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The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization: A Study of the Ethiopian Type

Preface
No barbarian race held as continuous an interest for the Greek and Roman artist as the Ethiopian. Realistic portraits of other known races in the classical world are relatively few and belong usually to the Hellenistic and Roman eras. The negro on the other hand was rendered with all the utmost fidelity to the racial type during the most restrained and idealistic period of Greek art. Attic vase painters who were content to indicate Orientals by their dress with scarcely any distinguishing marks of race, delineated with marked realism the wooly hair and thick lips of the Ethiopian. From its earliest appearance the popularity of the type never waned in any productive period of classical art.
Due to the humble position of the Ethiopian in Greece and the fact that realism was usually confined to smaller objects the great sculptors did not consider him a sufficiently dignified or important subject, since life-sized heads and statues are comparatively few. But for smaller objects the popularity of the type was tremendous, and is attested by a wealth of statuettes, vases, engraved gems, coins, lamps, weights, finger-rings, ear-rings, necklaces, and masks from classical sites.
Literary evidence as to the status of the black race in Greek and Roman life is very slight and to supplement our knowledge one must turn to the art objects which show the type. Interest was drawn to this problem at the time when the excitement over the abolition of negro slavery was raging in the United States prior to the Civil War. The earliest important work on the subject was a monograph entitled Die Aethiopen der altclassischen Kunst, by J. Loewnherz, published in an important year in negro history, 1861. This monograph does not fulfill the promise of its title, for the examples in art are subordinated to a study of the Memnon myth and a discussion of the real and mythical Ethiopian lands. In 1885 Von Schneider published an article in which he classified chronologically the examples which he knew, and which he later supplemented by a list of examples brought to his attention in the interval. The most important contribution to the subject has recently been made by Buschor in an article entitled Das Krokodil des Sotades, which gives a very full account of the negro on vases of the fifth century.
Other work on the question has been confirmed to the publication of individual specimens which have come into museum or private collections. Sometimes this has been made the basis of a substantial article as in the case of Schrader who compares at great length a head of a Libyan in the British Museum with a head of a negro in Berlin and who assembles some examples of Ethiopians relevant to his discussion. But in the main such articles have done no more than list a few unrelated examples of the type and make some inaccurate generalizations. This is probably due to the fact that only a few have been widely reproduced by illustration. The need for a new and more complete list has been frequently expressed. Wace expressed the hope that this would form a part of Bienkowski’s Corpus Barbrorum. Von Schneider, who had great interest in the subject, announced his intention of supplementing his list by a more complete study but died without realizing this aim.
At the suggestion of Professor David M. Robinson this study was undertaken. Representations of the negro type have proved to be so common that a complete list is an impossibility, as practically every museum or private collection contains one or more examples. This forces us to depend on catalogues, and as many negro types occur on minor objects they are not always illustrated. But the writer feels that the range of cases here given is sufficiently extended so that the principal types have all been included and she is encouraged by the very incomplete knowledge shown in previous references on the subject. She has visited many European and American museums in her study of the negro but lays no claim to a complete knowledge of all examples. The terminology has been a real difficulty, since the popular and the scientific understanding of the word “negro” are at variance. European usage in this matter is far from uniform and often careless. The German archaeologists use “Neger” and “Mohr” indiscriminately as synonymous, even Buschor in his excellent article employing them in the same sentence. Museum catalogues use one term as frequently as the other and study of the objects shows that they are not employed to distinguish a Moor from a Sudanese but that the usage is very loose. The French archaeologists use “nègre” to cover all variations of dark skin regardless of the features or hair. This is doubtless because of more frequent contact with France’s North African colonies than with those south of the Great Desert. English scholars, more familiar with Egypt, frequently call these classical negroes “Nubians”, a usage which has considerable warrant in that many entered Greece by way of Egypt from Nubia. The English also employ the word “negro” but the longer term Ethiopian is generally avoided.
Science limits the name “negro” to one group of African races, the Ulotrichi, the determining factor being, not the skin color, but the crisply curling so-called woolly hair. The principal representatives of this group are the stock of Senegambia and Guinea, and its other outstanding characteristics are short, broad nose, thick, projecting lips, a prominent jaw, and abnormally long arms. So complicated are the racial and tribal divisions and subdivisions in Africa with their varying characteristics that the classification of the art types according to racial origins is too difficult for the archaeologist. America, with a delicate race problem on her hands, has long since disregarded any scientific distinctions between the various African types, and the popular usage in this country defines a negro in the terms of the color line. Generally speaking racial feeling is directed against skin, and variations of the hair and features are not taken into account. The use of the word is further complicated by existing legal definitions such as that of the State of North Carolina, which declares any person a negro who has in his veins one-sixteenth or more of African blood.
Greek literature has no such confusion in nomenclature and gives very generally to any member of any dark-skinned group the name Aἱθίοψ, which the Greek geographers derived from αἱθóς and ὄψ that is to say, a man with a (sun) burned face. It is not at all restricted to the kingdom of Meroë south of Egypt. The Greek use of Aithiops, therefore, closely parallels the popular use of negro and is quite at variance with its restricted scientific use. To use negro in its scientific sense in the present study would be to exclude many Ethiopians. To defer to popular usage would be unscientific and would cause frequent misunderstandings. Therefore it seems best to retain the Greek word in its English form, Ethiopian, and to indicate genuine negro types under the individual descriptions, particularly since his study limits its scope to Ethiopians in Greece and Rome and is not concerned with their original African homes.
My heartiest thanks are due to Professor David M. Robinson who has supervised and assisted in all stages of preparation with that generosity well known to all his students and to Professor Tenney Frank, who read a portion of the manuscript.

