[Review] Sarah F. Derbew: 'Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity'

Let us sketch the scenery first before we start a proper review of this book.

Modern archaeology evolved in the late-19th century when amateurs like Heinrich Schliemann, Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Carl Blegen, and Arthur Evans, started excavating in Egypt and Greece. It was the age of colonialism and, although Greece is a mere 200 kilometers from Africa, these archaeologists could not believe that the first European civilization was influenced by Egypt. So, Greece must have developed in a sort of vacuum, because any African influence was deemed unthinkable. Yes, colonialism was racist.

Furthermore, during large swathes of time Egypt was a unified country, combining Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. As Upper Egypt (or Nubia) was what is now Sudan (and parts of Somalia), is it logical that black skinned Egyptians were not an exception. And because Egypt and Greece were geographically close, Greeks would surely have met black Egyptians.

Martin Bernal has written extensively about this in his magnum opus 'Black Athena' (1987, 1991, 2006). Derbew disqualifies him and his efforts in a single sentence because of 'his brief mentions of Ethiopia'. She also questions Cleopatra's skin colour, a curious American obsession because of 'the uncertainty about the precise identity of Cleopatra's paternal grandmother'.

In the first chapter of 'Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity', Derbew creates her own muddled explanation of terms. Think of 'black', 'Black', 'blackskinned', etc. She even positively mentions the already suspect critical race theory, also a way of muddled thinking that heralds from the US.

Then we are treated to another four chapters that are in reality just unrelated essays that do not untangle blackness in Greek antiquity. In these chapters, Derbew instills her own terminology, ideas, and preconceptions to some limited subjects. She finds racism in every corner of archaeology, history, literature, and ancient Greek plays. Derbew argues, for instance, that official descriptions of cups that show black and white faces are racist because the black faces are 'humourous' or 'laughing'. She does not see that the white faces on those cups aren't white but reddish or clay-cloured. Even the Nubian 25th dynasty, a line of pharaohs who reigned Ancient Egypt for nearly a century, from 744 to 656 BC, is treated with disdain, because they 'took advantage' of some internal strife. Well, internal problems are mostly the cause of invasions. Everywhere. You simply need to read Paul Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' (1987) or Peter Frankopan's 'The Silk Roads: A New History of the World' (2015) to understand the concept.

Her problem (and her cultural blindness) is that in the Mediterranean, there is no distinct black and white division. The farther south you get, the darker ones skin tend to be. So, in Greece you are not white, but brown or 'olive skinned'. And everybody knows that olives can differ in colour from light brown to almost black.

So, Sarah Derbew has a bias about racism. In the US there might be a true distinction between black and white, but in the Mediterranean there is just a spectrum of skin colours. Nobody cares about your skin colour.

And the sad conclusion is that where Sarah Derbew sees racism everywhere in archaeology, history, musea, literature or even Greek plays, there just isn't. But when you see racism everywhere, maybe it's you who is the true racist.