Customer Reviews

Black Athena Revisited

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

An excellent collection of twelve essays by over twenty scholars in refutation of specific claims and theory presented in Martin Bernal's "Black Athena." Mary Lefnowitz, the editor of this book, wrote only the introduction.

The criticism of new theories by one's peers is a legitimate way of insuring excellence and truth in scholarly studies. This tradition is also our protection against specious claims, shoddy scholarship and half truths. These essays are written not by a single "racist" author but by several experts in various feilds of study including linguistics and science.

The cricism in these essays is neither outrageous nor particularly unusual -- and far from vitriolic. Naturally, though, even the most even-handed refutation will be met with anger by those who believe the understandable delusion that victimhood somehow puts one in direct contact with truth.

Skepticism and disputation are two of our cultures most important intellectual tools. The essays in this book are thoughtful, learned and erudite responses to inaccuracies and exaggerated claims. They are not, as some wish to believe, attempts to uphold the racist status quo. Rather, they are to protect scholarly studies from a new and insideous kind of racism.

It is always best to read as many sources as possible, provided that those sources are verifiable and that the priority is thurst for truth over political (or social) agenda. This collection is an excellent start for those interested in finding other authors and ideas about antiquity.

I am more of a medieval history fan, but this little controversy-want-to-be caught my attention. After reading Bernal's fiction, this book gave a refreshing take on scholarship. Various authors - thus various viewpoints- look at the evidence. Politics - or political correctness-is essentially ignored and this is quite refreshing to the reader. I urge you to read this book if only to learn how REAL scholars objectively study their work.

it renews my faith in the human race when someone like Ms. Lefkowitz has the courage to stand up for rational thinking and logic. In response to the review from the reader in Michigan, you think Ms. Lefkowitz is blinded by her passion and YOU'RE not??????

This book absolutely undermines the fallacies of Black Athena. Whenever someone lies, just throw the truth at them. It works everytime !

It was trully fun to read this book versus Bernal's. You feel Bernal really stretching the truth, unlike here where the research is evidence-based. That is true science. Bernal is pure politics, embraced by a politically-motivated minority.

Enjoy.

If you want to read so-called scholarship based purely on politics, then by all means embrace Bernal. If you want to become semi-famous (or infamous) in the academic world by publishing fiction, read Bernal- he's your man. Just pick a topic that is politically correct and watch people too scared to criticise you!

Or, read this book and learn true scholarship. Enough said.

I like how people who did not read this book write in to trash it. This is typical of the hysteria: "We don't like our true history, our people have been suppressed, let's change history to raise our self-esteem."
Please. If you honestly go through each book and compare the same lines of argument/data, you can only conclude that Bernal is a fictional historian. It's that obvious. He surely became semi-famous in the process (coincidence?).
Let's start another conspiracy....

This is an excellent, ideology-free, cant-free, and most of all, well researched and scholary collection of essays on the "Black Athena" thesis of Martin Bernal: that Classical Western civilization originating in the city-states of Ancient Greece had in turn its origins in Black Africa, on the assumption that ancient Egypt was a "black" nation. Unbiased readers should note that no one of the eminently qualified essayists in this book makes the absurd claim that Classical Greek civilization "developed all by itself" as some hostile reviewers on this page have maintained, or that it had no Egyptian or Middle Eastern influences (the latter was more significant in the opinion of many). The contributors do convincingly refute Bernal's assertion that Greek civilization took its principal elements and foundation from Egypt, regardless of whether that nation was "black" (it wasn't in terms of being sub-Saharan Negro). And to answer the one reviewer from Iowa, we know enough about the ancient Egyptian language to know that it wasn't related to any of the sub-Saharan Black African Niger-Kordofanian languages anymore than it was related to Greek. Rather, it was distantly related to languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and the North African Berber languages: none of those are black African languages.

Bernal's blatant attempt to fabricate an Egypt that was "black" African is torn to shreds in this excellent collection of essays written in true academic fashion. As is pointed out in Black Athena Revisted, Egypt is Middle Eastern and has interacted mainly with other Mediterranean lands. I don't understand where Bernal gets his idea about how Western scholars have denegrated the ancient Egyptians or the Phoenicians. In the Western Civilization courses I have taken at UCLA it is clearly stated that Western Civilization began in Mesopotamia and Phoenicia and that there was a good deal of cross-cultural exchanges throughout the Mediterranean. Concrete evidence regarding Egypt's "racial" origins and those of the Middle East (from Morocco to western Pakistan) are numerous. Bernard Lewis' Race and Slavery in the Middle East is an excellent source for information regarding the Near East that uses Middle Eastern sources. Egypt's origins in Western Asia are also plentiful. Ancient Egyptian's sole descendent today is Coptic used for liturgical purposes by the Coptic Christians of Egypt, and is similar, in some ways, to Berber. The languages spoken in North Africa are Semitic-Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic, but their origins are in Syria and northern Arabia and were spread into North and East Africa later. The ancient Egyptians point towards their origins as springing from the Red Sea (presumably Arabia) and the Berbers of North Africa have a distinctive Caucasoid appearance and genetic tests show that are mainly of Western Asian and European extraction. Similarly, DNA tests upon Egyptian mummies reveal most to have been Western Asia with some being mulatoo and even Greek. The Arabs, who are so often blamed for having started Egypt's ethnic changes, were few in number (the sparse deserts of Arabia are hardly places for overpopulation to occur) and over time they arabized Egypt by making Arabic the official language without significantly altering the ethnic composition of most Egyptians. In fact there are probably more Egyptians of Greek ancestry than Arabian (although modern Egyptians refer to themselves as Arabs by virtue of being Arabic speakers). Other European populations were indeed introduced into Egypt including the Mamelukes from the Caucasus and southern Russia. These were mainly slave soldiers (although female concubines weren't uncommon). Further evidence of Egyptians being predominantly Mediterranean and not sub-Saharan recalls the Ethiopians. The Ethiopians speak a Semitic language that is more like Arabic or Hebrew rather than ancient Egyptian (a point Afrocentrists seem to overlook) and the Ethiopians have a number of tales to describe their origins (which are mostly black with some Semitic admixture). The story of Soloman and the Queen of Sheba (or Saba in modern Yemen) concludes with their son Menelik I becoming Ethiopia's first king. These tales substantiate that Afro-Asiatic languages arose in Syria and Northern Arabia and not in some undisclosed sub-Saharan region. The Ethiopians (like the Egyptians) claim that their language came to them from Arabia. Thus the term Afro-Asiatic is a linguistic one and not an ethnic designation. What is clear is that North Africans are today, and have been since the dawn of recorded human history, predominatly Caucasoid (or Europoid). The reasoning is simple: the harsh Sahara and Nubian deserts separated predominantly white North Africa from the blacks south of the Sahara. Historically, as a result of this barrier, North Africans have tended to interact with Western Asian and Europeans and did not begin to interact on a regular basis with sub-Saharan Africa until the Islamic period. As Robert Norton points out in his piece comparing Bernal's Black Athena with the Nazi ideology of Hitler (who supported the idea that the Dorian Greeks were of Germanic "Aryan" extraction) Afro-centrists are intent upon creating an image of themselves that makes them appear to be a master race, but like the Nazis they have few facts to substantiate their claims.

I guess the Black Greece theme is passe now (other than a few militants' fantasies). It's actually funny to read this next to Bernal's drivel. On one hand science (Lefkovitz), on the other obvious pc propaganda(Bernal). Read both and figure it out for yourself.