Rome, Nubia, and Ethiopia

We found this talk by Giovanni Ruffini on Rome in the Ethiopian and Nubian Imagination to be fascinating and a worthwhile listen. Anything accessible yet serious about medieval Nubia is worthy of attention and should be disseminated to all interested parties.

Romans in "Sub-Saharan Africa"

 

Although scholars still debate the nature and scale of trans-Saharan trade and contacts in antiquity, one cannot help but wonder. Surely, the Garamantes were engaged in contacts with groups both within and south of the Sahara, but what about others? Was Agisymba in the Lake Chad region? If so, what does it suggest about the possible origins of long-distance trade before Kanem in the "Central Sudan" region? Was the Meroitic state also a player here, perhaps trading goods of Mediterranean origin to lands further west?

Satyricon

Since this blog has developed an interest in covering a variety of early prose fiction and "novels" across time and space, the Satyricon of Petronius was destined to receive a post. Unlike The Golden Ass or The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre, what remains of the Satyricon is incomplete, mutilated, and disjointed. Believed to have been possibly 5 times as long as the remaining fragments, the original text must have been a lengthy and episodic series of adventures for Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Giton across the Italian peninsula and the Mediterranean region. From what remains of the text, and J.P. Sullivan's lively translation of its prose and poems, it is a mostly first-person narrative told from the perspective of Encolpius, a former gladiator. His series of adventures include brothels, orgies, a fantastic dinner at the home of a wealthy freedman (which supposedly satirizes Nero, the nouveau riche, and many other aspects of Roman society), shipwreck, and sexual encounters with men and women. Like the later work of Apuleius, this tale features many outcasts, disreputable characters, amorous escapades, allusions to magic, and stories within a story (including a memorable account of a werewolf encounter). Unfortunately, due to the fragmentary nature of it, one cannot help but feel somewhat disappointed with the Satyricon. But due to its endless humor and satirical elements that bring to life Roman civilization of the early empire, it is an unforgettable romp of a civilization already imperiled. 

Maternal Impression, Preformationism, and Outdated Science

Maternal impression was one of those crazy theories concocted in Greco-Roman times to explain the discrepancy that may emerge between a child and the parents. Rooted in the theory that in the act of conception, whatever the mother was looking at will influence how the offspring will appear, the notion of maternal impression was commonly cited by Roman male writers to explain their "discolored" children with their wives, a joke about elite Roman women sleeping with black, or, "Ethiopian" slaves (Thompson's Romans and Blacks contains several delightful anecdotes of Roman-Latin writings on the theme of white aristocratic, elite women engaging in sex with low, black slaves working in the stables, partly because the very notion was considered absurd). Like the ludicrous theory held by some (such as Herodotus) that "Ethiopians" (dark-skinned Indians and Africans) had black semen like the color of their skin, which Aristotle discounted, the notion of maternal impression was used in what some allege is the world's first passing novel, Aethiopica, rediscovered in Europe in the 16th century (read wiki). In a 1640 painting, as this article from The Root indicates, the notion of the queen of Ethiopia's maternal impression led to her daughter with the black king turning out white because during lovemaking, she gazed upon a statue of Andromeda.

This notion of maternal impression and the extreme cases it was equated with (interracial and cross-racial births) also reminds me of another absurd notion of medieval Europe and alchemy, the idea that an embryo was growing within the male semen, and the woman as merely a vessel for insemination! This absurdity included images drawn that made it seem as if semen included tiny embryos! According to this wiki page, such a theory was called preformationism, the theory that living organisms developed from miniscule fully-developed versions of their later, larger forms. The strangest thing about these theories is that people believed in them for thousands of years in some cases, though mostly before the birth of cell theory and advanced biology.

Images of the Black from Roman Pompeii

Additional images from Roman Pompeii of the macrophallic black, the above being a slave from an aristocrat's home, depicted in the mural. He carries lamps or some type of object, is very black, and has a large, visible phallus. Other than the skin color and large phallus, however, it is a far from realistic depiction of whatever this man probably looked like. The image below is another mosaic depicting what I initially thought was a Nilotic scene, but some of the creatures here appear to be Mediterranean rather than Nilotic. Note their nudity yet no oversized phallus.

Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, Egypt, Nubia, and Rome

Nile Mosaic of Palestrina from around 100 BCE depicts the Nile Valley from a Roman perspective. Ships on the Nile, temples, flora and fauna of the Nilotic landscape, and, as the land goes further and further uphill (South, toward the Sudanese border) we see men with bows hunting, likely representing "Nubians," who were also renowned archers. Scenes such as these depict Roman fascination and obsession with Egypt and its environment, especially regarding animals, the gods, the river itself, and the unknown expanses of northeastern Africa. Roman expeditions and travelers never penetrated beyond the vast Sudd in the Sudan, but their contact with the Meroitic kingdom to the south of Egypt ensured some contact with "Ethiopians," that is, dark-skinned or black people. The following mosaics depicts fellow black devotees to Isis from Roman art from Pompeii, at least, according to Frank Snowden, a Classicist who focused on depictions and perceptions of "black Africans" in the Greco-Roman world. Behold the diversity within the priests and worshipers of Isis, a popular cult throughout Egypt, Nubia, and the Mediterranean Roman-dominated world. The cult of Isis was indeed quite popular with Nubians to the south, and, by the 6th century A.D., Byzantine Christian authorities of heavily Christianized Egypt closed down the temple at Philae, near the border in the South. Anyway, the dark figure in the upper right of the first image, near the man with light-skin in the center on top of the steps, appears to be holding a sistrum. Apparently Egyptomania, the spread of the Isis cult, and Roman imperial rule led to demands for "authentic" touches to their Egyptian-derived religion (Image of the Black in Western Art is a great source on this). Dark-skinned people, animals, and Egyptian priests, not mutually exclusive with dark-skinned, were often initiators or participants in spread of Isis to the Italian peninsula, in places such as Pompeii. The second image depicts one dark-skinned figure on top of the steps with what may be a feathered headdress, perhaps representing Bes, an Egyptian ithyphallic dward god.

A lot of Nilotic scenes in Roman art also refer to sexuality, fertility, and ancient Egyptian religion, which is no surprise given the popularity of the Isis cult or that ancient Egyptians had fertility rituals associated with the Nile's inundation of the land. Other Nilotic scenes depict dark pygmies or dwarves, which, in Greek religion, was likely an allusion to the satyr, also associated with fertility and sex. Thus, Nilotic scenes of the Roman world not only reinterpret and recycle Egyptian religious themes, but also incorporate Greek and other influences. In order to depict the "exotic" and alluring fertility and Other, dark-skinned peoples often appear, such as the black figure represented in the following mosaic, also from Pompeii. It is unclear if this black figure represents fertility, authentic Nilotic scenes, or is a servant of some sort, but the picture undoubtedly connotes sexuality.