The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piyes historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority. Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians skin, to uncharitable effect.
The Archaeoblogger (which is where I picked up the link, I think, unless it was on the Archaeology mag website) said something similar, and I agree with both of you.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6369349&postID=2313029797959435862
And there was no slavery in the ancient world. It was just that the check for those wages was lost in the mail...
The ancient world was violently ethnocentric (in multiple directions). Everybody thought his own group was superior and should dominate everybody else.
But there was little or no connecting of this idea to skin color as an especially important factor. No idea of “race” in the modern sense. And especially there was no concept that one race was “supposed” to be enslaved to another. Slavery in the ancient world had little connection to ethnicity at all.
circa 500 BC.
"Revisiting that golden age in the African desert does little to advance the case of Afrocentric Egyptologists, who argue that all ancient Egyptians, from King Tut to Cleopatra, were black Africans."
And a lot of racism, particularly the extremely nasty forms, is traceable to recent history. Going along with what another freeper typed, ancient peoples *appear* to have done a decent job of separating ethnicity from race.