Pygmies in the Roman Empire

This Summer 2022 Independent Research Period began with an investigation into the spread of Egyptomania throughout history through the lens of colonialism. However, I quickly ran into multiple cases of what can be considered as “proto-racism”- material items that showed signs of a prejudice towards those who were not Roman; more specifically, those who possessed darker skin than the Romans including the Egyptians and Ethiopians. It occurred to me that tracing this evidence through its historical timeline would prove either 1. Futile or 2. Would not yield any results that are currently useful. What I did notice, however, was that identifying material goods based in the perspective of protoracism could help provide a more holistic view of the culture of the Mediterranean during antiquity. As such, i began to comb through several works of art- busts, mosaics, frescoes, and carved reliefs- to search for signs of what could be interpreted as any form of prejudice towards the figure or figures depicted. Immediately, I began to notice a trend among these artifacts; namely in Nilotic scenes. 

Within these scenes, there are representations of both Egyptians and other Africans. Nilotic scenes depict scenery of the Nile with the addition of flora, fauna, and people who live along the Nile. However, after the annexation of Egypt in 30 BCE by the Roman Empire, there is a noticeable shift in the way that non-roman individuals are depicted. They are imaged as Pygmies, caricatures of human beings who are small, stout, and usually suffering from dwarfism. 

I use these Nilotic paintings as a starting point of protoracism- not to say prejudice did not exist before, but these scenes are a material way of identifying this phenomen- one that is eerily similar (but also widely different) from ideas of race and racism today. This story map is a database of all of my evidence for the phenomenon of protoracism as I continue to investigate further.

“There were well-established trade networks connecting Egypt and Italy that predated annexation. Mediterranean societies had long prized raw goods of eastern origin, such as lapis lazuli and hippopotamus ivory, as well as faience materials of Egyptian manufacture. We can characterize the import trade before conquest as indirect, as materials moved from port to port and arrived in Italy after a series of intermediate transactions.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 20)

“I take as a given that Roman attitudes to Egypt were shaped by conquest, the product of ways of thinking about the world that insisted on the centrality and cultural hegemony of roman Italy, whether we label these habits of mind and practice “colonialism”, “imperialism”, or something else. In this sense, the taste for works of art from far-off places or evoking foreign styles was inherently political, reflective of the reality that one region (Italy) held sway over the other (Egypt).” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 1)

“How Romans thought about Egypt is a topic that has occasioned much interest in recent years, as scholars have investigated issues of stereotyping, racism, and colonialism in the ancient context. Here, then, I put two examples through their paces, focusing on context in every sense – physical setting, authorial agenda, and the dialectic between art and text.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 16)

“...he defines Roman “Classicism” to include borrowing from all cultures and places, including Egypt. Rarely can we determine with precision, therefore, what Roman viewers would have taken Egyptian style to mean beyond arguing that it, prima facie, evoked Egypt.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 53)

• It evoked Egypt, yes, but the demonstration of Egyptians as pygmies, deformed creatures, is significant. It lowers Egyptians while taking Egyptian styles raises the fascination and fetishization of (then) ancient Egypt, and the emphasis on the "mystery" of Egypt and the use of hieroglyphics without meaning plays into the fetishization of Egypt holding a "mysterious wisdom". We will never know what Roman viewers saw in Nilotic art in terms of meaning, but we know 1) the reasons this art was created (for political reasons, as I will try to prove) and 2) the outcomes of this type of art being so prevalent in Roman lives.

“Rome’s interest in the culture and place of Egypt was no simple phenomenon. For most people living in Italy, the physical land of Egypt was so remote that it was necessarily imagined, yet it was also omnipresent. Temples to the Egyptian gods were found in cities throughout the peninsula; grain from Egypt was on the table.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 63)

“Strabo downplays the event, insisting that the Ethiopian peoples beyond Rome’s borders were peaceful and non-threatening, under control and easily controlled.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 79)

• This immediately implies that the only reason Ethiopian peoples were "non-threatening" is because they were being controlled by and somehow lesser than Rome, and that if they were not controlled/easily controllable, they would be a threat. The vibes are the same as Rome always comparing Egypt to an alligator in terms that it needed to be "tamed".

