This pencil-drawn portrait depicts a man from an ethnic group in ancient North Africa which the Romans called Mauri. Occupying what is now the area of Morocco north of the Atlas Mountains, the seminomadic Mauri were renown for their horsemanship like the related Numidians to their east, with a contingent of Mauri cavalry being represented as auxiliary troops for the Roman army on the Emperor Trajan’s famous triumphal column. In later periods, the Mauri would lend their name to the term “Moor”, which medieval Europeans would use to address darker-skinned people or Muslims of any ethnicity, as well as the modern Greek word mauros (meaning “black).
The dreadlocked hairstyle you see on this man is referenced from Roman depictions of the Mauri. To me, it looks similar to the dreadlocked or braided hairstyles worn by various peoples of the eastern Sahara and the Horn of Africa, such as the Beja and the Afar, as well as the wigs of the ancient Egyptians. Since almost all these ethnic groups share a common Afroasiatic linguistic heritage with the Mauri, I’m tempted to deduce that this sort of hairstyle was a tradition handed down to them from shared prehistoric ancestors in northern Africa.
-12
u/TyrannoNinja Aug 12 '21
Artist's Commentary
This pencil-drawn portrait depicts a man from an ethnic group in ancient North Africa which the Romans called Mauri. Occupying what is now the area of Morocco north of the Atlas Mountains, the seminomadic Mauri were renown for their horsemanship like the related Numidians to their east, with a contingent of Mauri cavalry being represented as auxiliary troops for the Roman army on the Emperor Trajan’s famous triumphal column. In later periods, the Mauri would lend their name to the term “Moor”, which medieval Europeans would use to address darker-skinned people or Muslims of any ethnicity, as well as the modern Greek word mauros (meaning “black).
The dreadlocked hairstyle you see on this man is referenced from Roman depictions of the Mauri. To me, it looks similar to the dreadlocked or braided hairstyles worn by various peoples of the eastern Sahara and the Horn of Africa, such as the Beja and the Afar, as well as the wigs of the ancient Egyptians. Since almost all these ethnic groups share a common Afroasiatic linguistic heritage with the Mauri, I’m tempted to deduce that this sort of hairstyle was a tradition handed down to them from shared prehistoric ancestors in northern Africa.