Dan Georgakas
A few
years ago Martin Bernal’s Black Athena stimulated considerable commentary about
the role of blacks in antiquity. Many leftists applauded Bernal’s perceptive
analysis of the racism of many nineteenth century German scholars without
understanding the thinness of Bernal’s general argument regarding the supposed
Egyptian roots of Greek culture. Popular books by Afrocentrists, vaguely
proceeding from Bernal, posited an absolute victimization of black African
culture in which discoveries made by Africans have been attributed to Greeks or
were outright stolen by the Greeks. Much of this nonsense and Bernal’s notion
that Egyptians colonized mainland Greece centuries before the arrival of
Indo-Europeans have not withstood scholarly scrutiny. Mary Lefkowitz has been
particularly prominent in debunking Bernal and those who went far beyond
Bernal’s hypothesis.
An
unfortunate aspect of the intellectual fallout of this controversy has been a
diminution in interest in the actual role of Africans in the ancient world. Nor
have many leftists taken up Lefkowitz’s suggestion to look at the interaction
between black Africa and the Greco-Roman world. A starting point for any such
consideration is the work of Frank Snowden, whose most important single work is
Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience.
What
distinguishes Snowden’s work from Bernal’s is his marshaling of physical
evidence. Even on the literary side he bests Bernal by citing numerous Greek and
Roman sources with explicit evaluations of Ethiopians rather than citing vague
similarities in folk tales. He points out that the Greeks considered the color
of Ethiopians as stemming from environmental factors and never posited any moral
or intellectual consequences stemming from color, a view accepted by the Romans
and early Christians. Snowden’s texts go back to Homer and move through to the
early Christian era. This vast array of poems, essays, plays, histories, and
other written texts trace how the idealization of a distant black people evolved
into references to black people completely meshed into the Greco-Roman world.
Most
impressive are the one hundred and twenty-four images Snowden reproduces from
ancient pottery, murals, sculpture, and other graphic arts. These range as far
back as six centuries before the Christian era and like the written texts often
depict events from even older time periods. These images show black Africans
were involved in all aspects of life rather than limited to a single occupation
or myth. Common people of all kinds rather than a legendary hero are usually the
subject matter.
What is so
refreshing in reading Snowden is that instead of a back formation reading of
history based on the modern assumptions about black Africans in Europe, Snowden
goes to the ancient texts and limits his analysis to unambiguous
identifications. What emerges is a portrait of black Africans well integrated
into the ancient world in scenarios of explorations, trading, and wars that make
geographic and chronological sense. Snowden demonstrates that even when blacks
were slaves they were slaves like other peoples and manumission through various
means occurred with the same frequency and consequences as with those other
peoples. Rather than vague references to individuals who might be black or the
making black of Macedonian royalty such as Cleopatra, Snowden offers a history
involving the interfacing of entire nations.
As we
continue to struggle with the problem of color in the modern world, it is
enlightening and hopeful to know that color prejudice was not part of the
ancient world and was not part of the origins of Christianity. Rather than
promoting the culture of victimization and paranoia, Snowden allows the role of
black Africans in the ancient world to stand on the usual historic proofs. That
role proves to be substantial.
Snowden’s
Blacks in Antiquity is not a new book. It was first published in 1970! What a
shame that it is rarely referenced in leftist commentary on the role of blacks
in the ancient world. Underlying all of this discourse, of course, is the
erroneous notion that black contributions to the world depend on their immediate
impact upon the West. Leaving that discussion aside, the two major roots of
modern Europe are the pagan world of the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian
traditions. Snowden shows us the positive manner in which both those worlds
regarded and interacted with black culture in Africa. Postmodernists who think
all history is more or less subjective and invented often intersect with
nationalist thinkers who invent histories to fit their ideological and political
agendas. Neither fare well when confronted with the kind of data Snowden has
mounted. Score one for traditional research by a distinguished African American
scholar.
Dan
Georgakas is coauthor of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying and currently is teaching at
New York University.