“Hales has characterized all these images as evocations of the ‘fantastic’ or ‘transgressive’ but what does it really mean to label Egyptian imagery as ‘transgression’ or ‘fantasy,’ and are these terms always appropriate? As images of the edges of empire, Nilotic landscapes may well be appropriate to the edges of domestic space: the borders of painted walls, or the borders of the domus itself. Yet even as the association of this imagery with liminal space might appear to reinforce the idea of Egypt as far away, strange, or ‘Other,’ such domestic border zones simultaneously provide a way to incorporate the ‘Other’ within the household.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 20)

“The appearance of Nilotic imagery within a Pompeian domestic garden does not just ‘Egyptianize’ the garden; it also ‘Italianizes’ and domesticates the Nile.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 20)

“Within this wealth of research, three prominent developments include (1) an emphasis on ‘cultural,’ as well as ‘religious,’ interpretations of Aegyptiaca; (2) an emphasis on Aegyptiaca as ‘Roman’ rather than (or at least in addition to) ‘Egyptian’; and (3) an understanding of Aegyptiaca as pointing toward not an ‘authentic’ Egypt but, rather, a constructed ‘Egypt' of Roman imagination.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 28)

“Romans were not passive recipients of Egyptian culture; they actively appropriated, reinterpreted, and transformed the objects, images, concepts, and practices that they encountered” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 30)

“... or suggesting that people in Pompeii viewing paintings of festivals in Egypt would have understood themselves first and foremost as ‘Romans’ gazing upon cultural ‘Others.’” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 34)

• This being said, prejudice and bias are not a conscious effort- racism is a built-in belief that happens through systemic teachings. It is safe to assume the same for proto-racism, as the government used propaganda such as AEGYPTO CAPTA, the cult of Antinous. We can see this is cult worship practices, currency, and the art world. In the art world, the depiction of Egyptians as pygmies, as well as the ritual scarification of black sculptures shows the beliefs prevalent during the time. Many people do not actively work to hate others, it is something built into a system. It takes a conscious effort to recognize racial issues. (term “race” is used liquidly here to define modern day and ancient versions of race)

“There is a lot to say about Momigliano’s views in terms of recent debates on the cultural character of the Hellenistic world and the genesis of Roman (cultural) ‘imperialism’, or in terms of (ancient) Orientalism. Here, however, I will only build on Alien Wisdom to underline how much it was the idea of Egypt that mattered in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean.” (M.J. Versluys 26)

“Two considerations, however, have persuaded me to leave Egypt on the periphery of my inquiry: (1) Egypt had interested the Greeks since Homer as a country difficult to approach and with puzzling customs.” (M.J. Versluys 27)

“In other words: in the Hellenistic world Egypt would have been only an idea, a concept that was played around with by others, as from itself Egypt had no real culture left.” (M.J. Versluys 27)

• I disagree with this partially. What Egypt did not have was the same culture that was fetishized by the Hellenistic world- rather, they had a culture that was born from the fall of Egypt's empire exaggerated by remote rule by foreign rulers.

“Two important debates in that respect concern (1) the “Oriental” character of the “Egyptian” and other so-called “Oriental” gods (that is: the deconstruction of the Cumontian category of “religions orientales”) and (2) the “local” use and understanding of the “Egyptian” gods (that is: the deconstruction of the idea of “diffusion” emanating from an authentic Egyptian (religious) core).” (M.J. Versluys 28)

“What was the point of this fictive Egyptian style in this setting? The villa’s connection to the imperial family suggested to Elfriede Knauer that the scene was political; she argued that the pharaoh could be taken as a portrait of Agrippa as the “king of Egypt.” In the more balanced view of Magdalene Söldner, images like these in Augustan contexts have triumphal resonance, celebrating Egypt’s fall, but lack a literal, ideological meaning… Egyptian motifs create a deliberate play between the nostalgic and the foreign.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 54)

