Why is Cleopatra black?!

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

Then don't play Civ. Ever read the Civilopedia? The number of times that thing contradicts itself is astounding, although I guess it's no more inconsistent than the Bible, Encyclopedia Britannica or Wikipedia, so maybe that's just an inevitable result when many people are working together on a single project...

Reasonable consistency. Which the Wikipedia and even the Civiliopedia provide. And I am not sure how making a website compares to writting up the Bible, but I am going to assume it is a bit easier.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Locutus

I'd merely be repeating myself: this is a game, not a history research project;

Never said it was or expected it to be.

Originally posted by Locutus
you're misinformed about Saladin and Cleopatra, and if we'd talk more I'm sure you have misconceptions about plenty of other civs as well. Nobody's perfect, not you, not me and not Firaxis either. Don't hold them to higher standards than to ones you can hold yourself.

I've already commented the first part. You have since failed to point out one bit of serious misinformation I supposedly spread about Cleopatra or Saladin. Stop the Ad hominen attacks already.

But, I am revisitng this because I just noticed the boldened bit. The funny thing is that I am not. In fact I am holding them to a much, much lower standard than I hold myself to. I also understand the need to conform to popular belief in order to sell.



That is why I proposed an "Egyptian Cleopatra".

But your reasoning is that since an Egyptian looking Cleopatra is not very likey (and may I point out again that a tanned Southern European, as long as he does not have blue eyes will not look very differnet from an Egyptian) we may as well go for an impossible black Cleopatra. But since none of the leaders are perfectly accurate we may as well make Shaka Zulu a green eyed Asian!

Originally posted by Locutus

I'm merely trying to calm you down a bit with sense and reason.

Odd, I tought I was doing that. POW I guess. I've already speant way too much time arguing about the arab thing you commented. It was just a bit too much you arguing the Arabs of civ are like the hypothetical "Europeans" of civ. They are not!

They are like the hypotetical "Iberians" or "Eastern Slavs" or "Germanic" civs we could have in Civlization. Or like the Scandianvian civ we alread had. Do you get my position on that sad off-topic point now?

Such groups would fit that silly 90% understandable criterion you pointed out. Yes you being Dutch can understand 90% of German and English with knowledge of just your native tongue. The same would not be true of a Bulgarian, heck I’m Slovenian and I don’t understand 90% of Russian! I could understand like 70% German but this is only because we have a few of their words left over from the millennia of first Frankish then Habsburg rule and because of how similar English can be to German.


Europe if it was treated the same as the rest of the world would have 3 or so civs. Just like let's say Japan, Mongolia and China.

[Locutus]

Wow, you are REALLY making an entire horde of elephants out of a mouse. I can't even be bothered to read all that...

All I was trying to say is that there's NO SUCH THING as an 'Arab civilization', having one in the game is a stretch of historical accuracy to begin with.

But Firaxis does want that part of the world represented in the game, which makes perfect sense and I happen to agree with. But doing so will lead to some weird inconsistencies like a Kurdish king of Egypt leading an Arabian civilization. If that's a big problem for you, maybe you should move on to other things, or stick to Civ4 and mod it to your liking. No need to get your knickers in a twist over a few (very) arguably misplaced dots on a map on a promotional website...

[Heraclitus]

Well now I know you did not read my posts, since just about everything you state in your posts has been thourghly debunked in my previous posts.




Also, I am tired of asking you to stop misrepresenting my opinions. What is this a hobby of yours?

[FadingBeano]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


The Arabs would disagree, not only where they unfiied but they conquered the Spanish and Persians as well.

And Quite possibly could have taken France. Now think on that for a bit if Arabs DID defeat France. Would be a much much different world.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
My point: Making Cleopatra look like a tanned Macedonian with pharoaonic symbols would not have hurt sales in any way.
It would ever so slightly improved the educational value of CivRev. Why not do it?

Educational value.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by FadingBeano


And Quite possibly could have taken France. Now think on that for a bit if Arabs DID defeat France. Would be a much much different world.

Yes, it would have. I imagine only Russia and Britain remaining Christian in such a world. The Scandinavians would probably remain pagan.

[Kc7mxo]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
What are you on about? I'm trying to point out that pop-culture refernces are more in favor of a "white Cleopatra" which is just as silly as a "black Cleopatra". You are just trying to make it seem I am arguing something I am not.



Example of a "white Cleopatra"

all this seems kinda, meh, as far as i'm concerned. a black cleo is just un expected as far as I'm concerned and will throw people for a loop. If anything she ought to look greek or middle eastern.

BUT, Liz Taylor is just absolute *yum* so I want her to look like lizzie.

