This head of Cleopatra — called the Berlin Cleopatra for its placement in Germany’s Altes Museum — depicts the last of the Ptolemaic rulers as a traditional Macedonian matron with Hellenistic features, a Macedonian diadem and her hair in a chignon. It was made in Rome about the time of her visits there in 46 to 44 B.C.

'A bourn how far to be beloved': 'Queen Cleopatra' and cultural appropriation

May 12, 2023

The latest tizzy in the culture wars pits Egypt against the Netflix series “Queen Cleopatra,” which bowed Wednesday, May 10, starring a Black actress, Adele James, in the title role. Many Egyptians and some historians have taken exception with this, pointing out that Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt and as such was of Greco-Macedonian descent. But I think with a little imagination and a lot of understanding we can have a Black Cleopatra and an historically accurate one as well.

When Donnie met Vladdie (And Manny reunited with Justy)

July 8, 2017

Smit-ten.

That was the mutual word. Donnie said it was an “honor” to meet Vladdie. Vladdie, looking out from under shy eyes – or should that be sly eyes? – kept calling Donnie “Mr. President.” It must’ve been like the moment Mark Anthony reunited with Cleopatra on her barge. For so long the meeting had been a foregone conclusion. Now, here it was at last.

They shook hands. They leaned in. The chemistry was described as “warm.” (Try hot.) And when Melania tried to break up the meet to keep her hubby on track, she was – what a surprise – ignored. Oh, Melania, will you become like the embittered Michelle Williams character in “Brokeback Mountain”? Is there a Slovenian word for “triangle”? ...

My big, fat Greek odyssey, Part II: Hello, Thessaloniki

October 15, 2016

Our Times Journey group of Alexandrians no sooner got acclimated to Athens than it was time to bid the city – and its mesmerizing views of the Acropolis – a brief farewell and head north to Thessaloniki, about an hour’s flight, or the distance between New York and Washington D.C.

Named for a younger half-sister of Alexander the Great – his father, the crafty, lusty Philip II, having loved much but apparently none too well – Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece but the main one in the misty, highland Macedonian region that was once Philip’s kingdom.

At Athens International Airport, I scored a small, hefty, well-molded head of the Acropolis Museum Alexander in a gift shop, plus a free copy of the “Greece is….Thessaloniki” magazine, with an Andy Warhol Alexander on the cover, so I was pumped. ...

Free to be you, me – and someone else

October 8, 2016

Culture vulture that I am, I somehow missed the cultural appropriation wars that have erupted. That’s what you get for going on vacation and unplugging.

First, novelist Lionel Shriver apparently set off a firestorm at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival with a defense of artists using other people’s races, ethnicities, sexualities, etc. in their creations. Then Claudio Gatti outed the comfortable Roman translator Anita Raja as the author of the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante novels about the friendship between two poor Neapolitan girls.

Meanwhile, Bristol University cancelled a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida,” because students protested white people playing Egyptians and Ethiopians. ...

Greek to me: Met opens “Pergamon,” unprecedented Hellenistic show

April 13, 2016

“So,” a publicist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art asked teasingly, “are there enough Alexanders for you?”

She knows me only too well. Lover of the ancient Greeks that I am, there can never be for me enough images of Alexander the Great – the Greco-Macedonian king whose conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. ushered in 300 years of Hellenism (Greek culture) in Asia, reversing the course of cultural influence from East-West to West-East, and underscoring a tension between East and West that is still with us.

And yet, there I was in the first gallery of “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World” (April 18 through July 17), surrounded by Alexanders. ...

Carry on, Cleo: New exhibit considers the Egyptian queen’s ancestors

October 13, 2014

Thanks to Hollywood (on one end of the spectrum of ludicrousness) and historical revisionism (on the other), there are many misconceptions about Cleopatra.

She was a sex kitten unfurling herself before Julius Caesar, a beautiful siren setting Marc Antony on a collision course with Rome. She was milky white. She was black.

She was nothing of the kind but rather something more complex and far more interesting – a striking if not beautiful, intelligent , commanding woman who managed to attract two of the most powerful men of her time as she balanced two very different cultures. That she could not hold a third culture in the equation was part of her undoing.

Like many great and tragic figures – the sculptor Isamu Noguchi comes to mind but we might also want to throw President Barack Obama into the mix – Cleopatra was part of two worlds. And when you’re part of two worlds, you often end up belonging to neither. She was the last of the Ptolemies, who were in turn the last pharaohs and are the subject of a new exhibit, “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt,” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through Jan. 4. ...