“Struck in the same year (27 BCE) that Octavian adopted the title “Augustus” and received honors from the Senate, this coin honors him as a military victor while further validating his power through inscriptions referring to his consulship and his status as Julius Caesar’s adopted son. Together with the inscription referring to Egypt, the exotic crocodile helps characterize Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra as a foreign conquest, emphasizing Egypt’s “otherness” to avoid unwelcome implications of civil war between Octavian and Antony.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 3)

“As on the Augustan coin, then, the crocodile in Figure 2 evokes ideas of “Egypt” for its viewers. However, rather than Egypt as defeated enemy, this temple assemblage presents us with a very different Egypt: a land of wisdom and piety, the domain of deities who protect rather than threaten Roman imperium.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 4)

• This calls back to Versluys, who makes a point to say that Egypt was presented both as a threat to Rome AND as a place of ancient wisdom

“Hadrian arrives in Egypt in 130 AD and the events surrounding the death of Antinous are reported from the autumn of that year. There is certainly a lot of symbolism there. Antinous’ death in the Nile happened at the venerable old Egyptian site of Khum. This was the city of Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, the god who interpreted all secrets. The date reported for the incident is suggestive as well: 22 to 24 October. On these dates the Nile festival took place, a ceremony central to Egyptian life since millennia, and certainly also central to Egyptian kingship. During the Nile festival, the sovereigns traditionally presented themselves to the people as the representatives of the gods on earth, thus underlining their divine royalty. Antinous would have drowned at the very end of the festival, on October 24, which strongly underlines his association with Osiris. His death, as all concerned knew very well, was thus meant to result in resurrection and in a new beginning leading to prosperity. Therefore, what we find at Hermopolis Magna is, in my opinion, in all respects an Egyptian Eleusis.” (M.J. Versluys 31)

“When Hadrian, in 130 AD, enters Egypt over land his first stop is at Pelusium, where, before going to Alexandria, he makes sure that the tomb of Pompey the Great is lavishly restored. It is true that, as Anthony R. Birley has put it, ‘It was a favourite occupation of his to refurbish the memory of the famous dead.’” (M.J. Versluys 34)

“Hadrian therefore linked himself to Augustus and the Flavii in terms of building policy and imperial iconography. For both Augustus and Vespasian Egypt had played a crucial role in establishing their power base. Augustus sailed back from Egypt in 30 BC as the first Roman emperor, supported morally by his victory over Cleopatra and Mark Anthony’s Egypt, and economically by its wealth and grain.” (M.J. Versluys 34)

“The example of Hadrian has shown how much meaning could be made with Egypt if one was well aware of the socio-cultural capital of the symbol or concept.” (M.J. Versluys 35)

“It is clear that the term race is only a disguise of the idea of nationality” (Franz Boas, Race and Nationality 8).

“Often, we use the word to refer to any person born in Aegyptus or from the place, but in the Roman period, Egyptian had a different and less neutral charge. Although literary sources attest to the presence in Italy of persons born in Egypt, especially slaves, epigraphic evidence does not reveal many people self-identifying as Egyptian in Italy.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 47)

“...the label Egyptian did not simply identify an individual’s ethnicity, but also indicated legal status, a complex calculus that both determined and was determined by class, status, wealth, and ancestry. Roughly speaking, within the province of Aegyptus, an Egyptian meant anyone who did not enjoy distinguished status (Alexandrian or Roman) or qualify for legal privileges, regardless of what cultural or ethnic identity he or she might claim. So defined, Egyptians paid higher taxes, received harsher punishments for lawbreaking, and had scarce or no access to cultural institutions, such as the theater and gymnasium.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 47)

“Pliny managed to enlist his personal doctor, a man from Egypt, as a Roman citizen, but did so without first securing Alexandrian status for him, which meant that, as an Egyptian, the doctor could not lawfully leave the province. The emperor only reluctantly rectified the situation.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 47)

“This evidence, again, suggests that people from the province of Aegyptus were resident in Rome, but suggests further that they constructed their identities in complex and varied ways.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 47)

“Aegyptus resident in Italian communities, but the fact that they rarely self-identify suggests they did not live in communities unto themselves. We must consider the monuments they helped create as cultural products of Roman Italy, reflective of the many agents involved in their production – the author of the text, the artist who executed the work, and the patron who financed the project.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 52)