Anyway, Hatty is a better choice for a female ruler regardless. Even firaxis says Cleo was an awful ruler who simply got her country turned into a roman vassal and then backed the wrong horse in the civil war before getting committing suicide.

[Heraclitus]

I really think they should have gone with Hatty as a leader despite name recognition.

[lord of the mark]

are people still debating this kind of s**t wrt Civ?

1. Saladins powerbase, from which he conquered, was Egypt, not Syria, the Arabian peninsula, or Palestine (of course there was NEVER a major arab state based in Palestine - Egypt was frequently a dominant power in the Levant in arab times) Heraclitus just looks silly arguing that, even if hes shifted to Cairo vs upper egypt. In Civ2, IIRC, they werent that refined in exactly where the starting city was.

2. Black cleo, and arguing against black cleo, is just SO done. Afrocentrism, anti-afrocentrism, counterrevisionism, etc all been done to death here (and a fortiori IRL)

3. Lincoln vs Cleo. We have, you know, photos of Lincoln

3. Its civ, man. You wanna argue accuracy, go argue about techs, or units. But leaders? Who like live for thousands of years? You want accuracy, real historical accuracy, in 4x game, play EU.

[smellymummy]

because most people associate cleopatra to egypt.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by smellymummy
because most people associate cleopatra to egypt.

If you are responding to the OP.


The ancient Egyptians where not black!



Now, to rescramble my password, lets hope it works this time or I will need to ask for that voluntary ban some people have mentioned.

[Steve7811]

OP:

If all these little things are bugging you so much, then just don't play Civ games. If you are looking for super accurate depiction, then, like the other poster suggested, dabble on modding Civ4 games to your liking.

Firaxis never said Civ games are a totally accurate depiction of history as it was. There are many elements in the Civ games that are not realistic. Perhaps you should argue about them too? But then again, if you do that, then you should just completely avoid playing Civ altogether.

It matters not whether Cleopatra is depicted as black, Mediterranean, or anything else because we have no accurate record of how she looked like. Lincoln, on the other hand, we do have pictures of him. So Firaxis made Cleopatra dark-skinned woman. How does this, in any way, hurt the gameplay? Like I mentioned, Civ games were never intended as a replacement for accurate teaching of history to the exact science. If that's what you are looking for, please take a history class or read many educational books available via Amazon or through your local bookstore.

You are making a HUGE deal out of absolutely nothing that matters extremely little to the game. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing. It has no useful purpose.

If you were in a history debate in a graduate history class about accuracy of many depicted things or beings, that is one thing. Here, we are talking a mere video game which made no claims that it was 100% accurate. It just has historical flavor to it.

How realistic is it that the leaders never die through 6000 years of history being told in Civ games? How realistic is it that you can have the Mongols build the Colossus of Rhodes? Are you going to argue about these too? Instead, why don't you apply your "expertise" into arguments and debates that really matters instead of trying to take it to a video game?

[sakirov123]

Cleopatra, she was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty who intermarried with each other -- she was not Egyptian, but Macedonian Greek, and therefore was certain to have the coloring of that ethnic group, which includes gold-blondes like Alexander the Great as well as brunettes. This dynasty emerged and perpetrated itself by intrigue, incest, conspiracy and murder. The Ptolemies ruled from the enclave fortress of Alexandria where anyone who was not of Hellenic origins could not roam freely, not to mention the palace that the Ptolemies could be found in would surrounded themselves with Hellenic peoples from royality to slaves to servants and upper class members. Alexandria is called a "cosmopolitan" city, but the native Egyptians played no part in its demography. The native Egyptians who were reduced to lower class citizens and peasants spoke their native language, worshipped their native gods, and harbored a smoldering resentment against the foreigners who build and lived in Alexandria, which the Egyptians still called Rhakotis, the name of the small abandoned fishing village on the site Alexander founded his city. The Ptolemaic Dynasty interested in keeping the throne in the family line, continued the incestuous Pharaonic practice of marrying family members, which ensured not only that the family blood line was persevered but also their Hellenic ethnicity. Both set of grandparents and the parents of Cleopatra VII were of Ptolemaic bloodline. Ancient busts and coins of Cleopatra depict her Caucasian ancestry. She would have been of fair complexion because the fashion of ancient Greek and Roman females from Royal and Upper class families associated tanned skin with lower class people who worked out in the fields. Egypt is a very sunny place but you may be sure that ancient Ptolemaic queens like Cleopatra didn't go outside much to work on their tans. Contemporary descriptions of her were of average build with a hawkish nose and red-brownish hair. In light of the matrilineal nature of Ptolemaic succession, similar to that of certain older civilizations, it is unlikely that she or her father would have been named as heirs to the throne had they been off-springs of 'concubines' who were of none Ptolemaic bloodline given the legitimate Ptolemaic children that were abound in the royal palace. Further more Cleopatra was known to the Romans whom she came into contact with. She lived in Rome before Caesar's death where many people knew what she looked like. During her conflicts between her and Octavius, Roman poets and propagandists did their utmost to exaggerate her "foreignness" as a "Hellenic" barbarian who even had Antony dress in Greek style. But these same Roman poets and propagandists make no ancient reference to the colour of her skin ever describe her as "black" or "dark" and we know from other Roman poets that is a description they applied to other people who did have African characteristics or 'black' / 'dark' skin tones, which is an odd omission from these Roman propagandists who made use of anything in her appearance that marked her out as much "different" from themselves as they could. The mere fact that no Roman propagandists ever described Cleopatra as "black" or of "mixed" origins is an interestingly odd omission from the propaganda that was used against her to make her as "different" from the Romans as possible if this "Cleopatra was black of mixed origins" theory was true and points the fact that she probably and more then likely was not of mixed origins or of black ancestory. I still laugh when I hear Afrocentric emphasising her supposed "blackness" in an "earthiness" and "the kind of non-European regality which allows someone to sit on the floor", when in fact, Cleopatra could be further from being black or having any "earthiness" about her. She shocked the republican Romans by sitting not on the floor, but on a throne of solid gold.

