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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Found: The Sister Cleopatra Killed







http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1162130/Found-Skeleton-younger-sister-Cleopatra-murdered.html


New exciting proof that Cleopatra was of African descent and killed her sister!

Really?


Forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of the queen’s younger sister, murdered over 2,000 years ago.

ARCHEOLOGISTS and forensic experts believe they have identified the skeleton of Cleopatra’s younger sister, murdered more than 2,000 years ago on the orders of the Egyptian queen.


The remains of Princess Arsinöe, put to death in 41BC on the orders of Cleopatra and her Roman lover Mark Antony to eliminate her as a rival, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified.

The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, has provided pointers to Cleopatra’s true ethnicity. Scholars have long debated whether she was Greek or Macedonian like her ancestor the original Ptolemy, a Macedonian general who was made ruler of Egypt by Alexander the Great, or whether she was north African.

Evidence obtained by studying the dimensions of Arsinöe’s skull shows she had some of the characteristics of white Europeans, ancient Egyptians and black Africans, indicating that Cleopatra was probably of mixed race, too. They were daughters of Ptolemy XII by different wives......


2 comments:

  1. Excellent! Since the early 80s I've was thought and shown evidence that Cleopatra was of African stock by my Black Studies professors at my university. Thank you for providing this article.

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  2. You're welcome...
    The typical story says that Cleopatra
    was descended from one of
    Alexander the Great's generals,
    who took over ruling Egypt after
    Alexander's empire broke up.
    This would make Cleopatra a
    Greek queen of an African country.

    All of this raises the question of what
    exactly do we mean by "African ancestry"?
    If we go back far enough,
    the entire human species could be
    of African descent,
    and there was almost certainly
    interbreeding between
    Greek and Egyptian populations
    over the millennia that these
    two cultures were in contact
    even before Cleopatra was born.

    The cranio-facial measurements of "Arsinoe"
    are the basis of the assignment
    of this African ancestry.
    The idea is to take measurements
    of the skull and assign the individual
    to the ancestral category/race
    to which they are most similar.
    The techniques that have been
    developed for distinguishing
    different racial types based on
    cranio-facial measurements,
    are often qualitative,
    rather than purely metric.
    BUT, there is a trend in anthropology
    today that recognizes that our
    idea of race is much more based
    on cultural characteristics
    (with a slight input from
    morphological characteristics
    such as skin colour),
    than it is based on any
    genuine underlying physical differences.

    Anyways, compared to the rest
    of her colorful and tumultuous life,
    the question of whether
    Cleopatra had African ancestry
    is probably the least
    interesting thing about her.

    ReplyDelete