Customer Reviews

Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Belknap Press)

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Snowden is not an Afro-centric writer, he is a well qualified professor of classics, an accredited expert in his field.

"Blacks in Antiquity" presents a comprehensive history and analysis of ancient Ethiopian "black" culture. In the 18th and 19th centuries, some American anthropologists and theologians have attempted to rewrite Ethiopian history to show this advanced culture as one not truly black. The roots of that go into the very heart of the origin of western racism in Colonial America and can be found to affect our implicit views of race even today.

Snowden shows from historical, textual and archaeological evidence that the Ethiopians were indeed a "black" race. He also establishes their position of respect and complete equal acceptance with other ancient cultures of the time. In essence, it shows, while perhaps not explicitly stating it, that racism is a much more recent invention than many have supposed-- especially those hold to a "Black curse" or "inferiority" theory in physiology or theology.

If you want a volume that presents evidence in a straight foward and empirically supportable manner, this is an excellent choice.

Frank M. Snowden, Jr. (1911-2007) was an American Professor Emeritus of Classics at Howard University, and one of the foremost authorities on blacks in classical antiquity. He also wrote books such as Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks.

He writes in the Preface to this 1970 book, "I have attempted to set forth the facts as precisely as possible on the basis of the ancient evidence---literary, epigraphical, papyrological, numismatic, and archaeological. The material has been presented topically, each topic chronologically as far as practicable when such an arrangement was necessary for the most effective presentation of my findings."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Long ago E. Babelon observed that a comparison of different classical monuments depicting the Negro would demonstrate that the ancients were portraying no uniform type. He believed that a comparative study would be interesting from an anthropological view and would result in an identification of different groups of Ethiopians and subdivision of these groups." (Pg. 23)
"Unfortunately the plays involving Ethiopian themes or topics have been lost and are known only through fragments, titles, and the depictions of vase painters. The fragmentary evidence is sufficient, however, to indicate that as early as Aeschylus Ethiopians were presented as black, and speaking a different tongue, and as living in Africa." (Pg. 156)
"In the modern world the crucial test of the white man's acceptance of the Negro is the attitude toward miscegenation. Greek and Roman accounts of race mixture between Ethiopians and Mediterranean whites reveal no repugnance at the idea of racial crossings between whites and non-whites." (Pg. 192)
"The Ethiopian was the blackest and most remote of men. Yet his blackness gave rise neither to a theory of racial superiority not to an inferior treatment." (Pg. 196)
"There is nothing in the evidence, however, to suggest that the ancient Greek or Roman established color as an obstacle to integration into society." (Pg. 217-218)

Snowden seems to really know what he's talking about. To someone as ignorant in the subject as I was, it was a great read to learn all about the contact between the ancient Africans and Greeks. The pictures and explanations of artifacts are especially interesting.

Frank M. Snowden, Jr. draws a thorough picture of the absence of racism in the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. He is analysing ancient texts, archaeological evidence (paintings, sculptures), encounters of war, integration in mythology and the participation in the theater and amphitheater of Blacks from the white Greek and Roman perspective. Closing with theory and practise of living together without prejudice in pre- and early Christian Classic Mediterranean civilisation. He reveals the irony that the Greeks and Romans if at all, then harbored some prejudices not against black skinned, but the even whiter north Europeans beyond their borders. Anybody who is interested in all of the above will find this book rewarding.

However, elapsed time (written in 1969) has caused this work to suffer immensely, not only exemplified by the use of the N-word and also "Ethiopian" not exclusively for the people inhabiting today's country area of that name, but Blacks in general. Which occasionally becomes awkward, when the context does not make it clear, which "king of the Ethiopians" the book is referencing: From Axum (today's Ethiopia), any given black kingdom or especially Nubia (today's Sudan). Most names of peoples and kingdoms are not in use today anymore and Snowden doesn't always reveal, whom he is referring to in general modern terminology. No maps are provided for easy clarification.

Intended as passionately anti-racist, by today's standard, this book unintentionally harbors a lot of racism, not only in the vocabulary:

Snowden avers, only retardet kids would not be afraid of the other skin color. That has been disproven. Kids in kindergarten do not fear kids of other skin colors. (His contrary statements concern with lacking selectiveness fear of adult males, which is no less untrue.) In fact, human toddlers till a certain age are programmed by nature to accept almost any given mammal population as normal companions, being able to differentiate every individual monkey, what older kids/adults can't do anymore.

The book constantly describes paintings and sculptures, with no exception commenting black bodies and faces with vocabulary either sounding like medical conditions or in the tune of "flat-nosed, puffy-lipped" etc. Reading that many hundreds of times, Snowden thereby establishes respective synapse connections in the reader's brain. He never describes white skinned as something like "squeezed-out-nosed, inflated-lipped" etc., in fact, he doesn't describe white folks at all. Which makes white the norm of humanity and blacks the deviation. Whereas in reality it is the other way around (if at all, of course), as white people are nothing else but paled blacks, i.e. black would be the human norm, with all other phenotypes deriving from that.

