Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics [Paperback]

Martin Bernal (Author), David Chioni Moore (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2001

In Black Athena Writes Back Martin Bernal responds to the passionate debates set off by the 1987 publication of his book Black Athena. Producing a shock wave of reaction from scholars, Black Athena argued that the development of Greek civilization was heavily influenced by Afroasiatic civilizations. Moreover, Bernal asserted that this knowledge had been deliberately obscured by the rampant racism of nineteenth-century Europeans who could not abide the notion that Greek society—for centuries recognized as the originating culture of Europe—had its origins in Africa and Southwest Asia.
The subsequent rancor among classicists over Bernal’s theory and accusations was picked up in the popular media, and his suggestion that Greek culture had its origin in Africa was widely derided. In a report on 60 Minutes, for example, it was suggested that Bernal’s hypothesis was essentially an attempt to provide blacks with self-esteem so that they would feel included in the march of progress.
In Black Athena Writes Back Bernal provides additional documentation to back up his thesis, as well as offering persuasive explanations of why traditional scholarship on the subject remains inaccurate and why specific arguments lobbed against his theories are themselves faulty.
Black Athena Writes Back requires no prior familiarity with either the Black Athena hypothesis or with the arguments advanced against it. It will be essential reading for those who have been following this long-running debate, as well as for those just discovering this fascinating subject.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1987, Bernal published Black Athena, in which he argued that many of the cultural accomplishments traditionally attributed to the ancient Greeks originated, in fact, in Africa, especially among the Egyptians. Bernal also argues that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars of ancient Greece purposefully ignored or distorted evidence of the Afro-Asiatic roots of Greek achievement. He further argues that, because many of these scholars were overt racists and anti-Semites, they wanted those features that are considered to be the cornerstones of Western civilization to be the work of white people, and particularly Aryans. This controversial thesis attracted a great deal of popular media attention. Unsurprisingly, it met also with withering criticism from prominent scholars of archeology, linguistics and literature, the primary disciplines from which Bernal, who teaches government and Near Eastern studies at Cornell, collected his evidence. In this new volume, Bernal makes point-by-point retorts to, for instance, Egyptologist David O'Connor, who argues that Bernal is far too trusting of ancient literary sources; Mary Lefkowitz, a classicist and one of his most persistent critics, who finds very little of value in his work; and Emily Vermeule, an Aegean Bronze Age specialist, who questions Bernal's archaeological methodology. In response to Vermeule's allegations of "exaggerated sensitivity" (Bernal's words), he returns to passages from studies that he quoted in Black Athena as examples of scholarly racism. Many of the pieces here are previously published articles, essays and book reviews, and thus involve and reiterate aspects of his original book. 15 illus. (Oct.)Forecast: A considerable audience of nonspecialists will be curious about the current state of the 15-year-old controversy, but sales are likely to be limited to academics.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Not only has Bernal's controversial book Black Athena (1989) provoked passions with its thesis that Greek classical culture--and thus Western civilization--was influenced by Afro-Asiatic cultures, it also prompted his critics to publish Black Athena Revisited (1996), deliberately denying him an opportunity to respond, a move unheard of in academic circles. In this book, Bernal responds to the whirlwind of criticism surrounding his work, providing additional documentation for his thesis and revealing the sometimes petty conflicts among academics. Bernal answers specific criticism of Black Athena, conceding shortcomings in his original work and bolstering his thesis with new findings. In both works, Bernal cites linguistic, anthropological, and archaeological findings as the basis for his thesis, which is revealing in its insights on historical and contemporary racial politics. Bernal notes the hypocrisy of academics, steeped in the "cult of Europe," who only recently and begrudgingly credited Egypt's contributions to Western civilization and still deny any connection between ancient Egypt and modern "blacks." Readers need not have read Black Athena to benefit from the debate about the contributions of non-European cultures to Western civilizations and the hotly debated concept of Afrocentrism. This book and its companion, the forthcoming Debating Black Athena, will garner wide readership and spark interest in the previous works. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (September 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822327171
• ISBN-13: 978-0822327172
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #795,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > History > Africa > African Studies

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57 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great historiography, lots of inspiration for further study, June 15, 2003

By 

AK van Deelen "Alex K. van Deelen" (The Hague, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics (Paperback)

Black Athena

There are a lot of hysterical reviews on this forum, by people who clearly have
not read, let alone understood the book, Black Athena.

This book is not about whether the Ancient Egyptians were Black, or whether
Greek civilization as it exists today and became known to the Romans was a
wholesale copy of Egyptian civilization, as it obviously wasn't.

So, what is Black Athena about?

This book carefully sets out Martin Bernal's hypothesis, that ancient history
can be seen as having been molded into specific narratives, depending on
the age when that narrative was created and found it's uses.
He defines three different Models or narratives, namely the Ancient Model,
The Aryan Model, and his own Revised Ancient Model. He includes some
suggested timelines, but basically, the Ancient Model of Greeks like
Herodotus, suggested that in 15th century BC, Egyptians and
Phoenicians had set up colonies in Greece and the Aegean, creating Greek
civilization. The Aryan Model suggests that civilization started with the
indigenous creation of a civilization in Greece, and that there were
Nordic invasions of Indo-European speakers who mixed in with
the non-Indo-European speaking indigenous population
Bernal's Revised Ancient Model places the Egyptian and Phoenician
invasions in the 21st-19th century, pushes back the introduction of the
alphabet to the 17th century (from the 9th century), but maintains
that there were Nordic invasions and that the indigenous population
spoke a related Indo-Hittite language.