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Chapter I: The Ethiopian in Greek Literature

The absence of exact geographical knowledge of Africa and greater Asia is the basic reason for the profound confusion in the Greek mind about the Ethiopians. Appearing in Homer as the comrades of the Olympic gods, interwoven with the myths of Memnon and Andromeda, emerging actually as persons of curious appearance from the lands south of Egypt, it is small wonder that writers like Strabo and Pausanias found it difficult to reconcile them in geography and legend, and that in different periods they were identified with widely differing peoples.
The confusion begins with Homer himself, to whom Ethiopia was a land of the remotest border of the world beside the stream of Ocean. Here dwelt a blameless race of men who held sacrificial feasts which the gods attended; Zeus and the other gods in Iliad. I, 423-4:
Ζεὺς γὰρ ἐς Ὠκεανὸν μετ’ ἀμύμονας Αἰθιοπης
χθιζὸς ἔβη κατὰ δαιτα, θεοὶ δ’ἃμα πάντες ἕποντο
Iris in Iliad. XXIII, 205-7:
οὐχ ἕδος · εἶμι γὰρ αὖτις ἐπ’ Ὠκεανίο ῥέεθρα,
Αἰθιόπων ἐς γαίαν, ὅθι ῥέζουόσ’ ἑκατόμβας
ἀθανάοις ἵνα δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ μεταδαίσομαι ἱρων
and Poseidon in Odyssey. I, 22-24:
Άλλ’ ὁ μὲν Αἰθίοπας μετεκίαθε τηλόθ’ ἐόντας,
Αἰθίοπας, τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρων,
οἰ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος, οἰ δ’ ἀνιόντος—

In another passage the Ethiopians were visited by Menelaus,
Odyssey. IV, 84:
Αἰθίοπας θ’ἱκόμην καὶ Σιδονίους καὶ Έρεμβοὺς

They were included in a list of places decidedly near-eastern; and with Homer begins also the conception of the two-fold Ethiopians (cf. Od. I, 24 as quoted above), those of the east and the west—of the rising and the setting sun. We are given no clue as to which group of Ethiopians was visited by Zeus in company with the other gods, but Poseidon seems to have visited the eastern Ethiopians, since he was in Asia Minor on his way home when he caught sight of Odysseus on his raft,
Odyssey. V, 282-3:
Τὸν δ΄ἐξ Αἰθιόπων ἀνιὼν κρείων ἐνοσίχθων
Τηλόθεν ἐκ Σολύμων ὀρέων ἴδεν·