“A contextual analysis of domestic Aegyptiaca tends to problematize rather than resolve tensions between ‘Self ‘ and ‘Other,’ ‘religious’ and ‘exotica,’ ‘foreign’ and ‘familiar.’” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 13)

“Beyond asking how representations of Egypt reflect ancient attitudes toward cultural identity, we should thus also consider how these objects and images might have helped shape behavior and attitudes. In other words, we need to ask not only what material culture represents but also what it does.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 16)

“Constructions of identity in Pompeii would have been much more complex than such dichotomies imply—as, indeed, would constructions of identity (cultural, ethnic, political, and social) throughout the empire. Campanian local identities did not necessarily disappear after the Social War, at which point the population of Pompeii included, among others, old Samnite families, Roman colonists, and foreign transplants of various origins and social statuses.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 24)

“Additionally, after Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, ‘Roman’ and ‘Egyptian’ no longer functioned as invariably oppositional categories. Although Roman citizenship was not available to most Egyptians until 212 CE, exceptions existed for citizens of Alexandria and perhaps also army recruits. A number of people of Egyptian origin lived in Rome and occupied a broad range of social and economic positions.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 32)

“The ‘groupism’ fallacy can be particularly misleading when considering ancient ethnic, cultural, and religious identities. While such forms of identity were undoubtedly important in the ancient Mediterranean, we should not presume that people invariably foregrounded any one identity in every social situation. For example, Rebillard has recently demonstrated that early Christians only gave salience to their Christian identity in certain contexts, seemingly treating it as less relevant for many of their other choices and interactions (including some choices and interactions where many scholars had previously assumed that ancient Christians would prioritize their Christianness). (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 34)

“As a result, we must be careful about reading identities into Pompeian material culture. Since people had to negotiate many different forms of identity, we should not make blanket assumptions about which identities would have appeared most relevant in any given situation.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 34)

“Both periods saw waves of interest in Egypt in the arts of both the public and private spheres. Domitian rebuilt the Iseum and Serapaeum Campense after the devastating fire of 80 CE, thereafter one of the grandest structures in the Campus Martius. Recent work suggests that Hadrian’s Villa included a lavish temple dedicated to the Egyptian gods, and Egyptian and Egyptian-looking works stood in conversation with those that emulated the masterworks of Greece along his sumptuous “Scenic Canal.” A wide range of Egyptianizing works owned and commissioned by ordinary citizens, too, date to these periods – votive obelisks, statues of Isis and Serapis, sculptures of Egyptian animals. Mosaics from private homes included motifs of pygmies and Nilotic animals.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 4)

“These exotic works were prized by collectors as objets d’art, status symbols that conferred prestige on their owners; their discoverers did not document findspots as we would today. Many changed hands multiple times, eventually making their way into private collections and the major public museums of Italy, France, and Great Britain, there reflecting those societies’ claims to the heritage of Classical Antiquity and Dynastic Egypt.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 7)

“The categories we use to describe the exotic material culture of Roman Italy – Egyptian, Egyptianizing, aegyptiaca, Egyptiana, Pharaonica – are of our own devising and, generally speaking, organize the material by place of production, as I discuss in Chapter 1, separating those made in Egypt (imports) from those made in Italy (emulations).” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 12)

• Egyptian: made by Egypt for Egypt
• Aegyptiaca: objects that express stylistically and materially a distinctively ancient Egyptian-ness
• Pharaonica: appropriation of Egyptian culture w no meaning; often political
• Nilotic: fetishization of Egypt/ caricatures
• Cultic: Roman worship of Isis/ Serapis

“The shrine paintings from the House of the Gilded Cupids include what may be a representation of a shawabti figurine or canopic jar in a still-life of religious implements, along with what appears to be a statuette of a cobra, a sistrum, a cista mystica, and a patera. All the assembled objects are intended to be ritually potent, regardless of putative origin. Imaginary Egyptian sculptures, however, also appear in garden paintings in which the interior rooms of a house were painted to simulate opulently decorated exterior space.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 28)

