I personally love watching movies set back in 400 and 500 B.C., where there are chariot races and ocean voyages, and men and woman lie on piles of pillows sipping from goblets and eating fresh fruits... One thing I always noticed though is that there were never any black people; the only ones I ever saw were men that were forced to fight in the gladiator colliseum, or were slaves on the galley ships...
According to this article though, blacks made some deep contributions to Mediterranean culture.
T
his image is part of a weekly series that The Root
is presenting in conjunction with the Image
of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center
for African and African American Research.
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| African man represented in pottery |
Perched above the swelling form of a diminutive pottery vessel, the head of
a black man looks attentively ahead, the apparent custodian of its contents.
Though his appearance here may catch the viewer unaware, the presence of a
black person amid the mundane culture of the ancient world should not be at all
surprising. Across the centuries traversed by the Greco-Roman civilization, the
image of black people relates a story of arrival from not-so-distant Africa
that affected Mediterranean culture as profoundly as any other contributor.
An askos is a small bronze or terra-cotta vessel for enhancing the flavor of
food in the ancient world, most often with a sprinkling of olive oil. Judging
from the great numbers that survive, the askos must have been a staple of the
ancient Mediterranean dining table. The earliest examples go back several
thousand years before this one. The word
askos in Greek means “leather
bag,” referring to the animal skins used to store wine. The body of this askos
does indeed resemble an inflated skin, with a small spout in the side to pour
out its contents. The container is filled from the larger opening at the top of
the head.
This intriguing vessel was produced in Selinous, a thriving coastal town in
western Sicily. Like many of the large cities of South Italy and Sicily during
this time, Selinous made up part of Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece, a major
zone of expansion for cities on the Greek mainland and the eastern shore of
Asia Minor. Founded in the seventh century B.C., Selinous soon became a major
religious and commercial center, possessing some of the most magnificent
temples of the ancient world.
Along with such impressive monuments, one of the largest
pottery-manufacturing quarters of the ancient world has recently been unearthed
near the city walls of the metropolis. After over two centuries of prosperity,
the city was partly destroyed in 409 B.C. during hostilities with the
Carthaginians, a powerful non-Greek people who dominated much of the western
Mediterranean. Selinous never regained its former status as a great city after
this defeat and finally fell into ruins after another attack by the same foe a
century and a half later.
The features of the black man’s head conform to a standard type going back
to the initial encounter of black people by Greek culture. The incised, coiled
hair, with its receding hairline, and the full shape of the lips derived from
prototypes developed in the faraway Greek homeland from at least the mid-sixth
century B.C. Unlike the rest of the piece, the diminutive head, less than 2
inches high, was formed by pressing wet clay into a two-part mold. Although now
isolated as a unique artifact, the easily reproducible black head once must
have appeared on a large number of askoi.
Scholarship is divided over the date of the askos. It is usually assigned to
the late fifth century, about the time of the near destruction of the city by
the Carthaginians. Beyond considerations of date and style, the conjoining of
the black head with the globular, clearly nonhuman body of the askos invites
speculation over the intended meaning of the hybrid figure.
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| Photo of entire piece of African man pottery |
The process is informed by another surviving example of this type of askos.
The piece in question represents a siren, the mythological bird-woman believed
by the Greeks to lure sailors to their doom by the seductive strains of her
song. Also made in Selinous and dated to the same period, the construction of
the body, head, decoration and appendages corresponds to that of the askos with
the head of a black man. The resemblance between the two is so close that they
may have been made side by side in the same workshop.
Virtually all traces of coloration have worn away from the askos with the
black head. The presence of short legs and a tail, just as in the siren askos,
seems to associate the black man with the same type of mythological creature
that is a hybrid being, evocative of untamed, mysterious forces threatening the
stability of civilized life. Together with the siren askos, the askos may form
part of a group of related human-headed vessels.
Male sirens rarely occur in Greek art after the sixth century B.C., but the
situation may have been different in the cosmopolitan culture of Sicily during
the ensuing classical period. The ancient Greek world was fertile ground for
the dissemination of key visual motifs, including those from foreign cultures.
Hybrid creatures such as the siren originated in the Near East and were often
incorporated by the civilizations of the Mediterranean world as part of their
own cosmology.
One means of transmission for this singular body of mythological lore was
the far-ranging commercial power of Carthage. Long before their conquest of
Selinous, these seafaring traders served as a vital point of connection between
the Greek colonies and the ancient cultures of Asia Minor and the Levant. The
askos with the head of a black man, like the siren askos, represents the
continued presence of such imported cultural influences within the quite
different ambient of the classical world.
The conjunction of the black man’s head with the body of a mythical creature
conjures a dual sense of otherness. The distant geographical origins and clear
physical difference of sub-Saharan Africans from those of native Mediterranean
peoples introduced yet another element of diversity into the cosmopolitan scope
of the ancient Greek world. This very condition, however, could also provide a
beneficial apotropaic function by warding off evil influences lurking just
behind the relative order of mundane life.
Whatever the precise combination of human and unnatural being may reside in
this small clay vessel, the askos with the head of a black man uniquely
documents the continual
recognition of the African presence in the ancient world. A paradoxical
conjunction of disturbing fancy and deliverance from malign forces, it evokes
the important, but often marginalized, role played by people of color at the
dawn of Western civilization.
