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Posts:
2
From:
Utah
Registered:
2/28/06
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(1 of 5)
Feb 28, 2006 8:16 AM
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I know that for some that this is a subject that can be a little touchy, but my wife and I were discussing what ethnicity Cleopatra was. My understanding is that she is from the Prolemaic line and thus Macedonian descent. If this is correct, what exactly is the Macedonian descent? My understanding is that it is a mixture of Greek and Syrian blood lines. Help me understand what her ethnicity is.
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Posts:
10
Registered:
2/21/06
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(2 of 5)
Re: Cleopatra's Ethnicity
Feb 28, 2006 11:35 AM
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The whole Macedonian / Greek saga goes back to Alexander the Great and his father, King Philip II of Macedonia.
See the following link for a good history of Macedonia --
http://www.mymacedonia.net/
Another intersting tidbit regarding Cleopatra VII is that in addition to Caesarion, her child with Caesar, she gave birth to three children with Antony. When Cleopatra and Antony died, Caesarion was murdered, but the other three children were adopted and raised by Antony's abandoned wife, Octavia.
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Posts:
2
From:
California
Registered:
3/4/06
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(3 of 5)
Re: Cleopatra's Ethnicity
Mar 4, 2006 8:12 AM
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Of course Cleopatra was Macedonian. She was a descendant of the Ptolemys who governed Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great who had conquered Egypt. His kingdom was divided four ways after his death and the Ptolemy line became the rulers of Egypt by inheritance from Alexander the Great.
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Posts:
360
Registered:
8/19/05
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(4 of 5)
Re: Cleopatra's Ethnicity
Mar 26, 2006 4:29 PM
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Macedonians are from the northern area of Greece, and most of them at the time had blonde or red hair and very pale skins, not having been heavily mixed with Mediterranean stock. Ethnically they are--or were, in Cleopatra's time--more Slavic than Mediterranean, and a lot of them still are. She probably looked more like a Romanian or Bulgarian than like a person from southern Greece.
Cleopatra is believed to have been a redhead, and at least one stone profile alleged to be a portrait of her shows her having what's known as a 'tomato nose'--a rather prominent nose with a very large bulb on the end. That's a long way from Liz Taylor. Or, for that matter, from Theda Bara, whose real name was Theodosia Goodman, who portrayed Cleopatra in a silent in the teens, showing a lot more skin that Liz Taylor did in her version. Claudette Colbert portrayed her in the 30s, and she apparently didn't look much like Claudette Colbert either.
TexasCharley
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Posts:
3
Registered:
6/26/09
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(5 of 5)
Re: Cleopatra's Ethnicity
Jun 26, 2009 9:37 AM
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Waswild,
why would you mislead the original poster by sending him/her to a website filled with intentional inaccuracies and political propaganda?
As for the original poster's question, if you would like to know more on the ethnicity of ancient Macedonians, I suggest you visit one of the hundreds of thousands of libraries around the world and read the works of credible historians and authors, and avoid the works of basement pseudo-historians from FYROM.
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