Posted on 03/26/2005 1:14:24 PM PST by CHARLITE
No, this is not a blonde joke. If you want one of those, go to this weeks Humor File. Cleopatra was in fact a blonde. Thats because she was not Egyptian. She was a Macedonian Greek, with hair as blonde as Alexanders.
Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 BC, then went on to subdue all of the Middle East. When he died nine years later, his just-conquered empire was fought over and carved up by his generals. The one who ended up running Egypt was Ptolemy (367-283 BC). Declaring himself Pharaoh, he founded the Ptolemaic Dynasty, with twelve Ptolemies in succession, many of whom had wives named Cleopatra. The Cleopatra we know, lover of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, was the daughter of Ptolemy XII, and entitled Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC).
There was not a drop of Egyptian blood in the Ptolemies. They remained 100% Greek, including the Queen of the Nile herself Cleopatra. Can you imagine Elizabeth Taylor as a blonde? It kind of shakes up your image of history.
I am writing this overlooking the Nile in Cairo. The Pyramids of Giza are in the distance. If there is one thing omnipresent in Egypt its history and most all of that history is old, in more ways than one.
Egyptian history ended over 3,000 years ago. The Pyramids, the Pharoahs like Ramses II and King Tut, all of that was pretty much over by 1,000 BC. When the Persians seized the place in 525 BC, it had been torn apart by Libyans, Kushite Nubians, Assyrians and other invaders for centuries. Thus the very name Egypt isnt Egyptian. The Persians called it E Ko Ptah, the Land of Ptah, the Egyptian creator god. Herodotus Greekified this to Egoptus, which we changed to Egypt.
The Sphinx isnt the Sphinx thats a Greek word the Ptolemies gave it, meaning bound together as the statue of a Pharoahs head with the body of a lion. The real name is shesep-ankh-Atum, the Living Image of the God Atum.
The Ptolemies Greek rule of Egypt ended in 31 BC, with Octavians (who became Augustus) defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. For almost 700 years, Egypt was a Roman colony (first of Rome, then Constantinople). Then came the Arabs, followed by the Turkish Mamluks, followed by the Ottoman Turks. When Napoleon grabbed it in 1798, Egypt was an unknown backwater (I must dispense one myth here: The Sphinxs nose was not blown off by Napoleons artillery, as there are pre-1798 drawings of it so disfigured. It was defaced by Arab Moslems in the 8th century). Three years later, the Brits kicked out the French, and Egypt remained a British colony until independence came in 1952.
Well, sort of. Under the dictatorship of Gamel Abdel Nasser, Egypt became a virtual colony of the Soviet Unions. After Nasser died in 1970, it had a brief respite under Anwar Sadat, who kicked out the Soviets. Sadat was assassinated in 1981, and a fellow named Hosni Mubarak has been Egypts Pharaoh ever since.
Its hard to go anywhere in Egypt today without seeing Mubaraks picture staring down at you from huge billboards and street posters everywhere. For twenty-five years, there have been no elections, only referendums, where people get to vote either yes or no on his rule with no other options or candidates. He routinely gets over 98% yes. Any public criticism of him gets you in prison.
Mubarak will be 77 this May. Bush White House people who have talked with him recently comment on how he is always repeating himself and is showing signs of senility. Yet he still is shrewd enough to understand he cannot appoint his son Gemayel as his successor, and to announce (last month) with fanfare that there will be something like an actual election this fall, instead of another referendum.
If this takes place, with opposition parties allowed to organize, opposition candidates allowed to campaign, people allowed to freely vote with international monitors watching, it will be the first time in 5,000 years of recorded Egyptian history that Egyptians have had a voice in choosing their government. Far more importantly, it will have a thunderous effect throughout the entire Arab world.
