Lampas - Volume 58, Issue 2, 2025

This article analyses the uproar that followed the release of the Netflix series Queen Cleopatra (2023). The fact that the Egyptian queen is played by a black actress caused a lot of controversy, especially in Egypt. My aim in this article is not so much to establish the colour of Cleopatra’s skin, but to analyse for whom and why this is so important. After all, the debate is bigger than Cleopatra alone and touches on the role that the study of classics has played (and still plays) in our Western culture. This is currently being debated, not least in the United States, where the series was conceived. Finally, I consider the position that I, as a historian, should take in this debate.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-95 CE or slightly later) is one of the most negative ancient sources about Cleopatra, which made one of her biographers, Grant (2001: 240), state that he is ‘savagely biased against the queen’. Josephus’s reports in his later works go beyond the usual Roman contempt for Cleopatra’s bad influence on Mark Antony, her sexual immorality, her greed and her perverted hunger for power. In both his Jewish antiquities and his Against Apion, written after a stay of several decades in Rome, Josephus portrays Cleopatra as a killer queen and in Apion even as the enemy of the Roman people. This contribution focuses on Josephus’s negative portrayal in the Jewish antiquities but I also argue that there is evidence for a more positive portrait of the queen in Josephus’s earlier work The Jewish war and some of the passages in the Antiquities.

In the reception of Cleopatra, there are very few images of her between Antiquity and the Late Middle Ages. This article focuses on some of those earliest images, found in manuscripts from the 14^th century. It argues that while it is likely that Cleopatra was generally imagined as a white woman, the absence of a strong visual tradition meant that she could be imagined as a racialized ‘Other’. This is evidenced by a depiction of her in the Abreujamen de las estorias, an early 14^th-century Occitan text which shows Cleopatra as a woman with dark skin and distinctive racialized features. In the manuscript tradition of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, however, she is always depicted as a white woman. With the popularity of Boccaccio’s work, it was this version of Cleopatra that became entrenched in the Western visual tradition.

The reception of Cleopatra VII is closely linked to the reception of Alexandria, her residence. Because 19th- and 20th-century European artists imagined Alexandria as an Oriental city, Cleopatra was styled as a royal woman who fits into this Oriental context. While 19^th- and 20^th-century European intellectuals and artists occasionally showed some awareness that Cleopatra was a representative of a Hellenistic monarchy, 20^th-century films portrayed her in a (pseudo-)Egyptian style. Her image as a femme fatale was reinforced by the peplum films that were most popular in the 1950s and 1960s: in the conservative representation of women, Cleopatra was the antithesis of the ‘good’ heroine who had to wait for her male hero to rescue her and marry her.

Cleopatra is part of the Egyptian collective memory, as is reflected in the streetscape of contemporary Egypt. Cleopatra is also part of the Alexandrian identity specifically, and her name is used to advertise particular products. Moreover, Cleopatra has been reenvisioned in Egyptian theatre, literature, dance, television and, to a lesser extent, film and music. In these media, the Egyptian reception of Cleopatra is alternately superficial and sometimes comic, or serious and explicitly political. Certain aspects of the Egyptian portrayal of Cleopatra are strongly influenced by Western images, and in some Egyptian cultural productions Cleopatra is a vehicle for associating Egypt with the Hellenistic and European worlds. In addition, some Egyptian representations of Cleopatra and her court express a sense of Egyptian superiority over other African groups. The image of Cleopatra was also used in the Egyptian nationalism that opposed Ottoman and British imperialism. In this sense, the Egyptian portrayal of Cleopatra is simultaneously Western and typically Egyptian.

Tattoos are a powerful and popular form of personal expression embraced by all segments of the population. The Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) is frequently seen in modern tattoos. This article explores how Cleopatra is represented in tattoos and what these representations reveal about contemporary notions of gender and identity. The portrayals of Cleopatra can be categorized into four types: the femme fatale, the youthful beauty, the African queen, and the divine pharaoh. Each type reflects different gender beliefs, ranging from challenging traditional female stereotypes to reinforcing conservative roles. Using the perspectives of classical reception studies and gender studies, this study shows how the image of Cleopatra in tattoos is influenced by both ancient and modern perceptions of female leadership.