CLEOPATRA WAS A BLONDE - (terrific brief history of Egypt's rich past; optimistic democratic future)

TO THE POINT.COM ^ | MARCH 24, 2005 | DR. JACK WHEELER

[CHARLITE]

"He’s got to launch Egypt on the road to actual democracy.

That, plus an unshackling of the Egyptian economy with solid free market reforms – which has already started – will be a blow from which Arab Moslem terrorism and radicalism may not be able to recover. A free democratic Egypt is the doom of radical Islam.

Dr. Wheeler is right. If 75 million Egyptians reject Muslim-Islamic extremism and join an emerging prosperous, democratic Middle East, then terrorism will follow Soviet communism on Ronald Reagan's dust heap of history.

If Ronaldus Magnus were alive today, he would be championing the spread of freedom and liberty around the world, just as President George W. Bush is doing.......and the liberals would be opposing Reagan as loudly as they are opposing Bush.

[Lancey Howard]

Interesting post BUMP!

[anniegetyourgun]

Well, it's true that we do have more fun......

[TRY ONE]

"Cleopatra was in fact a blonde"

I bettcha they did "The Shower curtain Test" as performed in the Movie Mash ---

[bannie]

Wonderful read! BUMP!

(thank you!)

[Alter Kaker]

Has this man ever met a Greek woman? They're not exactly known for being overwhelmingly blonde. Nobody knows for sure what Cleopatra looked like, although some coins suggest she was large and dumpy.

[Cowboy Bob]

No, this is not a blonde joke. If you want one of those, go to this week’s Humor File. Cleopatra was in fact a blonde. That’s because she was not Egyptian. She was a Macedonian Greek, with hair as blonde as Alexander’s.

My father (studied Greek and Latin) has been telling me this for years...

[Alter Kaker]

http://sangha.net/messengers/cleopatra/mon2su.jpg

We have no idea what this woman's hair color was.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

Okay. Getting back to the original statement that Cleo was blond, nothing more was said about it. I’ve been to Greece and the folks there have dark hair. Outside of Greece, I have never met a blond Greek.

It was an interesting post though.

[Radix]

Well I knew that Alexander was a blonde because it was in that movie which I saw previews for.

[tiamat]

Good post, Charlite!

[tiamat]

Walk Like An Egyptian...

[GSlob]

Hmm.. all the contemporary Greeks I know are VERY dark-haired. Maybe there have been blondes once, but they seem to have become pretty rare.

[CzarNicky]

I thought she was black. That's what the multiculturalists told me.

[Frank_2001]

Great article!

[patton]

1) Egypt is the #2 reciepient of US foreign aide

2) Egypt is the #1 producer of Castor Oil in the world

3) The Immediate byproduct of castor-oil production is ricin

[SedVictaCatoni]

Has this man ever met a Greek woman? They're not exactly known for being overwhelmingly blonde. Nobody knows for sure what Cleopatra looked like, although some coins suggest she was large and dumpy.

Macedonian does not mean Greek - they were a different ethnic group. In the time of Alexander's father, they were considered half-civilized savages who lived on the edge of the Greek world.

The present-day Greeks have also had considerable racial intermixing since Ptolemy's (or Cleopatra's) day, with Turks, Normans, etc.

[PzLdr]

Cleopatra spoke seven languages, and was the only Ptolemid who spoke and read Egyptian. Her father or grandfather was called the "Flute Player", and was a nasty piece of work. Everyone forgets her brother, husband and co-ruler (He was about 13). Caesar had him murdered after deciding Cleo was the horse to ride (in a manner of speaking). Surprisingly, Octavian let her be buried with Antony (who had betrayed his wife, Octavian's sister) with Cleopatra. Not surprisingly, he murdered her son (allegedly by Caesar) Caesarion.

[SedVictaCatoni]

For almost 700 years, Egypt was a Roman colony (first of Rome, then Constantinople).

Well, no, it wasn't a Roman colony, because the Romans never sent anyone to settle there and populate the place. Considering that at the time of the Battle of Actium, Alexandria was a larger and much more economically important place than Rome, the idea that it needed to be colonized would have been considered absurd.

Egypt was, instead, initially an imperial province - essentially a miniature nation-state administered by the Emperor's agent for his personal benefit, instead of being under the control of the Senate.

[AntiBurr]

"Egyptian history ended over 3,000 years ago."

It's little gems like this that get my ire up. If it is true, then Egypt does not exist and we can just delete the rest of the article. At the best, it's sloppy writing which should be beneath any PhD.

On the subject of the Greeks being blond, The classical Greeks are generally said to have been light haired and the current coloring is likely due to having been over run repeatedly by Turks and other dark haired people. Dark hair is, I think, a dominant trait.

N.B. The woman we think of as "Cleopatra" was the 13th of that name.