“What consumers wanted, it seems, were goods that appeared to be Egyptian, not just goods that came from Egypt. At the same time, however, to treat imported and Roman-made aegyptiaca primarily as symbols of the conspicuous consumption of the leisured classes does them a disservice.” (Molly Swetnam-Burland 28)

“As an example of the power of materiality in shaping viewer responses, we might consider a three-dimensional depiction of one of the most common ‘Nilotic’ motifs: the Nile crocodile, an animal frequently presented in Roman art and literature as emblematic of Egypt.” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 36)

“Among the examples of the popularity of this "Nilotic" repertoire in the Vesuvian towns are two small mosaic pictures in reception rooms, respectively in the Flouse of the Menander (I 10,4) (fig. 6) and the House of Paquius Proculus (I 7,1) at Pompeii. These are variations on the same theme, that of pigmies on a boat on the Nile, which is evoked by its typical flora and fauna (crocodiles and hippopotami, as well as ducks and palm trees) against the background of a built-up landscape alluding to a city, presumably Alexandria.” (Irene Bragantini 26)

“The protagonists of these images are pigmies appearing in a setting defined by the same elements that encode the image of the Egyptian landscape during this period. These pigmies are engaged in "caricatural" actions, such as animatedly fighting against innocuous animals or, conversely, attempting in vain to stand up against crocodiles or hippopotami with inadequate weapons. These images hark back to a stereotype of Hellenisitc art, documented by a series of small bronze statues usually ascribed to the Alexandrine milieu. Through the startling association of a grotesque subject-- misshapen dwarfs or "pigmies" - with precious materials and a redefined technique, thesc statuettes must have contrìbutcd to an atmosphere of great domestic luxury.” (Irene Bragantini 26-27)

“They bear witness to the gradual spread, from the mid-first century BCE onward (ca 50-25 BCE), of a ‘Nilotic’ repertoire employed both in reception rooms and in gardens, as one of several forms that domestic luxury can assume among these social classes in this period.” (Irene Bragantini 27)

“By portraying the characteristic landscape of the Nile and the Delta, with its imaginary protagonists, its flora and its fauna, these images visually generate an “other” world, whose functions within the decorative system of the Roman house lies precisely in this “otherness’.” (Irene Bragantini 27)

“[Nilotic images] draw on another stereotype-- that of the luxury and pleasures of Hellenistic lifestyle -- to generate an imaginary ‘mental space’ for the dominus and his/her guests.” (Irene Bragantini 27)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gQBLEHO9ct0jr6zWPYm7yFHwzBZbH6vg?usp=sharing

Frank M. Snowden: The PDF I found was a review of his book, rather than his actual book. According to the review, Snowden establishes the presence of black people in Rome and Greece, with an apparent distinction between “Nilotic” and “typical” black physical characteristics. He attempts to establish a cultural relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia through the analysis of biological markers and the occupation of Ethiopian armies in Egypts. In regards to this book, I am concerned about his emphasis on the “characteristics” of the biological aspects of identification of relationships. Not only can it be used to further racist ideologies, but it can also skew any assessment of the cultural relationships between “Eastern and Western” nations.

Alex Scobie: I found this article incredibly interesting. Scobie begins by telling three different, yet similar tales found in Chinese, Arab, and North American cultures. They discuss pygmies- in the Chinese and Arab tales, the story begins with two individuals being pulled through the water by an animal and, when they are released, find themselves off the shore of an island, with a boat floating on the water. They go up to the boat and steal the fish (Two fish) that are inside. After a moment, a dwarf appears from underneath the water, holding a fish. He wonders where his fish went before pursuing the individuals to shore. The three of them end up in the village in a multitude of ways- following this, the individuals are faced with the fact that Cranes are hunting these dwarven people. The individuals help the dwarves by either giving them clubs, or snapping the necks of the cranes. Once the danger is gone, the dwarven village allows the individuals to leave (instead of killing them? It doesn’t specify). The North American story is equally similar, except that it lacks the beginning where the individuals are pulled across the waters. 

