Cleopatra!!

An expression is in our language(Turkish) and it says:

Originally posted by MythTR An expression is in our language(Turkish) and it says: Şıracının şahidi bozacı.   The witness of / maker or seller of grape must /  is maker or seller of boza   (boza is a drink you can search on the internet and you can understand me easily)

< ="-" ="text/; =utf-8">< name="ProgId" ="Word.">< name="Generator" ="Microsoft Word 12">< name="Originator" ="Microsoft Word 12"> Bottom line: Cleopatra having Egyptian ancestry – extremely flimsy chances. Cleopatra having Persian ancestry – certain, but the genes were “watered-down”.

Originally posted by pebbles     Originally posted by Flipper http://genealogy.about.com/library/family_trees/bl_cleopatra.htm     According to this link,it's documented Cleopatra married two of her own brothers.   Was it a tradition passed down from Greek culture or the Ptolemy Dynasty adopted the indigenous Egyptian royal custom ?

The second one.

Sibling marriages are recorded in pharaonic history, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Another instance of sibling marriage is that of Cambyses, so the Macedonian houses may have followed an Achaemenid, rather than a pharaonic model. In favour of this pleads the fact that other Hellenistic houses - which had no need to imitate the pharaohs, but gained quite a lot from immitating the Achaemenids - also adopted sibling marriages: the Seleukids and the Mithradatids.

The first instance of brother-sister marriage in the Ptolemaic house occurs in the second generation, with Ptolemaios II, surnamed "Philadelphos" (sister-lover). It's interesting that Theocritos, in his Idyll 17, tries hard to find a Greek precedent for such a love relation and finds none other than that between Zeus and Hera.

There have been some studies made by anthropologists and these show humans develop a certain "neutralisation" syndrome towards their siblings - that is brothers and sisters brought up together would no longer find each other sexually attractive.

Problem with the ancient royal courts is that siblings seldom grew up together. Arsinoe II, for example, the one who would marry Ptolemaios II, was shipped off to Thrace to marry Lysimachos when she was quite young (about 15). Even children who grew up at the same court might not have spent too much time together, so the neutralisation might not have had time to develop. Between Ptolemaios II and his sister, Arsinoe II there seemed to be some serious attraction going on (well, at least from Ptolemy to his sister...)

Now, if you add to that the doctrine that these kids were fed, namely that they were by birth above human status, being born of divine ancestors, you get an idea that they would search for suitable mates. And who fitted the bill better than a sibling?

In time, sibling marriages became quite common, although love wasn't always present, and in some cases the opposite was true.

The interesting thing is that sibling marriages diffused from the royal court towards the common people. In the Roman times, a significant minority of all the marriages recorded papyrologically are of this type. Historians explain the process as an economic measure, whereby the property would remain within the family (the dowry of the daughter would go to the son). Cheap bastards ;)

And people forget that in the Alexandrian society Greeks were at the top, Jews and other foreigners at the Middle, and Egyptians below I expect Nubians and others would be among the very bottom.

Originally posted by pinguin And people forget that in the Alexandrian society Greeks were at the top, Jews and other foreigners at the Middle, and Egyptians below I expect Nubians and others would be among the very bottom.

Originally posted by Goocheslamb you guys are forgetting the statues of cleopatra. they look nothing like black

While it's highly likely ordinary Egyptians would have been of African descent the Ptolemys kept their bloodline pure by marrying their siblings. Unless Cleopatra's ancient Greek ancestors were black it's just not possible.