in systematic archaeological investigation. After excavating a predynastic cemetery, Petrie concluded that the remains buried there were of the people who had made the Egyptian civilization.
If we look at the archaeological evidence from Asia and Africa, it is clear that this pharaonic civilization occurred only in Egypt. The ancient people of Africa, although blessed similarly with the bounty of the Nile and even better weather, left nothing behind them.
Cleopatra was not black, and I would welcome the opportunity to teach Pinkett Smith about a woman whose achievements and story were sufficiently dramatic not to require politically motivated embellishment in the retelling of them.
When Cleopatra took the throne in 51 BC after the death of her father, Egypt was severely damaged, significantly in debt and experiencing high inflation. The Nile had recently flooded more destructively than usual, political power lay in the hands of Rome and the feelings of anger and rebellion among the Alexandrians toward the pharaoh had reached fever pitch.
Cleopatra rose to the occasion, entering the political arena with a strong character, a sharp mind and, it has to be said, feminine charms that she did not hesitate to exploit, as witnessed by her relationships with and manipulation of the Romans Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Cleopatra had several private tutors who prepared her to rule Egypt, but she also pursued academic interests of her own, such as science and philosophy, and could be said to have been a pioneer in the field of women’s rights. Unlike her forebears, Cleopatra learned the native language of Egypt, as well as Greek and other tongues.
Cleopatra, then, was many things, and well deserving of having her story told to modern audiences, but one thing she most definitely was not was black.
It is a shame that Netflix has categorized this new series as a docudrama, rather than a pure drama, because no one who knows anything about ancient Egypt can possibly take it seriously.
Dr. Zahi Hawass is Honorary Chairman, Antiquities Coalition Advisory Council, Egyptologist and Former Minister of Antiquities of Egypt, a position he served twice. He is also the Director of Excavations at Giza, Saqqara, Bahariya Oasis, and the Valley of the Kings. He has been involved in several important archaeological projects. He led the search for the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony on the premises of a Ptolemaic temple near Alexandria. (Source: Antiquities Coalition)
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: This guy is insane. His culture? Im sure he doesn't even know a damn thing about black people let alone African culture. Also, he doesnt even look like any of the Pharoahs depicted during the dynastic period.
Bassem Yousuff could be 90% Arab and 10% native Egyptian he could claim ancient Egyptian ancestors. But his Egyptian ancestry could be higher, it could be 60%, who knows or it could be none at all, zero
Somebody described as black who lives in Sudan or Chad or DRC for instance, who might have an ancestor who was an ancient Egyptian or they might have 0% Egyptian ancestry.
We can't tell by looking
It is peculiar for anybody to claim Ancient Egyptian culture since Egyptian culture has been dead for 2,000 years and many of these tombs have only been excavated in recent times. I doubt Bassem Yousuff practices Ancient Egyptian culture but I don't know much about him
Ancient Egyptian culture is African.
Has Bassem Yousuff taken a genetic test to determine his african ancestry? Also, Assuming Bassem Yousuff is 10% dynastic egyptian, why is that enough for him to claim its his culture considering he doesn't know any damn thing about african people and african culture at all? Many black people across the globe are 10% non black this or that, is he cool with black people claiming white, arab, south west/asian culture as their heritable culture?
Adele James is black of mixed ancestry. She is most likely 30% non black yet to these people she cant even play an african egyptian because she look too black. Bassem Yousuffs claims on west africa is pointless. He doesn't know anything about africa or black people. For the record you have many meditteranean groups like the Greeks or Italians for example who are part African and they dont claim any african civilization.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: Ancient Egyptian culture is African.
Has Bassem Yousuff taken a genetic test to determine his african ancestry? Also, Assuming Bassem Yousuff is 10% dynastic egyptian, why is that enough for him to claim its his culture considering he doesn't know any damn thing about african people and african culture at all?
How do you know Bassem Yousuff knows nothing about ancient Egyptian culture?
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: Ancient Egyptian culture is African.
Many black people across the globe are 10% non black this or that, is he cool with black people claiming white, arab, south west/asian culture as their heritable culture?
Suppose a black person who was born in Egypt said they were a native Egyptian and said "my culture goes back to the ancient Egyptians" would you consider this claim made by any living person acceptable?
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack:
Adele James is black of mixed ancestry. She is most likely 30% non black yet to these people she cant even play an african egyptian because she look too black.
She's not playing an African Egyptian. She's playing a Macedonian Greek
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: Ancient Egyptian culture is African.
Has Bassem Yousuff taken a genetic test to determine his african ancestry? Also, Assuming Bassem Yousuff is 10% dynastic egyptian, why is that enough for him to claim its his culture considering he doesn't know any damn thing about african people and african culture at all?
How do you know Bassem Yousuff knows nothing about ancient Egyptian culture?
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack: Ancient Egyptian culture is African.
Many black people across the globe are 10% non black this or that, is he cool with black people claiming white, arab, south west/asian culture as their heritable culture?
Suppose a black person who was born in Egypt said they were a native Egyptian and said "my culture goes back to the ancient Egyptians" would you consider this claim made by any living person acceptable?
quote:Originally posted by Mighty Mack:
Adele James is black of mixed ancestry. She is most likely 30% non black yet to these people she cant even play an african egyptian because she look too black.
