Black Athena

Martin Bernal

ISBN 10: 0813512778 / ISBN 13: 9780813512778

Published by Rutgers University Press, 1987

About this Item

Winner of the American Book Award, 1990. Could Greek philosophy be rooted in Egyptian thought? Is it possible that the Pythagorean theory was conceived on the shores of the Nile and the Euphrates rather than in ancient Greece? Could it be that Western civilization was born on the so-called Dark Continent? For almost two centuries, Western scholars have given little credence to the possibility of such scenarios. In Black Athena, an audacious three-volume series that strikes at the heart of today's most heated culture wars, Martin Bernal challenges Eurocentric attitudes by calling into question two of the longest-established explanations for the origins of classical civilization. The Aryan Model, which is current today, claims that Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers, or "Aryans," of the native "pre-Hellenes." The Ancient Model, which was maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that additional Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Moving beyond these prevailing models, Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model, which suggests that classical civilization in fact had deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. This long-awaited third and final volume of the series is concerned with the linguistic evidence that contradicts the Aryan Model of ancient Greece. Bernal shows how nearly 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has been plausibly derived from two Afroasiatic languages-Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. He also reveals how these derivations are not limited to matters of trade, but extended to the sophisticated language of politics, religion, and philosophy. This evidence, according to Bernal, confirms the fact that in Greece an Indo-European people was culturally dominated by speakers of Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume. "A work which has much to offer the lay reader, and its multi-disciplinary sweep is refreshing: it is an important contribution to his to historiography and the sociology of knowledge, written with elegance, wit, and self-awareness. a thrilling journey. his account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find." -- Margaret Drabble, The Observer "An astonishing work, breathtaking bold in conception and passionately written. salutary, exciting, and in its historiographical aspects, convincing." -- G. W. Bowersock, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton "The next far in book. A formidable work of intellectual history." -- Christian Science Monitor.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Black Athena
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813512778
• ISBN 13: 9780813512778
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the American Book Award and a Socialist Review Book Award What is classical about Classical Civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the whole basis of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied, or supressed since the eighteenth century--chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers--or Aryans--from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this "Aryan model." They did not see their political institutions, science, philosophy, or religion as original, but rather as derived from the East in general, and Egypt in particular. Black Athena is a three-volume work. Volume 1 concentrates on the crucial period between 1785 and 1850, which saw the Romantic and racist reaction to the Enlightment and the French Revolution, and the consolidation of Northern expansion into other continents. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal makes meaningful links between a wide range of areas and disciplines--drama poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of "modern scholarship." Martin Bernal is Professor Emeritus of Government Studies at Cornell University; he was formerly a Fellow at King's College, Cambridge.

About the Author

Martin Gardiner Bernal (1937 - 2013) was Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The first two volumes of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization ("I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985"; and "II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence") have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, Greek and Japanese. Black Athena won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1990.