There is a lot of misunderstanding about the color of Cleopatra’s skin. For many years it was thought that she was a white woman since that’s how she was portrayed in movies and books.
Now, there are a lot of people who think that Cleopatra was a black woman. Some theories state that because she was an ‘African’ woman, she would have had an African sister.
But let’s talk about her real descendance.
The Birth and Youth of Cleopatra
There were several queens named Cleopatra that ruled ‘ancient’ Egypt, but Cleopatra VII was the most famous one. She was born in the Ptolemaic Kingdom around 70 B.C.¹
This kingdom was an ancient Hellenic Kingdom based in the area that we know as Egypt. Ptolemy I, a partner of Alexander the Great, founded it — he was, like his ruler Greek/Macedonian.
Cleopatra’s parents are unknown, but her father was likely Ptolemy XII, and her mother was probably Cleopatra VI Tryphaena, who were both of Greek/Ptolemic descent.
One of the people close to Cleopatra was Philostratos, her tutor. He taught her Greek and Philosophy, so she didn’t speak a word of Egyptian.
Was She Black?
To be very short, probably not. As I stated above, she was born in the Ptolemaic Kingdom and had Greek/Macedonian descent parents, which assumes that she was a pale-skinned woman.
Another reason to assume that Cleopatra was a white Greek woman is that she agreed to be portrayed on a coin in the Greek style.
Cleopatra is likely shown in some remaining Roman frescoes from Pompeii and Herculaneum, in addition to statues and coins.²
A contemporaneous depiction from Pompeii’s House of Marcus Fabius Rufus portrays the queen as the goddess Venus Genetrix bearing a cupid in her arms, presumably an unusual depiction of her son Caesarion, whom the Roman dictator Julius Caesar fathered.
There is another claim by historian Adrian Goldsworthy: he makes the point that Cleopatra, who had Macedonian ancestors and a little Syrian hair, was most likely not dark-skinned.³
Opposing Claims
In 2009, a BBC documentary hypothesized that Arsinoe IV of Egypt, Cleopatra VII’s half-sister, may have been part North African and that Cleopatra’s mother, and thus Cleopatra herself, may have been part North African as well.⁴
This was primarily focused on the claims of Austrian Academy of Sciences member Hilke Thür, who investigated a headless skeleton of a female infant in a 20 BCE tomb in Ephesus (modern Turkey) in the 1990s, along with old observations and photos of the now-missing skull. She assumed the body belonged to Arsinoe.
What we know about cleopetra is just imagination. And different people imagine it differently. No one knows which is actually true.