What a shocker: another multi-billion, soulless company using ethnicity to sell and promote its products. Netflix Cleopatra seems to be another woeful attempt by a major company to use ethnicity to gain “controversy attention”, but this project also looks to be filled with HUGE historical inaccuracies.
How hard is it to get the basic historical facts right about some of the most well-known, well-researched, and famous ancient rulers in human history?
So, for those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Netflix has recently released a trailer for a new docu-series they are producing called Queen Cleopatra…which is obviously about the last (and most famous) Egyptian Pharaoh, Cleopatra.
Another cookie-cutter documentary about Cleopatra? That’s SUPER original.
Nevertheless, even with the strange title of “Queen” Cleopatra (which I’ll get into in a minute), a good chuck of the internet is in an uproar as the series has chosen to depict Cleopatra as an Egyptian ruler of African/Ethiopian/Libyan/I’m not sure where they’re tracing her ancestor decent, rather than widely accepted Egyptian and/or Greek ancestry.
And, even though that’s painfully stupid in its own right, I have a much bigger problem with the brief content of the series show thus far.
Okay, to start off with the elephant in the room: Cleopatra MOST LIKELY (key words here) did not have any major African descent.
Obviously, it’s true that there was African-descendant people living in Egypt (as the country is technically in Africa) with widely accepted ethnic African features (ex: the Numidian culture dominating the upper Nile River, the Kingdom of Kush that dominated much of the lands that now border modern day Egypt and Sudan, etc.), thus making it theoretically possible one of Cleopatra’s Ptolemaic ancestors married a woman belonging to one of these cultures.
However, given the fact that the Ptolemies were a house of royals descendant from Ptolemy I, one of the better Macedonian (aka: Greek) generals in Alexander the Great’s army, and they continued the Old Egyptian practice of familial intermarrying, there’s a very low percentage Cleopatra resembled anything else but an interbred Egyptian-Greek (aka: the Greeks who settled in Egypt after the fall of Alexander’s Empire).
Thus, the rather weird focus on Cleopatra being “black” by these so-called “experts” is an obvious strike against the credibility of this show. I’m not saying that Cleopatra was definitively not ethnically African, but I’m 100% saying these experts clamming she is 100% ethnically African (and not Egyptian or Greek) is false.
To categorically classify her as something the entire historical, academic, archeological, and Egyptian-centered world (aka: the governing bodies in Egypt) cannot 100% prove one way or the other is akin to propaganda.
Nevertheless, as for the reasons I’m far more concerned about, this show has showcased a few glaring historical errors in the trailer alone.
First off, calling this show “Queen Cleopatra is factually incorrect as she was Pharaoh Cleopatra, not just a mere queen. Sure, that may seem like a minor difference as she was ruling the Egyptians as the “queen”, but the simple term of “queen” completely understates what the “Pharaoh” had to the Egyptian world.
(Netflix-Queen Cleopatra-Official Trailer)
As the trailer stats many times, Cleopatra was a god to the Egyptians and was the sole mediator between the mortal plane and the gods themselves as their Pharaoh, so to just call her “Queen Cleopatra” is a bit of a disservice in my opinion.
Anyways, as for a major historical blunder, the show for some strange reason said that Julius Caesar, who was one of Cleopatra’s famous lovers, wanted to marry Cleopatra and “he wanted to be king to Cleopatra’s queen” is mind numbingly stupid and against ever single principle of the Roman Republic and life.
Not only did Caesar purposefully not divorce his wife (which was very easy to achieve under Roman religious law) and marry Cleopatra because to do so would be seen as a treacherous act against the Roman Republic (i.e.: the Senate, which despised him, would think he betrayed his homeland for foreigners…like what happened to Mark Antony twenty or so years later), but he also NEVER OPENLY stated his desire to be a “king”.
Again, becoming a king was one of the most sacrilegious things a wealthy nobleman, general, senator, consul, etc. could do in the Roman world given the Republic’s founding by overthrowing a monarchy. Hell, the reason why Caesar was murdered was because the Senate thought he was becoming a king (which he sort of was, just not in the traditional Roman way), and they thought killing him would save the Republic.
At no point did he go around and give the impression he wanted to marry Cleopatra and become a king of Egypt and/or Rome as that would have been career (and actual) suicide.
(Netflix-Queen Cleopatra-Official Trailer)
Moreover, the notion that Cleopatra and Egypt were the only thing keeping Rome running is also one of the most asinine things I’ve ever seen in a “historical” docu-series.
By the time of Cleopatra (i.e.: 50ish B.C.) being a Pharaoh, Ptomey Egypt was essentially a client state to the Roman Republic as Cleopatra’s father and predecessor, Ptomey XII, signed over his kingdom to the Roman Republic if he had no living heirs upon his death as a “thank you” for helping him win back his throne from his daughter.
Oh, and he also made the Senate the executors of his will, so they had every right to name whoever they wanted as the rulers of Egypt.
Then, to top it all off, the only reason why Cleopatra was not either executed or made co-Pharaoh by Caesar is due to her brother, Ptolemy XIII, fighting Rome and Caesar to be the sole ruler of Egypt (which is exactly what Cleopatra was doing by seducing Caesar and later Mark Antony), but was obviously defeated and killed.
There’s a lot more wrong with this trailer, but I’ve gone on long enough for one day.
I’ll give a more in-depth review once the documentary debuts on May 10th.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Netflix) (Queen Cleopatra | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Netflix) (Queen Cleopatra | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube)
In Text Image 2: (Netflix) (Queen Cleopatra | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube)
