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Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (Volume 2: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence)

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Martin Bernal had an opportunity to write a book which would change our view of the classical world. Two of his premises, today, are unarguable: academics in the 19th century and before created a canonical Ancient Greece which never existed to justify their beliefs in European cultural superiority; the real Hellas was part of a larger world, the Greeks borrowed a lot from Babylon, Phonecia, Egypt, Persia, and so on. Ancient writers never hid this. One can read Herodotus and discover how he credits these "barbarians" with important ideas and innovations.

Bernal, it seems, succombed to political correctness and wrote a silly book instead. Why "black" Athena? Why emphasize Africa over Asia when Egypt, by this time, had become a province of larger empires? The readers of Bernal's book might be surprised to discover that he's not the father of "afrocentrism" some portray. The intelligent Bernal wants to win credit for the cultures in Asia and Africa which were part of this large Ancient world.

Bernal the polemicist, sadly, never leaves the kooky world of the late 20th century. There was no such thing as "Africa" in the ancient world in the way we currently understand it. The politicization of race is a modern phenomenon (even if most Eygptians were "black", which is dubious, they weren't racially conscience and didn't have ties to central Africa). Lastly the Greeks did not "steal" everything. It's impossible to write an intelligent history of this period without examining how the Greeks invented some ideas, borrowed some others, and out of this synthesis created something new.

The library of Alexandria was a Greek library. There was no Egyptian library in Athens. Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle and conquored the known world. The Byzantines spoke Greek. When Arab culture experienced its golden age they worked with Greek texts. Bernal seems so intent upon discrediting the originality of the ancient Greeks he creates another world which never existed.

This book can be used as a primary source for the "culture wars" of the 1990s. A promising thesis was compromised by ideological overreach. Still worth reading but dated and, in places, inane.

Although all avenues of historical research should be investigated (where reasonable leads exist), this is truely an endeavor in historical revisionism, hence unmatched except by the late Soviet scholasticship of claiming every invention from flight to democracy.

Dr. Bernal continues his brilliant analysis of Egyptian-Greek connections during ancient times. Unfortunately, due to the racism and extreme hatred from a select few of European roots who seem to loathe those of African descent, these books are reviewed poorly. No doubt this is primarily due to latent white racism, Eurocentrism, and the inability to deal with evidence which contradicts firmly held beliefs. Much like a religion, Euro-descended persons seem to think that it is their birthright to believe that their ancestors and only their ancestors developed the so-called "wonder of civilization". This is a position much abused throughout history to justify warfare, slavery, subjugation, murder, and even genocide of dark-skinned peoples the world over. Dr. Bernal's work helps to rectify some of these historical wrongs by offering a potential alternative that should be considered rather than dismissed ipso facto. In some ways, the second volume may be considered the weakest of the three with the historiographical aspects of Volume I generally being lauded even by some of the historians who spew so much vitriol at Dr. Bernal and Afrocentrists in general. Volume III is a major contribution to the study of ancient contacts which is still not as widely publicized and consequently also not considered as controversial. Hopefully, over time, humans will be able to shed some of their hateful and racist beliefs so that we can get a truly proper historical analysis of the early connections between Egypt and Europe and these books are a significant part of that overall process.

If you want to pass yourself off as a scholar, at least use some evidence. I'm sorry, but everyone in the academic community is well aware of the political drive behind this publication. Other than militants, no one else supports this drivel.

It is strange that so many so-called educated Europeans cannot look at the evidence presented in this book objectively. Even now when western science has proven that civilization started in Africa. No matter how far back in Greece or Rome that people search, they can find nothing older that civilization in Africa. You can't go back millions of years in Greek history and find skeletal remains, but you can in Africa. Even the early Greeks themselves told you that they got their knowledge from Egypt, which by the way was an African civilization. And by the way to prove that the Egyptions were black Africans until after many invasions people need to read the works of Cheihk Anta Diop who proved with the melanin dosage test that the Egyptian mummies were indeed black Africans. Go to your museums in Germany, France and England and you will see the artifacts that prove that the Egyptians were black. Gerald Massey, Albert Churchward and many other European scholars have also stated that civiliztion, writing, religion and the sciences started in Africa. Do your research and understand that history as it is taught today is wrong.

We reviewed this book in my African Studies course. The professor (African-American by the way) stated that most in academia consider this work laughable. The problem is that the PC environment today allows this propaganda to get through unchallenged.
Read with an open mind, and then laugh at the end.