Iris must have been visiting the Ethiopians of the west since she stops at the palace of Zephyrus on her way. But the western Ethiopians play a minor part in Greek mythology for as the Memnon myth grew in importance, the son of the Dawn who was also king of the Ethiopians, fixed them in the East, where Eos and Tithonus dwelt παρ΄ Ώκεανοῑο ῥοῇϛ ἐπὶ πείρασι γαίης (Hymn to Aphrodite, 228).
The Ethiopians of Homer, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρων, comrades of the gods rather than of men, are creatures too shadowy for any description of their personal appearance. There is no indication that they were black, no allusion to the later etymology which derived Ethiopians from αἴθω and ὄψ, that is (sun) burnt faces. On the other hand we cannot argue that Homer had never heard of dark men because he does not specifically mention them, and in his linking of the Ethiopians so closely with the rising and the setting of the sun he cannot have been entirely unmindful of the action of the sun’s rays. It is not inconceivable to see in the western Ethiopians, who seem to have no other raison d’être than to fill a geographical gap, a subconscious reasoning that the sun must color men dark in the region where it sets not less than where it rises. But they are entirely fabulous and any attempt to place them in a fixed geographical scheme is futile, since Homer himself says that we do not know the places where the sun rises and sets, Odyssey. X, 190-192:
ὦ φίλοι, οὐ γάρ τ΄ἴδμεν ὅπη Ϛόφος οὐδ΄ ὅπη ἠὼς,
οὐδ΄ ὅπη ἠέλιος φαεσίμβροτος εἶσ΄ ὑπὸ γαίαν
οὐδ΄ ὅπη ἀννείται.

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Only the Ethiopians visited by Menelaus have a faint ring of reality, as these are listed with actually existing peoples including Egyptians. If we wish to think that Homer had heard vaguely of dark men in the south it proves nothing that Menelaus visited them by ship. Shakespeare in an age of greater knowledge gave a sea-coast to Bohemia.
References to Ethiopians in Hesiod are hardly more definite than in Homer. In a fragment quoted by Strabo VII, 3, 7, Hesiod lists Ethiopians with Ligurians and Scythians, peoples of whom Hesiod could have no definite knowledge but who are not mythical. Löwenherz (p. 9) is wrong in saying that Hesiod has actual information about African Ethiopians since he names them together with the Libyans. There is no manuscript warrant for reading Libyans here, nor any reason for substituting them unless Hesiod shows elsewhere that he knows the real location of Ethiopia. This he does not, for in Theogony 984-5 the Ethiopians are without a definite home, and Memnon the son of Eos is their king. Hesiod in the fragment is apparently listing a few tribes who are to him extremely remote, the extremes of north, west, and south. Nor is there in Hesiod any specific reference to the Ethiopian color, though nameless dark men in the south are referred to for the first time in the Works and Days where (527) it is said that in winter the sun goes ἐπὶ κυανέων ἀνδρῶν δῆμόν τε πόλιν τε. In spite of the gloss, Αἰθιόπων-Μαύρων-κυανέων, the reference here may be to Egyptians, though the adjective κυανέοισι is later applied to Memnon’s Ethiopians by Quintus of Smyrna, II, 101. In a fragment of Mimnermus (Bergk 12; Diehl 10) the sun goes γαῖαν ἐς Αἰθιόπων ἵνα δὴ θοὸν ἅρμα καὶ ἵπποι ǀ ἑστασ΄, ὄφρ΄ Ήὼς ἠριγένεια μόλῃ. The Ethiopians are again in the East and the western Ethiopians have disappeared, at least for the time being, for Mimnermus evidently thinks of them as sufficiently fixed in the east to be synonymous with it and sufficiently mythical to be contrasted with the Hesperides.
Aeschylus is the first Greek writer to place the Ethiopians definitely in Africa. Prometheus (Prom. 808-9) refers to a dark race, κελαινὸν φῦλον, who dwell near the springs of the sun where the Ethiopian river is, ποταμὸς Αἰθίοψ. Were it not for mention of the Nile River and the Egyptians this would sound like a complete return to the mythical Ethiopians near the stream of Ocean. The reference to the springs of the sun and the fact that in the Suppliants (280-2) they were neighbors of the Indians show that Aeschylus’ geography was very inexact. In fact the Ethiopians again recede into a mythical haze in a fragment (Nauck 192) from the Prometheus Unbound of Aeschylus quoted by Strabo, I, 2, 27:
Φοινικόπεδον τ΄ἐρυθρας ἱερὸν
Χευμα θαλάσσης,
Χαλκοκέραυνόν τε παρ΄ Ώκεανῳ
λίμναν παντοτρόφον Αἰθιόπων,
ἵν΄ ὁ παντόπτας Ἥλιος αἰεὶ
χρωτ΄ ἀθάνατον κάματόν θ΄ἵππων
θερμαίς ὕδατος
μαλακου προχοαίς ἀναπαύει.

