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Sofia Torallas Tovar | Egyptians in Athens: Following the Trails of Words
t is the year 458 BCE, and Aeschylus presents The Suppliants at the theatre of Dionysus in Athens. The plot of this tragedy brings a chorus of the daughters of Danaus to Argos, fleeing from a forced marriage to their Egyptian cousins, and Aeschylus places Egyptian words in the Greek speech of the actors. The Athenian audience had some knowledge of their southern neighbor. Not only had Herodotus and others described the marvels and rarities of the Land of the Nile, but there were also Egyptian born residents in Athens working at the harbor and the markets. Sofia Torallas Tovar joins us for a lecture that invites you to hear the ancient Egyptian voices in Athens, by exploring The Suppliants and other sources that attest to the linguistic contact between Greece and Egypt before Alexander’s conquest.
The OI welcomes Sofia Torallas Tovar, Professor of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, for this Members Lecture.
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^ This reminds me of an article I read several years ago here:
The (Black)Faces of Aeschylus' Suppliants A theatre group at the Sorbonne has been making headlines after a production of Aeschylus' Suppliants they were preparing for was shut down by protestors. What?! This sounds CRAZY! Were the protestors opposed to a possible message of the play as welcoming refugees and immigrants (as seems to have been the point with the Sicilian staging in 2015)? No. They were protesting the play as racist and they have a point.
Notice anything about the actors? Hint--this is a photograph, not a coloring book. That stuff on their skin is #blackface.
Since the protestors blocked the performance, there have been a series of statements from the uni and the director with excuses replete with condemnations of the protestors. John Ma sums it up on a Twitter discussion about it:
The most recent responses have the director saying that it was intended that the actors would wear masks (according to ancient Greek tradition) for the performance, not #blackface. And yet:
Brunet insisted the actors wore masks on stage, not blackface, and that the row stemmed from a misunderstanding sparked by a photo taken rehearsals of a white actor with her faced covered with "coppery makeup".
Last year's performance apparently had been done in #blackface and, really, do actors do dress rehearsals in #blackface if they are going to wear masks in performance? Why would they not practice instead in the masks and not go through all the time and effort of donning #blackface? And if the director was really interested in capturing the dynamics that emerge from remembering that the Danaids are in the play black-skinned, why not cast appropriately?
Because, one of the remarkable things about the play is that, although the Danaids explicitly refer to themselves as "black" ('black, sun-beaten people" μελανθὲς ἡλιόκτυπον γένος lines 154-5), it is not considered an important mark of their difference at all when they arrive in Greece from Egypt. When the Argive king Pelasgos first sees them, he thinks they look very foreign, but doesn't even notice their skin color: This group that we address is unhellenic, luxuriating in barbarian finery and delicate cloth. What country do they come from? The women of Argos, indeed of all Greek lands, do not wear such clothes. It is astonishing that you dare to travel to this land, fearlessly, without heralds, without sponsors, without guides. And yet here are the branches of suppliants, laid out according to custom next to you in front of the assembled gods. This alone would assert your Greekness…(ll 245-54). This play is one of many indicators from ancient Greece that skin color was not usually associated with prejudice. And yet this director managed to take this play and make it all about skin color and prejudice through the employing of a well known racist practice of #blackface--which, by the way, has a long tradition of being just as racist in France as it does in the US.
Additional irony? The thing that marks them as foreign in Aeschylus is their clothing. See anything in the pictures about their clothes? Yep--Greek-style. This director has reversed Aeschylus...
Oh no! Where is Antalas?! Is this not what he calls "dark-washing"?! LMAO
BrandonP Member # 3735
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^ You'd think they could hire actual actors of African descent to play the Danaids (not to mention get them more culturally appropriate clothing). At the risk of sounding like a "social justice warrior", the blackface was not a good idea.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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What I also don't like is how Aeschylus's play is now being used for political propaganda to promote things like open borders and a false notion of "female suppression".
The Suppliant Maidens were not some 'poor women seeking refuge'. They were royal princesses (elites) who sought refuge from political marriages at the behest of their own father and eventually ended up murdering their husbands! (an event that took place after the ending of the play). The Danaides i.e 'Suppliants' along with their father Danaus sought help from a 3rd party-- King Pelasgus. It was not a story of displaced women escaping domestic violence. Neither does the story have anything to do with economic and political instablities ruining nations across the globe.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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As an aside, having looked into the myth recently, it appears that one of the Danaids spared her Egyptian husband and that they founded a ruling dynasty in Argos together. So basically you have an African couple ruling over a European city. That’s something you don’t read about every day, you have to admit.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ Correct. But remember, the Danaids, Aegyptoi, etc. all descend from the matriarch Io who was said to have an Argive origin. Io was said to be a high priestess of Hera who was impregnated by Zeus with Epaphus. Who was Io? Or rather was was the basis of this myth? I think it is an interesting topic of its own.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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But on a serious note, I'm curious if there was any actual basis to the story of the 'Suppliant Maidens'.
The three areas in which the story is set is Argos, in Greece, and Libya and Egypt.
Another interesting fact is the story seems to take place before the Great Flood that ended the Greek's notion of the Bronze Age after which the present Iron Age started. I say this because Argos was ruled by King Pelasgus and Pelasgus seemed to be an eponymous title for rulers or forebears of the Pelasgian people who are described as "aboriginal" or "primordial" to the later peoples who inhabited Greece.
Tehutimes Member # 21712
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A. What's wrong with being equated with a social justice warrior? B.There sure are a multitude of white proponents for Nazism/fascism including p.o.c.fanatics.Dutch tribals love svarte Piet (black Pete)in Xmas parades.C.Orientals,(Chinese,Koreans,& Japanese dig blackface in ads & tv shows including cartoons. Research has shown there Khemite colonists colonised Greece yet some claim only Greece colonised Khemit in typical white supremacists jive talk.
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ I'll just answer your first question, since you lost me afterward with your jumbled wording.
First of all I despise the phrase "social justice"! Justice is exactly that--justice. The moment someone attaches a prefix, that means there's an agenda involved to pervert justice for some nefarious end. Hence, "social justice", "environmental justice", "racial justice", "gender justice", etc. are just deceitful scams that actually ultimately ruin or destroy the goal that most people think these terms mean. In the case of mass immigration for instance, these migrants are being used and exploited by the same powerful groups who actually ruined their home countries to begin with! By the way, are you aware that the Nazis were also "social justice warriors"?? They actually promoted a lot of things that are considered "progressive" by many especially on the political left. That is why I only promote justice by itself with no prefixes attached and why I'm against "social justice" let alone the fooled "s-j warriors" who only fight for the cause of their hidden masters.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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Politics aside...
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: But on a serious note, I'm curious if there was any actual basis to the story of the 'Suppliant Maidens'.
The three areas in which the story is set is Argos, in Greece, and Libya and Egypt.
Another interesting fact is the story seems to take place before the Great Flood that ended the Greek's notion of the Bronze Age after which the present Iron Age started. I say this because Argos was ruled by King Pelasgus and Pelasgus seemed to be an eponymous title for rulers or forebears of the Pelasgian people who are described as "aboriginal" or "primordial" to the later peoples who inhabited Greece.
I suspect the Greeks attributed foreign ancestry to some of their ruling dynasties to link those dynasties to the prestige or allure of their foreign cultures of origin. For example, some storytellers in Argos probably thought having a dynasty be of Egyptian origin associated that dynasty with the "exotic" prestige of Egyptian civilization. It would be a bit like Muslim Africans fabricating genealogical connections to Arabia, or non-Native people in the US claiming to be part Cherokee as a way of linking themselves to the Native American "noble savages".
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