“The Ptolemaic dynasty was super into inbreeding to maintain bloodlines. They rarely married outside their family, and when they did, they brought in Macedonian or Greek nobility to marry. There’s some speculation that Cleopatra may have had some Syrian blood from several generations prior, but she was almost entirely Greek.
She was the first of the Ptolemaic dynasty to actually learn how to speak Egyptian, which was notable. The family ruled Egypt for almost three centuries, and it wasn’t until the last in the dynasty that any of them bothered to learn the language. It endeared her to the Egyptian people, and they saw her as one of their own. Ethnically speaking, though, she was Greek.”
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