Yes, also read about the colour-question. However, what these history challenged people forgot, is that she is related to Alexander the great, so indeed she looks caucasian. The other thing about nudity of Egypt pharaohs, I repeat that those masturbated in the nile in public, so most probably a nude Cleopatra is not that surprising after all.
There are those, including some in academic circles, who want to declare all African people to be black. This campaign is politically motivated and a reaction to the historic denial of the achievements of sub-Saharan peoples - like the long standing belief that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe must have been the work of European or Middle Eastern people rather than the black natives - but it ignores the fact that the people of North Africa are genetically different form the people of the south. While there was some intermingling and there was even a time when Egypt was ruled by a black Nubian dynasty, the 25th, which XVIII & early XX century Egyptologists tried to deny; it is also certain that the Ptolemy Dynasty was, thanks to incestuous marriages, entirely Greek.
That being said, Gal Gadot is probably a lot closer to what the real Cleopatra looked like than Elizabeth Taylor, Vivian Leigh or Claudette Colbert.
Here's a pretty good little article on what the real Cleo may have looked like.
Like Helen of Troy, Cleopatra (69 – 30 b.c.), has always been one of the history’s famous beauties. But was she really beautiful? Modern historians claim to have evidence that…
moco-choco.com
Not a great beauty, but many authors said that it was her brains that attracted men, not her looks.
If the lady herself did pose in person, upon competing the work the sculptor would likely have been immediately blinded (if not executed) for daring to look upon the naked body of the queen. Sculpting her enviable figure would have been tantamount to laying his hands on her actual flesh.
If you look closely at the lower legs (and get your eyes off her boobs!
), you will see that there is a hem line of a skirt. Isis was often depicted topless and wearing a diaphanous skirt.
Hey, she's a goddess, she can wear anything she wants.
Now, if we could only have had this Isis dress like that.
Guys who went through puberty in the 70s will agree.