Also ancient Greece was never as "multiracial metropolis" as some believe it to have been. Cleopatra was the last ruling monarch of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, a Greco-Macedonian colonial government installed after the breakup of Alexander the Great's empire, which included Egypt. Alexandria was build by the Greeks, a Hellenistic city it had a Greek Royalty, Greek Upper and Middle class, and a Hammite lower class. The Ptolemies along with the Seleucids(who ruled the Greco-Macedonian Seleucid Empire from modern Syria through Anatolia and to Central Asia) were among several other Greco-Macedonian colonial governments in the region. They were corrupt, abusive Greek ethnocentric autocrats that tried to force Hellenistic culture upon people as varied as the native Egyptians, Hebrews, Arabs and numerous other people they ruled over. Needless to say native Egyptians regarded the Ptolemies as foreigners, twice Cleopatra's father escaped assassination attempts upon his life. Rome was the final inheritor of the Hellenistic world but Hellenism, the label that is applied to the culture which the dynasties derived from long outlived them. These Greek Dynasties made no great effort to assimilate native populations but in the end they succeeded in establishing a Hellenic culture better then they had a right to expect.

And this Middle Eastern identity is just as bogus as her supposed 'black' identity. No one retelling her story today could do so without brining awareness that she was a Western ruler of what is now an Islamic state, at the moment of its invasion by a western superpower. After all it was her greatggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggreat-grand dad who claimed none Europeans unworthy of ruling over Europeans:

"Yes a son of Roxane or Barsine really is a fitting ruler for the Macedonian-Hellenic people! Even to utter his name will be offensive for Europe, since he will be mostly captive. Is that what defeating the Persians will have meant for us - being slaves to their descendants?" - Ptolemy I Soter; Quintus Curtius Rufus

Lastly Cleopatra as a royal born Greek lady would have been a light skinned Caucasian European looking, as depictions of her and her family clearly indicate. Greeks were and still are light skinned Cacuasians. Have you seen their artifacts and other depictions ancient Greeks made of themselves? They depicted themselves in similar phenotypes found in modern Greeks today, for the most part Caucasian light skinned individuals. The Arab scholar Ibn Butlan once noted that Greeks have "fair hair" and "blue eyes", this does not mean ALL Greeks were/are of Nordic appearance, it merely suggests that the blond-haired & blue-eyed types is more common among Southern Europeans like Greeks, Italians, Serbs, etc. and fair coloring was very common among Cleopatra's family line, than M.E. and stood out more as a characteristic worthy of mention by Ibn Butlan. Even in the ancient writing of Homers epic fair Greeks are mentioned. The ancient epics describe Helen as fair haired, Achilles as fair haired, Menelaos as red haired, Hermes Praxiteles is depicted with red hair. Greeks depicted themselves both dark haired, blonde haired and red haired because fair Greeks have existed since ancient times.

[Heraclitus]

You see what bugs me is that they are going against such an important fact, the other stuff dosen't bother me as much.


Making Cleopatra black makes as much sense as making Tokugawa look Italian. It is a gross rewriting of history, it turns civ 4 from a fun unrealistic game about human history to a fantasy game.

I doidn't expect historical accuracy, but I didn't expect them to change history when it doesn't affect game play just so they can cater to American Afrocentrist lobby's.