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A recurring theme in the art of ancient Athens, African individuals are among several types of non-Greek others taken up as subject matter by vase-painters in the Archaic and Classical periods. Depictions of Africans on black- and red-figure vases are characterized by their heterogeneity and variety, and they appear in both scenes of daily life and in mythological episodes. Two myths involving the hero Herakles in vase-painting provide fertile ground for exploring the construction of African difference and otherness: violent encounters with the mythical Egyptian pharaoh Busiris and the Libyan earth giant Antaios. This talk attempts to make inroads in unravelling the iconographic complexities of the episodes by taking a broad approach to contextualizing them; as images subject to the constraints and conventions of vase-painting, as objects born from the agency of craftsmen, as visual representations of myths within the zone between the parallel worlds of art and text, and as depictions of non-Greek others on the boundary between ancient difference and modern race.