Strabo, who tries hard to reconcile the Ethiopia of Homer and Aeschylus with his own geographical knowledge, explains this passage by saying that since the stream of Ocean refreshes the sun along the whole southern belt, Aeschylus appears to place his Ethiopians along this whole belt. They are probably also the μελανστέρφων ένος (Nauck, Aes., Fr. 370) preserved by the scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius (IV, 1348) who explains that Aeschylus means those whose whole body is dark.
From the vague and unreal Ethiopians of poetry one is recalled into reality rather sharply by Herodotus’ matter-of-fact description of two sets of Ethiopians who entered Greece in the army of Xerxes. Herodotus distinguishes sharply between the straight hair of the Asiatic Ethiopians and the woolly hair of those from Africa. They are not presented as corresponding to Homer’s twofold Ethiopians, though Homer-loving Greeks must have considered this a verification of the poet’s geographical knowledge. Herodotus shows himself a rather superficial observer of racial differences, as he mentions hair as the only distinguishing mark between the two groups, although he goes into their costumes and weapons in some detail. It is significant that nowhere does Herodotus refer to dark skin, apparently taking this for granted as understood, and showing that the identification of Ethiopians with the black races must have dated well before his time.
In view of the fact that Herodotus had discussed the type scientifically, and that vase painters had familiarized it at Athens some time before the plays of Euripides were produced, one is surprised to have the Ethiopians again retire to a mythical landscape on the world’s edge as they do in a fragment of the Phaethon of Euripides. But even though the Ethiopians are again mythical they are by now surely dark; it is made explicit that Ethiopia, the country implied by the proper names, is the home of the swarthy race who daily are the first to be struck by the golden flame of the sun.
The explanation is that the Ethiopians have become a fixed literary tradition in Greek poetry, maintaining a separate life of their own and having little to do with reality. Every literature retains certain supernatural beings who become a part of the poetical heritage of their country and who have a long literary history. This is the reason that no inconsistency was felt when poetry suddenly transplanted the Ethiopians from Africa to the extreme east. It is also the reason why the purely poetical western Ethiopians reappear in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (III, 1190 f.):
ἠέλιος μὲν ἄπωθεν ἐρεμνὴν δύετο γαίαν
ἑσπέριος, νεάτας ὑπὲρ ἄκριας Αἰθιοπήων

In an age when great numbers of terra-cotta figurines portrayed the negro type with a realism that often amounted to caricature. The Ethiopians of the poets—Homer, Hesiod, Mimnermus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Apollonius—are mythical or partly mythical creatures, while the writers of prose—Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Heliodorus—dealt with the African reality.
Whenever the mythical Ethiopians appear in conjunction with definite heroes or heroines of mythology they shrink in importance. Interest is centered in the principal actor and mention of them is purely formal, without additional description, as a part of the hero’s title. They are closely associated with Memnon, a hero of the epic cycle, and with the post-Homeric myth of Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia.
Memnon does not appear in the Iliad but is twice referred to in the Odyssey, once (though not by name) as the son of Eos who slew Antilochus (IV, 187-8), and once for his great beauty (I, 522). It will be noted that Homer does not call him the king of the Ethiopians. He is the beautiful son of Eos, and as the son of so fair a goddess he would not have been thought of as dark-skinned. His identification with the Ethiopians, whether known and not mentioned by Homer or developed soon after, seems to be a reconciliation of two distinct legends—one which placed a fabulous race of men at the place where the sun rose, and one which brought a hero son of Dawn to Troy from the sun-rise regions. It was an easy step to make the dawn hero the king of the dawn folk or Ethiopians though the association of the two always puzzled the Greeks. The practical Romans finally made Memnon himself an outright Ethiopian.
That Memnon’s association with the Ethiopians was completed before the time of Hesiod is clear, for the Theogony (984-5) names him their king. The identification must have been made before or by the Aithiopis, an epic poem assigned to Arctinus of Miletus and lost except for a few fragments and an echo in the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna. The fragments do not mention Ethiopians. The central theme of the Aithiopis, judging from literary references and vase paintings, was Memnon’s participation at Troy on the Trojan side, his victory over Antilochus the son of Nestor, his death at the hands of Achilles and the grief of his mother Eos.
Memnon was originally an eastern or Asiatic hero and many places in Asia were associated with his name. He was particularly connected with Persia where he was thought to have built Susa. But Pausanias says that he went from Ethiopia to Egypt, then to Susa and from there to Troy. For other places associated with him, see Letronne. Later his identification by the Greeks with the so-called “Vocal Memnon” or statue of Amenophis at Thebes transferred him to Africa and heightened the mystery of his origin.
Asiatic also was the myth of Andromeda, whose parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia were rulers of Ethiopia. Through the command of Ammon she was bound to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster and saved by Perseus, who was returning from his battle with Medusa. The myth is not an early one but was well known by the fifth century B.C., where it was a subject for vase painters and dramatic writers. Sophocles and Euripides each wrote an Andromeda. The Ethiopian country of the Andromeda legend was also in antiquity a debated point. The similarity between the names Iope and Ethiopia caused the myth to be localized at Joppa, the presence of a sea monster demanding a sea-coast country. Even in the time of Josephus the traces of Andromeda’s fetters were pointed out at Joppa. On the other hand, later writers believed the scene to be African and Heliodorus says that Perseus, Andromeda, and Memnon were all worshiped as heroes in African Ethiopia.

