How Cleopatra got caught up in a culture war
Hollywood has long chosen people like Elizabeth Taylor to play Cleopatra. But this year, Netflix cast the Black British woman Adele James in the title role of Queen Cleopatra for its series.
A social media firestorm ensued. Egyptians, who felt that their history was being misrepresented, claimed that she was light-skinned and of Macedonian origin. Some of them launched a Change.org petition demanding that the series be canceled.
Into that simmering cauldron stepped the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, which was intent this summer on celebrating the inspiration that scores of Black artists – from Prince and Michael Jackson
