Thread by @Histofafrica

Regarding the controversy surrounding Netflix's Cleopatra, I've seen many people online spout the same argument. "Archaeologists exhumed Cleopatra's sister in 2009 and found out she had African DNA." Every single part of that statement is wrong, and this thread will discuss why.

"Archaeologists exhumed Cleopatra's sister in 2009." The grave in question is not a new discovery. Located in Ephesus, Turkey, it was excavated as early as the 1920s. It wasn't until the 90s that one archaeologist claimed an association with Cleopatra's murdered sister, Arsinoe.

What backed this up? Well, the argument went as follows:
A) the tomb is in Ephesus, where Arsinoe was assassinated according to the historical record.
B) the tomb is octagonal. So was the lighthouse of Alexandria.
C) it's from roughly the right time period.

That's it.

There are no engravings, local traditions, or analysis of historical records which connect the tomb to Arsinoe. I don't know about you, but the idea that the tomb must be Arsinoe's because...its an octagon in Ephesus seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

There's some decently compelling counterevidence to the claim. When the tomb was excavated, the remains inside were of a young teenage girl, aged likely 13-18. This does not align with Arsinoe's biography.

Arsinoe, seven years before her death, had participated actively in politics and war, including arranging the assassination of a military officer and leading the army in a siege. If the body in Ephesus is hers, this would have made her between 6-11 years old during the battle.

So, the body at Ephesus is likely to not even be Arsinoe. But, even if it was, did the body contain African DNA. The answer is that nobody knows, because the DNA from the body was not successfully tested.

In the paper "Arsinoe IV of Egypt, sister of Cleopatra identiried? Osseous and molecular
challenges", the authors note that, despite their efforts, they failed to obtain any nuclear DNA. Later attempts to find mitochondrial DNA proved unhelpful as well.

Turns out that the skeleton, which had been exhumed in the 20s, had not always been kept in perfect conditions. So, if there is no DNA evidence, where does the "African" claim come from?

**I kid you not, phrenology and skull measuring!**

For those unaware, phrenology is a long-since discarded pseudoscience which claims that different "races" could be identified through skull analysis. As you might expect, this was pretty entwined with racism.
(See example of phrenology used for overt scientific racism below.)

The body recovered at Ephesus was missing the head, but incomplete older sketches done by phrenologists were used to reconstruct what the missing skull may have looked like. Then, not kidding, one of the researchers claimed that the skull has "African features."

So, the click bait articles which claim that "Cleopatra's sister had African DNA" should really say "a random body from Turkey has cranial features which outdated pseudoscience assigns to African skull shapes."

Which highlights how unconvincing this idea really is.

So was Cleopatea "black"? The evidence states otherwise. Cleopatra was almost certainly of a predominantly Greek background, with perhaps some Persian ancestry.

Pick your battles people.

(almost like the model of "biological race" is a flawed human construct and we shouldn't reify with centuries old pseudoscience)

Also, it seems like a popular response to the documentary is to say "there are plenty of interesting queens of African descent worth learning about." I agree, here's some we've covered on the podcast so far.

Neithotep, premium ep. 1
Sophia of Aksum, season 2 episode 15
...

Gudit, season 2 episode 19.
Konadu Yaadom, season 3 episode 11.
Yaa Asantewaa, season 3 episodes 29-30. (Not a queen per say, but a fascinating noblewoman.)
Rangita, season 4 episode 4.

And many more to come in the future.