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I believe one reason for the geographical confusion as to the possible location of 'Ethiopia' may have to do with the fact that Ethiopia may perhaps be synonymous with the Biblical 'Kush' in which there is an African Kush identified with Nubia as well as an Arabian Kush identified with southern Arabia. Interestingly, even Greek geography identifies the Arabian Desert as being on both sides of the Red Sea.



Thus Ethiopia may also straddle both sides of the Red Sea and perhaps further east. The country of Ethiopia homeland of Perseus' bride Princess Andromeda is said to be a coastal nation. Many have identified it with Canaan in the Levant and it's capital Ioppa as the Yaffa. Though perhaps it may be further south along the Red Sea coast. The myth of Memnon hailing from the east where Eos (Dawn) arises is interesting because the southern Mesopotamia in the Persian Gulf area was a cult center of the Eastern Semitic goddess of dawn called Aya and this area has Arabian ties as well.

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As Memnon because of his great beauty was evidently white, and Andromeda is white in vase paintings, the ruling caste of Ethiopia must have been considered white. But what was the color of the people ruled over? Greek writers seem to have avoided this problem by silence and the purely formal mention as given above. But the vase painter wanting to portray Memnon or Andromeda was confronted with the necessity of selecting a physiognomy for their followers or servants. Hence on certain vases treated in another chapter negro types appear. And here lies the relevancy of this discussion to the problem of the Ethiopian type in art. For the painter did not create fanciful Ethiopians, but apparently reproduced negro types with which they were well acquainted. Negroes had appeared in Athens. Hence, if the legend specified Ethiopians these were the Ethiopians which the painter knew, and they are interesting more for what they can disclose of contemporary slave life in Greece than for their connection with myth.
The accuracy of knowledge displayed in regard to the geographical Ethiopia by Greek and Roman authors, their involved grouping of the Ethiopian according to habits of eating and living and their uncertain boundaries, is outside the present question. Some time has been given to the mythical Ethiopians because in the first place they are really Greek, a product of the Greek imagination and a tradition of Greek literature. In the second place, Greek poets created the art interest in the Ethiopian type and gave it a legendary aura which can be held in large measure responsible for the curiosity which prompted the reproduction of the type in Greek art. One can almost see the potter look at his model, as he created one of those joyously realistic plastic heads of negroes and muse “Can these be the blameless Ethiopians of Homer?”

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Another assumption Beardley makes is that because Memnon and Andromeda were described as "beautiful" they must have been white. This flies against Greek writings describing black individuals or entire peoples as beautiful in appearance. An example would be Didyme Ptolemy II's Egyptian concubine who was described as beautiful as she was black. An example of the latter would be Herodotus who describes the Macrobians a people who lived at the extreme south of the Nile as "the tallest and handsomest of all men".

black Memnon


Black depictions of Andromeda are rare but they exist.

