28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very useful perspective, November 30, 1999
This review is from: Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Paperback)
This text is a wonderful antidote to the present-mindedness which marks much of our current discussion of race and race relations. Snowden examined the ancient Mediterranean world--a highly pluralistic, interracial world--to learn how significant the concept of race was at that time. His compelling and creative use of human representations in art, and of the stories that ancient people told about eachother show that race--while seemingly all-important today--was insignificant to them. He identifies (among others) Egyptian, Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman art in which "black" and "white" people stand side-by-side as soldiers, military officers, political rulers, spouses, athletes, guests at feasts, mythic figures, etc. While ancients recognized the physical differences which we use as racial identifiers, they did not seem to draw the same invidious distinctions or make the same social uses of race which Europeans around the world have made over the past 500 years. I regularly refer to his findings in 2-3 of my college courses to raise questions about the naturalness and inevitability of our current racial assumptions. The many photographs included in the text make it even more valuable, by allowing us to draw our own conclusions from his graphic evidence. I highly recommend this book.
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Snowden presents an extremely credible view of ancient race, September 20, 2000
This review is from: Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Paperback)
Let's get it straight. Dr. Frank Snowden knows what he is talking about.
Snowden offers solid evidence from antiquity that does show "racism" based on skin color was in fact not a major issue of ancient times. While it is true that slavery did exist from antiquity, it was based on conquest, and not skin color or race from a biological superiority/inferiority perspective.
Dr. Snowden is not writing a piece of revisionist history or unsupported political Afro-centrism, he is presenting findings of honest and credible research.
This is an excellent book that any intelligent person who has serious questions about race and racism in history should read.
One possible conclusion you may arrive at is that racism is evidently a much more recent social (and possibly even theological) construction in history and definitely not one that originated in antiquity.
I highly recommend "Before Color Prejudice".
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
HUGE inconsistencies, however intriguing..., August 28, 2010
This review is from: Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Paperback)
While the detailingly sought quotes are presented, there are mass amounts of contradictions, historical and personal coming from Mr. Snowden himself acknowledging the "absence" of ancient racism, while engaging in questionable personal views and terminology. Rather than aggress his respective scholarship, I will simply quote as follows...
p.88 1st paragraph
"Nubians who left their country for EGYPT or elsewhere in Mediterranean lands were obviously conspicuous because of their color: they were blacks in predominantly WHITE societies."
(one may question this quote in constrast to a quote from Herodotus "The Father of History" stating that Colchians were an Egyptian race because like them they have black skins and wooly hair, which amounts to little since many other colonies do as well, Lucien also described an Egyptian boy as not just merely black, but with thick lips, thin legs and plaited hair. Ammanianus Marcellinus, Aristotle, Achilles, and even The Bible follow suit.)...
p.83 2nd paragraph
"It was obviously because of a deeply rooted tradition linking blackness with death and the Underworld that some writers of the early Roman Empire put dark-skinned peoples-Ethiopian, EGYPTIAN, Garamantian - in ill-omened contexts."
p.73 4th paragraph
"Piye, for example, in his triumphal stele made no reference to color: he apparently did not regard himself as a champion of black peoples who had overturned their former masters."
(remember when I stated that there were HUGE inconsistencies?)
p 103 2nd paragraph
"Blacks could have a soul as pure as the whitest of whites"
(that's HIS own quote...heavens)
p 100 3rd paragraph
"Ethiopians, Indians, and other dark peoples."
p106 3rd paragraph
"Menas, sometimes portrayed as a negro, was a national saint of Egypt."
p72 3rd paragraph
"To many Egyptians, Napatans appeared "Egyptian", not foreign."
p73 1st paragraph
"Nubians "among civilization's pioneers" renowed for their wisdom and their fame in astrology"
p72 3rd paragraph (one page before)
"Meroites, though heavily indebted to the Egyptians throughout their history in language, religion, and art, gradually developed their own distinctive writing, worship their own gods, and create their own style of architecture, sculpture, and pottery"
(This stubbornly ignores the findings of the A-Group culture in the Northern Sudan region of Qustul in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in a cover of the New York Times from March 1, 1979 stating "Archeological Evidence Yield's World's Oldest Monarchy", which implies Egyptian iconography and symbolism, Pharaonic tombs, and even Monarchies PERIOD, not just divine kingship, take root there archaeologically.)
... nice pictures though!
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