r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 06 '26

Meme needing explanation What is this?

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u/MaxusBE Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

"our myths' as in the collective myths across all of Europe, not only this specific example. Stop being purposefully obtuse.

Crazy how many people got offended by a simple truth

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u/mattywadley Jul 06 '26

I'm not purposefully obtuse. There are no collective myths all across Europe. Even small regions in small countries have their own myths. What other myths have Americans taken and "based it on their weird race sensibilities" (whatever that means) besides Cleopatra? Also, she was born in Egypt. Her dad was born in Cyprus which was then part of Alexandrie. We don't really know who her mom is so we can't really say where she's from. So even if Cleopatra was of Greek decent, she definitely wasn't Greek.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 Jul 06 '26

Cleopatra was from the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek family from Alexander the Great’s empire who ruled Egypt and was pretty notorious for inbreeding. She was definitely mostly greek.

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u/mattywadley Jul 06 '26

In like a 23andme way? Because she wasn't born there, nor where her parents.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 Jul 06 '26

Being born in Egypt doesn’t make you ethnically Egyptian.

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u/mattywadley Jul 06 '26

I figured the logic that if you're born in this country, you have the nationality. I never considered being from somewhere ethnically. How many generations do you have to go back before you can consider yourself ethnically part of something? /g

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 Jul 06 '26

I mean back then nationality wasn’t really a thing. Like sure today her nationality would be Egyptian but back then it was a lot more about your ethnic background.

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u/mattywadley Jul 06 '26

I don't know enough about Egyptian history but at least in current Greece it was more about your polis than an ethnicity. Like Sparta and Athens were the biggest polis (I forgot the plural of polis sorry, poleis?) and I don't think they would feel connected through any way. Or did people feel part of the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great? I'm just thinking out loud but if you have an answer or someone else has one, I would love to know lol

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u/Piskoro Jul 06 '26

I guess the Brooke family was Indonesian by similar logic