All ten chapters in this book are documented to a different period and
the changing perspectives and emphasis that is put on a particular origin
of history or culture (from the Ancient Model In Antiquity (I), through
this model's transmission during the dark ages and the renaissance (II),
The Triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th Centuries (III) and
the beginning Hostilities To Egypt In The 18th Century (IV) (long _before_
Champollion's decypherment of Egyptian in the first quarter of the19th century).
These hostilities had no small part of their origins in the existing race based slavery,
colonialism and the challenges from within Europe to the transatlantic slave trade
as a catalist of the need for a defense of the first two institutions.

Chapters V through IX deal with the Romantic Linguistics (V) the discovery of
Sanskrit as a related, Indo-European language and the rise of the Indian-Aryan model.
Hellenomania (VI) deals with the rise of Greece as a fount of European
civilization and ideals, under the German school of von Humboldt and Wolf.
Hellenomania 2 (VII) deals with the takeup of this school of thought in England
and the growing pre-eminence of the Aryan model in the middle of the 19th century.
The Rise And Fall Of The Phoenicians (VIII) deals with the recognitions of
the Phoenicians and the influence of antisemitism, as does chapter (IX).

The book concludes with The Post-War Situation (X) and discussion
of the influences of Gordon and Astour and their reclaming of the legacy
of the Phoenicians.

In the end we have to ask: is it really so difficult to believe that Ancient Egypt
at the height of it's power, it's age of expansion, created small Egyptian colonies
in the Peleponnese and around the Aegean (20th century BC), that these colonies
helped to transfer some of it's culture and civilization, and that the Greeks had myths
that said so? No linguist today disputes the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet.
A small step pyramid has been found in Thebes, Greece. Most ancient Greek
philosophers paid homage to Ancient Egypt and studied there, in the 5th century.

A classic book and a must read for anyone interested in the topic, especially
of Aegean relations and the history of history itself.

36 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Literally Black!, December 4, 2003

By 

A. Conzevoy (Sherman Oaks, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics (Paperback)

People may dislike Bernal's writing style, but that doesn't mean they should ignore his ideas.

By naming his books "Black Athena" Bernal doesn't mean that Athena, the symbol of the Athenians and their culture, which we call Greek culture, was imagined as black. More likely he believes she was a light Mediterranean brown. Even the famous classicist Bernard Knox (a professor who wrote introductory essays to Robert Fagel's translations of The Iliad and Odyssey) concedes this point in his ironic essay collection "The Oldest of the Dead White European Males" when he politely describes Greeks as an olive colored people.

Bernal's use of black in "Black Athena" refers to the historical misconception of her skin color by Romantics, Racists, and Imperialists who were not necessarily the same people. It also refers to the poetically and politically motivated misunderstanding of the historical origins of Greek myth, culture, and language. Not to say that Athena wasn't a Greek Goddess but rather that Greek ideas of Gods and Nature have significant (and uncredited) roots in more ancient civilizations (whether Egyptian, Sumerian, or more broadly Afro-Asiatic).

Bernal is attempting to undermine the false popular idea (especially among people who specialize in the study of the Greco-Roman Classics) that, poetically speaking, Greek culture just sprang out of the ground like Cadmus' dragon teeth. Oh wait, no; actually, that myth tells of how a Phonecian, who we classify as Afroasiatic, brought literacy to the Greeks. Other ancient Greek sources attest to having recieved the basic tools of Greek Culture from their neighbors, why should we disbelieve them? Then there's etymology...

Of course, Afroasiatic roots do not detract from the genius of Greek theater, literature, and philosophy! That would be like saying Newton was an idiot because he didn't invent numbers. That would be like saying Shakespeare was worthless because he didn't create the theater, because he learnt from the literary examples of Geoffrey Chaucer, Christopher Marlow, and Ben Johnson, because the subject matter of his plays were shaped by thousands of years of preceding history, and because his plots were not original.

Clearly parents have a large role in the raising of children, but posterity does not praise parents for their childrens' accomplishments, not with great artists, scientists, or statesmen. Though they lay the foundations of a child's moral, literary, and technological culture, what is built on those foundation is not theirs. Ultimately Shakespeare's father was not Shakespeare, but who would believe that Shakespeare's family had no influence on his intellectual development? Likewise, using and improving the brilliant ideas of neighbors and ancestors does not rob scientific progress or artistic excellence of value. Is it more important that an idea is perfectly original? none are, or that it is good? Cultural innovators keep their worth when credit is given where credit is due, and their supporters have their importance recognized too.

It seems like the subject of intellectual precedence stirs up great anxiety in lovers of Classical literature. It shouldn't. Greek achievements are no less grand because they sprang from foreign soil. If anything, appreciation of Bernal's ideas will hopefully convince linguists and classicists with philosophical inclinations to shape up their fields erroneous notions of cultural origins, especially regarding etymology (read his books for details). It would be wonderful if a love of truth leads to more precise translations and a better understanding of the ancient literature we love.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Studious Response To Racist, Hate-filled Critics, December 24, 2010

By 

RepublicConstitution "Freedom" (Earth) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics (Paperback)

This is a compilation of Dr. Bernal's well-thought responses to his most prominent critics. 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 works help 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. 'Writes Back' is interesting to gain an understanding of the scope of some of the milder and less racist attacks on Dr. Bernal and the theory. The major racists are those on the outside of academia who see these works as some kind of affront to their heinous and false belief system.