re: Gal Gadot cast as Cleopatra, and people aren't happy about it

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You clearly know more than my rudimentary historical remembrance from college.

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Cleopatra was a descendant of Ptolemy I, a Macedonian Greek

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Cleopatra’s ethnicity remains a mystery

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She looks like a slightly feminine Alexander the Great to me.

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As a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, Cleopatra was directly descended from Ptolemaios I Soter, one of Alexander the Great’s generals and a member of the Diadochoi, the group of generals who divided up Alexander’s empire amongst themselves. The Ptolemies were heavily inbred and it was customary for brothers and sisters in the royal family to marry each other.

The Ptolemies rarely ever married outsiders and, when they did, they usually only married members of other Greek royal families. In fact, Cleopatra’s only known non-Greek ancestor was her very distant ancestor Apama, who was the Sogdian wife of the Greek king Seleukos I Nikator, who was also one of the Diadochoi.

Consequently, Cleopatra’s family tree looks more like a ladder than a “tree.” Cleopatra’s father was Ptolemaios XII Auletes. Her mother was most likely Kleopatra V Tryphaina, who was her father’s main wife, as well as his sister or cousin. Cleopatra herself married two of her own brothers in succession: Ptolemaios XIII Theos Philopator and Ptolemaios XIV.

In addition to being ethnically Greek, the Ptolemies were also culturally Greek. Greek was the only language that most of the Ptolemies ever learned to speak and, while they portrayed themselves as pharaohs to their Egyptian subjects, they thought of themselves—and portrayed themselves to the world—as thoroughly Greek monarchs. In fact, Cleopatra herself was the only member of her family who ever even learned to speak the Egyptian language at all. She almost certainly would have thought of herself primarily as a Greek queen.

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