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CHAPTER II: The Introduction of the Ethiopian into Greece

Greek literature gives but little information as to the presence of Ethiopians on Greek soil. From Herodotus we learn that they formed a part of the army of Xerxes which invaded Greece in the year 480 B.C. A casual reference in Theophrastus tells us that it was fashionable to have Ethiopian slave characters in the third century B.C. But the evidence of excavations shows that they were known even in Minoan times.
A fragment of a painted stucco relief, found at Knossus, which shows a man’s hand fingering a necklace which has pendants in the form of heads of Ethiopian type with large triple earrings, dates from the period of Middle Minoan III. The hair is black and curly, the eyes large, the noses short and the lips thick and red. The color of the skin is a tawny yellow. From the dull orange beads and yellow faces Evans suggests that the material was gold and believes that a man is putting a necklace about a woman’s neck perhaps in a wedding ceremony. Evans says that “the golden material of the necklace, coupled with the negroes’ heads, seem to point to Nubia—the Egyptian ‘Eldorado’ as the source of that precious metal,” but he also thinks it possible that the gold may have come from some other African source south of the desert by way of Libya, as there is other evidence that the Cretans had relations with the Libyans. Faïence fragments found with the so-called Town Mosaic which date perhaps even earlier from Middle Minoan II times, show types which Evans considers negroid from the swarthy skin color, prognathism, and shape of the torso. He believes they form part of a siege scene and that some are in the attitude of suppliants. To Late Minoan I b, the age of the great expansion overseas, belong the remains of a fresco on which the “Minoan Captain of the Blacks” is leading the negro troops. The employment of negro auxiliaries by Minoan lords is a historical fact of great significance. Perhaps they indicate conquest in Africa where there were caravan routes to the interior of immemorial antiquity. Their employment as Palace Guards and auxiliaries on European soil is paralleled by the use of Senegalese troops in modern warfare.

From these Minoan fragments it is evident that the Cretans had some knowledge of dark races in Africa. This knowledge does not seem to have been carried over to the mainland; Mycenaean or Helladic art has not afforded any portraits of Ethiopians and it is difficult to believe with Evans that the Minoans made use of black regiments for their final conquest of a large part of the Peloponnese and Mainland Greece. In any case the art type would have died out with the Indo-European invasions. Beyond this Greek literature is silent and the many representations of the negro type in Greek art must furnish their own interpretation.
The earliest appearance of the Ethiopian type in the art of the mainland is on a series of plastic vases in the form of heads, some single and some janiform. Schneider believed that negroes entered Greece for the first time in the army of Xerxes and that their sudden appearance in art is due to the deep impression left in the minds of those who saw them. A glance at these vases convinces one that here is no memory picture. The racial type is rendered with great fidelity. Here is the true negro type, woolly-haired, prognathous, with broad nose and large everted lips. There is no doubt that Ethiopians were actually on Greek soil and that they served as models for the potter. These vases from the evidence of their decoration and shape can now be dated in the latter part of the sixth century B.C. Consequently Ethiopians did not enter Greece for the first time in Xerxes’ army, and we must look for an earlier link between Greece and Ethiopia.
The most obvious connection between the two geographically is Egypt. Here the Ethiopian had been known for centuries, and had appeared upon Egyptian monuments since the second Dynasty, roughly corresponding to the Early Minoan period. There have recently come to the Boston Museum two excellent painted limestone portraits of an Egyptian Ethiopian prince and princess dating about 3000 B.C. Dr. Reisner calls these “the earliest known portraits of negroes,” but it has been wrongly denied that these are negroes by Petrie in Ancient Egypt, 1916, p.48.
Prior to the founding of Alexandria, the strongest bond between Egypt and Greece was the city of Naucratis in the Nile delta. Flinders Petrie (Naukratis I, p. 5), and Prinz (Funde aus Naukratis, pp. 1-6) place the date of its founding by Milesian colonists in the early half of the seventh century B.C. from the evidence of its pottery and scarab industry, and from the testimony of Greek authors. By the middle of the sixth century it had achieved a marked commercial eminence. It was granted certain privileges and immunities by the government of Egypt. It was the gateway of Egypt for all foreigners, since it was the only port of the delta which foreign ships were permitted to enter. It was, therefore, the most logical place for Greeks to have their first contact with members of the Ethiopian race, and the first negroes to enter Greece were in all probability brought back by returning voyagers from Naucratis.
Naucratis was important not only as a commercial but also as an artistic center, and if we are correct in assuming that Ethiopians became known to Greece by way of this city, we should expect them to appear in the art of Naucratis before they occur in the art of the mainland. Excavations have proved this to be the case, and the popularity of the type to have lasted into later centuries. Furthermore the founders of Naucratis were Ionic Greeks from the mainland of Asia Minor and the interrelation between the Ionian art centers in the early period is well established. There is, therefore, additional support for this conjecture in the fact that the Ethiopian type occurs on objects of the seventh and sixth centuries from Cyprus and Rhodes, two islands influenced by the art of Naucratis. Furtwängler (Griech. Vasenmalerei, tet to pl. 51, PP. 255-260) assigns to an Ionian artist the well known Caertan hydria depicting the myth of Heracles and Busiris in which Ethiopians are shown as attendants. Karo is of the opinion that the Busiris vase was made in North Africa. Buschor (Muen. Jb. Kunst, XI, p. 36) remarks that the master who painted this hydria must have been familiar with the Naucratite fabric and types. Buschor, however, believes that Ionian artists introduced the negro type into Greek art. This does not contradict the idea that Naucratis played an important part. It only introduces an intermediary step. The following objects have been found at Naucratis and other places outside the Greek mainland with which Naucratis had trade relations...