Egypt is the Arab giant. There are 72 million people here, almost three times the population of Iraq. For 3,000 years it has been a sleeping giant. In the half-century since independence, its political freedom has been stifled and its economy shackled by socialism. With the most cursory glimpse of the country, one can see the enormous potential here. Egyptians are smart, friendly, hospitable to the world, and ready to go.
The famous monuments tourists have flocked here to see for centuries have a very interesting psychological impact on Egyptians. Civilization began in Mesopotamia, but there wasnt any stone. Everything was made of mud brick and it all crumbled away. So the memory and reality of a pre-Islamic history faded away. So it is throughout the Arab world. All that came before Islam can be ignored. Except in Egypt, where there was stone, where gigantic monuments made of stone still exist and their pre-Islamic history cannot be ignored. For many Arabs, all they are, besides a tribal or clan membership, is Moslem. Egyptians know they are far and deeply more.
There is thus an entrenched capacity in Egypt for a moderate Islam that participates in the world and doesnt reject it. Egyptian Islamofascists like Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Ladens Number Two in Al Qaeda, arent welcome and have to go elsewhere. Radical anti-West movements like Iqwan Muslimi, the Moslem Brotherhood that started here, have to ally elsewhere, like with the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia.
The Iqwan is here in Egypt, no doubt. It was formed here in 1928. It conducted the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Right now it is quiescent. And so we come to Egypts great fork in todays road. The fear of the Iqwan is now suddenly serving a useful purpose. The January 30 elections in Iraq stunned Egypt. Millions of Egyptians watched their fellow Arabs freely, peacefully, and enthusiastically vote for their government. Now they want the same for their country.
And Mubarak realizes that if he doesnt give it to them and dashes their hopes, then lots of folks will see the Iqwan as their only alternative. American, European, and world pressure will be on Mubarak to not hold pretend sham elections. Hes 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.
Its a memorable time to be here, watching Egypt awaken from a slumber of three millennia. This ancient land may be about to play a critical role in our future.
When I was last there they were pot shotting the cruise ships on the Nile. Hurt a few but killed their tourist business. Smart people!
So...are their genetics wiped out?
(Love learnin' stuff!!!)
What loving people.
They were so kind to each other back then.
I spent a few years in Egypt and its a basket case. Heavy socialist( Ba'athist lite). If I had to guess, Id say look for a lot of violence there in the near future.
No. We are them. The Caucasians and Mongoloids probably split from a common ancestor and that was probably the Jomon - Ainu people. The oldest (undisputed) Mongoloid skeleton ever found is only 10,000 years old.
Here's another 'take' from Dr Robert Schoch (Geologist/Geophysist):
Dr. Schochs Recent Book :
Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids
From Lost Egypt to Ancient America
A startling and dramatic new view of our ancient past ...
By Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., with Robert Aquinas McNally
We associate pyramids with ancient Egypt. But pyramids are not uniquely Egyptian ‑- and therein lies a great mystery. Pyramids and pyramid‑like structures can be found all over the globe, built by cultures that span vast distances of geography and time. They appear in the ancient African kingdom of Kush, along the Nile ... in Mesopotamia and Sumeria ... in England and Ireland ... in India and throughout Southeast Asia ... in ancient China ... in Peru's coastal and Andean regions ... in the ancient Olmec and Mayan realms of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador ... in pre‑Columbian Illinois... and elsewhere. How can it be that a form as distinctive as the pyramid was built in such widely separated locales? Was it merely coincidence? Or was there another force at work?
In Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America (a Tarcher/Putnam hardcover, 2003, $24.95 U.S./$37.50 Canada), Boston University professor Robert M. Schoch ‑- one of the world's preeminent geologists in recasting the date of the Great Sphinx ‑- suggests that there was, indeed, another force at work. In his eye‑opening new book, Dr. Schoch argues that these far‑flung pyramids share a common ancestor long lost to history: a primordial pyramid‑building civilization that once navigated the seas and spread its way of life around the globe.
