Gal Gadot as Cleopatra Makes Archaeological Sense
DNA analysis has shown that the closest relatives of ancient Egyptians are today’s Levantines, so Israeli Gal Gadot as Cleopatra is a pretty good matchGal Gadot (right) superimposed on photograph of Cleopatra VII statue fragment, at the Royal Ontario MuseumCredit: Cleopatra image by Daderot, Gal Gadot image by Martin Meissner/AP
Ariel David
Published at 09:25
Following this week’s announcement that the Israeli actress Gal Gadot will play ancient Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra in a new movie, social media erupted in a bitter battle between advocates for greater diversity in film, and opponents of what is perceived as political correctness gone mad.
Critics contend that a person of color should have been cast as Cleopatra: an African, Arab or mixed-heritage actress should have been given the part – but not Gadot, a Jew of Eastern European descent. The pro-Gadot camp countered that Cleopatra herself was apparently a white woman of Greek or Macedonian descent and that historical records show Arabs only reached Egypt centuries after Cleopatra’s death. The first century B.C.E. queen was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, distant descendants of Ptolemy, the general who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the country.
The more informed among Gadot’s detractors retorted that while Cleopatra was indeed the daughter and successor of King Ptolemy XII, her mother may have been of local African stock, meaning that the famed lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony was possibly of mixed heritage.
Greater diversity in film is a reasonable and noble cause, but the backlash is tinged with heavy political and ideological undertones, and is accompanied by anti-Israel and antisemitic abuse against Gadot.
On one hand, the latest controversy looks like a bad sequel to the one over whether Gadot should be considered white or a person of color, which erupted when she was cast as Wonder Woman.
On the other hand, given that history and archaeology have been mobilized by both sides, this debate does raise an interesting question: what do we really know about the ethnic background of the ostensibly beautiful Cleopatra and of the ancient Egyptians in general?
The short answer is: it’s complicated. Portraits of the queen on coins from the period don’t help us clarify the issue, although they do paint a rather unflattering picture that suggests Cleopatra’s legendary beauty was a later historical embellishment. Some experts think it likely that Cleopatra may have had local Egyptian or African ancestry, but there is no clear evidence either way.
The unusual case of an unknown mother
Officially known as Cleopatra VII Philopator, the future queen of Egypt was born in 70 or 69 B.C.E., the third of Ptolemy XII’s six children. The main problems in establishing her exact background are that her tomb has never been found and her mother is unknown.
Some experts, like Yale classicist and author of “Cleopatra and Rome” Diana Kleiner, suspect her mother was Ptolemy XII’s first wife, Cleopatra V Tryphaena. This opens up a whole new can of worms, because this Cleopatra’s origins are also unclear, though it has been suggested that she may have been Ptolemy’s sister. This would not be surprising because the Hellenistic dynasty did not like to mix with the local population and adopted the traditions of incestuous marriage and inbreeding that had been common among earlier generations of pharaonic rulers.
Cleopatra VII herself first ascended to the throne in 51 B.C.E. as the wife of her younger brother Ptolemy XIII, whom she later eliminated in a power struggle with the support of Julius Caesar.
However, Cleopatra Tryphaena died right around the time of Cleopatra VII’s birth – and some experts have suggested her mother may have been somebody else entirely, who remains unidentified. For example, the Egyptologist Sally-Ann Ashton, who helped create a computerized 3D reconstruction of Cleopatra’s visage based on ancient artifacts, postulates that she may have been the daughter of a local Egyptian concubine of Ptolemy XII.
A murdered sister
The effort to prove that Cleopatra was a dark-skinned woman of mixed ancestry predates the brouhaha over the casting of Gadot. Perhaps the strongest case is presented by a 2009 BBC documentary which focused on the figure of Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra’s younger sister and another of her rivals for the throne.
Arsinoe, who along with her brother was on the losing end of the power struggle with Cleopatra and her Roman allies, was first exiled to Ephesus, in today’s Turkey, and then murdered on the orders of Mark Anthony in 41 B.C.E. The researchers behind the documentary claimed that a tomb found in Ephesus in the 1920s was Arsinoe’s and that measurements of the skull unearthed in that burial displayed hallmarks of African ancestry.
Relief of Cleopatra, left, and Cesarion on the Temple of Dendera, EgyptCredit: Rowan
Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in a scene from "Wonder Woman 1984"Credit: Clay Enos/ Warner Bros Pictures
“It has got this long head shape,” forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson said at the time. “That’s something you see quite frequently in ancient Egyptians and black Africans. It could suggest a mixture of ancestry.” In other words, if Arsinoe had African ancestry so did her more famous sister, the researchers postulated.
Leaving aside that establishing anybody’s ancestry using skull measurements is a fraught and unreliable endeavor, many experts were skeptical of the documentary’s conclusions back when it first aired. Renowned Oxford classics professor Mary Beard noted that there is little evidence to link that particular tomb in Ephesus to Arsinoe. Also, just as we are not sure of who Cleopatra’s mother was, we cannot be sure that the rival siblings were full sisters rather than daughters of Ptolemy XII from different women.
Be that as it may, the argument that Cleopatra was of African heritage misses a broader point.
Historical ironies
Even if Cleopatra herself was a local woman and not an inbred Macedonian aristocrat, Gadot would still be appropriate to play the role – perhaps even more so. Genetic analysis of 90 mummified remains of ancient Egyptians who lived between 1388 B.C.E. (just before the time of Ramses II) to 426 C.E. (the late Roman period) concluded that these people (not just the Egyptian elites but ordinary folk whose remains were preserved) had “higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians,” according to the 2017 study published in Nature Communications.
The fact that the ancient Egyptians’ closest living relatives are people who live in Israel, Jordan and the surrounding region today, and not modern Egyptians, is not entirely surprising. We know that in antiquity there was often massive immigration from the Levant, especially from Canaan, into pharaonic Egypt.
Meanwhile, the same study found that today’s Egyptians have a much stronger African genetic component than their pharaonic ancestors, which stems from an influx from sub-Saharan Africa well after the Roman period, in other words long, long after Cleopatra lived.
The mummy DNA study highlights the irony of the anti-Gadot campaign. Inadvertently it makes a very good argument for casting the Israeli actress in the role of the Egyptian queen. If indeed Cleopatra had mixed Greek and ancient Egyptian heritage and if we accept that ancestry should be a factor when choosing an actor to play a historical character (a big if) then someone of European and Levantine descent such as Gadot seems like a good match. In fact, this would seem like the closest match we could get without actually bringing back to life an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, and anyone who has seen “The Mummy” knows that that would be an extraordinarily bad idea.
The Khazar myth
Of course there will always be those who will argue that Ashkenazim, Jews of Eastern European descent like Gadot, are just white Europeans and have no link to the ancient Israelites or other inhabitants of the Levant. The idea is based on the theory, itself colored by a strong political bias, that Ashkenazim descended from the Khazars, a Caucasian people who converted to Judaism during the Middle Ages. This thesis continues to hold some currency, especially in anti-Israel and antisemitic circles, even though a plethora of historical and genetic studies have debunked it. As an example, one study, published in 2014 in Nature Communications, sequenced the genome of 128 Ashkenazi Jews and concluded that this group “is an even mix of European and Middle Eastern ancestral populations.”
So, to sum this up, we may still not know whether Cleopatra, or Gadot, should be called white or persons of color, but at least, from what history and archaeology can tell us, there seems to be no inherent inaccuracy or distortion in having a Jewish Ashkenazi actress play the last queen of Egypt. Enjoy the movie.
Gal Gadot as Cleopatra makes archaeological sense - Archaeology - Haa…
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