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Posts: 26237 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Due to the humble position of the Ethiopian in Greece and the fact that realism was usually confined to smaller objects the great sculptors did not consider him a sufficiently dignified or important subject, since life-sized heads and statues are comparatively few. But for smaller objects the popularity of the type was tremendous, and is attested by a wealth of statuettes, vases, engraved gems, coins, lamps, weights, finger-rings, ear-rings, necklaces, and masks from classical sites.

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ Probably because foreigners in general tended to have humble positions in Greek society. Most foreigners who came to Greece or Greek territories came simply as merchant or traders, while others were sold as slaves. It has nothing to do with 'race' per say but the attitude Greeks had with foreigners in general. Xenophobia was not uncommon. That said, the Greek custom of xenia or guest right ensured that any visitor who came had to be treated with hospitality.

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Originally posted by Doug M:

Unfortunately all of these narratives focus on a very carefully chosen examples that conform to the stereotypical features of racist anthropology. None of these refer to the evidence of Africans in Minoan art, such as the boats depicted with African travelers and so forth. Not to mention the other examples of artistic influence from Africa on early classical Greek art......

Not to mention the fact that 500 BC is very late in the ancient history of Africa, as this is after the end of the ancient Dynastic kingdoms on the Nile.

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Posts: 26237 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ I can't help but to think there is some sort of conspiracy behind this. Because in all the sources I've read there are entire catalogues of art pieces in the hundreds yet we never see them in the net.

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Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ What about the Minoan frescoes? I find it odd that there are various projects to preserve Egyptian tombs and their artwork even virtually in the web like Kent Weeks' Theban Mapping Project, yet I've heard of no such endeavors with the material in Crete or Cyprus. Also, one would think Greco-Roman depictions of Africans would be made a priority especially in these days of "diversity, equity, & inclusion".

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Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Another issue that merits further discussion is the physical character of the Egyptians on the Busiris vases. The literature on the so-called race of the ancient Egyptians has a long and sordid history that cannot be addressed in full here, but suffice it to say that in the nineteenth century it became entangled with the race science of the day. Ancient Egypt was subjected to a systematic whitening as part of a larger effort to justify the enslavement of people of African descent by denying any association between civilization and black people (Bernasconi 2007, p.12).

Whether such concepts as race and racism even existed in the ancient Mediterranean remains a subject of debate (Isaac 2004, pp. 4-5; McCoskey 2012, pp. 47-49; Kennedy et al. xiii-xv; Jensen 2018, pp. 14-16) and racial categories such as black and white are modern social fabrications that would have held no meaning in antiquity (Dee 2004, pp.163-4; Smith 2018, pp.18-19).

It is clear, however, that ancient Greek vase-painters, even accounting for the distortions and conventions inherent to their medium, conveyed Egypt as place that was home to people who in modern terms would be considered black.

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Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by BrandonP:

I have a personal conjecture that the "blacks" in this Minoan fresco may be Egyptians too, though it's hard to say without more of the fresco being found. Certainly seems that Egyptians would have been a more familiar sight to Minoans than Kushites from further south.

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Originally posted by Tazarah:
"... These discoveries proved more ancient and direct Ethiopian contact with early Aegean civilizations than had ever been speculated previously. Crete became a prime example of this thesis, providing proofs that would make it the basis for contending that Ethiopians had asserted “a profound influence on the material and literary aspects of Greek civilization… Archeological synchronisms made it possible to establish links between prehistoric Crete and ancient Egypt."

