Was Cleopatra brown or white?

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.”

Was Cleopatra a Lightskin?

Instead, he continues, Cleopatra “wore the headband and robes of a Greek monarch.” Stacy Schiff concurs Cleopatra was not dark-skinned, that “the Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor”, that her Ptolemaic relatives were described as “honey skinned”.

Was Cleopatra Black and did she speak Egyptian?

Cleopatra Spoke Egyptian. We do have early evidence that Cleopatra was the first ruler in her family to actually speak the native Egyptian language, rather than the Greek of the Ptolemies. Such could be evidence for an Egyptian ancestry, and could possibly but not necessarily include black African ancestry.

Did Cleopatra have dark hair and pale skin?

Ernle Bradford writes that it is “reasonable to infer” Cleopatra had dark hair and “pale olive skin” by how she portrays herself as a “Eastern Mediterranean type” on her official coins, and that she challenged Rome not as an Egyptian woman, “but as a civilized Greek.”

Was Cleopatra Greek or Roman?

Cleopatra’s official Ptolemaic coinage (which she would have approved) and the three Roman portrait busts of her considered authentic by scholars (which match her coins) portray Cleopatra as a Greek woman in style, including the Greek chiton, Hellenistic diadem, and Greek chignon.

What race were Cleopatra’s remains?

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”.