[qb]She's not playing an African Egyptian. She's playing a Macedonian Greek
I didnt say he didnt know anything about Ancient Egyptian culture.
quote:Suppose a black person who was born in Egypt said they were a native Egyptian and said "my culture goes back to the ancient Egyptians" would you consider this claim made by any living person acceptable?
call me prejudiced but certainly more acceptable than the man who looks like he came right out of the caucaus region.
quote:She's not playing an African Egyptian. She's playing a Macedonian Greek
I forget this is a documentary, not a show. you are right she was macedonian greek. She may have been mixed ive not researched much into cleopatra considering im more concerned about other african female rulers like hatshepsut, tiye, sobnekferu etc
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
A couple of reconstructions of Cleopatra, the first one is made by Royalty now, the second one by Alessandro Tomasi and the two at the bottom by Sally Ann Ashton
Another rendering of Cleopatra from Royalty now, here depicted in modern clothing
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Another video where an Egyptian speaks against the Cleopatra documentary
This was posted in one of youtube video comment sections.
Sako Gekchyan quote-
quote: @Spitfire The Dragon TV Love And Positive Light But the Sahara did not prevent so-called Black people from traveling to North Africa.
First of all, the Sahara was not always a desert. As recent as 6000 years ago, large parts of it were lush, savanna, and even some tropical forests as well.
It only gradually became a desert. Over time it has gone through several cycles of Fertilization and desertification.
Second, what do you mean by black? Do you consider the people of Sudan black? If so, then clearly, there is no barrier to some groups of Black people.
They are literally right up the river. Do you think there was some magical forcefield keeping Black people in prehistoric times from migrating north into the lower Nile valley? This is the same question I ask hoteps who insist that Egypt was blackity black.
I asked them if they think there was some magical forcfield along the Sinai border, preventing prehistoric Middle Eastern populations from migrating into the Nile delta, and beyond? In both cases, the logic is pretty silly.
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Ancient Egypt and Pre-history Egypt
Genetic history
quote: Beginning in the predynastic period, some differences between the populations of Upper and Lower Egypt were ascertained through their skeletal remains, suggesting a gradual clinal pattern north to south.
When Lower and Upper Egypt were unified c. 3200 BC, the distinction began to blur, resulting in a more homogeneous population in Egypt, though the distinction remains true to some degree to this day. Some biological anthropologists such as Shomarka Keita believe the range of variability to be primarily indigenous and not necessarily the result of significant intermingling of widely divergent peoples.
Keita describes the northern and southern patterns of the early predynastic period as "northern-Egyptian-Maghreb" and "tropical African variant" (overlapping with Nubia/Kush) respectively. He shows that a progressive change in Upper Egypt toward the northern Egyptian pattern takes place through the predynastic period. The southern pattern continues to predominate in Abydos, Upper Egypt by the First Dynasty, but "lower Egyptian, Maghrebian, and European patterns are observed also, thus making for great diversity."
A group of noted physical anthropologists conducted craniofacial studies of Egyptian skeletal remains and concluded similarly that "the Egyptians have been in place since back in the Pleistocene and have been largely unaffected by either invasions or migrations. As others have noted, Egyptians are Egyptians, and they were so in the past as well."
Genetic analysis of modern Egyptians reveals that they have paternal lineages common to indigenous North-East African populations primarily and to Near Eastern peoples to a lesser extent—these lineages would have spread during the Neolithic and were maintained by the predynastic period. University of Chicago Egyptologist Frank Yurco suggested a historical, regional and ethnolinguistic continuity, asserting that "the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they were Africans of the Afro-Asiatic ethnic grouping".He writes:
"Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990; Brace et al., this volume)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a [Nile Valley] continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions (Trigger 1978; Bard, Snowden, this volume). Language research suggests that this Saharan-[Nile Valley] population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages... Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC... In summary we may say that Egypt was a distinct Afro-Asiatic African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the Sahara." A 2006 bioarchaeological study on the dental morphology of ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish shows dental traits characteristic of indigenous North Africans and to a lesser extent Southwest Asian and southern European populations. Among the samples included in the study is skeletal material from the Hawara tombs of Fayum, which clustered very closely with the Badarian series of the predynastic period. All the samples, particularly those of the Dynastic period, were significantly divergent from a neolithic West Saharan sample from Lower Nubia. Biological continuity was also found intact from the dynastic to the post-pharaonic periods. According to Irish:
[The Egyptian] samples [996 mummies] exhibit morphologically simple, mass-reduced dentitions that are similar to those in populations from greater North Africa (Irish, 1993, 1998a–c, 2000) and, to a lesser extent, western Asia and Europe (Turner, 1985a; Turner and Markowitz, 1990; Roler, 1992; Lipschultz, 1996; Irish, 1998a). Similar craniofacial measurements among samples from these regions were reported as well (Brace et al., 1993)... an inspection of MMD values reveals no evidence of increasing phenetic distance between samples from the first and second halves of this almost 3,000-year-long period. For example, phenetic distances between First-Second Dynasty Abydos and samples from Fourth Dynasty Saqqara (MMD ¼ 0.050), 11–12th Dynasty Thebes (0.000), 12th Dynasty Lisht (0.072), 19th Dynasty Qurneh (0.053), and 26th–30th Dynasty Giza (0.027) do not exhibit a directional increase through time... Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by the dental samples, appear biologically constant as well... Gebel Ramlah [Neolithic Nubian/Western Desert sample] is, in fact, significantly different from Badari based on the 22-trait MMD (Table 4). For that matter, the Neolithic Western Desert sample is significantly different from all others [but] is closest to predynastic and early dynastic samples.