Strange Alliance: Pygmies in the Colonial Imaginary

Chris Hugh Ballard

Annals of Medical History

• Interesting Read: it discussed the differences between pygmies, dwarves, and hunchbacks in ancient Egypt and how those three were thought about back then. Pygmies “d’ng” were the naturally shorter races of individuals who hailed from Central Africa and were forced to entertain Egyptian courts. Dwarves were people of normal Egyptian society (sometimes also slaves) who were not made to entertain nor put in charge of special tasks. Hunchbacks were those whose backs were malformed due to disease. The differences to the Egyptians with these three will be important to check out, since there must be a reason that dwarves and hunchbacks were not treated the same as pygmies (whose physical characteristics are quoted in the source above).

Herodotus Book 2

• "Now when the Libyan youths, well supplied with water and provisions, were sent off by their comrades, they passed first through the inhabited part of the country to the region of wild beasts, and then came to the desert, which they proceeded to cross in a westerly direction. After traveling for many days over the sand, they noticed trees growing on a plain. They approached and began to pick the fruit hanging from them, and while they were doing so were attacked by some little men, of less than middle height, who seized them and carried them off. Neither the Nasamonians nor the little men could understand a word of each other's language. They were led across enormous marshes, and finally came to a town in which all the inhabitants were the same height as their captors and had black skin. Beside the city a great river, in which crocodiles were visible, flowed from west to east... [Eatearchus the Ammonian] declared that the people whose city they visited were a nation of sorcerers." (32-33)

This is interesting because this reminds me of my readings of the Azande, a group in central North Africa whose culture includes the belief that magic and witchcraft are common, and is used to explain why certain tragedies happen when they happen. The Azande also live on the white Nile, the half of the river after it splits at the delta.

Although Herodotus holds some respect for Egypt, his painting of it as an Other is telling, "For example, Egyptian women frequent the marketplace and work as retail-dealers, while the men, remaining at home, attend to the weaving. All other peoples, when they weave, push the weft up; the Egyptians push it down. The men carry loads on their heads, the women on their shoulders. The women urinate standing up, the men sitting. The Egyptians defecate indoors but eat outside in the roads, maintaining that whatever is shameful though necessary must be done in secret, but whatever is not shameful openly. No woman is a priestess of either a male or female god; men act as priests of all the gods and goddesses. Sons are under no obligation to take care of their parents if they are not so inclined, whereas daughters are obliged to take care for them regardless of their inclination". This is interesting because Herodotus continues on, naming several more differences between Greek and Egyptian culture and labeling them as polar opposites; namely, poising Egypt as a perpetual "Other". (35)

Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):

（Ἀμμώνιοι). A people of Africa, occupying what is now the Oasis of Siwah. According to Herodotos (ii. 42), the Ammonians were a colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians, speaking a language composed of words taken from both those nations.

• This does not make sense to me. the Siwa Oasis is between Libya and Egypt, closer to the Mediterranean rather than Ethiopia.

"The Egyptians tell the following story about the oracles in Greece and Libya. According to the priests of Theban Zeus, two priestesses were abducted from Thebes by the Phoenicians and sold, one in Libya and the other in Greece, and it was these women who founded the oracles in the two countries. When I asked how they came to be so sure about this, they replied that a diligent search had been made for the women at the time, but that it had been impossible to discover their whereabouts; afterward, however, they received the information they had given me. The prophetesses at Dodona, on the other hand, tell the following story. Two blacks doves flew away from Egyptian Thebes, one of them to Libya, the other to Dodona. The former, perching on an oak tree, spoke with a human voice and declared that an oracle of Zeus should be established on the spot. The Dodonaeans who heard her assumed this was a divine commandment, and at once obeyed. The priestesses say that the dove that flew to Libya told the Libyans to establish there an oracle of Ammon (which is also an oracle of Zeus)… I myself am of the following opinion. If the Phoenicians actually abducted the holy women and sold one of them in Libya, the other in Greece, or Pelasgia (as it was then called), the latter must have been sold to the Thesprotians. Afterward, in servitude there, she built a shrine to Zeus under an oak tree; for she would naturally remember in her exile the god whose temple she had cared for in Thebes. Later, once she had learned the Greek language, she set up an oracle and mentioned that the same Phoenicians who had sold her, also sold her sister in Libya. It seems to me that the women were called doves by the Dodonaeans because they were foreigners, and their speech resembled the twittering of birds. The priestesses report that after a time the dove spoke with a human voice (once the woman's utterances were intelligible to them). Until she spoke in Greek, her talk sounded to them like twittering. For how could a dove speak with a human voice? In reporting that the dove was black, they indicate that the woman was an Egyptian." (ii, 54-57)

• Why did black doves indicate the woman was Egyptian? Does it have to do with skin color, or a mythology outside of this tale?

