Over 60,000 Sign Petition Criticizing Netflix's Black African Cleopatra

More than 60,000 people have signed a petition criticizing Netflix's portrayal of Ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra as a black African heroine

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2023) More than 60,000 people have signed a petition criticizing Netflix's portrayal of Ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra as a black African heroine.

Netflix's new "Queen Cleopatra" is billed as a documentary series. It stars Jada Pinkett Smith, an American actress of African-American and Afro-Caribbean descent, as Egypt's last pharaoh who ruled Egypt until its annexation by Romans in 30 BC.

The petition, penned "by the Egyptian people for the Egyptian people," argues that the series peddles "Afrocentrism" in an attempt to "claim Egypt's history and rob the actual Egyptians from it."

"Egypt was never black and it was never white, Egypt is just Egypt. There are many great African/black civilizations, but Egypt was/is not one of them," the petition, which has been trending on Change.

org since it was published on Wednesday, says.

The authors stress that the petition is not meant to target black people but is "a wake up call to preserve the history and the integrity of the Egyptians and the Greeks."

Cleopatra's racial heritage has become subject of heated debate in the late 20th century, with some African-American scholars presenting the ancient queen as a black African.

Cleopatra is known to have originated from a Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Ptolemy, a general in the army of Macedonian king Alexander the Great. Encyclopaedia Britannica says she had little, if any, Egyptian blood, and was the first member of the Ptolemaic family to learn Egyptian.