Diodorus’s relatively late statement that Ethiopians sent 'great forces abroad into other countries where they succeeded in bringing many parts of the world under their dominion… long before the Trojan war' is weighted and reinforced by Herodotus’s writings on the Colchians, and both are supported by the Minoan findings of an early Ethiopian presence that precedes them.

Hansberry acquaints us with the implications of all this research. The notices tied to the archaeological discoveries show a long history of Minoan contact with 'black' and African cultures 'from the very beginnings of early Minoan civilization.' As Evans noted, the 'beehive' tombs of the Aegean bear a 'striking resemblance to a type of very ancient tomb that had a wide distribution throughout Africa.' Evans believed that these architectural structures might have been 'introduced into the Aegean area by emigrants from Africa,' which led him to 'attribute the foundation of Early Minoan culture to an actual settlement of colonist from North Africa in Crete.'"

"Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx" by Maghan Keita, page 117 (2000) Oxford University Press

https://books.google.com/books/about/Race_and_the_Writing_of_History.html?id=fnylq8hkVbYC

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Just by reading and even before checking the source, I knew the author's ethnicity would be Afro-American...

I find it unbelievable that this individual is considered a "scholar" in America. He confusingly interchanges "Ethiopians" with "Ancient Egypt," while it's clear that the Greeks distinguished between the two. Even worse, he associates Colchians with Ethiopians...

The so-called "Minoan findings" are merely depictions of what appears to be some type of upper Nubians. From this, the author draws far-fetched conclusions, such as Ethiopian dominion and settlement. As for the "beehive" structures, they are simply tholoi, an Eastern Mediterranean tradition with no parallel in Africa. "colonist from North African in Crete" while this funerary tradition doesn't even exist in North Africa...


Once more, we observe how certain black academics in the US demonstrate bias and insecurity. They frequently make questionable statements and connections, attempting to incorporate black individuals into various contexts and envisioning "dominions"...

Posts: 1779 | From: Somewhere In the Rif Mountains | Registered: Nov 2021  |  IP: Logged | 

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Maghan Keita is no archaeologist and has not done any field work in Greece or North Africa. But he has written some articles about classical authors. He has also written articles like:

Race, The Writing of History, and Culture Wars(2002)

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This article argues that postmodernism undermines traditional historiographies and seeks to provide new avenues of freedom and escape from White supremacy. Indeed, the argument of this article is that new historiographies are necessary to rid intellectual discourse of the assumptions of racist theory. Consequently, the work of Du Bois and Diop, founding historiographers of a new way of viewing Africa, might be seen as an opening to a new discourse.

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Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by BrandonP:
The aDNA report on Minoan remains describes their hair and eye color as being mostly dark, but doesn't say anything about their skin color. While the ancient Minoans do seem to have been genetically similar to modern Aegeans, is there any chance that they could nonetheless have been darker-skinned during the Bronze Age and later turned paler due to in situ selection?

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Skin color can be difficult to assess but we have at least some skeletal remains whereof a couple were the basis of facial reconstructions of Minoans



J. H. Musgrave, R. A. H. Neave, A. J. N. W. Prag, E. Sakellarakis and J. A. Sakellarakis, 1994: The Priest and Priestess from Archanes-Anemospilia: Reconstructing Minoan Faces
The Annual of the British School at Athens
Link to article

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Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist

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Two of the palaces of the famous ancient Egyptian naval base Peru-nefer near Tell el-Dab‘a/‘Ezbet Helmi in the eastern Nile Delta, which date to the reign of Hatshepsut/Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, were embellished with Minoan wall paintings (see project »Ancient Egyptian palaces«). Unfortunately, they were no longer in situ on the walls, but had fallen to the ground, as they had been painted on hard lime plaster unsuitable for the mud-brick walls of the palace (as such soft building materials shrink over time). From there they were picked up, taken out of the palace and dumped down the landing of the entrance ramp or disposed of in several middens near the beginning of the ramp.

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The reconstruction of the mural scenes from thousands of plaster fragments is the subject of this project. Only about 5-20 % of the former wall programme has been preserved. With the aid of the corpus of Minoan and Mycenaean art, including small-scale art and glyptic, the frescoes are being reconstructed.

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