A study published in 2017 described the extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were recovered from Abusir. The study was able to measure the mitochondrial DNA of 90 individuals, and it showed that Ancient Egyptians had the greatest affinity for modern Middle Eastern (Arabs, Levantine and Anatolian) and North African populations and had significantly more affinity with south-eastern Europeans than with sub-Saharan Africans. Genome-wide data could only be successfully extracted from three of these individuals. Of these three, the Y-chromosome haplogroups of two individuals could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa. The absolute estimates of sub-Saharan African ancestry in these three individuals ranged from 6 to 15%, which is slightly lower than the level of sub-Saharan African ancestry in Egyptians from Abusir, who range from 14 to 21%. The study's authors cautioned that the Mummies may be unrepresentative of the whole Ancient Egyptian population, since they were recovered from the northern part of Egypt and that the Southern part might have more Sub-Saharan component being closer to Nubia. and that they only dated from the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period. As a result mummies from the earlier classical periods of Egyptian history such as the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom further to the south were omitted.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx:
Another rendering of Cleopatra from Royalty now, here depicted in modern clothing [/QB]
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: [QB] Another video where an Egyptian speaks against the Cleopatra documentary
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Cleopatra Ancestry quote-
quote: Cleopatra belonged to the Macedonian Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies, their European origins tracing back to northern Greece. Through her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, she was a descendant of two prominent companions of Alexander the Great of Macedon: the general Ptolemy I Soter, founder of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and Seleucus I Nicator, the Macedonian Greek founder of the Seleucid Empire of West Asia. While Cleopatra's paternal line can be traced, the identity of her mother is unknown.She was presumably the daughter of Cleopatra VI Tryphaena (also known as Cleopatra V Tryphaena), the sister-wife of Ptolemy XII who had previously given birth to their daughter Berenice IV.
Cleopatra I Syra was the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty known for certain to have introduced some non-Greek ancestry. Her mother Laodice III was a daughter born to King Mithridates II of Pontus, a Persian of the Mithridatic dynasty, and his wife Laodice who had a mixed Greek-Persian heritage.Cleopatra I Syra's father Antiochus III the Great was a descendant of Queen Apama, the Sogdian Iranian wife of Seleucus I Nicator.It is generally believed that the Ptolemies did not intermarry with native Egyptians.Michael Grant asserts that there is only one known Egyptian mistress of a Ptolemy and no known Egyptian wife of a Ptolemy, further arguing that Cleopatra probably did not have any Egyptian ancestry and "would have described herself as Greek."Stacy Schiff writes that Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek with some Persian ancestry, arguing that it was rare for the Ptolemies to have an Egyptian mistress. Duane W. Roller speculates that Cleopatra could have been the daughter of a theoretical half-Macedonian-Greek, half-Egyptian woman from Memphis in northern Egypt belonging to a family of priests dedicated to Ptah (a hypothesis not generally accepted in scholarship), but contends that whatever Cleopatra's ancestry, she valued her Greek Ptolemaic heritage the most.Ernle Bradford writes that Cleopatra challenged Rome not as an Egyptian woman "but as a civilized Greek." _____________ Cleopatra race controversy The race of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian-led Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, has caused some debate in scholarly and non-scholarly circles. For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in Ebony magazine in 2002. Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, traces the origins of the Black Cleopatra claim to the 1946 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 Sogdian Iranian ancestry, based on the fact that her Macedonian Greek family (the Ptolemaic dynasty) had intermarried with the Seleucid dynasty. Michael Grant states that Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood and that she "would have described herself as Greek.Duane W. 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.Roman frescoes in Pompeii and Herculaneum similar to the Vatican and Berlin marble sculptures have been identified as possible portraits of the queen based on comparable facial features and royal iconography.
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 Ptolemy XII Auletes but had different mothers.
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
By the way. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks
quote: HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians, 2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum, 3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.
That study by Arnaiz-Villenas et al seems to have been rather criticized. In this video the study is mentioned and also something about him as a researcher.
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: By the way. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks 2001 Feb
quote: HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians, 2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum, 3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.
Antonio Arnaiz-Villena is a Spanish immunologist noted for his controversial research into the genetic history of ethnic groups and fringe linguistic hypotheses.
Greeks and Sub-Saharans Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five scientific articles, where, among other claims, they concluded that the Greek population originates from Sub-Saharan Africa and do not cluster with other Mediterraneans.[8][14][15][16][17] The explanation they offered is that a large number of Sub-Saharans had migrated to Greece (but not to Crete) during Minoan times,[8][14][15][16] i.e. predating both Classical and Mycenaean Greece. Those conclusions were related to the "Black Athena" debate and became embroiled in disputes between Greek and ethnic Macedonian nationalists.[18]
They cited Dörk et al. for having found a marker on Chromosome 7 that is common to Black Africans and, among Caucasoid populations, is found only in Greeks.[14][19] Dörk et al. did find an African-type of cystic fibrosis mutation in Greeks, however this mutation was extremely rare; it was detected only in three Greek families.[19] The explanation they offered is quite different from Arnaiz-Villena's. Dörk et al. state: "Historical contacts—for example, under Alexander the Great or during the ancient Minoan civilization—may provide an explanation for the common ancestry of disease mutations in these ethnically diverse populations."[19]
Hajjej et al. claimed to have confirmed the genetic relatedness between Greeks and Sub-Saharans.[20][21] However they used the same methodology (same gene markers) and same data samples like Arnaiz-Villena et al.[8][15][20][21]
