"Cleopatra Was Not Black" Says Egypt's Former Minister of Antiquities

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former Minister of Antiquities, debunks Netflix's Cleopatra documentary.

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Sep 28, 2023

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Cleopatra’s race

“I do not think that the film that was made by Netflix about Cleopatra is fair,” he commented. “It is not fair at all. Because it is not good to show Cleopatra as black.” But the Egyptian scholar clarified that his opinion was not rooted in racism. “I would object also anyone who will make Cleopatra blonde,” he added. “Because Cleopatra was not black. Cleopatra was not blonde.”

“Cleopatra was a very light, a Mediterranean beautiful woman,” the Egyptian academic explained. “And there is no evidence at all that Cleopatra was blonde or black.” In Hawass’ professional opinion, the Netflix documentary is misrepresenting the facts about the famous Egyptian Queen.

“Netflix is changing history,” Zahi argued. “This is a documentary. If you make a documentary, it has to be the truth.” “You invite scholars, archeologists, to give their opinion about Cleopatra,” he continued. “No one, no archeologist, can say at all that Cleopatra was black.”

Zahi explained that, while he understood the freedom of poetic license, he did not appreciate the Netflix show misrepresenting itself as a real, accurate documentary. “If it’s drama, if Netflix make a drama film, they have the right to do what they want,” he said of the controversial casting choice. “But [you have] to write at the beginning of the film that this film has nothing to do with history. It is from the imagination of the film director, or the film producer.”

Changing history

The world-renowned Egyptologist invites the listener to take a look at the evidence regarding Cleopatra’s appearance. “We have many statues of Cleopatra. One at the Vatican. One at the Rosicrucian Museum,” he observed. Hawass also spoke directly from his own personal research findings. “And I discovered one statue in my excavation in cooperation with Kathleen Martinez on the search of the tomb of Cleopatra, inside a temple called Taposiris Magna, located 35 kilometers west of Alexandria. We found a beautiful face of Cleopatra. We also discovered about 15 coins have the face and name of Cleopatra. And we do have the famous scene of Cleopatra depicted on the facade of the temple of Hathor, the goddess of beauty and love in Dendera. If you look at the image of Cleopatra and the scenes, you will never see any features that can show Cleopatra black.”

“The reason that all of us are against this film, because the film is not following history,” Hawass asserted of himself and other scholarly opponents of the Netflix show. “The film is making a false imagination about Cleopatra on history.” “Cleopatra was a Macedonian queen,” the scholar insisted. “If you look at all the queens and the princesses of Macedonia, no one was really black.”

Zahi explained how, in light of what we know about Cleopatra’s ancestry, it is wildly implausible to think that the Egyptian pharaohess was black. “Also, at the same time, you can see the marriage of the Ptolemic, Ptolemy XII was the father. He had a son, Ptolemy XIII, and Cleopatra. Then there is no way that we can see Cleopatra as black at all.”

Mediterranean sex appeal

For Hawass, Cleopatra’s gorgeous Mediterranean look was the secret behind her exotic sex appeal. To arbitrarily Africanize her appearance would completely upend our understanding of this ancient person. “How can she capture the heart of Caesar?” He asked jokingly. “There was no way. If she was blonde, she will not capture the hearts. Because there were many blonde women in Rome. If she were black, she would not capture his heart. Because in that time, all many blacks were not really from the family of the Ptolemies.”

Cleopatra’s distinctly Mediterranean look was deeply enchanting not only to Caesar, but to other Roman men, such as Mark Antony and Octavian. “She has a beautiful Mediterranean face,” Zahi said. “The first time that when she met Caesar, to ask him to help her become the Queen of Egypt. Caesar did make her the queen. And after that he fell in love with her. And he married her, and he had a son from her called Caesarion. She went for one year to live in Rome. After Caesar was assassinated, she came back to Egypt. Mark Antony came to take revenge from her, but actually, from the first moment they met in a boat, he fell in love with her. And never went to Rome in that time. He stayed in Egypt. And she took him on a cruise to see the marvelous civilization of Egypt. And after that Octavian came to take revenge from Cleopatra and Mark Antony. At the Battle of Actium, he defeated Mark Antony. After after that, that was the end of Cleopatra.”

It is hard to know for sure what Cleopatra looked like, but based on the existing evidence, she was almost certainly not black. On this note, Zahi speculated about the whereabouts of Cleopatra’s body. “Some people think that Cleopatra was buried beside her palace in a tomb under the water. But we do think that maybe she was buried inside this temple of Taposiris Magna. But we still searching right now.”

Dark agenda

Zahi criticized the Netflix show as a flagrantly politicized distortion of ancient Egyptian history to promote pan-Africanist ideology. But he didn’t blame the media company itself; he instead blamed Jada Pickett Smith. “I really don’t think that Netflix is really intended to do that,” the former Egyptian minister speculated. “I think Netflix had a film made by the wife of Will Smith. She had, she is the one that has an agenda. She is the one that want to proof that ancient Egypt was black. But this is not true. Because, look at Egypt. Egypt was controlled and ruled on Dynasty 25. At the end of Egyptian history, by Kush Kingdom, the black kingdom.” He held up his pointer finger in humorous disbelief. “One dynasty!”

Hawass mocked the black Kush Kingdom as a historically irrelevant minor dynasty, which was not responsible for Egypt’s dynamic culture. “In that time, they made pyramids,” he explained, “And the pyramids were like hills. There is no way to compare the pyramids of Meroe to the pyramids of Egypt. Means that this dynasty did not make the civilization of Egypt. This dynasty has nothing to do with ancient Egypt.”

But it gets even worse for the Netflix show. Many times, the ancient Egyptians were actually enemies with their black African neighbors. “You look at all the senses on the temples of the Old, the Middle, and the New Kingdom. And you see the Egyptian Kingdom is sitting their enemies. In front of him, a Nubian, a man from Africa, a Libyan, an Asiatic. Look at the faces of the Nubian, or the faces of the African. They cannot look like the Egyptian at all,” Hawass explained.

According to Hawass, the misconception that the ancient Egyptians were black originated with a Senegalese politician named Cheikh Anta Diop, who drew this false conclusion after seeing black statues of Ramesses II and Tutankhamun. UNESCO declared in 1970 that there was no evidence to prove this claim.

The famed Egyptian scholar argued that there are two prevalent explanations for the ethnic origins of ancient Egyptians. They were either a Semitic people from Asia, or a Hamitic people from Africa. The people from the Delta was very light-skinned. The people of Upper Egypt were dark, but not black. But there is a third theory. Flinders Petrie, an Englishman who founded modern Egyptology, discovered a large cemetery in Naqada. He announced that those people might have founded Egyptian civilization. Hawass thus concluded that ethnic Egyptians, not black Africans, were the true founders of ancient Egyptian civilization.