The World Briefly

April 21, 2023

The Gray

Egypt

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A new Netflix documentary series sparked outrage in Egypt this week for portraying ancient Egyptian Queen Cleopatra as a Black woman, with one lawyer calling for the streaming platform to be blocked in the North African country, the Telegraph reported.

The issue stems from a trailer for the series “African Queens,” which shows the first-century BCE queen as a woman of Black African descent – played by mixed-race British actress Adele James.

US actress and executive producer Jada Pinkett Smith said the decision to cast a non-white Cleopatra was aimed at having Black actresses tell the stories of Black queens.

But the trailer stirred controversy in Egypt, with leading Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass releasing a statement saying that “Cleopatra was not black.”

Hawass said the docu-series “gives wrong information on ancient Egypt,” adding that Cleopatra was of Greek descent.

A number of Afrocentrist scholars have proposed that the ancient Egyptian queen was Black – but that theory has mostly been rejected by academia.

Historians say that Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty that began with Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy I in the fourth century BCE.

Ptolemy I became ruler of Egypt following Alexander the Great’s death when the latter’s empire was broken up between his generals.

The uproar over the Netflix series comes after US comedian Kevin Hart canceled his planned show in Egypt in February following public outcry over his past Afrocentric views on ancient Egyptian history, according to Middle East Monitor.

This story originally appeared in the April 21, 2023 newsletter, Paradise, Imperfect.