Other authors contradict Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci (view MDS plot[22]). Then, Ayub et al. 2003[23] did the same thing using 182 loci (view dendrogram[24]).[25] Another study was conducted in 2004 at Skopje's University of Ss. Kiril and Metodij, using high-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 according to Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. Contrary to Arnaiz-Villena's conclusion, no sub-Saharan admixture was detected in the Greek sample.[25]
In a sample of 125 Greeks from Thessaloniki and Sarakatsani, 2 Asian-specific mtDNA sequences (M and D) were detected (1.6%). No sub-Saharan African genes were observed in this population, therefore, non-Caucasoid maternal ancestry in Greece is very low, as elsewhere in Europe.[26] Additionally, in a sample of 366 Greeks from thirteen locations in continental Greece, Crete, Lesvos and Chios, a single African haplogroup A Y Chromosome was found (0.3%). This marks the only instance to date of sub-Saharan DNA being discovered in Greece. In another sample of 42 Greeks, one sequence of the Siberian Tat-C haplogroup turned up, while other studies with larger sample populations have failed to detect this paternal marker in the Greek gene pool[27][28] and while its frequencies are actually much higher in Scandinavian and Slavic populations.[29][30] Also, a paper has detected clades of haplogroups J and E3b that were likely not part of pre-historic migrations into Europe, but rather spread by later historical movements. Greeks possess none of the lineages denoting North African ancestry within the last 5000 years and have only 2% (3/148) of the marker J-M267, which may reflect more recent Middle Eastern admixture.[31]
Jobling et al., in their genetics textbook "Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples & Disease", state that Arnaiz-Villena's conclusions on the Sub-Saharan origin of Greeks, is an example of arbitrary interpretation and that the methodology used is not appropriate for this kind of research.[32] Karatzios C. et al., made a systematic review of genetics and historical documents, showing great flaws in Arnaiz-Villena's methodology and theory on the Greeks/Sub-Saharan genetic relationship.[33]
Three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, criticised Arnaiz-Villena's methodology.[34] They stated that "Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics. The limitations are made evident by the authors' extraordinary observations that Greeks are very similar to Ethiopians and east Africans but very distant from other south Europeans; and that the Japanese are nearly identical to west and south Africans. It is surprising that the authors were not puzzled by these anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups." Arnaiz-Villena et al. countered this criticism in a response, stating "single-locus studies, whether using HLA or other markers, are common in this field and are regularly published in the specialist literature".[35]
A 2017 archaeogenetic study concluded concerning the origin of both the Minoans and Mycenaeans, that:
Other proposed migrations, such as settlement by Egyptian or Phoenician colonists are not discernible in our data, as there is no measurable Levantine or African influence in the Minoans and Myceneans, thus rejecting the hypothesis that the cultures of the Aegean were seeded by migrants from the old civilizations of these regions.
The other proposed migrations that is mentioned and disproved by the paper pertain to Black Athena's positions that Arnaiz-Villena also tried to support with his work.[36]
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Interesting. Thanks for the update.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
Honestly, if the actress playing Cleopatra in the upcoming Netflix doc wore a red-haired wig, she wouldn't look much different from those Roman portraits that people claim represent the "real" Cleopatra (I notice none of said ancient artworks have labels in Latin identifying whom they're portraying though). The actress isn't even that dark-skinned.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
@Brandon, is this a picture made by you? I found it in a video about Egyptians reacting over Netflix Cleopatra film.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: @Brandon, is this a picture made by you? I found it in a video about Egyptians reacting over Netflix Cleopatra film.
Yes, that's my depiction of Sobekneferu.
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
I posted this link again back on the first page. REAL Egyptian DESTROYS Anti-Black Arab "Egyptians" (With RECEIPTS)
Anyway here is another one.
BIack Egyptian TikToker Reveals The Hate She Receives From Egyptians Over Her Skin Color
Wongel Zelalem reports on a bIack Egyptian TikToker getting rejected for the color of her skin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi3kne7_vDU Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
It's kind of off topic. Although people might question Adele James playing an Egyptian the situation here is that they are questioning her playing a Macedonian Greek, Cleopatra
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Molefi Kete Asante is talking about the Netflix film about Cleopatra. Among many things he mentions that he actually met Zahi Hawass once.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Molefi Kete Asante is talking about the Netflix film about Cleopatra. Among many things he mentions that he actually met Zahi Hawass once.
Malcolm X had a European grandfather
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: [QB] Another video where an Egyptian speaks against the Cleopatra documentary
Why Egyptians are mad about Cleopatra Netflix series
I thought this Egyptian was a black self hating Egyptian and anti-black at first but she is brown i think looking at pictures of her. By the way i saw her video a few days ago before the link was posted. She is anti-black. Of course she believes most ancient egyptians were not black,tut etc.. and they come from the mid-east etc..
DW Nerd quote-
quote: You are not an invader. You are a true egyptian! The Ancient Egyptians came from Middle East/Mesopotamia. The ancient egyptian language has similarities with semitic languages from Middle East and has nothing to do with subsaharan languages. The sculptures and paintings even look like you. You are a true Egyptian Princess❤
Nora Elzeiny quote-
quote: This made my day, Thank you🥰🥰
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Here she is back again with a video where she expands on the subject why Egyptians are mad at Netflix Cleopatra series
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: By the way. HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks
quote: HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians, 2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum, 3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.
You are presenting a study that was very pseudo and aimed to troll the Greeks and their origin.
A group of top scholars addressed and comprehensively rejected the infamous Arnaiz-Villena study, which claimed Greek ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans, as well as subsequent papers published by him and others employing the same flawed approach. They want all of the studies to be withdrawn.