"As a fault Bernal has muddied already muddied waters with attempting to ask the wrong questions ...and, those who have been 'refuting' him, have likewise addressed the wrong concerns. ... (but) If nothing else has come out of this debate, it is a realization that the notions of race as expressed by modern scholars reflect a modern industrial world and must be understood in that context." Eugene Cruz-Uribe



Black Athena, in a nutshell:
In Black Athena, Martin Bernal attempts to prove that the roots of Greek civilization and language came from Egypt and the Levant. Bernal argued in his first volume, 1987, that 18th and 19th century White scholarship, biasedly favored an 'Aryan/ Indo-European Model,' denying ancient Egyptian contributions. He attributed the European root search results to a racist dominated mentality. While Bernal proposal that ancient Egyptians were dark Africans, there is no proof of their Negroid classification. His work drifted to the extreme left supporting the wider allegation of Afrocentrism. The second volume of this projected four-volume work arouses fundamental questions of awe and skepticism, that touch almost every issue in American daily life: lack of logical dialogue, residual racism, failure of university programs.
To state that because Egypt is located on (NE corner of) of Africa, it is African, is merely simplistic. Does geography hold the only key to this classification? Dean Eugene Cruz-Uribe adds that, "... for many scholars that the anti-Bernal crusades that have evolved often have faulted Bernal ... and have thus downplayed the questions raised (that his outrageous theses addressed squarely one area of scholarship that Egyptologists and Classical historians had preferred not to address)".

Black Athena II:
Martin Bernal supports his thesis, by many Egyptian or Semitic roots for Greek words, while more recent discoveries in upper Egypt, indicated Phoenician alphabet could have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic into a more linear form during about the 12th century BC. The immediate offspring of Phoenician were the old Hebrew alphabet, and Aramaic, as well as Archaic Greek. No matter where and when the adoption of Egyptian signs onto a Semitic language occurred, the process of adoption is quite interesting. Bernal's striking examples, may exert a stronger potential in light of recent finds, but there is too much to be developed before his weaker cases could be supported by conclusive archeological reconstruction.
Much of the Bernal's archaeological interpretations though boldly genius, still lack solid evidential examples to convince. Bernal woven model of a "Pax Aegyptiaca" populations with cultural infilteration in the Aegean Bronze Age is no new idea. Bernal advances such cases that have been neglected or minimized by the Hellenocentricts. Bernal's blunt reconstructions go much further than warranted, comments John Lenz, "In fact he rejects a model of multiculturalism in favor of a scenario of widespread Egyptian colonization and domination."

Failure of Humanities:
How often do we hear Egyptian wisdom ignorantly depreciated by comparison with Greek philosophy? How many universities even offer courses on the ancient Near East and Egypt?
Harvard school's governing board selected a transforming leader reminiscent of Harvard's past great presidents, who set the agenda for higher education in the country and, as revered public intellectuals, dominated national debates. Dean Summers--himself a former Harvard economics wunderkind, convinced that his old school, (as mostly all ivy's) needs far more than a face lift, nothing less than a cultural revolution on campus. He initiated a review of the undergraduates study material that could ultimately help revise the definition of an effective liberal arts education program worthy of the 21st century, calling for a more interdisciplinary approach to learning as well (Bernal's self pursued agenda). Currently, humanities students major in traditional subjects, such as English or classics, while the nature of knowledge has vastly changed, many of the most exciting areas of inquiry cut across traditional disciplines, pointed the ousted dean. While the majority of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences -- which placed a pending vote of no confidence against Summers and seemed ready to move on it -- Summers still maintained strong support from some faculty members and a majority of students.

A compelling Review:
In an even handed analytical review, "Ancient Histories and Modern Humanities," By John Lenz, he concludes, "Black Athena, volume 2 is extremely heavy going and problematic. Informative and generally reasonable in tone, its scope and ambition put the work of most scholars to shame. Even hoary antiquarians will learn things, and other dedicated readers will be led into the fascinating alleyways of Aegean prehistory. Everyone, however, should read this work with extreme caution."

One brief example: Aristotle could not possibly have stolen his ideas from the library at Alexandria as claimed, since he died before the library was even built.

But of course fans of this book and its author don't care about the truth.

Point that out and the name-calling begins.

