CLEOPATRA: BLACK OR WHITE pt. 1 of 5

An investigation into the origins of Cleopatra and ancient Egypt

This is part 1 of a 5 part series. Each instalment will be released weekly to premium subscribers of ALKEBULAN. Free articles will continue to be available to everyone.

A HUMAN ODYSSEY CORRUPTED

On October 31st 1968 Stanley Kubrick released 2001 a Space Odyssey. He imagined that by the year 2001 we would have conquered the final frontier. This wasn’t seen as an unattainable vision for our future for by that time mankind had discovered fire, invented the wheel, harnessed electricity, built the plane, automobile, telephone and in 1969 we even walked on the moon.

We’re well past that year now but with all our advancements, we’re still caught up in conversations about skin colour as a determinant of human worth and station, conversations about race.

With this, an age old question has reared its head due to the release of a Netflix documentary; Was Queen Cleopatra black?

What I’m going to present won’t be an argument as to whether Cleopatra was black or white, but a hypothesis based on an even more pertinent supposition; Does it matter?

In order to answer this question we need to understand the context within which investigations on ancient Egypt have existed. My captive audience, let us begin…