Christos Karatzios, Stephen G. Miller, Costas D. Triantaphyllidis. January 10, 2011
ABSTRACT:
Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five papers making the claim of a Sub-Saharan African origin for Greeks. Hajjej et al. essentially published copies of Arnaiz-Villena's studies using the same methods, and data sets. World leading geneticists have rejected Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (the primary defect is that they relied on too few genetic markers to reliably compare populations). Numerous studies using proper methodology and multiple genetic markers are presented, showing that Greeks cluster genetically with the rest of the Europeans, disproving Arnaiz-Villena's claims. History, as well as genetics, have been misused by Arnaiz-Villena's (and by extension Hajjej's) unprofessional statements and by their omissions and misquotations of scientific and historical citations. The abuse of scientific methods has earned Arnaiz-Villena's research a citation in a genetics textbook as an example of arbitrary interpretation and a deletion of one of his papers from the scientific literature. In order to protect science from misuse, the related papers of Arnaiz-Villena et al. and Hajjej et al. should also be retracted from the scientific literature. Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by mightywolf: You are presenting a study that was very pseudo and aimed to troll the Greeks and their origin.
he already addressed that, he said:
quote:Originally posted by Firewall: Interesting. Thanks for the update.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Nora also has a couple of short videos where she further discusses Netflix Cleopatra
U.S. made this Black North African Egyptian immigrant identify as "white" caucasian #shorts https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xk6BgsEUvKA Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Black Egyptian woman addresses Racist North Africans #Northafrica #ancientegypt #egypt #africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8kZai3mHCE Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Egyptian Woman has some words Kevin Hart about his statements about Egyptians being black https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWJvXFHAWqQ Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
I have not seen all of this video and i will check the whole video out the later but check it out.
How The Migratory Routes of Africans Prove Their Link to Egypt and Nubia | The Link - Part 1 KueliMika https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSZKvinHTc8 Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
An Egyptian lawyer filed a case against Netflix
quote: Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary has filed a case with the Public Prosecutor to shut down the Netflix platform in Egypt, following the trailer release of “Queen Cleopatra. ” A new documentary depicting the historical figure as a black woman.
The Egyptian lawyer has demanded that serious legal action be taken against those responsible for the making of the documentary. He blamed the Netflix management team for its participation in “this crime”.
He also demanded a thorough investigation of the process as well as the overall discontinuity of Netflix’s streaming service in Egypt as a consequence.
The Egyptian lawyer has demanded that serious legal action be taken against those responsible for the making of the documentary. He blamed the Netflix management team for its participation in “this crime”.
He also demanded a thorough investigation of the process as well as the overall discontinuity of Netflix’s streaming service in Egypt as a consequence. It added that the movie trailer, which attracted millions of viewers across the globe, contradicts Egyptian history.
The case said that the documentary promotes Afrocentrism which aims at distorting and obliterating Egyptian identity.
The complaint, which was handed into the Public Prosecution, also stated that: “In order to preserve the Egyptian national and cultural identity among Egyptians all over the world there must be pride in the makings of such work.”
The complaint has also accused the makers of the documentary and platform management of “forgery”.
Former Egyptian Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass described depicting Queen Cleopatra as a black woman as “falsifying facts”, adding that “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was blonde, not black.”
Queen Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was born in 69 BC and died in 30 BC in Alexandria.
Seems even the Russian embassy in Egypt got involved in the discussions about Netflix Cleopatra
Posted by Firewall (Member # 20331) on :
Arabs In Egypt Are Upset With Netflix's Cleopatra Because They Cast A Black Actress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDS06V1UoSo Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
A Black woman about Netflix Cleopatra film. Short video
People are confused and Hollywood is just helping fan the flames by pretending to care about black history. They don't. Hollywood and the West only care about Cleopatra because she was legitimately a white Queen of Egypt who was part of the political intrigue of Rome, which was also white. That means, not African, not Arab or "brown" but white and colonial conquerors, which is the foundation of modern Western civilization.
It allows them to imagine a white Queen dressing up and acting like some indigenous Queen of the Nile Valley. This perception largely comes from the fictionalized account written by Shakespeare. But the reality is that the Greek Dynasty in Egypt promoted Greek culture, especially in Alexandria and among the elites. They did maintain and preserve the ancient culture, but changed it to deify the Ptolemies as gods annointed rulers of the Nile. And outside of religious ceremonies, they primarily dressed and acted according to Greek custom.
Netflix is only promoting this particular revision of the historical narrative because it actually puts black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with. Black people did not really come up with this and it was likely white executives that promoted this farce, along with the Persian director and so forth. Jada Pinkett Smith seems to be nothing more than a figurehead because no sane person would say that the African roots of the Nile Valley starts with the Greeks. Of course it doesn't and no serious African scholar has been using Cleopatra as the basis for any argument in support of that. However, Netflix and their so called woke agenda is just another example of white leftists working against black people even while they claim to be trying to help. They know full dam well that this would trigger backlash and they know full well that there were legitimately black Queens of the Nile they could have portrayed. But they don't want to and actually want to promote the idea that for black people to have an ancient history, they must "race swap" some historical figures. Which is obviously propaganda against and not support for African history.
quote: The Macedonian-Greek character of the monarchy was vigorously preserved. There is no more emphatic sign of this than the growth and importance of the city of Alexandria. It had been founded, on a date traditionally given as April 7, 331 bce (but often cited as 332 bce), by Alexander the Great on the site of the insignificant Egyptian village of Rakotis in the northwestern Nile River delta, and it ranked as the most important city in the eastern Mediterranean until the foundation of Constantinople in the 4th century ce. The importance of the new Greek city was soon emphasized by contrast to its Egyptian surroundings when the royal capital was transferred, within a few years of Alexander’s death, from Memphis to Alexandria. The Ptolemaic court cultivated extravagant luxury in the Greek style in its magnificent and steadily expanding palace complex, which occupied as much as a third of the city by the early Roman period. Its grandeur was emphasized in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by the foundation of a quadrennial festival, the Ptolemaieia, which was intended to enjoy a status equal to that of the Olympic Games. The festival was marked by a procession of amazingly elaborate and ingeniously constructed floats, with scenarios illustrating Greek Religious cults.