Here’s why it matters: It’s important to discuss the colonialist relationship between Rome and Egypt as it takes on the same form as other situations of colonialism and contributes to our understanding of modern colonialism and oppression. Using this as a case study would be good.

“Within art history and literary studies, the concept of ‘context’ has sometimes attracted critique for its supposed implications of inertness or inflexibility. In archaeological usage, however, the ‘context’ of an artifact is explicitly conceptualized as ever-changing, even post-depositionally. As Lucas puts it, for archaeologists, ‘no context is static.’” (Caitlín Eilís Barrett 17)

“These images are an adaptation within the Roman culture of habitation of a vast store of themes and iconographies portraying Egypt as a land of mystery, miracles and oddities. For a public of Hellenistic culture, this image could be evoked by means of a limited number of stereotypes or ‘icons,’ which sufficed to represent Egypt, its landscape, and its peculiar religious practices.” (Irene Bragantini 25)

“... their function within it, a discourse formulated in the awareness that the figurative language of a given society is not a "description" of reality, but a system of communication, and as such calls for a holistic approach. By analyzing how a given image developed within the ancient figurative repertoire as part of a specific figurative system it appears in (in our case, the system and language of house decoration), one can rescue this evidence, at least in part, from the isolation and fragmentariness to which it has been relegated so far.” (Irene Bragantini 26)

What I’ve gathered so far from these readings is that Egyptians for thousands of years held a bias against supposed “Pygmies”- people of naturally short stature who were inundated with a plethora of harmful stereotypes that served to dehumanize them and place them as closer to animals and monkeys than as humans. Often believed to be lacking morals and the ability to communicate with other human beings, Pygmies are a caricature of Central Africans that have persisted for 5,000 years now. Egypt did not have much art depicting Pygmies, but it did have statuettes of Pygmies in the typical style of other Egyptian statuettes. When acquired as a Roman territory, Pygmies were then put into Nilotic landscapes- however, black people during this time were mixed into greek and Roman society. Therefore it is unlikely that Pygmies, to the Roman elites, represented black people. However, it is likely that the Pygmies in Nilotic landscapes are used to represent Egyptians, who were considered inferior to the romans. This would also fit with the tendencies of the Roman Empire to appropriate Egyptian culture in the sense that they knew that Pygmies were a caricature that came with an inherent power dynamic in which the Pygmy (to Egyptians since 3,200 BCE) is a symbol of those who are inherently inferior and morally corrupt. To the Greek and Roman mythos, the Pygmy was a race of human who were in an eternal battle with the cranes, and whose queen angered hera over her unabashed claims of superior beauty than the goddess. This is where Nilotic paintings come into play- not only do the Pygmies in these paintings represent the Mythos of the Pygmy, but they also represent the Egyptians as a generalization of their own belief in the “inferiority” of Africans. In a sense, this could also be explained by the geographical location- for Egypt, all other Africans to the south (Ethiopians, Pygmies, Nubians, etc.) were considered inferior and more savage than the Egyptians. For the Roman Empire, Egypt was south and therefore, geographically in the mindset of southern inferiority. If Egypt said that those who lie south of the Nile were lesser then, Rome could have taken that and turned it into a sort of ‘those who are south of the Roman empire’. (Here, Egypt is not considered as part of the Roman Empire entirely in the sense that it was used as a cash cow for the Empire and fed a majority of Rome's people. OR this could be a situation where Egyptian beliefs about Africans were turned against them, as Rome appropriated these symbols and used them against the Egyptians. I need to look into Roman views of Nubians, Ethiopians, and Pygmies (in herodotus’s writings and history, the Nubians were already looked down upon by the Romans). I believe this will lead me towards the road of Proto-racism and pull me into Patrice rankine’s line of research.

