We’ve mentioned this story in the headlines before but at the end of last week it took a new turn. Netflix is preparing to release a new show called Queen Cleopatra which was produced by Jada Pinkett Smith. Initially I was under the impression this was a dramatization of the story but in fact it’s being promoted as a historical documentary. There’s just one problem which is that Cleopatra is being played by black actress Adele James and that choice does not sit well with Egypt’s Supreme Council Of Antiquities. Last week, the SCA, which is responsible for safeguarding Egypt’s cultural history, weighed in on the matter.

The 160-year-old SCA, which is responsible for Egypt’s cultural heritage and all its archaeological sites, put out a press release on Thursday giving its reaction to the portrayal of Cleopatra with “African features and dark skin”.

“The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities confirms that Queen Cleopatra had light skin and Hellenistic (Greek) features,” the body said in the statement posted on the website of Egypt’s Ministry of Culture and Antiquities…

“The appearance of the heroine 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,” he said.

Pinkett-Smith posted a statement about the show last week which makes it clear that the idea of Cleopatra as a black queen was the main reason she was interested in the show. The statement also mentions some academic experts they consulted about the topic.

“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them,” Pinkett Smith tells Tudum. The sad part is that we don’t have ready access to these historical women who were so powerful and were the backbones of African nations.”

In the series, Queen Cleopatra is played by Adele James (Casualty). The creative choice to cast an actor of mixed heritage to play Cleopatra is a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler’s race. During the time of her reign, Egypt’s population was multicultural and multiracial. Cleopatra’s race was unlikely to be documented, and the identities of her mother and paternal grandparents weren’t known. Some speculate she was a native Egyptian woman, while others say she was Greek.

…Working with leading historians and experts including Shelley Haley (Professor of Classics and African Studies, Hamilton College) and Dr. Sally-Ann Ashton (Cleopatra scholar), we explore Cleopatra’s story as a queen, strategist, ruler of formidable intellect as well as a woman whose heritage is the subject of great debate. Her ethnicity is not the focus of Queen Cleopatra, but we did intentionally decide to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.”

Dr. Sally-Ann Ashton co-wrote a book about Cleopatra. I haven’t read it but one of the reviewers (from 2013, so long before this show) made clear what he found the central idea of the book to be:

The most important point, I think (in the author’s view and brought home to the reader) is that she didn’t see herself (nor was she) Greek, but Egyptian. This makes sense given that, by the time she was born, many generations of the Ptolemies had ruled Egypt (beginning in the late 4th century BC with Alexander’s death), and it’s likely that the royal family had been thoroughly assimilated into Egyptian culture. That’s not a new idea either, but there are still some who incorrectly emphasize her Macedonian roots.

The other academic listed is Dr. Shelley Haley who gave an interview a few years ago describing how she had a dream about Cleopatra:

While I was at Howard. It started with Cleopatra. She haunted me. I had a dream where Cleopatra came to me and said, “Why aren’t you telling my story?” When I woke up, I answered her in my head, “There’s nothing to tell! What is there to say except what’s already been said?”

At Howard I taught a course on women in antiquity. We were talking about Cleopatra, and I explained that she was a Greek ruler by genealogy. I had checked out the Cambridge Ancient History and brought it to class, and I showed my students the genealogy that’s printed in the back of the book. One student, whose name was Roy, pointed to the question mark by Cleopatra’s grandmother in the genealogy. He asked me, “What does this mean?” I said, “That just means they don’t know her name.” But he pointed below the question mark, where they had put in parentheses “Egyptian concubine.” And Roy asked me, “What about that?” Honestly, until that student put his finger there, I had never seen it. That just goes to show how manipulative a master narrative can be. I never saw until that moment that even the Cambridge Ancient History can leave room for interpretation, can leave open a space for you to imagine the life of that Egyptian concubine who became the grandmother of Cleopatra.

The promo for the show makes it pretty clear that this isn’t just an incidental part of the production. It ends with Dr. Shelley Haley saying, “I remember my grandmother saying to me ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.'”

To be fair, it’s not clear exactly what Haley is arguing here. In her 1993 paper she seems to be arguing that Cleopatra was an important symbolic figure for black feminists even if it’s not clear she was actually black. Maybe that’s the argument being made in the show as well?

This feels like the 1619 Project approach to history where if you can find even one historian willing to back you up you can trumpet that view loudly while largely ignoring the evidence for the alternatives. The ancestry of Cleopatra does have some blanks in it but for reasons spelled out here, it’s unlikely that Cleopatra had any Egyptian ancestors.

Update: This person does recreations of historical figures based on statues and coinage. This video walks through the basic questions about Cleopatra’s ancestry and also provides some lifelike recreations based on likenesses created during her lifetime. This was made a year ago so prior to the current controversy over the Netflix show.