Ptolemy II gave the dynasty another distinctive feature when he married his full sister, Arsinoe II, one of the most powerful and remarkable women of the Hellenistic age. They became, in effect, co-rulers, and both took the epithet Philadelphus (“Brother-Loving” and “Sister-Loving”). The practice of consanguineous marriage was followed by most of their successors and imitated by ordinary Egyptians too, even though it had not been a standard practice in the pharaonic royal houses and had been unknown in the rest of the native Egyptian population. Arsinoe played a prominent role in the formation of royal policy. She was displayed on the coinage and was eventually worshiped, perhaps even before her death, in the distinctively Greek style of ruler cult that developed in this reign.
...
Euergetes was succeeded by his son Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205 bce), whom the Greek historians portray as a weak and corrupt ruler, dominated by a powerful circle of Alexandrian Greek courtiers. The reign was notable for another serious conflict with the Seleucids, which ended in 217 bce in a great Ptolemaic victory at Raphia in southern Palestine. The battle is notable for the fact that large numbers of native Egyptian soldiers fought alongside the Macedonian and Greek contingents. Events surrounding the death of Philopator and the succession of the youthful Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 bce) are obscured by court intrigue. Before Epiphanes had completed his first decade of rule, serious difficulties arose. Native revolts in the south, which had been sporadic in the second half of the 3rd century bce, became serious and weakened the hold of the monarch on a vital part of the kingdom. These revolts, which produced native claimants to the kingship, are generally attributed to the native Egyptians’ realization, after their contribution to the victory at Raphia, of their potential power. Trouble continued to break out for several more decades. By about 196 bce a great portion of the Ptolemaic overseas empire had been permanently lost (though there may have been a brief revival in the Aegean islands in about 165–145 bce). To shore up and advertise the strength of the ruling house at home and abroad, the administration adopted a series of grandiloquent honorific titles for its officers. To conciliate Egyptian feelings, a religious synod that met in 196 bce to crown Epiphanes at Memphis (the first occasion on which a Ptolemy is certainly known to have been crowned at the traditional capital) decreed extensive privileges for the Egyptian temples, as recorded on the Rosetta Stone.
...
Physcon was able to rule in Egypt until 116 bce with his sister Cleopatra II (except for a period in 131–130 bce when she was in revolt) and her daughter Cleopatra III. His reign was marked by generous benefactions to the Egyptian temples, but he was detested as a tyrant by the Greeks, and the historical accounts of the reign emphasize his stormy relations with the Alexandrian populace.
During the last century of Ptolemaic rule, Egypt’s independence was exercised under Rome’s protection and at Rome’s discretion. For much of the period, Rome was content to support a dynasty that had no overseas possession except Cyprus after 96 bce (the year in which Cyrene was bequeathed to Rome by Ptolemy Apion) and no ambitions threatening Roman interests or security. After a series of brief and unstable reigns, Ptolemy XII Auletes acceded to the throne in 80 bce. He maintained his hold for 30 years, despite the attractions that Egypt’s legendary wealth held for avaricious Roman politicians. In fact, Auletes had to flee Egypt in 58 bce and was restored by Pompey’s friend Gabinius in 55 bce, no doubt after spending so much in bribes that he had to bring Rabirius Postumus, one of his Roman creditors, to Egypt with him to manage his financial affairs.
In 52 bce, the year before his death, Auletes associated with himself on the throne his daughter Cleopatra VII and his elder son Ptolemy XIII (who died in 47 bce). The reign of Cleopatra was that of a vigorous and exceptionally able queen who was ambitious, among other things, to revive the prestige of the dynasty by cultivating influence with powerful Roman commanders and using their capacity to aggrandize Roman clients and allies. Julius Caesar pursued Pompey to Egypt in 48 bce. After learning of Pompey’s murder at the hands of Egyptian courtiers, Caesar stayed long enough to enjoy a sightseeing tour up the Nile in the queen’s company in the summer of 47 bce. When he left for Rome, Cleopatra was pregnant with a child she claimed was Caesar’s. The child, a son, was named Caesarion (“Little Caesar”). Cleopatra and Caesarion later followed Caesar back to Rome, but, after his assassination in 44 bce, they returned hurriedly to Egypt, and she tried for a while to play a neutral role in the struggles between the Roman generals and their factions.
Her long liaison with Mark Antony began when she visited him at Tarsus in 41 bce and he returned to Egypt with her. Between 36 and 30 bce the famous romance between the Roman general and the eastern queen was exploited to great effect by Antony’s political rival Octavian (the future emperor Augustus). By 34 bce Caesarion was officially co-ruler with Cleopatra, but his rule clearly was an attempt to exploit the popularity of Caesar’s memory. In the autumn Cleopatra and Antony staged an extravagant display in which they made grandiose dispositions of territory in the east to their children, Alexander Helios, Ptolemy, and Cleopatra Selene. Cleopatra and Antony were portrayed to the Roman public as posing for artists in the guise of Dionysus and Isis or whiling away their evenings in rowdy and decadent banquets that kept the citizens of Alexandria awake all night. But this propaganda war was merely the prelude to armed conflict, and the issue was decided in September 31 bce in a naval battle at Actium in western Greece. When the battle was at its height, Cleopatra and her squadron withdrew, and Antony eventually followed suit. They fled to Alexandria but could do little more than await the arrival of the victorious Octavian 10 months later. Alexandria was captured, and Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide—he by falling on his sword, she probably by the bite of an asp—in August of 30 bce. It is reported that when Octavian reached the city, he visited and touched the preserved corpse of Alexander the Great, causing a piece of the nose to fall off. He refused to gaze upon the remains of the Ptolemies, saying “I wished to see a king, not corpses.”