Meticulously researched and dramatically written, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders lays out, step by step, a fascinating new theory of how the Old World and the New World met:
Evidence that the Egyptian pyramids at Giza (or portions of them) and certain associated structures were built earlier than conventionally believed.
The significance of the striking similarities between pyramid cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, despite the long distances of land and sea between. The rituals, beliefs, and stories that underlie the pyramids.
How ancient peoples emigrated from the Old World into the New World.
How pyramid builders entered the New World from the west and influenced the rising civilizations of Central and South America.
How the pyramid builders sailed.
A theory that ancient peoples may have migrated across vast distances in response to catastrophic encounters with comets.
The possible existence of a lost pyramid‑building civilization in the period before 3,500 B.C., the generally accepted date for humankind's earliest taste of civilization.
What it means to know that the high civilizations of our planet may have been interconnected for much longer than we imagined.
Voyages of the Pyramid Builders also includes a special appendix, "Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza," in which Dr. Schoch provides his most recent and persuasive evidence that the Sphinx is much older than we think. For anyone who is interested in ancient Egypt, past cultures, prehistory, early migrations, paradigm shifts, and the origins of civilization, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders is a groundbreaking reinterpretation of how we understand our ancient past.
Robert M. Schoch, a full‑time faculty member at the College of General Studies at Boston University since 1984, earned his Ph.D. in geology and geophysics at Yale University. Dr. Schoch has been quoted extensively in the media for his work on the Sphinx, and he was featured on the Emmy‑winning documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx, hosted by Charlton Heston.
Robert Aquinas McNally is a writer and poet whose early education in classical Latin blossomed into a lifelong fascination with ancient civilization and mythology.
I first learned the fact of who and what Cleopatra was in my freshman history class. I wonder how they know that she was blonde though? Don't the Greeks come in many different shades of hair colors?
I guess "blonde" means "light haired" and not black- or red-haired. True, undyed "blonde blondes" aren't so common in the world as a whole. In some places, anyone whose hair wasn't black might be regarded as a rarity worthy of note. Some Greeks would qualify as blond(e)s in Egypt who wouldn't pass muster in Scandinavia. It's the same way in India. Color differences get exaggerated. It is worth noting though, that the "Macedonians" in those days were rather a different people from today's Macedonians, and it's said that even the Greeks were changed by intermarrying with later Slavic arrivals. This has been a very touchy topic though.
Large, dumpy, blonde and thinking she was born to rule? That sounds like Hillarypatra.
Very interesting post, but it sure strayed a long way from that 'blonde' siren, Cleopatra. :)
Ping.
Really? Actually the Greeks loved blond hair but very few of them had blond hair. Very doubtful that Cleo was blond.
This explanation ignores a very vexing problem. Since we have no knowledge of what spoken ancient egyptian sounds like, or will ever have any way of knowing, all modern "names" for ancient people and things is a guess. They had no vowels, such that any one of these names can me re-written as many ways as there are permutations of vowel substitutions.
Modern Greeks are a lot more slavic and mediterranean than ancient greeks were. Due to lots of barbarian invasions after the collapse of Rome. Besides, the Macedonians were a different racial group entirely, and could have been blonde. And anyway contemporary historians attested to Alexander being blonde.
Only thing I don't agree with in the original post is that in 300 years it is impossible that there wasn't some interbreeding between the Ptolemies and the local Egyptians, so Cleopatra could have been dark afterall.
:)
THANK YOU!
Egypt is still a backwater.
Aristotle wasn't a Macedonian. He was born at Stageira, which was a colony of Andros situated in Chalcidice. Andros was a Greek city, and a member of the Delian League.
So were are we headed?
It is not at all far-fetched that the Ptolemies never interbred with the native Egyptians. The Ptolemies were so concerned with purity of blood that they quite frequently practiced intermarriage within the royal family. Cleopatra's first husband, for instance, was her brother.
There are busts of her made when she was still alive.
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