Wow what a concept- the pushing of Egyptians and Egypt as a mysterious other or an animal to tame stems from political motivations and Octavian-Augustus’s need to emphasize the civil war between him and Antony. Just like modern-day pushes of minorities as thieves, beggars, criminals, and lowlifes.

We need to seek more nuanced approaches that recognize material culture’s “meanings” to be multiple, fluid, and contextual.

The idea of the Roman Empire viewing Egypt as an “other” and Rome incorporating Egyptian religio-culture into their own via appropriation and looking upon it with a familiar reverence are two statements that can and do simultaneously exist. I have an issue with Caitlín Eilís Barrett’s article but I can’t vocalize why I don’t like a part of it. I think it has something to do with the way she paints Egypt as “although they aren’t equal, some Egyptians were given exceptions to Roman luxuries'' as if that fact makes up for what was done to Egyptian culture. One big difference I see between the appropriation of Egyptian culture into the roman world and the forcing of Roman culture onto the Egyptian world is that Egyptians were oppressed (See Barbara Borg’s article) by the Roman Empire after becoming a territory (riches were stolen, Egypt itself was considered a wild animal needing to be tamed, it became an agricultural cash cow, and was utilized for its trading routes). On the other hand, the elites of Rome were able to battle with complexities in regards to their personal relationships with the idea of Egypt while always maintaining a “safe” distance from it. They appropriated the art and religion of Egypt, but they did not inherit the struggles of or the reality of those who identified with Egypt. What we see is Egyptians being legally banned from erecting private images in temples and tombs, while across the Mediterannean we see these same images stripped of their original meanings and hanging in the rooms of villas meant for receiving guests and being used for cult worship to the point that we cannot call Isis an Egyptian goddess anymore but rather a Ro man one. 

Bragantini’s article focuses partially on the differences between Nilotic and Pharaonic Egyptomania in Campania, Italy. At its most simple, Nilotic images are images that put Egypt into a caricature of sorts- depicting Egypt in a way that dehumanizes the people (through the image of pygmies) and acted as symbols of luxury among the elite and would be placed in rooms meant for receiving guests. The way that Bragantini regards this recalls ideas of the exotification and fetishization of an “other”- similar to modern Orientalism- in that the sole purpose of Nilotic art is to emphasize Egypt’s “otherness”. 

• I hesitate to agree with Bragantini here, as when looking at Versluys’s article, we have to remember that Egypt was not necessarily seen as an “unknown other” but rather, a concept of “mysterious wisdom and antiquity”

This section is devoted to the sources that I plan to read more into during the Fall 2021 Semester to further develop my senior thesis.

‘Juvenal, Satires 1 and 5, Selections – Roman Dining’ < https://blog.richmond.edu/romandining/juvenal-1-and-5-selections/ > [accessed 4 August 2021]

Leemreize, M. (2014). " The Egyptian Past in the Roman Present". In Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World   https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004274952/B9789004274952_004.xml 

McCoskey, D. E. (2004). On Black Athena, Hippocratic medicine, and Roman imperial edicts: Egyptians and the problem of race in classical Antiquity. Race and Ethnicity. Across Time, Space and Discipline, 297-330.

Nimis, S. (2004). Egypt in Greco-Roman history and fiction. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 24

•  https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous id=GALE%7CA126387262&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=11108673&p=AONE&sw=w

Samuels, Tristan, ‘Herodotus and the Black Body: A Critical Race Theory Analysis’, Journal of Black Studies, 46.7 (2015), 723–41 < https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934715602182 >

Symposium on Roman Imperialism, Post-Colonial Perspectives (1994 : Leicester, England), Jane Webster, Nicholas J Cooper, and University of Leicester. School of Archaeological Studies. 1996. Roman Imperialism : Post-Colonial Perspectives : Proceedings of a Symposium Held at Leicester University in November 1994. Leicester Archaeology Monographs, No. 3. Leicester, England: School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester.

• https://universityofrichmond.on.worldcat.org/v2/oclc/36415555