The changes brought to Egypt by the Ptolemies were momentous; the land’s resources were harnessed with unparalleled efficiency, with the result that Egypt became the wealthiest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Land under cultivation was increased, and new crops were introduced (especially important was the introduction of naked tetraploid wheat, Triticum durum, to replace the traditional husked emmer, Triticum dicoccum). The population, estimated at perhaps three to four million in the late Dynastic period, may have more than doubled by the early Roman period to a level not reached again until the late 19th century. Some of the increase was due to immigration; particularly during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, many settlers were attracted from cities in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, and large numbers of Jews came from Palestine. The flow may have decreased later in the Ptolemaic period, and it is often suggested, on slender evidence, that there was a serious decline in prosperity in the 1st century bce. If so, there may have been some reversal of this trend under Cleopatra VII.
...
By the same token, rigid lines of separation between military, civil, legal, and administrative matters are difficult to perceive. The same official might perform duties in one or all of these areas. The military was inevitably integrated into civilian life because its soldiers were also farmers who enjoyed royal grants of land, either as Greek cleruchs (holders of allotments) with higher status and generous grants or as native Egyptian machimoi with small plots. Interlocking judiciary institutions, in the form of Greek and Egyptian courts (chrēmatistai and laokritai), provided the means for Greeks and Egyptians to regulate their legal relationships according to the language in which they conducted their business. The bureaucratic power was heavily weighted in favour of the Greek speakers, the dominant elite. Egyptians were nevertheless able to obtain official posts in the bureaucracy, gradually infiltrating to the highest levels, but in order to do so they had to Hellenize.
The basis of Egypt’s legendary wealth was the highly productive land, which technically remained in royal ownership. A considerable portion was kept under the control of temples, and the remainder was leased out on a theoretically revocable basis to tenant-farmers. A portion also was available to be granted as gifts to leading courtiers; one of these was Apollonius, the finance minister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who had an estate of 10,000 arourae (about 6,500 acres [2,630 hectares]) at Philadelphia in Al-Fayyūm. Tenants and beneficiaries were able to behave very much as if these leases and grants were private property. The revenues in cash and kind were enormous, and royal control extended to the manufacture and marketing of almost all important products, including papyrus, oil, linen, and beer. An extraordinarily detailed set of revenue laws, promulgated under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, laid down rules for the way in which officials were to monitor the production of such commodities. In fact, the Ptolemaic economy was very much a mixture of direct royal ownership and exploitation by private enterprise under regulated conditions.
One fundamental and far-reaching Ptolemaic innovation was the systematic monetarization of the economy. The monarchy also controlled this from top to bottom by operating a closed monetary system, which permitted only the royal coinage to circulate within Egypt. A sophisticated banking system underpinned this practice, operating again with a mixture of direct royal control and private enterprise and handling both private financial transactions and those that directed money into and out of the royal coffers. One important concomitant of this change was an enormous increase in the volume of trade, both within Egypt and abroad, which eventually reached its climax under the peaceful conditions of Roman rule. There the position and role of Alexandria as the major port and trading entrepôt was crucial: the city handled a great volume of Egypt’s domestic produce, as well as the import and export of luxury goods to and from the East and the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. It developed its own importance as an artistic centre, the products of which found ready markets throughout the Mediterranean. Alexandrian glassware and jewelry were particularly fine, Greek-style sculpture of the late Ptolemaic period shows especial excellence, and it is likely that the city was also the major production centre for high-quality mosaic work.
The Ptolemies were powerful supporters of the native Egyptian religious foundations, the economic and political power of which was, however, carefully controlled. A great deal of the late building and restoration work in many of the most important Egyptian temples is Ptolemaic, particularly from the period of about 150–50 bce, and the monarchs appear on temple reliefs in the traditional forms of the Egyptian kings. The native traditions persisted in village temples and local cults, many having particular associations with species of sacred animals or birds. At the same time, the Greeks created their own identifications of Egyptian deities, identifying Amon with Zeus, Horus with Apollo, Ptah with Hephaestus, and so on. They also gave some deities, such as Isis, a more universal significance that ultimately resulted in the spread of her mystery cult throughout the Mediterranean world. The impact of the Greeks is most obvious in two phenomena. One is the formalized royal cult of Alexander and the Ptolemies, which evidently served both a political and a religious purpose. The other is the creation of the cult of Sarapis, which at first was confined to Alexandria but soon became universal. The god was represented as a Hellenized deity and the form of cult is Greek, but its essence is the old Egyptian notion that the sacred Apis bull merged its divinity in some way with the god Osiris when it died.
The continuing vitality of the native Egyptian artistic tradition is clearly and abundantly expressed in the temple architecture and the sculpture of the Ptolemaic period. The Egyptian language continued to be used in its hieroglyphic and demotic forms until late in the Roman period, and it survived through the Byzantine period and beyond in the form of Coptic. The Egyptian literary tradition flourished vigorously in the Ptolemaic period and produced a large number of works in demotic. The genre most commonly represented is the romantic tale, exemplified by several story cycles, which are typically set in the native, Pharaonic milieu and involve the gods, royal figures, magic, romance, and the trials and combats of heroes. Another important category is the Instruction Text, the best known of the period being that of Ankhsheshonq, which consists of a list of moralizing maxims, composed, as the story goes, when Ankhsheshonq was imprisoned for having failed to inform the king (pharaoh) of an assassination plot. Another example, known as Papyrus Insinger, is a more narrowly moralizing text. But the arrival of a Greek-speaking elite had an enormous impact on cultural patterns. The Egyptian story cycles were probably affected by Greek influence, literary and technical works were translated into Greek, and under royal patronage an Egyptian priest named Manetho of Sebennytos wrote an account of the kings of Egypt in Greek. Most striking is the diffusion of the works of the poets and playwrights of classical Greece among the literate Greeks in the towns and villages of the Nile River valley.
