The first season of Netflix's "African Queens" focussed on the 17th-century warrior Queen Njinga, who ruled an area in today's Angola.
Executive producer and narrator Jada Pinkett Smith told Netflix's online magazine, “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them ... The sad part is that we don’t have ready access to these historical women who were so powerful and were the backbones of African nations.”
The second season of the documentary series turns to the legendary Queen Cleopatra, who is played in the series by black British actress Adele James. This casting has led a leading Egyptian archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, to reiterate his conviction that the real Cleopatra was of Macedonian descent.
This is not the first time issues of ethnicity and classical civilisations have made the headlines. Martin Bernal's Black Athena, The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation caused a storm on publication (1987-2006) that went well beyond academia.
Bernal's volumes touched a nerve by connecting debates in classicism to contemporary American politics of race, but the academic consensus has been that while his critique of prejudice in European academia is valuable his "derivations" of Greek culture from Egypt are faulty.
Other more established classicists such as Martin Litchfield West and Walter Burkert have continued to find deep connections between Greek and other ancient cultures, particularly eastern cultures, for instance in West's The East Face of Helicon, West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry.
Sources: PAP, rutgersuniversitypress.org, policyexchange.org.uk, netflix.com, time.com, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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