Adolf Erman is one of Bernal's sources which sums up the quality and legitimatcy of his book. This quote shows how true his facts really are. "The question of the race-origin of the Egyptians has long been a matter of dispute between ethnologists and philologists, the former maintaining the African theory of descent, the latter the Asiatic. Ethnologists assert that nothing exits in the physical structure of the Egyptian to distinguish him from the native African, and that from the Egyptian to the negro population of tropical Africa, a series of links exist which do not admit of a break. The egyptians, they maintain, cannot be separated from the Berbers, nor the latter from the Kelowi or Tibbu, nor these again from the inhabitants round Lake Tsad; all form one race in the mind of the ethnologist, differentiated only by the influence of a dissimilar manner of life and climate. Therefore, they say, many old customs of the ancient Egyptians are now found amongst the people of the Upper Nile. I will only instance the curious head-rest still used in the east of the Sudan to protect the wig, and the peculiar sickle-shaped sword, still carried by the Monbuttu princes with the same dignity as it was of old by the Pharaohs. On the other side philologists maintain that the language of ancient Egyptians has distinct kinship with that of the so-called Semitic nations.

Spread over anterior Asia, and the east and north of Africa, is found a great root-language, which has been called after its chief representatives, the Egypto-Semitic. The Semitic languages of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia belong to this group, as well as the allied Ethiopian dialects of east Africa, the languages of Beharis, Gallas, and Somalis. Further removed is the Libyan, spoken by the people of Berber in north Africa as far as the Atlantic; and still more perculiarly constituted is the ancient Egyptian. Nothing certain has been or probably will be ascertain, for the Libyan and Ethiopian languages are only known to us in their present much-changed forms. But the fact remains that philologists consider that the people who speak these languages belong to one and the same race. Other reasons tend to show us that the Semitic races migrated from one part of Asia to the districts in which they afterwards settled, and therefore the theory has been accepted that the Ethiopian, Libyan, and Egyptian people all forsook their Asiatic homes during the dim ages of the past, and seized possession of north and east africa. This theory is directly opposed to that of the ethnologists, according to whom these races are purely African. If we free ourselves, however, from the prejudices which have long held sway over this domain of science, we shall be able to reconcile these two theories. It seems a very doubtful hypothesis that ancient races should dwell quietly in one inhospitable region until the idea should suddenly seize them to forsake their homes and, with their children and their goods, to seek a better country. Such migrations have certainly taken place amongst the hordes of barbarians (e.g. the old migrations of the Teuton or Scythian races), but they never had much effect. After a few generations all traces of them disappeared in the countries they conquered, and no one would imagine from the appearance of the inhabitants of modern Italy, Spain, or Tunis, that whole tribes of Germanic race had overrun those countries. Neither the language nor the race of the subject nation suffers permanent change from such violent incursions.

On the other hand, if but a few adventurers, conquer a country and thus make it possible for their kindred to settle there, the constant influx of immigrants even in small numbers has an immense influence on the people. In the first place, conquerors succeed in introducing their language to be used officially; the upper classes of the subject race, desiring to belong to the ruling class, then begin ostentatiously to use foreign idioms; at last perhaps only after a thousand years, the lower classes begin also to adopt the new language. Thus in our own days we have seen nations extend their nationality, e.g. a few Spaniards and Portugese in south America, a few Arabs amongst the Copts and Berbers, a few Anglo-Saxons amongst the Celts in England. In each case we see that in this process the language only of the subject people changed, the race itself remains unaltered. In like manner probably ancient nations underwent transformations. The inhabitants of Libya, Egypt, and Ethiopia have probably belonged to the same race since prehistoric times; in physical structure they are still Africans, though in later times they used kindred dialects."

Reference:

Erman, Adolf: Life in Ancient Egypt, Dover Publications, Inc. 1971

I tried to read parts of this book, for free reading on internet. And far before to read even 5% of this trash, I decided to end the reading. This book has the absurd claim that Greek civilization was founded by black Africans. And uses togues' similarities between Greek and Phoenicians as the the proof of this "fact".
In fact Phoenicians weren't black and the same is true about the majority of the Egipticians. When we compare black African tongues and Greek, we found there's no real link between them.
The author is an American racist, looking for money and fame, writing this kind of trash-book.
If he really wanted to shows to real contributions of black Africans to mankind, he would be showed things, such as the commercial sorghum.