Thus there are clear signs of the existence of two interacting but distinct cultural traditions in Ptolemaic Egypt. This was certainly reflected in a broader social context. The written sources offer little direct evidence of ethnic discrimination by Greeks against Egyptians, but Greek and Egyptian consciousness of the Greeks’ social and economic superiority comes through strongly from time to time; intermarriage was one means, though not the only one, by which Egyptians could better their status and Hellenize. Many native Egyptians learned to speak Greek, some to write it as well; some even went so far as to adopt Greek names in an attempt to assimilate themselves to the elite group.
Alexandria occupied a unique place in the history of literature, ideas, scholarship, and science for almost a millennium after the death of its founder. Under the royal patronage of the Ptolemies and in an environment almost oblivious to its Egyptian surroundings, Greek culture was preserved and developed. Early in the Ptolemaic period, probably in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, the Alexandrian Museum (Greek: Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) was established within the palace complex. The geographer and historian Strabo, who saw it early in the Roman period, described it as having a covered walk, an arcade with recesses and seats, and a large house containing the dining hall of the members of the Museum, who lived a communal existence. The Library of Alexandria (together with its offshoot in the Sarapeum) was indispensable to the functioning of the scholarly community in the Museum. Books were collected voraciously under the Ptolemies, and at its height the library’s collection probably numbered 500,000 or more papyrus rolls, most of them containing more than one work.
The major poets of the Hellenistic period, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes, all took up residence and wrote there. Scholarship flourished, preserving and ordering the manuscript traditions of much of the classical literature from Homer onward. Librarian-scholars such as Aristophanes of Byzantium and his pupil Aristarchus made critical editions and wrote commentaries and works on grammar. Also notable was the cultural influence of Alexandria’s Jewish community, which is inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch was first translated into Greek at Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period. One by-product of this kind of activity was that Alexandria became the centre of the book trade, and the works of the classical authors were copied there and diffused among a literate Greek readership scattered in the towns and villages of the Nile valley.
The Alexandrian achievement in scientific fields was also enormous. Great advances were made in pure mathematics, mechanics, physics, geography, and medicine. Euclid worked in Alexandria about 300 bce and achieved the systematization of the whole existing corpus of mathematical knowledge and the development of the method of proof by deduction from axioms. Archimedes was there in the 3rd century bce and is said to have invented the Archimedean screw when he was in Egypt. Eratosthenes calculated Earth’s circumference and was the first to attempt a map of the world based on a system of lines of latitude and longitude. The school of medicine founded in the Ptolemaic period retained its leading reputation into the Byzantine era. Late in the Ptolemaic period Alexandria began to develop as a great centre of Greek philosophical studies as well. In fact, there was no field of literary, intellectual, or scientific activity to which Ptolemaic Alexandria failed to make an important contribution.
quote: he priestly family that became the High Priests of Ptah under the Ptolemies was already important in the Memphite temple hierarchy at the start of the Ptolemaic period. For all we know they may even be descended from the Memphite High Priests of an earlier period, although proof is lacking. Whatever their earlier status, they were transformed during the Ptolemaic era into the heads of the religious establishment in Egypt, controlling vast resources, and second only to the king. In essence, for much of the later part of the Ptolemaic era the High Priest of Ptah in Memphis was the head of the native Egyptian community.
This rise to prominence began under Ptolemy II. He engaged on a major series of religious reforms, most notably by introducing the dynastic cult, originally instituted as the cults of his deified sisters Philotera and Arsinoe II. These cults were not limited to the Greeks, but were also introduced to the Egyptians. The Egyptian head of the cult of Arsinoe II, Nesisti-Pedubast, appears to have revived the ancient title of Chief of Artificers (High Priest of Memphis) in the latter part of the reign. Although the cult of Arsinoe itself was transferred after three generations to a related line, the High Priests of Letopolis, the creation of the Memphite pontificate began a process of aggrandisement that eventually culminated in the pontificate of Psherenptah III. This High Priest was head of all the priesthoods in Egypt, and at the age of 14 personally crowned Ptolemy XII as king.
The last member of the main line, Imhotep-Pedubast, died in mysterious circumstances on the day of the fall of Alexandria to the forces of Octavian. His maternal uncle and cousin, Psherenamun I and Psherenamun II, attempted to maintain the pontificate under the Romans. The attempt was apparently unsuccessful and the last clear trace of the office is seen in 23 BC, only seven years after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Certain hierophantic positions that persisted until the rise of Christianity in the third century AD may be traceable to the Memphite pontificate. However, although the possibility cannot be excluded, there is no evidence that they continued to be held by the same family.
Netflix is only promoting this particular revision of the historical narrative because it actually puts black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with. Black people did not really come up with this and it was likely white executives that promoted this farce, along with the Persian director and so forth. Jada Pinkett Smith seems to be nothing more than a figurehead
blame whitey for Jada being an idiot
Take some responsibility I say
Netflix does not care about putting black people on the spot to defend something they had nothing to do with, they simply know controversy sells and supported Jada's project
Do you know who Molefe Asante is? He supports Jada
" 1:26:21 as a historian philosopher I give her our total support "
Molefi Kete Asante is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies.[1] He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University,[2][3] where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.[4][5][6]
Asante is known for his writings on Afrocentricity, a school of thought that has influenced the fields of sociology, intercultural communication, critical theory, political science, the history of Africa, and social work.[7][8] He is the author of more than 66 books and the founding editor of the Journal of Black Studies.[9][10] He is the father of author and filmmaker M. K. Asante.[4]
The Game
