Was Cleopatra black? Ancient categories and modern debates

Charlotte frames the ethnicity question and notes Greeks and Romans seldom recorded skin colour.

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Episode notes

In the first episode of a five-part series, Mary and Charlotte tell the story of Queen Cleopatra’s early years. Forget, for the time being, Elizabeth Taylor rolling out of a rug, poisonous asps and baths of asses’ milk. Focus instead on inbreeding and incest, because Cleopatra, child of Ptolemy the Flute-Player, married her brother, Ptolemy 13th. When he died in suspicious circumstances, she married another brother, Ptolemy 14th.

Mary and Charlotte discuss why the Ptolemy dynasty of Egypt was so fixed on keeping it in the family. In the second half of the episode, they explore the controversial issue of race in Cleopatra studies. On one hand, she was born into a dynasty from Greece which prided itself on inbreeding. On the other, it seems likely that beneath the official accounts, a great deal of cavorting went on beyond the royal household. The main reason it is so hard to reach any definitive conclusion is that ancient writers were uninterested in race as we understand it. They seemed not to fixate or even be interested in skin colour.

The episode ends with Cleopatra primed to meet Julius Caesar.

Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

There is a whole series of reliable modern biographies of Cleopatra (as well as many more unreliable accounts). This is a short selection of the trustworthy:

D. Roller: Cleopatra: a biography (Oxford UP, pb, 2011)

S. Schiff, Cleopatra: a life (Virgin books, pb, 2011)

J. Tyldesley, Cleopatra: last queen of Egypt (ProfileBooks, pb, 2009)

For the wider history of the dynasty:

Alan Bowman: Egypt after the Pharaohs (British Museum Press, pb, 1996)

L. Llewellyn-Jones, The Cleopatras (Wildfire, pb, 2025)

For Alexandria and its culture:

E. Richardson, Alexandria: the quest for the lost city (Bloomsbury, pb, 2022)

Islam Issa, Alexandria: the city that changed the world (Sceptre, pb, 2024)

For Cleopatra and race:

In addition to the biographies cited, you can get an idea of the debates, here:

https://theamericanscholar.org/black-cleopatra/