BOOK REVIEW: BEFORE COLOUR PREJUDICE 'THE ANCIENT VIEW OF BLACKS BY FRANK SNOWDEN

Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks
by Frank M. Snowden
According to Professor Emeritus Frank M. Snowden Jr., (AB, AM, Ph.D.) Howard University Classicist Department–reading of the sources, the Ethiopians “pioneered” religion, and were key to the origin and propagation of many of the customs which existed in Egypt. The Egyptians, it was argued, were descendants of the Ethiopians. Snowden states that the term Kushites, Nubian s, or Ethiopians is to used in much the same way as the modern term “colored”, “black, or Negro”. “The experiences of Africans who reached the alien shores of Greece and Italy constituted an important chapter in the history of classical antiquity,” he writes. “Using evidence from Terra cot ta figures, paintings, and classical sources like Herodotus and Pliny the Elder, Snowden proves, contrary to our modern assumptions, that Greco-Romans did not view Africans with racial contempt. Many Africans worked in the Roman Empire as musicians, artisans, scholars, and generals as well as slaves, and they were noted as much for their virtue as for their appearance of having a “burnt face” (from which came the Greek name Ethiopian)”.
Professor Snowden received the National Humanities medal in 2003, which honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to important resources in the humanities.
Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience
by Frank M. Snowden
Further developing the themes he so eloquently outlines in Blacks in Antiquity, Frank M. Snowden Jr. continues his investigations into attitudes towards Africans in the classical civilizations of Rome and Greece. Snowden identifies the African blacks from Egypt, Nubia (the modern Sudan), Ethiopia, and Carthage (Tunisia), discussing their interactions–including intermarriage–with the Greece-Romans. (He also notes that many of the artistic representations of these people resemble present-day African Americans.) From the trade missions of the Egyptian dynasties to their conquest of the Mediterranean and ultimate downfall at the hands of the Romans, Snowden unravels a complex history of cultural exchanges that went on for several millennium in which racial prejudice was not a factor. “There was a clear-cut respect among the Mediterranean peoples for Ethiopians and their way of life,” he writes, “and above all, the ancients did not stereotype blacks as primitives defective in religion and culture.” — Eugene Holley Jr.
Black Women in Antiquity (Journal of African Civilizations; V. 6)
by Ivan Van Sertima (Editor)
Customer Review:
This is a well researched and very scholarly book. Ivan Van Sertima as well as the contributors to this work have produced much insight on African women in world history like Queen Nzinga, the Candace queens, Makeda (Queen of Sheba) Hatsheput and many others. I feel that this work is of great significance and should be read by all who are interested in the role of African women in world