The perspective is white. Antiquity's norm is Greece and Rome. Not Egypt, Phoenicians, Ethiopia, Sumer, etc. The mingling is not told from the latter's viewpoints.

Even worse, most of the above are not considered to be black. In the meantime we know that all of the above and many more peoples in the ancient vicinity were black peoples. This is a mayor flaw of the book as for one thing, the meeting of black and white(r) cultures leaves out considerable, even the most important portions of the book's potential subject matter. For another, one of the important reasons for the lack of racism is missed: The infant by comparison Greek and Roman civilisations knew Egypt, Sumer and other more ancient cultures as role models, which have been faked/mistaken into white in the meanwhile. (Which explains the prejudice towards the back then "under-developed" northern European cultures.) Moses and other historical personalities still appear to be white in this book.

Also in its style, the book shows signs of ageing. The occasionally integrated ancient Greek vocabulary isn't translated, not even transscribed into the Latin alphabet and thus become unreadable for most readers. This intellectual arrogance has been dropped in the 1990s. I mean, really: 82 notes pages for 150 normal text pages (+ 100 picture pages), but these most essential transscriptions are not provided! Speaking of foot notes: It may happen that a foot note is longer than 2 pages and includes references back to the previous parts, to several pages of both of the two picture sections. As if that wouldn't be enough, the picture references within the normal text may be many dozen pages in advance, without giving the page numbers (but the picture numbers; in combination with foot notes). This is the epitomy of obstacle reading I have had to deal with in my lifetime yet.

Clearly, this book is to be venerated as pushing the envelope once. Now we are in dire need of a completely new book on the subject as even a potential extensive preface and some changes wouldn't be enough to adjust it to the times.

In my opinion this book was written for college students. It is much more of a lesson plan layout than a narative on Africian history. The author takes each issue in sections and I find that in doing so there is quite a lot of repeation in his information. He also use words spelled in the Greek alphabet that I could not understand. At the early stages of the book many of these words are used with English counterparts but as the book goes on it seems as though you were suppose to remember them. It was Greek to me and not necessary.

I had to dig out some old maps I had in order to put locations on many of the areas he was writing about. The book would be a lot better if there were maps included. The artifacts pictures in the book, some ninety-nine pages, were a great aide to my understanding and there are plenty of them. There are about eighty-two pages of reference notes and only about one hundred and forty-three pages of text.

In the end result I put myself in a classroom receiving a lecture from my professor. Did my homework (research of names and places I was not familure with) and was able to follow the information over an extended period. It took me almost a month, during my free time, to finish it. The information is there. The arguments are there. With all the negative comments I've mentioned above I found the book serving the desire I bought it for. Knowledge. That made it's reading and content worth while to me.

The so-called "negroid" features this author attributes to the Ancient Authors views of the races of Blacks in antiquity is a modern defined term. Ancient authors were more simple, as they did not consider themselves anthropologists as we know anthropology today. The term "black-skinned" or "wooly-haired" was much more significant in describing this race, rather than anthropological terms such as thick lips, broad noses, etc. These ancient authors knew as we know today, that physical features of Africans varied, and instead focused of what was more prevalent-skin color.
In his critique of Cheikh Anta Diop's Black Egyptian the author states: "One of the passages which Diop cited is a much disputed account of the Colchians and Egyptians by the historian Herodotus, the meaning of which is uncertain. Of the other passages quoted, one does not necessarily refer to an Egyptian, and the others do not support Diop's statement about 'thick-lipped, kinky-haired Egyptians'; in fact, the authors cited do not even mention hair or lips". This passage alone tells me that this Author obviously does not cross-reference his work, as anyone that has read The History by Herodotus, there can be no confusion that when the author stated "black-skinned and wooly hair" in describing the Egyptians, there could be no mistaken as to what the author meant. As he did not state, dark-skinned, brown-skinned, tanned, etc., he clearly stated the color he observed on the skin of the Egyptians, Ethiopians and Colchians-Black.
The worst quote from this author criticizing Diop's work was "Further, Diop overlooks the fact that classical authors regularly differentiated between Egyptians and Ethiopians." I am entirely embarrassed that such as statement could be used by a so-called scholar, as this author must have overlooked the fact that the classical authors "regularly differentiated" between the Greeks and the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, The Greeks and the Assyrians, and so on..yet we know that the Greeks and the Romans were both from a white race with different customs, why would it not be comprehensible to the average reader that the Egyptians and the Ethiopians were also from the same race with "customs" that differentiated them. Is it not known that even in modern times Africans differ in their customs.
In conclusion its sad to think that this author confined the Black race only to the area of Ethiopia without citing the fact that Herodotus also affrims that the Ethiopians colonized Egypt and gave birth to their civilization. I would highly suggest "The African Origin of Civilization" by Cheikh Anta Diop instead.